Stop at Incidental Vocabulary 170-176

“A strong vocabulary equips students to actively participate in society as educated citizens and informed consumers” (169).
  
“Word knowledge is not static, but rather dynamic—changing and growing over time as a learner experiences, hears, and reads a word in a variety of places and circumstances” (170).

Content-specific vocabulary relates to terms that are critical, yet specific, to a particular discipline or unit of study.

Academic vocabulary encompasses a set of terms often found among expository texts and formal presentations or speeches but which is not unique to any con ten or academic discipline.
 

The 5 Facets of Word Knowledge

Incrementality: levels of word knowledge develop over time
Polysemy: multiple meanings associated with a word
Multidimentionality: many different types of knowledge to be learned abut a word
Interrelatedness: connections are made between or among words
Heterogeneity: word type, purpose, and prior knowledge influence word knowledge required
7 Tasks and Considerations

Learning a basic oral vocabulary
Learning to read known words
Learning new words representing known concepts
Learning new words representing new concepts
Learning new meanings for known words
Clarifying and enriching the meanings of known words
Moving words into students' expressive vocabularies

Preventing Vocabulary and School Failure
Teaching vocabulary through rote exercises that require dictionary definitions of extensive numbers of technical and specialized terms is a recipe for failure. True knowledge is applied knowledge. Unlike the "definition only" method of learning vocabulary, the teacher should start with concrete experiences in order to instill concepts and words. Full-concept learning of vocabulary, according to Simpson, requires for mental operations:

recognizing and generating critical attributes - both examples and non examples- of  a concept.

seeing relationships between the concept to be learned and what is already known

applying the concept to a variety of contexts

Incidental vocabulary development occurs through conversation, word play, exposure to spoken words from a variety of sources, and reading.