Benefits of talking about 50-cent words with young children
Opportunities for initiating conversations about rare words can come from storybook reading experiences. Discussing words with children prompts their active involvement and provides teachers with information about children’s evolving lexicons. In fact, conversations about words provide more information about a child’s develop- ing vocabulary knowledge than we can learn from tests or observations of children’s word use. Benefits of conversa- tions about sophisticated vocabulary include the following, learned from talking with preschoolers.
They expose children to new words and new con- cepts. Talking about unusual (i.e., low-frequency) vocabu- lary exposes children to new words in a context that is visu- ally and verbally supportive. The following illustrates how a teacher exposed children to the word unruly in the course of discussing the text in Henry’s Happy Birthday, by Holly Keller.
Ms. Doran: Unruly means hard to control. It was hard for Henry to make his hair do what he wanted it to do—stay down. Your hair might be unruly when you wake up in the morning.
Jason: Yeah, my mom’s hair is messy. Ms. Doran: When she first wakes up? Jason: Yeah, all over, like this (hands circling head). Ms. Doran: It sounds like her hair is unruly, too. Hard to
control.
Ms. Doran’s use of unruly in a short discussion of Henry’s appearance exposes children to a sophisticated word whose concept they can easily understand.
They clarify differences in meaning between new words and known concepts. Talking about words offers teachers opportunities to clarify nuances in word mean- ings. The following conversation during a reading of Lind- say Barrett George’s In the Woods: Who’s Been Here? shows how talking about sophisticated vocabulary helps adults understand what children pay attention to in definitions and how they can provide clarification to help children understand word meanings.
Preschoolers who hear rich explanations of sophisticated words learn significantly more words than children who do not.
68 Young Children • November 2012
Mr. Myers: When it (pointing to butterfly) was inside, its wings were together, but once it got out, it could splay, or spread out, its wings.
Aquala: Ya! Mr. Myers: Splay means to spread out. Aquala: Yeah, like peanut butter. Like spread with a knife. Mr. Myers: Yes, but the peanut butter doesn’t really get
splayed because it doesn’t have parts. Splay means to spread something that has parts. You have body parts that you can splay. You can splay your arms, legs. And spread out all over like this (gestures).
Aquala: (pointing to stomach) Can’t splay this! Mr. Myers: No, you can’t splay your stomach. You can’t
splay your tongue. So you can only splay things that have parts to spread out.
Aquala: (spreading arms apart) This splay? Mr. Myers: Yes, you are splaying your arms. Aquala: (to another child) And you are splaying your whole
body.
This conversation included general information about splay’s meaning. When the child applied a literal under- standing of spread, however, the adult clarified that splay- ing requires parts and differs from spreading a substance.
They deepen meanings of partially known words. Sometimes children’s knowledge about words is limited to only one derivation, to a single context, or to examples, not meanings. Discussion provides opportunities to deepen chil- dren’s knowledge of words, as follows in a conversation dur- ing a reading of William T. George’s Box Turtle at Long Pond.
Ms. Fradon: A predator is an animal that eats other animals.
Garth: Like a tiger. Like a tiger eats an antelope.
Ms. Fradon: Yes. Garth: Because (pointing to raccoon) they eat turtles.
Ms. Fradon: So, a raccoon is a predator of?
Garth: Of the … of the (pointing to turtle)
Ms. Fradon: Box turtle. Exactly. Caritina: (pointing to raccoon) Yep, that’s a predator.
This conversation provided infor- mation about the characteristics of a predator, a word for which Garth has partial knowledge through examples (tiger). Garth later indicated an under- standing of the meaning of predator by stating “Because they eat turtles.” He seemed to use the basic meaning of predator to judge that the raccoon
qualifies. Still using examples, Caritina agreed: “Yep, that’s a predator.” The conversation exemplifies application of the new information to animals in the book, deepening the children’s knowledge of predator exemplars.
They repair misunderstandings. Talking about sophisticated words with preschoolers enables adults to repair children’s initial misunderstandings of new words, especially if children have missed important distinctions in meaning, have not heard the word precisely, or have misap- plied their existing knowledge or metalinguistic information— knowledge about language (e.g., knowing that words ending in -ing are probably actions). The following example is from a conversation about illustrations of bunting during a read- ing of Henry’s Happy Birthday.
Mr. Chua: Do you know what bunting is? Antoine: Uh-uh [no]. Mr. Chua: (to Val) Do you know? Val: Uh-huh [yes]. It’s putting up things. Mr. Chua: Not quite. Bunting is a decoration. Val: Uh-huh. Mr. Chua: And it’s cloth or paper that is hung up to make
parties look pretty. It is a decoration—something pretty. Sometimes grown-ups put bunting up to decorate a room or even the outside of a building.
Val’s first response indicates that she thinks the word bunting is a verb. The -ing ending seems to indicate to her that the word labels some action: “putting things up.” Mr. Chua then clarifies that bunting is a noun, something that is put up, not the action of hanging something. When a teacher models accurate use of misunderstood information
© K
ar en
P h
ill ip
s
Young Children • November 2012 69
in the explanation, children learn exactly why the initial meaning is problematic.
They prime children to value words and increase their knowledge about word learning. Exposing chil- dren to uncommon words and their definitions can shape chil- dren’s expectations to hear explanations and to wonder about word meanings. In the next example, a teacher reads Jim Arnosky’s Rabbits and Raindrops and inserts a low-frequency word, lawn, which Ms. Krigstein had explained previously.
Ms. Krigstein: Mother rabbit hops out—jumps quickly—into the bright sunlight, onto the green grass, that green lawn. So mother rabbit is leading her babies on the green lawn.
Wallace: The green grass? Ms. Krigstein: Yes, the green grass is the green lawn.
Modeling the belief that sophisticated words are interest- ing and important to know communicates to children that words are worthy of their curiosity. Talking about unusual words provides benefits to children beyond simply hearing
them or having rich definitions. When children learn sophis- ticated words through discussion, they might begin to real- ize that they sometimes misunderstand a meaning. Knowing this is a possibility, and that specific details are involved in distinguishing a sophisticated word, children seem to learn to check their understanding of key details in words’ mean- ings. This child believes queries about words are welcome and that words in the story should make sense.
Place Your Order Here!
