1. Everyone is lumped onto the same level of difficulty with no regard for their skill level.



2. The user is only exposed the material a few times which in not sufficient for long term retention and mastery.

There are huge differences in the spoken vocabulary (pre-reading) of kids entering the first grade. Research has shown that first graders in the top 5% have a productive vocabulary of 7000 words while the students in the bottom third of the class only knew about 1500 words. The interesting thing is that this isn't attributed to IQ because the student's that only knew 1500 words were able to learn new words just a quickly as the student's with the larger vocabularies. Instead it is attributed to their environment - specifically how much time did they spend talking to their parents or other adults and how much were they read to or did they read themselves.

As a general rule of thumb schools have no idea what the vocabulary level of first grader is. This is mostly due to the fact that it can only be measured orally and they simply don't have the resources to do measure it. When a student is behind in their vocabulary and nothing is done to improve it the will continue to be behind and the problem gets worse and with each new grade as the material gets more and more difficult. What can be done? We must determine what the vocabulary level of the student is and then get them started on a learning path tailored to their existing level of vocabulary. This will rapidly boost their learning of new words. The problem is that traditional vocabulary programs take a cookie cutter approach and try to put everyone through the same path. More often than not the students are presented with a word list that has a bunch of words they already know. Or worse yet sometime they are given a list of words that are way beyond their current level. On one hand they will not be challenged and on the other the will give up. In either case they won't learn enough words to improve their vocabulary.

So, what would a well designed vocabulary program look like? The bottom line is that the student must have enough repeat exposures in different formats for the word to become a part of the passive vocabulary. Which means they may not use the word in every day life but they would recognize the word. To be successful all of this must help the student know the words meaning, how to spell it as well as the proper pronunciation. That way when they are reading and they run across one of these words they will recognize it immediately and be able to continue a full speed.

Finally, learners must find the practice path enjoyable or they will never get enough repetitions to put the new words into long-term memory. Students must "fall in love with practice," in other words, if they are ever going to close the vocabulary-reading gap and catch up to their peers.