Enhancing Adolescents’ Comprehension of Text by Building Vocabulary Knowledge

Secondary-level students are required to learn critical content by reading and comprehending complex text. This task is especially challenging for students with disabilities who spend the majority of their day in the general education content area setting. General and special education teachers who implement research-based vocabulary instruction can increase students’ content knowledge and broader reading comprehension. This paper provides an overview of research on vocabulary instruction associated with improved outcomes for secondary students with disabilities. Based on this research, a set of practices for providing effective vocabulary instruction is described. Specific examples for implementing explicit vocabulary instruction, text-based instruction, and morphology-based instruction are provided.