Learning Vocabulary through Reading

Abstract

Children with early reading and vocabulary deficits often struggle in these areas across development. Although direct instruction is effective for teaching individual vocabulary words, it is time consuming, and may not be sufficient to close the vocabulary gap between good and poor readers. Instruction on deriving the meanings of unknown words from context may help to increase vocabulary knowledge in children with reading and vocabulary deficits. Toward this end, we review the research concerning factors that influence word learning from context and instructional approaches that have been shown to be effective in teaching derivational skills.