Help with vocabulary - Decoding versus reading

Painless Reading Comprehension - Darolyn “Lyn” Jones Ed.D. 2021

Help with vocabulary
Decoding versus reading

The word vocabulary refers to the collection of all the words used in a language—whether those words are signed, written, spoken, or drawn. Think about sign language or Japanese script. Even now in social media and text, you use symbols like emojis that stand in for words and are considered part of your vocabulary. Therefore, understanding the words and symbols is very important to understanding what you are reading.

If you can’t keep what you read in your head, it might also be because you don’t understand the words. So learning more vocabulary words is important. But learning them with imagery and learning how those words connect with your senses of taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell also helps.

How you learn what words mean

Before you went to school, you learned new words by listening to the adults and other kids around you talk. You tried out new words, associated meaning with them, and then learned to put the words into meaningful sentences to form a message. At school, your teachers helped you to build your vocabulary by giving you lists of words, asking you to define them, spell them, and maybe do activities like use the words in sentences. Your teachers also read to you and asked you to read on your own. All of those events—listening, speaking, memorizing, and reading—have helped your vocabulary to grow. There are millions of words out there, and no one expects you to know them all—you just need to know how to figure out what they mean!

Think of a word as a jigsaw puzzle piece. By itself, a puzzle piece has its own color and shape, just like a word on its own, it has meaning. Think of the word heart. On its own, you might think of the organ beating in your chest, pushing blood through your body. However, once I connect that word to other words, it may take on a different meaning. The same is true with a puzzle. When you snap a puzzle piece into the puzzle, it takes on a different meaning as well and becomes something different than what it started out being.

For example:

The firefighters at the scene of the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11 showed great heart in saving so many lives.

When you snap the word heart into place along with other words, it takes on a new meaning. The word heart in the sentence isn’t talking about an organ; it’s talking about courage and bravery.

Connotation and denotation

Words have two identities: connotation and denotation. When you read a word on its own, you think of the dictionary definition: denotation. But when you read a word in context (connected to other words), it may take on a new meaning: connotation. When I say the word heart, you may all agree on a standard definition or its denotation, which is an organ in the body. However, reread the sentence:

The firefighters at the scene of the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11 showed great heart in saving so many lives.

You probably think of a new definition. In fact, when you read words, you naturally think and visualize other meanings based on your personal experiences. For example, upon hearing the word heart, some might see their grandfather lying in a hospital bed after he had heart surgery. Others might see a person they love. Still others might see their favorite basketball hero who showed great spirit or heart when helping the team win the game. In fact, probably not too many of you visualize a body organ.

imagesPAINLESS TIP

After you know a word’s connotation and denotation, you really understand the word and aren’t likely to forget it.

That’s part of the problem with vocabulary. When you read something unfamiliar to you, you either don’t know what the words mean or you don’t know what definitions of the words the writer wants you to use. Read the following passage.

How to Take a Good Portrait Photo

Before you begin shooting, first choose the best background for your subject. Take a meter reading of the light on and around the subject to determine the exposure. Then, pose your subject. Decide how much focal length you want. Before you set the dials on your camera, decide how much depth of field you want. Do you only want the subject or subjects in the photo to be in focus or do you want what is surrounding the subject to also be in focus? If you want only the human subject or subjects to be in focus (short depth of field), then open your aperture or F stops (1.4, 2.8, or 5.6) and set your shutter fast (60, 125, or 250). If you want everything to be in focus, then close your aperture (8.0, 11.0, or 16.0) and set your shutter slow (30 or 15). And finally, expose for the person’s face.

Now, you probably figured out that this passage is talking about taking pictures, but unless you are a photographer, you don’t know much else. When you read something and don’t understand it, you feel like an outsider to the topic—a foreigner in a foreign land! And, when you try to figure out what a word means by looking at it on its own, by figuring out its denotation only, you still don’t know what it means. You must do more than that. You need to be an insider to the topic and figure out what the word means on its own and what it means while it is connected or hooked into other words. This may take some time, but it’s well worth the effort.