What are the major states of word knowledge and what are the implications of these states for instruction?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Task 1: Learning to read known words: Students need to learn phonics and other word recognition skills.
Task 2: Learning new meanings for known words: Students meet familiar words in contexts in which the words take on new meanings. Context, discussion, and the dictionary can be used to add to students' understanding of a word's meanings. A large part of expanding a student's vocabulary is adding new shades of meaning to words partly known.
Task 3: Learning new words that represent known concepts: Because the concept is already known, this really is little more than learning a new label. 
Task 4: Learning new words that represent new concepts. Students must develop conceptual knowledge along with learning the label for the word.
Task 5: Clarifying and enriching the meanings of known words: Context, discussion, and the dictionary can be used to add to word's meanings and to get a better sense of shades of meaning and connotations of words. Teachers might help students forge connections among known words and provide a variety of enrichment exercises to ensure greater depth of understanding.
Task 6: Moving words from receptive to expressive vocabulary: Encountering a new word in several contexts to get a firm sense of its meaning and usage and discussing it would help provide the kind of familiarity needed to use it.