VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION MODEL AS A FOUNDATION FOR READING ACADEMIC ARTICLES IN THE ISRAELI ACADEMIA

Abstract

A firm mastery of target language vocabulary is crucial for academic reading performance. Therefore, teachers should equip learners with tools that would help them understand and learn lexical items.To this end, we propose a graded instructional model, which combines strategies for decoding the meaning of novel words as well as learning and retaining them. In order to understand an unfamiliar word a student is encouraged to either guess it or consult a dictionary. Following lexical deciphering, the teacher assists the student in selecting the most frequent and useful words to be learnt. The learning process requires explicit focus on novel words. First, the learner copies the new word into his notebook alongside its dictionary definition and the context it was used in. Next, the student creates a keyword association which helps him retain the word. The learner then attempts to learn it using his preferred perceptual learning style. Since long-term retention of vocabulary requires multiple repetitions in varied contexts spaced at increasingly larger intervals, the teacher provides the learner with plentiful opportunities at novel vocabulary reinforcement. In addition, testing vocabulary progress guarantees further encounters with the target words. The graded vocabulary instruction model may be successfully integrated in versatile pedagogical frameworks aimed at lexical expansion.