Vocabulary as a barrier to learning

• B1 Everyday + technical meanings: volatile, accommodation (place to stay vs. eye focus)
• B2 Different technical meanings in different fields: molar (tooth, chemical concentration), accommodation (eye focus, Piaget contrast to assimilation).

Relationship to teachers' goals

1. Technical words central to the current teaching. Mostly the teacher will explain their meaning: they are part of the content to be taught.
   • Obvious jargon e.g. mathemagenic
   • Hidden jargon e.g. valid (a technical word in psychology).

2. Technical words not the focus but used by teacher
   • Names of other fields e.g. neurophysiology, ...
   • Asymptotic, Euclidean geometry, acronyms, iteration.

3. Educational / institutional terms. These words are often used by teachers in directives to students, yet a) usually no effort is made by anyone to define their meaning for learners, b) frequently different teachers in the same institution use and assume different meanings.
   • Organisational terms: Seminar, tutorial, semester;
   • Terms about work e.g. in an essay specification: Argue, discuss, bibliography

4. Supposedly common English words, not in fact correctly understood by the learners.
   • [Martie Sanders' examples] simultaneous, abundant, subsequent
     
   • Logical connectives: therefore, however, because, thus (and probably: if, then).

Why should teachers address the problem?

Definitions? philosophy

However in the context of teaching, at least of teaching any technical subject, I think I have to confront such general vague philosophy with some realities. Here, in a microcosm to do with classroom needs, is the Wittgenstein-ian debate between formal ideas of language modelled on axiomatic logics and ideas of language as an interaction between beings whose use of words depends upon a shared meaning based on something else.

Whatever the partial truth of that, at least the following opposing facts must be accommodated in our approach to learning and teaching:

• Experimental work shows that people quite often misunderstand each other without realising it. A general belief that we do succeed in communicating and understanding is not reliable evidence that this occurs in reality.
  
• In many conversations, particularly those directed at practical action and decisions, we frequently detect mistakes the other person has made (false beliefs, misunderstandings of what has been said) which we decide not to correct because it is not necessary for the purposes of that conversation. Thus we know that quite often misunderstandings are detected by one party but not by the other, and the latter is not enlightened.
  This is for good reasons of efficiency. The word "pedantic" more or less means the unnecessary correction of other people in such situations. The existence of this concept is further evidence of the frequency and even desirability of undetected misunderstanding.
  
• On the other hand, one of the core features of modern intellectual life is the use of precise definitions and exact language. All teachers, except possibly those who teach only non-technical conversation, must pay a lot of attention to precise language, while also dealing with its imprecise use. A fascinating case is that of the names of technical fields e.g. psychophysics: these are imprecise terms, because they really mean whatever is currently studied by a social group calling themselves psychophysicists. These meanings shift quite fast with time, and are periodically debated explicitly. Such debates illustrate forcefully both that precise definitions are important to practitioners, and that they do not exist for some technical terms of great importance in how science is done. This does not mean that all or most technical terms are without precise explicit definitions; but it certainly does mean that some are.

I can only say that teachers should provide explicit definitions and examples of terms wherever possible; and in other cases indirect definitions and examples; and failing even that, provide examples and pointers to where learners can read further examples.

Things to try

1. Start course sections with vocab?
2. Keep word list on blackboard as you go, during a lecture. And on the web during a course.
3. Close course sections by discussion of vocabulary e.g. bring an OHP with it on, and discuss or ask students about each word in turn. This is probably a good idea, but likely to focus only on the words the teacher is conscious of being a problem.
4. Web glossary built by students.
5. Produce a glossary for every course or lecture section (perhaps on the WWW). As it is a learning objective, even if often tacit, it should be done. Textbooks with glossaries are usually not satisfactory as work at Stafford has shown: if a student needs to learn (or check) say 30 words as part of a block of lectures, it is not useful to have a glossary for a whole degree course or profession with a thousand terms in, hiding the few they need. We should probably produce a vocabulary list for each small unit of teaching. Putting it on the web may be a particularly good idea, as it can easily be updated as more problematic terms are exposed.
6. Draft a document and go round getting definitions from staff, or at least asking for comments on your own definition. This is particularly important for type 3 above: institutional terms that in fact may not be being used consistently.

How to get students to ask about words; and to deal with that effectively during class.

• Ask students to select a word they think / found tricky. Go round, everyone contributes. This may be good because what one found tricky but did detect, others may have a misunderstanding of.

Context and audience: towards a design method

You want to create for vocabulary a model as practically useful as ARCS for motivation (or as Laurillard's for pedagogic/instructional design, as being developed by Michelle Montgomery).

To do that, you have to find a way so that, given proper study and practice of your model-to-be, any teacher could review and modify their text (or other material). The difficulty I feel is that this will require knowledge of what students whom you haven't yet talked to know. Perhaps I shouldn't be so resistant. Perhaps we (teachers) should get serious; look at the required educational pre-requisites for students taking this course, and really just read off what they know; anything else they can't be assumed to know.

So for my "asymptote" example, after titanic recall, I think that term comes with learning about hyperbolae in the math of conic sections. So I would "just" need to look at current math syllabi (syllabuses?) to see if that is still taught at school as it was for me; and whether my students would have taken math A-level (advanced level high school math, roughly).

I teach HCI (human computer interaction), and this goes much better (like most things) using real examples from the audience's personal experience. On the course I teach it in, this means I need to familiarise myself with their current computational environment. This is some extra work, but guarantees the relevance of my examples for the whole class. This is a close parallel to, though perhaps rather easier than, what we are discussing here.

If you continue to be serious about this, here are 2 extra related considerations. You said that page turning isn't real hypertext in the context of using hypertext for vocab. explaining. While I agree there is probably a factor of about 10 in speed of access, so in one way your point is right, on the other hand you should consider carefully the real use of such vocab. lookup. I didn't mention any of this in my messages, but of course the reality is that in many cases we feel we understand enough from context not to need instantly to know an exact meaning for words. I don't understand when this is and isn't true. But when it is, slow page-turning lookup may be OK.

For me, this is related to Beatrix Potter. She is still an ultra-famous English children's author, writing about 100 years ago for the very young. I read in a biography that she was criticised by some at the time for including some rare and long words completely unsuited to such a young audience. She rejected this criticism, saying something to the effect that to use an infantile vocabularly rigidly was patronising and prevented their learning new words. I've recently heard comparable remarks in feedback from students: something about positive attitudes to a professor here who presupposed wide reading on their part. This was completely unrealistic, but made them feel they were being taken seriously and indicating a standard to which they could aspire. There is a very important point here, though I haven't got on top of it yet.

Perhaps this is what you mean by "context". But it is to do with how some words you just don't need to understand immediately; others you only need an approximate idea at the time; but others are essential or you are lost from then on.

I suppose it may turn out something like:

• Use your model-to-be NOT to delete words, but to add explanations. (But perhaps to select/add cases that are in that particular audience's experience.)
• Add explanations for almost everything, but often not in the main text where it could eventually get cluttered (but remember that it is about 10 times easier to skip over a clause with an unnecessary explanation than to struggle with a missing one).
• Reviewing exact definitions and/or canonical examples may be a very useful exercise that should be made a regular part of most teaching; but as a separate activity e.g. a way of reviewing material.

But there will be additional principles.
A difference between our PSA and asymptote examples is probably that your students would be enriched by hearing a 3 minute diversion explaining all about what they are (say because designing PSAs and thinking about their effectiveness or lack of it is an interesting ISD sideline); but mine would probably not be as conic sections are totally unrelated to HCI and all I needed was a way of talking about a limit that you forever approach but never reach. So your model-to-be should not discourage such things, but instead require teachers to estimate whether it is a case of a useless extra burden or a Beatrix Potter-like case of expanding their experience beyond their immediate pedagogic need but not beyond any relationship to that.

References