by Andrew Biemiller

In recent years, we have seen a tremendous emphasis on the importance of phonics instruction to ensure educational progress. We also have seen that while more children learn to “read” with increased phonics instruction, there have not been commensurate gains in reading comprehension (e.g., Gregory, Earl, and O’Donoghue, 1993; Madden et al., 1993; Pinnell et al., 1994). What is missing for many children who master phonics but don’t comprehend well is vocabulary, the words they need to know in order to understand what they’re reading. Thus vocabulary is the “missing link” in reading/language instruction in our school system. Because vocabulary deficits particularly affect less advantaged and second-language children, I will be arguing that such “deficits” are fundamentally more remediable than many other school learning problems.

http://www.wordsmartedu.com/Biemiller_Teaching_Vocab.pdf