Nope. It never stops. Which was one of the things that I found interesting about the Bromely article -- she acknowledged the fact that language is a living, changing thing and that new words are created every day in English, especially in STEM fields. I also think it's significant that she took the time and space to talk about how our attitudes as teachers towards new vocabulary affect how students perceive the experience of encountering new vocabulary. Sheer enthusiasm for language is the bedrock that all of these other strategies are built on. I don't know about you, but I love a good $10 word; and that makes the experience of guiding students through vocabulary instruction or discovery much less like a chore.
In general, I found the Bromely article very interesting, even if some of the statistics made me raise my eyebrows a bit. Seventy percent of the most common words having multiple meanings seems a bit iffy to me; that just seems high. As well, I thought that saying that English is a simple and consistent language relative to other languages was a bit of an overstatement. While I can concede that English would be simpler than tonal languages just on a literary level, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're consistent by any means. English pulls grammatically and linguistically from so many places it would be difficult to remain internally consistent. In addition, I really wish the Bromely article had gone more in depth about using connections and associations to learn new words. I know this is the primary method I use to learn new words, and by its very nature this strategy is accessible to all. Seeing how to implement this in a classroom would be a great resource for me.
In the Baumann and Graves article, I feel like it's worth mentioning that it's really important to me that they classified symbolic representations as their own category of vocabulary. Understanding these and knowing how to read them are crucial for building comprehension in math and science. I often liken math to a foreign language -- it's not English, but it is a language with vocabulary and a grammatical structure, and can be understood and used to communicate. It is internally consistent and logical. It's not magic or gibberish.
Lauren, I also really liked how Bromely took the time to talk about how teachers attitudes toward vocabulary affect students' perspectives of the vocabulary. As teachers, it is important that we keep curiosity and enthusiasm when it comes to exploring new vocabulary words with the class. This is something that I have really been striving to do in my own math class.
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