Learning new concepts often comes with lots of terminology and jargon. While the terms are equally as important to understand as the concept itself, it can overwhelming for a new learner.
Using language that is approachable, will help build their understanding rather than memorize key terms. In this lesson, we’ll review learner-friendly language and how to create learner-friendly definitions.
According to Steele & Mills (2011) a learner (or student)-friendly definition is written by an adult (SLT, teacher, assistant) and is not constrained by space limitations, as a dictionary definition is. For example:
|
Word
|
Dictionary Definition
|
Learner-Friendly Definition
|
|---|---|---|
|
sympathy
|
harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another
|
understanding what another person is feeling because you have felt the same way before
|
CREATING LEARNER-FRIENDLY DEFINITIONS
Through a two-step process shared in Beck’s Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction about creating learner-friendly definitions, you can also create learner-friendly definitions.
1. Determine the word's typical use
Think about how the word is typically used and what meaning you are trying to convey when you use it.
Think about the connotations, or context or assumptions that are made when using the word.
2. Build a definition out of everyday language
Use words that are at the team’s level of understanding, avoiding overuse of formal terms.
The language should demonstrate the correct context.
Include words like “someone”, “something”, and “describes”
EXAMPLE: EXPLAINING DEBUGGING
dictionary.com defines debug as “to detect and remove defects or errors from.”
The word “remove” refers to taking out whatever is causing the error. Teams may get stuck on the removal part and not realize that fixing a bug can involve correcting how something was written in the code.
A clearer learner-friendly definition could be
“When someone debugs a computer program, they look for the mistakes in it and correct them or looks for unneeded code and removes it, so that it will run properly.”
Resource for mentors
The collinsdictionary.com is a great resource for learner-friendly definitions.
These are a great starting point for you to modify from. Some words have example sentences demonstrating the word’s use and images to help with understanding the word.
If teams need more practice or different ways of learning terms, here are some other ways to make new terms learner-friendly (Stahl and Nagy, 2006):
- share synonyms and antonyms
- share examples and nonexamples
- discuss similarities and differences between new terms and words the team knows
- word association (have teams share the first word that comes to mind when you share a new word; this can be a fun way to assess team’s prior knowledge on a new concept)
I still have a question
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