Glossary

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?