Vocabulary work for the reluctant reader

I've posted before on the fact that many of our students have small vocabularies and that this hampers their reading comprehension.  (You can read that post here.)  By far the best way to increase your vocabulary is to read a wide variety of materials - particularly books or articles at a challenging reading level.  I have also posted on the fact that it is difficult to get students to actually do this.

Vocabulary building needs to begin - well, from birth really.  However, college bound students should consciously work on their vocabularies beginning no later than middle school.  How can you get a reluctant reader to work on his or her vocabulary without reducing it to rote memorization?  Comic books can be a great method.  Calvin and Hobbes is a great comic series with some terrific vocabulary words in it.  It appeals to everyone age 10 and up.  The artist, Bill Watterson, has retired, but compilations of the strips are still in print.  You can also find them online.

I recently discovered another great vocabulary-building book series.  Stephan Pastis, who draws the nationally syndicated comic strip "Pearls Before Swine", has also written a series of books about an elementary school character, Timmy Failure.  The series is aimed at students in late elementary school, but I have enjoyed them, and I'm 53.  These chapter books are in the style made popular by the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. "Pearls" doesn't tend to be filled with SAT-level words, so imagine my surprise and delight when I encountered the following in the first Timmy Failure book, Mistakes Were Made:  rigorously, depiction, alleviated, stipulations, assent, prudent.  And that was just the first 50 pages!  Each book in the series is entertaining - a quick, easy read.  Unlike Calvin and Hobbes, which some children would need to read with a dictionary, many of the words in the Timmy Failure books are defined by the characters as you go, although in both series you could get the basic gist of many words from their context.

These books make great holiday gifts!  

Hello, Founding Documents!

When revisions to the SAT were first announced, there were several changes proposed for the reading section.  One of the changes was the elimination of the fill-in-the-blank vocabulary section that started off each reading section.  I thought that was an interesting choice at the time because, as unpopular as the vocab questions were, testing vocabulary is an easy way to assess reading comprehension.  Vocabulary knowledge is a reliable predictor of reading comprehension and vocab questions are a lot easier to write.  In addition, testing vocabulary, as opposed to passage-based testing, allows more questions to be asked in the time allotted, which should allow for finer differentiation among test-takers.

The reasoning offered at the time was that being familiar with "obscure" vocabulary did not predict success in college.  In the very same announcement, Daniel Coleman said that the reading passages would include "the founding documents."  At this point, the test-prep tutoring community responded, "Ummm.....have you actually READ the founding documents??"  Talk about obscure vocabulary.  I sat down and compiled a list of obscure or antiquated words from the Constitution ALONE that numbered in the hundreds.  Then the practice PSAT was posted without any founding documents in it, and I figured the College Board members had come to their senses.

Shortly after that, ETS posted four practice SAT tests.  I took the first one, and then I got busy.  REALLY busy.  It's been a crazy summer in test-prep land.  All the tutors I know have been swamped.

The first practice SAT had a pretty easy reading section.  Lovely.  There was plenty of time, and the most difficult section had a passage that had clearly been written for grownups but wasn't ridiculously challenging.  I didn't take tests 3 and 4 until this week, and HOLY CRAP!!  Hello, founding documents!

So there is a lot we could say here about the wisdom of including founding documents in some tests, but not others, including that fact that this would be a perfectly valid reason for avoiding the revised SAT.  However, if you are going to take it, you need to show up prepared to interpret writing that is 300 years old, obscure vocabulary and all.

It's hard to solve the triangle if you don't know what a "guy wire" is.

Happily all of my students currently studying trigonometry know that one would find a shadow on the ground, and all of them know how a kite works!  However, I did have to tell three students in a row what a "guy wire" is.

I'm not sure how we should be trying to address this problem.  On the one hand, we don't want a student who knows how to solve a triangle to miss the question because he doesn't know a non-math vocabulary word.  (And what about the ESL kids?) One solution might be to provide a labeled diagram with each question.  However, many would argue that being able to model the problem involves the student drawing his own diagram. Is there even a description of a guy wire that doesn't essentially tell the student how to draw the diagram?  And if we restrict ourselves to vocabulary that was used for examples in class, then how do we ever present a student with a novel problem?

The fact is that a word problem has to be about something.  And if the student has no experience with that "something" then it's a lot harder to work the problem.

(For more context, see this earlier post.)

The new SAT: Vocabulary

If it has taken a few days for SAT tutors and coaches to respond to Wednesday’s announcements about the redesign of the test it’s because we were super-busy preparing kids for Saturday’s test.  In the brief breather I have before I get slammed with kids trying to prepare for the May test, here are some of my thoughts. 

This will take several posts because a LOT of interesting things were reported.  There are two sets of interesting things:  the changes themselves and people’s comments on the changes.

Actually make that THREE sets of interesting things:  the changes, the comments, and the way the media has reported it all.

Let’s start with the content.  About the adjustments to vocabulary:

Hooray!  I agree that time spent with vocabulary flashcards in order to memorize words such as “phlegmatic” is not time well spent.  However, I do caution you not to assume that this means a child will not need to study vocabulary in preparation for the SAT.  It just means that the vocabulary he or she is learning is more likely to be vocabulary that can actually be put to use in college and beyond.

After several years I have stopped being astonished by the depths of my students’ ignorance when it comes to vocabulary.  It is not necessary to include words like “perspicacious” on a test in order find words with which the average teenager is not familiar.  I know Mr. Coleman promised to only test words that a child learned in school, but he should probably have promised to only test vocabulary that the child ought to have learned in school, and perhaps some that should have been picked up while living life.

There is an exercise I used to do with all of my critical reading students.  (It is from the first edition of The Critical Reader by Erica Meltzer, the current version of which I highly recommend.  There will be a link after this post if you want to order it.)  In the exercise, the student must read a short paragraph, determine the author’s main point, and answer a typical SAT question.  When the student fails to correctly answer the question (which is usually the case), we go back and dissect the paragraph.  There are several words that you must understand in order to understand the passage.  One word is particularly key and it comes in the first sentence.  Only about one in ten of the students (most of whom attend an elite private school) can give me a definition for the word.  Only about three in ten admit to having come across it before.

The word is not “phlegmatic” or “perspicacious”.  It is “partisan.”  In the last decade how many major newspaper issues have been published that did NOT include the word “partisan?”  Knowledge of this word is essential if you plan to take part in political conversation, but our high school students don’t know it.

If it were true that the current SAT only measures whether or not you are good at the SAT (a common claim), then it would follow that getting a better score would be all about memorizing useless vocabulary and learning special tricks that apply only to the test.  However, I assure you that when a student does badly on a critical reading section it turns out, upon questioning him afterward, that he really didn’t understand the article, and often vocabulary is at the root of the problem.

Study materials review: Up Your Score

Up Your Score:  The Underground Guide to the SAT has been around so long it is no longer "underground."  First published in the 1980's, each edition stays fresh by recruiting top-scoring students as co-authors.  The 2013-2014 edition is by Larry Burger, Michael Colton, Jaja Liao, Manek Mistry and Paul Rossi.

This guide is intended as a supplement to The Official SAT Study Guide.  Up Your Score does not include any practice exercises.  Compared to other supplementary guides, this book includes more advice on studying (how to concentrate, how to improve your memory, best time of day to memorize something, etc) stress reduction, and general test-taking strategies.  The section on guessing strategies is one of the most interesting of its type that I've read. There is even a section on bubbling technique.  Apparently some students take a ridiculously long time to color in the bubbles. Who knew? Most of the tips are of the type you see in every guide, but there are a few new ones here. This guide is more fun than most.

When it comes to content, there isn't much here.  One third of the book is devoted to vocabulary.  The book doesn't have a whole lot to say on the rest of the critical reading section.  There are 600 words in the vocabulary list.  The bad news:  they are arranged alphabetically instead of by meaning.  The good news:  after dozen words or so there is a silly alliterative story using those words designed to help you remember them.  Another thing this book does well is to distinguish between words you might need to know to answer the vocabulary questions at the beginning and literary terms you might need to know to answer the passage content questions.

The math section begins on such an elementary level that, honestly, if you don't know how to do that then you aren't the sort of person who can learn math from a book.  It then proceeds to brush lightly over far too much material without either giving an opportunity to practice or referring you to appropriate problems in The Official Guide.

The writing section is short and tries to cover both the multiple choice content and essay advice.

I picked up a copy at BJ's for under $10, so the price isn't all that bad.  However, if you've already read another guide, this one doesn't have enough new stuff to make it worth buying.  Check a copy out at your school or local library and then read just the useful bits.  If this will be your first guide it's worth the price, although if you find out that you need more intensive help in a particular section, this one won't cut it for you.

Vocabulary is a stumbling block in reading comprehension

A limited vocabulary is frequently a stumbling block for my students when it comes to reading comprehension.

Both the SAT the ACT include "vocabulary in context" questions:  "In the context of this passage, what does fill-in-the-word mean?" These questions often stump my students.  However, even questions that are not explicitly about vocabulary can present problems.  Consider one question which had as possible answers:  a.  stunned amazement,  b.  silent contempt,  c.  mild concern, and d.  feigned interest.   Imagine trying to answer the question without knowing the meanings of "contempt" or "feigned."  Worse, a student will occasionally miss the entire point of a passage because such a large percentage of the words are unfamiliar that he or she can't work out the gist of the article through the context.

Am I just being a curmudgeon, or have student vocabularies really declined since I was young?  According to an article in today's Huffington Post, it's the latter.  Exam scores recently released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal that the students at the top - those most likely to apply to college - are performing less well than their predecessors.  Furthermore, vocabulary was (as predicted) closely linked to reading comprehension.

If you are the parent of a young child, you will want to take note.  There are vast differences in the rate at which young children are exposed to language.  These differences are usually described as existing between higher and lower socioeconomic groups, but if you are looking at child-care or preschool options, you should pay close attention to the language proficiency of teachers and child-care providers.  Differences in language acquisition in early childhood persist into adulthood.

If you are the parent of a slightly older child, you should continue reading to your child, even if he or she has already learned to read.  Your child should read on his or her own, of course, but by reading aloud, you can introduce your child to literature that is on a more challenging level.  Don't put your child in a position of trying to make up for years of neglect by attempting to learn 2,000 vocabulary words in the month before the college entrance exam.

Don't miss this window of opportunity!

Experience has taught me that there are many parents of young children who are already worried about SAT scores and college admissions. Some of you may find you way to this blog. This post is for you.

 

Scientists theorize that our brains are wired to learn certain things most efficiently at certain times.  For example, you may have heard that foreign languages are best learned before adolescence.  This is often used as an argument to expand foreign language instruction in elementary and middle schools. There are possibly other critical periods for learning as well.

Some of these learning “windows of opportunity” are open quite early. For example, in order to be able to hear certain language sounds, infants should be exposed to them by age six months.  One of the challenges in learning a foreign language as an adult is the inability to distinguish between similar sounds used by native speakers of the language. Chinese adults learning English struggle with the “r” sounds because they cannot distinguish them from the “l” sounds.  Some companies are trying to capitalize on this by selling CD’s of lullabies sung in a variety of languages so that babies can be exposed to a variety of foreign language sounds.

Whether or not you choose to expose your infant to the sounds of another language, you should talk to your baby early and often! Language acquisition is one of the most important tasks of early childhood.  When children enter Kindergarten there is a huge gap between the children with the largest vocabularies and those with the smallest, and that gap is very difficult to close.   Read more about that here.

You can read more about critical periods for learning in Endangered Minds by Jane Healey.  Stay tuned next week for another window that is open until your child is about 6 years of age.

Study Material Review: Gruber's SAT Word Master

This book could be useful for anyone who wants to build his or her vocabulary.  The book includes the obligatory vocabulary list (2300 words) but this can safely be ignored. The real value is found in the first half of the book.  There is an extensive section on prefixes, suffixes and roots, followed by lists of "the most frequent SAT words."  These are lists of SAT words that all have roughly the same meaning followed by another list of words that all have roughly the opposite meaning.  For example: The first pair of lists are words that mean "to praise" and words that mean "to belittle."  Rather than learn these approximately 280 words in alphabetical order, you can learn words together that all have a similar meaning.

This is not a book you can pick up the day before the exam for an immediate difference.  You will need to work on learning these words and roots for a month or more, so make sure you get started well before test time.

Some rectangles are squares!

I am pitching a fit. So far I have raised my voice, stomped my feet, and thrown a pencil. A more sensitive child might be alarmed, but the strapping six-foot athlete beside me looks more bemused than upset.  [Note: This fit was entirely for effect. A more sensitive child would never have seen it.] And what has brought on this display of temper?  Yet another high school geometry student has mis-defined a rectangle as having “two long sides and two short sides.”

I have spent countless hours trying to beat that notion out of the heads of my high school students and replace it with the correct definition: A rectangle is a quadrilateral with four right ANGLES. It’s all about the angles. The lengths of the sides are immaterial. In fact the sides could all be of equal length. That’s right. Just as a cardinal is a particular type of bird, a square is a particular type of rectangle.

Recently I have decided that it might be better to focus my attention on the other end of the problem: picture books.  Ideally, students would never learn the incorrect definition in the first place, and it seems that if picture books got it right, that would be a step in the right direction.

My experience so far with picture book publishers is that as long as the book is popular, they don’t care if it contains errors. Therefore we need to hit this on two fronts: First, make sure that the publishers get enough complaint letters that they begin to wonder whether or not a correct book would be more popular, and second reduce the popularity of incorrect books by giving them bad reviews. 

Below, you will find three books that should be permanently out of print along with contact information for the publisher.  The book name itself is a link to the Amazon page for that book in case you wish to write a negative review. In addition, pass this information on to other parents, make letter-writing an assignment for your geometry class, and alert the media! Leave a comment if you get a response. Let’s see if we can get this straightened out once and for all.

Twizzlers Math: From Simple Shapes to Geometry - published by Scholastic - to send them an email

Quote to reference, page 15:  "A rectangle is a shape that has four right angles and four sides. Opposite sides are parallel and have the same length.  The perpendicular sides are a different length."

Circus Shapes - published by Harper Collins - to send them an email

Quote to reference, pages 24, 25:  "The bears form a rectangle. - two sides short and two sides long." 

When a Line Bends...A Shape Begins - published by Houghton Mifflin - to send them an email

Quote to reference:  "A rectangle is like a square with something rearranged. Two sides are long and two are short. The four sides now are changed."  In addition, this book goes on to say that if you rotate a square 45 degrees it becomes a "diamond."

Use a $5 word in your essay.

Have you ever heard the saying "Don't use a $5 word when a 50¢ word will do?" This does not apply to your entrance exam essay. One of the things the scorers look for is your use of vocabulary. This is not to say that every word needs to be the most sophisticated word you can find. You don't want your essay to sound like you wrote it with a thesaurus in your lap.  Besides, 40 or 50 minutes isn't enough time to write an essay in which each word is the best possible word for that space.  However, during the last minute or so when you have - hopefully - finished writing, read over your essay. If you haven't used any college-level words, then pick one word and replace it with a better one. Let the scorers know that you are comfortable with college-level vocabulary.

A fun way to boost your vocabulary!

A fun way to boost your vocabulary!

Generally, one of the best ways to boost your vocabulary is to read. There can be two problems with this method:  First, you must read text that includes words you do not already know; rereading the Hunger Games series for the third time isn’t going to cut it. It can be hard to find reading material that has advanced vocabulary but is also enjoyable. Second, this method works best when practiced over a long period of time. What if the test is just around the corner?

Clearly what you need are fun books that are dense with polysyllabic words but that are also quick to read. Try Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip drawn by Bill Watterson in the 1980’s and1990’s. The strips were collected into books that are still available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You might even find them at your local library.

It was my children who first alerted me to the comic’s usefulness as a vocabulary builder. We own over a dozen of the books and both boys grew up reading them. My oldest remarked that he had learned more new vocabulary from Calvin and Hobbes than from his English class assignments. Consider this sentence from a strip in The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes:  “Poised precariously over a percolating pit of putrid pasta, Spaceman Spiff is held prisoner.” Or, “With stupendous powers of reasoning, the caped combatant concludes there’s no need for homework if there’s no school tomorrow!”

With a few Calvin and Hobbes books, you can build your vocabulary without feeling as if you spent your holiday break studying!