Lesson Idea Provided By
Anne Roberts
English teacher, newspaper adviser
Falls Church High School
Falls Church, Virginia

Vocabulary development can result from all students in a class studying the same list of words. This approach gives students a shared vocabulary and the teacher certainty of a diction pool from which to build communication experiences. Students can be asked to create their personal vocabulary development lists from two weeks’ reading of newspapers and periodicals.

The following 15 words were used by columnist George F Will in “The Last Word,” June 21, 1999, page 84. This list could be used for a vocabulary quiz with students asked to write a commentary on a topic of their own choice using the following words or as an example of the type of words one could collect reading commentary in a news magazine.

1. Askance
2. Aspiration
3. Capitulation
4. Cataclysmic
5. Catechism
6. Cohesive
7. Communiqué
8. Cumulative
9. Deconstructing
10. Detachment
11. Emanations
12. Flush
13. Moral imperative
14. Preemptive
15. Railing (against)