Why is vocabulary instruction important to reading comprehension? According to the Joshi article, vocabulary is a means for beinning the understanding of comprehension. One study of 3rd graders showed that most students had mastered decoding skills and could comprehend grade level materials. But it has been noted that once they reach middle grades, while their decoding skills remained good, poor vocabulary interfered with comprehension on these grade levels. Some students do not have a large source of vocabulary or are not taught vocabulary that enriches their understanding while reading. According to the Adams article, direct vocabulary instruction has resulted in an increase in word knowledge and reading comprehension in all students that were studied.
What is the Matthew Effect?
The Matthew Effect states that poor readers tend to read easier materials and fewer books than good readers do. A poor reader’s vocabulary grows at a slower rate than students with a larger vocabulary because the books that they are being assigned have poorer quality vocabulary in them. Students with a larger vocabulary read more and better comprehend the material they read. A student’s vocabulary knowledge is affected by the amount of words they are exposed to. Children with a lower vocabulary tend to define words in terms of the context that they were read in, while children with a larger vocabulary were able to define words in more general terms and show examples of the word meanings.
Good discussion. Adams would most likely argue that increasing vocabulary knowledge results in greater skill in word recognition. If your recall, her models posits that a lexical entry consists of three representations, i.e., phonological, semantic, and orthographic, all of which send and receive activation from one another. A word with all 3 representations reaches the threshold activation faster than a word with no meaning because it would receive activation only from the phonological and orthographic processors.
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