Research School Network: Opportunities for Word-Consciousness Tiny moments of interest in words can cascade across the curriculum

Graves (2008) describes word-consciousness as an ​‘awareness of and interest in words and their meaning.” It’s an understanding of where words come from, how they are built, their varying uses and their particular power. We can’t possible teach pupils every word, but we can build word-consciousness, which will, as Alex Quigley puts it, ​“initiate a new way of thinking that can prove of life-long worth for our students.”

You can read much more about this in our blog on ​‘Building Word Consciousness’.

When teachers regularly draw attention to words across the curriculum, then pupils are more likely to make connections themselves.

Consciousness of word parts

In a lesson at the start of the day, Ali’s history teacher describes how Magellan circumnavigated the globe. He draws attention to the latin root ​‘circum’, meaning around. It’s a lightbulb moment for Ali, who has often forgotten the difference between circumference, radius and diameter. Now he understands that the circumference means going around the outside of the circle.

In the next lesson Ali points this out to his Maths teacher, who hadn’t even thought of that connection, so she makes a note to include that etymology in her explanations of circumference next time. And out of interest, she looks up radius and diameter to see if there are any interesting etymological aspects of the vocabulary in Maths. Before long, she’s looking at the ​‘fract’ of fraction, the ​‘iso’ of isosceles and the ​‘chrono’ of chronological. She stops before they ask her to teach English, but knows that there are opportunities in the subject to explore vocabulary that will be helpful for conceptual understanding.

All of this started from the teacher in the history drawing attention to word parts. And it is this culture of taking opportunities that can help build word-consciousness. Not only does it help to understand each word, it develops the idea that this is something that we can do with words.

Consciousness of polysemy

Another opportunity we can take is to draw attention to polysemous words, words that have different meanings in different contexts. This is often the case in a subject like science, as our colleagues at Blackpool Research School explore in this excellent blog. The image below is taken from the EEF’s Improving Primary Science guidance report.

It’s not just science. Another example comes from the Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools guidance regarding Maths:

When we notice these words, it isn’t just about pointing things out. Often, the difference can highlight conceptual similarities, such as cell in physics and biology and root in maths, English and biology.

Word-consciousness is also understanding that over time our knowledge of a word changes. Cronbach (1942) set out the ways that our knowledge of words develops:

• Generalization: You can define a word.
• Application: You can use it correctly in a particular context.
• Breadth: You know the multiple meanings of the word.
• Precision: You are able to apply the word appropriately in all situations
• Availability: You can use the word where apt.

The more we are conscious of word-consciousness, the more opportunities we can take to build it.