K–10English K–10 Syllabus

What is vocabulary and why is it important?

Vocabulary can be categorised as receptive word knowledge (ie words that are understood when others use them) and productive word knowledge (ie words that are used orally or in written form).

Vocabulary can also be considered in terms of its breadth and depth. Breadth of vocabulary refers to the number of words an individual knows the meaning of. Depth of vocabulary means the words an individual can define (ie words they can provide attributes of and supply examples of other semantically related words) and use in a range of contexts.

Learning English vocabulary is one of the most crucial tasks for English learners as it is vital to reading success and to literacy development more generally.

Vocabulary contributes to young children’s phonological awareness and connects the word-level process of phonics and the broader cognitive process of comprehension, which in turn contributes to improvement in reading comprehension and writing.

Vocabulary plays a key role in the development of comprehension skills in all subject areas as students need to understand around 90 per cent of words to comprehend a text. Therefore, explicit teaching of carefully selected words is important for vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension and creating written texts. Students in K–2 primarily learn vocabulary through oral language. Beyond this, vocabulary is largely learnt through reading and exploring texts. Students who communicate using nonverbal modes of communication should be provided with opportunities to learn new vocabulary using their preferred communication system. For example, using Key Word Sign, or through real objects, photographs or symbols.

Teaching vocabulary

A robust approach to teaching vocabulary should involve:

• explicitly teaching selected words
• explicitly teaching word-learning strategies
• promoting word consciousness
• providing rich and varied language experiences.

Explicitly teaching words

Explicitly teach students that a word is a group of letters that has meaning when spoken or written. Display the written word. Model this with individual word - for example, ‘This is the word fish. A fish is an animal that lives in fresh or salt water. It has gills to breathe through and it has scales on its body.’ Plan for words that will be the target of teaching (target vocabulary). These words can be selected from texts read to the students or concepts from Mathematics and other learning areas. It is not possible to teach all the new words that students will encounter throughout the year. Therefore, words targeted for explicit instruction need to be carefully selected. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) devised a 3-tiered framework to classify words as follows: Tier 1 words are basic-level words (eg dog, baby, happy, pretty). While we need to teach students how to read and write these words, they rarely require instruction at school in terms of what they mean and how to use them. Tier 2 words are of ‘high utility for mature language users and are found across a variety of domains’ (eg precede, stale, awful, snuggle). Tier 2 words add power and precision to written and spoken language but many Tier 2 words are most commonly found in written language. Tier 3 words are used rarely (low frequency) and only in highly specific situations (eg decibel, octave, atom).

The Three tiers of vocabulary posters: English K–6 are available as one downloadable document to support teachers’ and students’ understanding of vocabulary.

Vocabulary learning opportunities should also include words in students’ home language. This can promote:

• students making connections with their home language
• all students to learn new words in a range of languages and/or dialects.

Students for whom English is an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) may require supplementary teaching of Tier 1 words.