ABSTRACT
Research on vocabulary in the United States has a history of over 100 years. The rst archival study we are aware of was conducted by E. A. Kirkpatrick and published in Science in 1891. Beginning in the early 20th century, particularly with the work of Thorndike, vocabulary became a prominent topic of educational research (Clifford, 1978). Although interest in vocabulary research has waxed and waned over the years (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002), over 100 years of work has produced a very substantial body of knowledge, much of it quite solid. Although there are certainly many unanswered questions about vocabulary and vocabulary instruction, the fact is we know a great deal about teaching vocabulary. Much of what we know has been summarized in substantial reviews by Graves (1986), Beck and McKeown (1991), Blachowicz and Fisher (2000), and Baumann, Kaméenui, and Ash (2003), all of which are considerably longer than this chapter. Consequently, this review is selective rather than comprehensive. In it, we describe research ndings that are either speci cally about instruction or that provide background important to understanding instructional issues and making instructional decisions. Some of the ndings come from studies that dealt speci cally with students with learning disabilities. Most of them, however, come from studies of students in general and apply to both students without reading disabilities and those with disabilities. The chapter is divided into two major sections. In the rst section, Foundational Considerations, we examine a number of factors about words and word learning that inform instruction. In the second section, Vocabulary Instruction, we take up speci cs of teaching vocabulary. Finally, in a brief Concluding Remarks section, we identify what we see as some of the most important questions that need to be answered to further improve vocabulary instruction.
