In addition, a strong relation has been found between environmental indicators such as socioeconomic status and
vocabulary
knowledge, indicating that home factors may contribute substantially to students''
vocabulary knowledge.
Nearly all strategies of increasing vocabulary knowledge result in greater learning than occurs during typical opportunities. These methods have included semantic mapping and semantic features analysis procedures, the keyword method, and computer-assisted instruction.
Words can be known at different levels of understanding. Therefore, choice of vocabulary intervention procedure should be based on the procedure''s efficiency with respect to teacher and student time, and its usefulness in helping students learn the meaning of other words independently.
Directly teaching word meanings does not adequately reduce the gap between students with poor versus rich vocabularies because of the size of the gap. It is crucial, therefore, that students also learn strategies for learning word meanings independently.
The relation between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge is strong and unequivocal. Although the precise causal direction of the relation is not understood clearly, there is evidence that the relation is largely reciprocal.
The development of strong reading skills is the most effective
independent word learning strategy available. However, those students who are in the greatest need of vocabulary acquisition interventions tend to be the same students who read poorly and fail to engage for reading necessary to learn large numbers of words.
The meaning of words is learned during independent reading activities, but the effects do not appear to be very powerful. Words need to be encountered in text multiple times before their meaning becomes part of a student''s vocabulary. However, although independent reading is not an efficient way to learn word meanings, the tremendous number of words typical students in the primary and middle grades encounter in written text nevertheless result in considerable vocabulary learning.
Improvements in beginning reading instruction are crucial if students are to develop the skills necessary to engage in significant amounts of independent reading and hence acquire a sufficiently large vocabulary.