Vocabulary Proficiencies: Exceptional Expressions for Everyday Events

What Vocabulary Proficiencies Can Be Enhanced Through Exceptional Expressions for Everyday Events?

 

The fundamental aim of Exceptional Expressions for Everyday Events or E4 is to support students in becoming curious about and aware of the richness of language. What makes language both useful and intriguing are the many relationships among words and the interconnections of words to ideas. Human experience is complex, and word choices can be critical in helping people better convey new concepts or subtle differences in meaning. A broader vocabulary naturally allows improved understanding of an increasingly complicated world.

E4 is aimed at offering students “the gift of words,” to use the metaphor of Scott, Skobel, and Wells (2008). Following are some of the ways in which even quite ordinary words can be interrelated and complex, and which are highlighted in E4.

 

Polysemy or Multiple Meanings:

Often, the most common words in a language have multiple meanings, a feature that is called polysemy (“many meanings”). A good example of this is the word set, which in theOxford Unabridged Dictionary has 464 definitions. That is an unusually high number, but quite a few everyday words (e.g., find, change, good) have a surprising number of nuanced, or distinct, meanings.

 

Multiple parts of speech:

When a word takes on a different meaning, it often becomes a different part of speech as well. For example, some definitions of the word set are verbs, as in set an example or set the vase down. In other situations, set is a noun, as in a set of dishes or a TV set.

 

Synonyms:

Words may be clustered in groups by their meanings. Consider the word good as an adjective that means pleasant or fine. A search in a thesaurus produces some of the members of the word cluster for good: acceptable, commendable, pleasing, gratifying, satisfactory, marvelous, splendid, wonderful. In E4, we use the term synonym to describe words that have similar meanings, not necessarily the identical meaning. This distinction is very important for teachers and students to recognize, because it is learning how to use the words within a cluster that brings precision to thinking, writing, and oral expression. Words such as acceptable and marvelous have a related meaning but not the same meaning. The words within a semantic or word cluster share a general meaning but differ in intensity and specificity. By focusing on words within clusters, E4 supports students in recognizing the elaborate networks and relationships among words.

Please use the lessons (32) below during your Reading/Language Arts Block.

Listen Vocabulary Talk Vocabulary Look Vocabulary Walk Vocabulary  Write Vocabulary Check Vocabulary Ask Vocabulary Learn Vocabulary Attentive Vocabulary Save Vocabulary Loud Vocabulary Good Vocabulary Bad Vocabulary Change Vocabulary Finish Vocabulary Want Vocabulary  Fast Vocabulary Slow Vocabulary Happy Vocabulary  Sad Vocabulary Right Vocabulary Said VocabularyThink Vocabulary Give Vocabulary Teach Vocabulary More Vocabulary Less Vocabulary Time Vocabulary Imagine Vocabulary Focus Vocabulary Find Vocabulary Show Vocabulary