When and Where I Found It: As I have been reviewing the Handbook of Reading Research: Volume III for research to support projects I am working on in my two classes, I came across the journal article Vocabulary Processes by William E. Nagy and Judith A. Scott (2000). This article discusses “the complexity of word knowledge” and one of the five aspects of this is “heterogeneity” (p. 270).
Nagy, W. E. & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary Processes. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.). Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 269-284). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Meaning: Nagy & Scott (2000) assert that heterogeneity is an important aspect of word knowledge to consider when discussing how students’ vocabularies grow. The authors state that heterogeneity is “what it means to know a word differs substantially depending on the kind of word” (p. 270).
Level of Familiarity: I had only heard this term in relation to science before. While reading about this aspect of word acquisition, I was able to apply my knowledge of this word non-specific to literacy.
Do I Want to Know This Word Well? Why? I would like to know the word heterogeneity well. It is important for me to be able to teach words based on what type of language group they are in. For example, my students’ knowledge of and ability to use the word ‘of’ will be very different than their knowledge of and ability to use the word ‘matter’.
Do I Want Others to Know this Word Well? Who and Why? All teachers should know this word and be able to apply it to their vocabulary instruction. Being aware that words fall into different groups allows teachers to be able to teach words based on their usage and given meaning. It is important that vocabulary not just be taught in a word-definition format!
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