Language Barrier

After reading Chapter 7, Mastering the Art of Effective Vocabulary Instruction, by Janet Allen, from the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst and Linda Rief; I found a connection to readers who did not understand the words that were on the page in front of them. This is not because I had read about them and now understood their plight of not being able to understand the main point of an essay because they did not reconize the vocabulary. I recognized a similarity with readers who do not understand the words on a page and myself because when I was learning Spanish, I rarely knew very many of the Spanish words on a given page. I struggled with comprehension initially, and did what I thought was required of me to read the text, I sounded words out and looked for words that I knew that could help decode the sentence. Thankfully, there were many tools employed by teachers that helped all of us struggling Spanish speakers to learn the vocabulary and the definitions each word had in different contexts. I eventually learned more and more about the language and root words and feel confident listening, speaking, writing and reading in Spanish, although there are always new words to be learned! I think that it is most important to give students an opportunity to discuss words in class and help them see the difference between using a good word and a great word.
Also in this chapter were various techniques for assessing a students' understanding of vocabulary. The idea of Concept Circles found in this chapter, is a creative way to understand relationships between words. Spanish teachers could easily incorporate this into vocabulary instruction as a tool for comparisons between similar words and a way for students to group words from a particular chapter. This has to be more engaging and useful than rote memorization of a list of Spanish words with the English translation next to them. As students learn a new language or new words in a language they already speak, it is important to have a schema in which they can place the word and hopefully be able to use it in the future.