Cognitive views of language propose that all of our knowledge is stored 
in units called schemas or frames. These are like screenplays for 
typical events -- getting up in the morning, applying for a job, going 
grocery shopping, attending a birthday party -- which allow us to 
recognize an event and behave appropriately. Schema theory has featured 
in studies of reading for some time now, because possessing and 
pre-activating a schema related to the topic of the reading 
("anticipatory set") improves reading comprehension, and lacking a 
schema impedes it significantly.

Schemas are the knowledge bases within which the definitions of words 
reside. "Sister" resides in a kinship schema; "candy" isn't just 
anything sweet (fruit is not candy), but also involves notions like 
"treat" (hence extensions to "eye candy" and "brain candy") and "not 
meal food". "Pet" as a sort of animal depends on the notion of 
domesticated animals that serve only as companions, which means they 
have to contrast with beasts of burden and food -- competing animal schemas.

A few of you have mentioned putting words together that come from the 
same domain of experience -- nautical words, etc. This exploits schemas; 
it is easier for students to fit a new word into an existing schema by 
relating it to other aspects of the domain.

Early-grade materials often do this: words about the sea; words for 
things in the kitchen, etc. For reasons I do not understand this does 
not continue much in the higher grades. I've seen some lists of words 
like "occupational" or "history" or "science", but a lot of the words on 
the list are not exclusive to that domain. They're in the list because 
they were in the reading.

The other way humans organize their knowledge is in categories of like 
things. My first exercise when I teach about vocabulary is to ask my 
students to name 25 of the words they know that start with "m", _in 
alphabetical order_. This is very hard, of course. We don't store words 
in alphabetical order in our minds.

Then I ask them to name ten kinds of fruit. The whole class starts 
calling out and we have 15 fruit names in less than a minute. Once 
again, teaching materials for young children often work with categories 
(animals; plants; occupations), but again, this disappears in the higher 
grades. Why? Using the natural ways the mind organizes words facilitates 
vocabulary expansion.

I advise my students (for when they become teachers) to work with their 
kids to develop schema- and category-based "dictionaries". Each time 
they get a list of new vocabulary words, they work on adding them to 
these dictionaries. Word processing makes it very easy to adapt and 
change such documents.

The game "Outburst" works on these two principles. It's a game in which 
teams have to guess ten words that are on a card that the "emcee" holds. 
Each list is based on either a category (Clint Eastwood movies, hobbies, 
populous cities, volcanoes of the world) or a schema (things you find in 
a bathroom, things associated with San Francisco, things you take to the 
beach, etc.). I also use this in class. It's really excellent for ESL 
teaching. But having kids make up an Outburst game derived from their 
"dictionaries" could be an entertaining way to review vocabulary. Only 
words from their dictionary earn points, just as in Outburst you get no 
credit for naming something that does not appear on the card.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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