· It is estimated that there are over one million words in the English language- 110,00  which are commonly used

· Knowledge of grammatical patterns and word forms significantly help ELL students

· Nation (2001): use of word families reduces frustration among ELL students

· Padak, Newton, Rasinski & Newton (2000): knowledge of word roots can be introduced at an early age and proves to be effective

o Shared reading: focus on new words (subject specific or general academic words), encourage students to identify parts of words they may have seen

o Small group conversations about words: students act as “word detectives” and try and solve the meaning of words (brainstorm and make predictions)

o Word charts: don’t overwhelm students with too many words, provide examples of the words in use rather than just providing the definitions, word families

oCloze sentences: reading comprehension activity-students make educated guesses about the missing word  in the sentence, provide a word bank
Word-learning strategies

o Making inferences from context: model/teach students how to look for clues about the meaning of the word in the sentence and/or the sentences before and after

oWord analysis: use Greek and Latin word roots and affixes to determine the meaning of low frequency words

oUsing dictionaries and other reference tools: picture dictionaries, thesauruses, bilingual dictionaries, word dictionaries-students determine which meaning/definition makes the most sense for the context

·Is the text relevant to student interest?