Ugsa baja siguro! Vice Ganda of ABS-CBN’s “Showtime” was asking
the “madlang people” how to spell words worth five thousand pesos if one gets
it right. The first word was subpoena. Three members of the audience tried but
failed. The fourth got it right. The word etiquette then was asked to be
spelled. A “cool-looking” guy tried without batting an eyelash but got it
wrong. But the most annoying thing is that when the host asked the audience to
spell paraphernalia. No one got it
right even if most of them Googled the word as flashed on the TV screen.
The audience of the
show was of mixed ages and profiles. Some of them were dressed to the nines;
others were young and are in college by just the looks of them. So, this could
be considered as a slice of the big whole on what is happening on the
vocabulary of the people who are inside of the educational spectrum?
Lately, PISA released
the result of the reading-related examination. Among 79 participating countries
or economies the Philippines ranked dead last in reading, and we ranked second
last in both mathematics and science (beating only the Dominican Republic).
Vocabulary refers to
the words we must understand to communicate effectively. Educators often
consider four types of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening
vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to understand what we hear.
Speaking vocabulary consists of the words we use when we speak. Reading
vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to understand what we read.
Writing vocabulary consists of the words we use in writing.
Vocabulary plays an
important part in learning to read. Beginning readers must use the words they
hear orally to make sense of the words they see in print. Kids who hear more
words spoken at home learn more words and enter school with better
vocabularies. This larger vocabulary pays off exponentially as a child
progresses through school (readingrockets.org).
When one could not spell
the word well, there is a tendency that it is not constantly used by the person
in speaking, listening, reading and writing. Exposure to reading materials
might be limited since they were not able to get the word well. Or they simply
do not understand the word itself. (Digression: a lot of people I know did not
realize that the word BUNTING is an English word. For them, the local term is
BANTING, those embellishments we hang on the streets during fiesta.)
According to Steven
Stahl (2005), “Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not
only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world.”
We continue to develop vocabulary throughout our lives. Words are powerful.
Words open up possibilities, and of course, that’s what we want for all of our
students.
But what is it that
allows a person to encounter a lot of words for him to know the world better?
That is reading.
Reading Vocabulary
plays an important role in word recognition. Beginning readers use knowledge of
words from speech to recognize words that they encounter in print. When
children ‘sound out’ a word, their brain is working hard to connect the
pronunciation of a sequence of sounds to a word in their vocabulary. If they
find a match between the word on the page and a word in they have learned
through listening and speaking, and it makes sense to them, they will keep
reading. If a match is not created, because the word they are reading is not
found in their vocabulary, comprehension is interrupted. This is the case even
if they are able to generate the correct pronunciation through the decoding
process (Beck, 2019).
Lately, the
superintendent of schools where this writer is assigned instructed that a
focused group discussion be conducted to identify the gap why we lag behind
reading comprehension. It was then found out that educators do not even see the
importance reading evidence of having NO reading programs in schools. The
reading activities conducted are Band-aid solutions and for compliance purposes
as well.
There is a need for
teachers and school heads to consider the importance of reading among
themselves since they could not develop plans of actions if they do not
understand its importance. There is a need to develop the intelligent WILL
among the educators to love reading themselves. They could not give what they
do not have.
The curriculum must
be revisited as well. There might be jam-packed competencies to be taught that
teachers are hurrying to finish them NOT considering the BASICS like
comprehension and numeracy.
For how could the
future leaders discern and infer when they do not even know that the word JUDGMENT
does not have an E after G?
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