Many clients need help to develop their vocabularies, but addressing the problem can be daunting. The number of words to be learned—estimated at 60,000 for the average high school graduate—is enormous. Moreover, word learning involves not only linking word forms to meanings, but also enriching those meanings over time and linking words with related meanings. This program presents research from education, second language acquisition, psychology, and speech-language pathology on vocabulary instruction, and provides support for five instructional strategies: frequent exposures, spaced exposures, multimodal input, numerous exemplars, and frequent testing (active practice).

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

• review symptoms of vocabulary deficits among children with language impairment
• describe current research on word learning problems from multiple disciplines
• relate learning to memory and word usage
• describe types of errors in word usage by children with language impairment
• list five evidence-based instructional strategies for building vocabulary
• combine evidence from multiple disciplines to inform instructional practices

 View the Table of Contents [PDF]