Sniglets, a word game popularized by comedian Rich Hall, provide teachers and students with a break from the monotony of vocabulary drill by allowing students to make words of their own, practice inferential skills in developing and identifying the meanings, and learn how words are created and made a part of language. (HOD)

Although knowledge of multimeaning words is important for reading comprehension, deaf readers may know only the most common meanings or nuances of high-frequency multimeaning words. Results of a study are reported in which 33 profoundly hearing impaired students stratified into three equal age groups (ages 10, 11, and 12) were administered a…

Presents an approach to vocabulary instruction that serves to increase knowledge of word definitions, to provide semantic links to words, and to promote greater facility in using words. Reviews studies associated with the "fertile vocabulary" instructional plan and discusses program results and benefits. (ML)

Notes that teaching techniques used to "build" vocabulary are not based on the ways most people acquire vocabulary. Discusses the problems and possibilities of expanding students' language usage. (RL)

Discusses exercises in foreign language teaching in which the learner can, from experience in his own language, conjecture the meaning of foreign words from the context. Shows, with examples, how such exercises can be created using nonsense words. (IFS/WGA)

Describes some of the current views in semantics and semantic development and discusses the implications for vocabulary instruction. Explains the major theories of word meaning acquisition in children and lists researched variables of word meaning development. Offers examples of instructional strategies for effective vocabulary development. (ML)

This individualized inservice packet on vocabulary development in the content areas is intended to enable teachers to help students expand word meaning, using the technical vocabulary of their content areas. It is one of a nine-part series of booklets--Teaching Teen Reading--in self-instructional format intended as a practical resource for…

Defines formulaic phrases by showing their stereotypical nature. A taxonomy of phrases is proposed for classificatory purposes, and some techniques are suggested for teaching these structures. The techniques are based on analogy and analysis, where students imitate a sentence by keeping certain structures unchanged and changing the rest. (PJM)

A study investigated whether semantic feature analysis (SFA) significantly improves the content related vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of adolescent, learning disabled readers. SFA is a set of vocabulary development activities designed to help students categorize vocabulary words and compare related ideas. Subjects, 62 learning…

Designed as a teacher's guide to accompany the revised edition of the classroom text "English Words from Latin and Greek Elements," this manual contains the following material that is not in the textbook: (1) answers to all exercises in the text; (2) the Latin and Greek origin of all prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and bases that…