New Vocabulary Directions

Why? To make vocabulary a meaningful, individualized experience, one worth your time and effort as you strive to become the most educated individual you can possibly be through a growth mindset, rather than an overly simplistic “review” of words, many of which you already know, that may help you on a standardized test and that you’ll quickly forget after the quiz

How?: Step 1 Throughout the week, you are to identify 10 words you encounter during your readings from any class or outside activity that you do not currently know how to define based on the contexts in which you find them.

How?: Step 2 For each word you identify, you are to write out the quotation in which you found the word, complete with proper MLA citation. For example, if you pull a quotation from Into the Wild, it may look like this: “Many who know him have commented, unbidden, that he seemed to have great difficulty seeing the trees, as it were, for the forest” (Krakauer 63).

How?: Step 3 Once you have provided the quotation and its citation, write a full citation for the work from which you took the quotation. For example, the quotation on the preceding page would look like this: Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1996. If you have questions about MLA citations, please visit Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL). It is an excellent resource for you.

How?: Step 4 Go to Merriam-Webster.com (m-w.com) and look up each word’s definitions. Identify the single definition of the word being used in the context provided by your quotation. Write that definition down and provide the basic citation as follows: (m-w.com). I’ll show you an example on the final slide.

How?: Step 5 Using the definition you have chosen to guide you, create your own example sentence in which you use the word in the same context as it was used in your chosen quotation. Underline the word in the sentence. Again, I’ll show you an example at the end.

Example “Many who knew him have commented, unbidden, that he seemed to have great difficulty seeing the trees, as it were, for the forest” (Krakauer 63). Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1996. Definition: “not asked for or invited” (m-w.com). Sentence: A former friend of mine made an unbidden negative comment on my Facebook post.

DUE DATES This assignment will be due the first day of class following a full five-day week of school—usually Mondays for juniors and Tuesdays for sophomores. If we do not have a full five-day week of school the week before, it will not be due that week. I’ll make sure to let you know about weeks when we don’t have vocabulary due.

Miscellaneous This assignment can be handwritten or typed. Students should be completing this on an individual level; collectively working on the assignment with one or more other students is not allowed because the idea is to work on words you need to learn rather than on words someone else needs to learn.

Final Thought While this assignment will require more time and effort from you, my hope is not only that it will encourage you to learn more definitions of words that you can then utilize in your own reading and writing but also urge you to continue reading challenging formal and informal literature, as we only continue to learn when we challenge ourselves to do so.