15: Final Entry/Reflection on Vocabulary Learning

Throughout the course of LTED 625, we were asked to update a blog focusing on learning new words that intrigued us. The goal of this was to build our awareness of how often we encounter new words as well how we approach to learning the new words.

Through this blog, I have become more aware of the numerous words I encounter on a daily basis that I am unfamiliar with. My words are scattered across the spectrum, coming from various sources. It was not until I started the blog entries that I realized how often I encountered unfamiliar words. Previously I would ignore the unfamiliar words or use context clues to help me understand its meaning. After reflecting on the words I looked up, most of the words were words I had come across before, such as in movies or in books, but never gave a second glance. These are the words that intrigued me the most. I wondered how I had heard these words but never gave them a second thought; especially if I had no real idea of their meaning. Such as with ‘guff’ from The Royal Tennebaums. I watched that movie at least 10 times and it was not until the blog that I realized that it was in the movie and I had no idea of its meaning.

My routine literacy practices vary, depending on what a part of the year/semester it is. Not too many of my words came from texts that I read for pleasure as I have little time to invest in a book. Most of my words came from movies or television shows as that is how I relax after a long day. The rest come from articles from either Yahoo or class articles. I read Yahoo articles almost every other day. While I do read the occasional celebrity gossip, I do engage in reading news that pertains to the country in general. Words such as ‘fracking’ came from Yahoo news articles. Once I looked it up, I realized how often I had been expose to word but never realized it. I see this word everywhere now, even on bumper stickers.

As a word learning, I benefited immensely from keeping a vocabulary blog. While I do not recall every single word and definition from my entries, the blog made me more aware of all the words I am exposed to on a daily basis that I do not know their meanings. I know now how truly important it is to be exposed to new words and different ways to learn the words. I have started to become more curious about unfamiliar words and their meanings after writing in the blog. This concept came from the class as well. Now as a teacher I am pushing more vocabulary words and strategies on my students.

This blog entry has embedded in to my life the concepts of both reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn. I read varies types of texts and came across new learnings. When I stumbled upon a new vocabulary word, writing-to-learn help enroot its meaning to my long-term memory. Through exploring the context I found the word, its meaning in context, my level of familiarity, and my reflective commentary, I learned the words and made them my own. ‘Corpulent’ is now one of my favorite words to know. If I did not write about it in my blog entry, I would have never learned this word.

These vocabulary tests have illustrated to me that not all vocabulary tests are like the ones I completed in school. My memories of these tests are the teaching handing us a sheet with all the words and me writing the definitions from short-term memory. Now I realize that vocabulary tests are not all the same. They incorporate different aspects of the word and its meaning. When I give my students vocabulary quizzes, I have them define it and write it in a meaningful sentence in order to show their understanding of the word.

One of the most important concepts this class has taught me is the importance of learning new words. While I will not continue with the blog entries or familiarize myself with the words on the same level as I did in the blog entries, I will continue learning new words. If I stumble across unfamiliar words, especially ones I cannot analyze using context clues, I will look them up. This blog assignment was the catalyst for my new words curiosity. I enjoy learning new words and now I am more aware of new words when I encounter them. This is especially important to me because if I want my students to learn new words, I should continue learning them as well. This way I can share with my students my new words and hope that they are just intrigued by them as I am. In order to continue learning new words, I will look them up in an online dictionary, or simply by going to Google. Once I read the definition, I will mentally write the definition in my own words and then put it in a sentence. This way if I come across the word again, I will understand its meaning.

14:1 Pretentious

Where & When: I was watching How I Met Your Mother earlier this week and heard the word "pretentious." Ted was telling two of his friends, Robin and Barney, about his first girlfriend, Karen, from high school/college. Karen was a slight snob and she used the word pretentious quite frequently. As did Ted, who turned into a male version of Karen when he was with her. I don't quite remember the exacting word but it appeared numerous times throughout the episode and sometimes was said "that's so pretentious."

Fryman, P. (Director),Bays, C., & Thomas, C. (Creator) (2009). Sorry, bro [Television series episode]. In How i met your mother. 20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Definition: Pretentious is defined as: an allegation of doubtful value : pretext; a claim or an effort to establish a claim; a claim or right to attention or honor because of merit; an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment

In this context I believe that is defined as claiming that something deserves high attention but really doesn't.

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pretension%5B1%5D?show=0&t=1354471582
 
Level of Familiarity: I have heard this word before. Not only have I seen this episode before, but the ensuing episodes of How I Met Your Mother had the word in it as well. I never knew what it meant, but I was able to understand its meaning through the context it was used in.

Reflective Commentary: I picked pretentious to be my word this week because it was continuously used not only in that particular episode but also in the ensuing two episodes. I was able to gain a surface understanding of the word through how Karen and Ted used it in their sentences. But I was still curious to know the actual definition of the word. Usually I can hear a word once and as interested as I am about it, I'll just use my context clues to understand its meaning. However the word was used so often, I was rather curious to know its true meaning. This is a great word to know as you can call someone pretentious if they are making a big deal about something that doesn't really deserve the attention.

13:2 amalgamate

Where & When: Just now I was looking up synonyms for the word 'focused' on http://thesaurus.com and I stumbled upon the word 'amalgamate' as one of its synonyms. It was actually a synonym for the word 'centralize,' which itself was a synonym for the word 'focused.'

In other words I found amalgamate:

Focused -> Centralized -> Amalgamate
 
Definition: According to the same website, amalgamate  is defined as "blend."
http://thesaurus.com/browse/amalgamate

Level of Familiarity: Until I stumbled upon this word on accident, I had never heard of it before. Looking at the word, I do not see any roots that would give clue to its meaning. At least not that I know of. However, I'm sure Dr. Hopkins sees some. In the process of trying to see if there was a root word or suffix, I looked up 'amal' and it is a Canadian film. Perhaps they are trying to tell us we should blend with Canada more?

Reflective Commentary: This word is one that I do not come across very often in every day life. But perhaps I see/hear it, and do not realize it.Even though the word 'amalgamate' did not help me on my quest to find a synonym for the 'focused,' it did give me a vocabulary blog entry and a new word.Looking at the word, I wonder how often I would use it. My thoughts instantly go to using it in a recipe.Last night I baked cookies and one of the steps said to blend in the dry ingredients. As an avid baker, the term blending is very common. I wonder what would happen if I wrote " amalgamate the dry ingredients?" How many people would be able to understand what I was saying? So perhaps I should not use this word when sharing recipes. I would make my friends smarter with a new word, but probably also frustrated as they have to stop and look it up. Their level of caring for VSS is probably slim to non. But I do think we can incorporate this word into everyday conversation, as long as we give some context to its meaning in the sentence, just so people know what we are saying.



amalgamating Canada and America

13.1 guff

Where & When: I found the word 'guff' while watching the movie, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), last night. It was said by one of the main characters, Royal Tenenbaum, about 30 minutes into the movie, when he was speaking to one of his sons, Chas. Royal said something to Chas, who made a sort of grunting noise. Then Royal said in response, "Don't give me that guff."

Anderson, W. 2001. The Royal Tenenbaums [Motion picture]. United States: American Empirical Pictures.

Definition: Guff is defined as "verbal abuse"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guff

Level of Familiarity: I have watched this movie several times before and never realized that Royal said the word 'guff' before. Even before the movie, I do not recall hearing the word before.

Reflective Commentary: After listening to the dialogue between Chas and Royal, this word stuck out to me. I was curious to what 'guff' meant. I knew it was in reference to what Chas said, or at least the noise he made. After looking up I can see the Royal mean that Chas shouldn't have made his grunt/sign noise in response to Royal talking about dying of cancer. Royal expected Chas to be more sympathetic and did not want the verbal abuse of a grunt. Overall I like the word gruff and think it would be a useful word to know. When someone says a mean or sarcastic comment, you could response to them and say exactly what Royal said. Guff appears to a word that could be common so I wonder if I have heard it before, but never realized it. After all I have watched the movie quite a few times and never really heard it until last night.


Royal, left. Chas, right.

12:2 Mien

Where & When: I found the word mien when I was reading my article for the reciprocal teaching article.

"While his dear Ulkna’s sad entreating mien,/ Did but increase the brute’s unchaste desire;/ He vaunting bears her off, her sobs are vain,/ They part the man and wife whom all admire" (p 598).
 
Hansen, J. (2009). Multiple literacies in the content classroom: High school students’ connections to u.s. history. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 597-606. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.52.7.5

Definition: a person's manner, bearing, or appearance, expressing personality or mood

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mien

Level of Familiarity: I had never heard this word before until the poem from the article.

Reflective Commentary: While searching for a word this week, I had found another word in the article but could not recall where it was located. I instead found this one first and was still just as curious to its meaning. When I first typed it into Google, I typed 'mein' on accident. I had not realized I switched the 'i' and the 'e' at first so I was rather confused why it was defined as "Chinese wheat flour noodles." As that does not make sense in context. While his dear Ulkna’s sad entreating" Chinese wheat flour noodles. I suppose it could make sense if the noodles were old and appeared sad but Ulkna's sad manner sounds much better. I have not heard this word before so I wonder if this is out of date  (as in not popular). But it also could be that I have seen it before just not realized it.

12:1 Scrupulous

Where & When: Scrupulous was found by one of my students at work today.

           

“’You are over scrupulous, surely. I dare Say Mr. Bingley

Austen, J. (2003). Pride and prejudice. New York, NY: Barnes & Nobles, Inc.

Definition: having or showing a strict regard for what one considers right; principled.

Or 

punctiliously or minutely careful, precise, or exact: a scrupulous performance.

Based on the sentence, I believe Scrupulous means being punctual and precise

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scrupulous

Level of Familiarity: While I think I have seen the word before, I did not know the actual definition. 

Reflective Commentary: During my first period class, my student was reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This student in particular is a 9^th grade male. We watched the movie during my 3^rd period class and he would come in to watch it with us because he finished his work across the hall, in his Global class. I originally brought in the book for the girl in third period to read because she showed interest in reading it after I played the movie. Of course I was floored that she was willing to tried and read a Jane Austen novel as the language is difficult. I promised the 9^th grade student that I would bring in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in for him to read. Back to today’s class. We were mainly working on makeup assignments because so many students were absent. This student is bright and explains why he is in 9^th grade but taking 10^th/11^th grade English. He said he was bored because he finished The Hunger Games 1-3 already. So I offered to give him Pride and Prejudice to read for now. Since the vocabulary is difficult for the book, it wasn’t long before he asked me what scrupulous meant. Of course I didn’t know what it meant so I had to look it up. Then I realized this student actually helped me with my homework by giving me a vocabulary word.

Mrs. Bennet herself; the lady who is the topic of the sentence

11:2 librocubicularist

Where & When: I was looking through Pinterest and I stumbled upon a picture of the word librocubicularist.

Defintion: librocubicularist means a person who reads in bed.
It is defined through the Pinterest picture.

Level of Familiarity: Until I stumbled upon this word, I had never heard it before.

Reflective Commentary: I really like the word librocubicularist. I don't know how much I would actually use it. Librocubicularist is a word that would not come up in conversation a great deal, unless you were talking about a person who reads in bed. I might actually use this word frequently enough as I am an avid reader and so are most of my friends. I might actually refer to myself as a librocubicularist. It would be a great word to through around as no one would know what it meant. Looking at the word I see the word 'libro,' which is book in Spanish. This would be a useful trick to help understand the meaning.