Investigating Techniques for Teaching Word Meanings

Differential Word Knowledge and Reading Comprehension

“…These findings are similar to those of Ahlfors (1979), Anderson and Kulhavy (1972), Crist and Petrone (1977), Gipe (1979), and Johnson and Stratton (1966), who also found that programs which could be classified as "mixed" were significantly more effective than those classified as "definitional." However, the results of the present study extend the findings of these earlier studies.…”

“…This is not to say that the processing requirements of a vocabulary teaching method are not relevant to effective instruction. On the contrary, looking at the processing activities of students during vocabulary learning, as well as the types of information provided to students, one might be able to explain Margosein, Pascarella, and Pflaum's (Note 1) finding that a definitional treatment which required a great deal of elaborative processing, the semantic mapping technique suggested by Johnson and Pearson (1978), produced significantly better vocabulary learning than did a mixed treatment similar to that used by Gipe (1979). The concept of depth of processing needs further refinement (see Baddesley, 1978;Lockhart & Craik, 1978), but it appears that some account of the processing dimension should be included in future studies in this area.…”

“…The passage comprehension, sentence anomaly, and sentence cloze tests were considered to be tests of comprehension, either at the passage or sentence level (Weaver, 1979). The sentence anomaly and sentence cloze tests were also considered to be measures of the understanding of the vocabulary words in context (Gipe, 1979;Johnson & Stratton, 1966) and were used in conjunction with the multiple-choice test to assess the different effects of the treatments on word knowledge. …”

“…On the other hand, the use of discussion in this study may have been more effective than the work sheet type of instruction used in the earlier studies. Gipe (1979), who also used fifth graders and used similarly chosen target words, used only work sheets for vocabulary self-study without an open discussion. The students in her definitional group averaged about 60% correct on weekly tests, while the students in the present study averaged about 80% correct.…”

“…Wide reading has generally been found to be less effective in terms of vocabulary learning than direct instruction in vocabulary, either by a definitional or mixed method (Petty, Herold, & Stoll, 1968). Also, Ahlfors (1979), Anderson and Kulhavy (1972), Crist and Petrone (1977), Gipe (1979), and Johnson and Stratton (1966) found that methods which could be classified as mixed produced significantly higher vocabulary learning than definitional methods.…”