Monday, October 1st, 2012
Where & When: The word, ecumenical, appeared to me when I was reading my favorite text The Handbook of Reading of Research (2000). In context it appeared as "Whether we have come very far in our efforts to offer a more balanced ecumenical view of academic contents remains to be seen" (Alexander & Jetton, 2000, p. 288).
Defintion: According to dictionary.com , ecumenical (ek-you-men-i-kuhl) is an adjective and it means to be general and or universal. The defintion also provides about 4 other meanings that are mostly synnomous with the defintion mentioned above but they rest seem to tie in an element of christianity. For example, "promoting or fostering Christian unity."
Level of Familiarity: My level of familiarity with this word is very minimal. I honestly think this is my first encounter with the word. So if I had to place my "stage" of word learning according to Dale (1965) and I would say that I fall under "(1) Never saw it before" (Handbook, 2000, p. 270).
Often times, I am able to gain some level of understanding of a word by seeing it used in context. But usually, this occurs when I have had other exposures to that word. This idea is acknowledged by Nagy and Scott (2000) in their research relating to gaining a vague understanding of a word through "incidental word learning" (Nagy & Scott, 2000, p.270).
To be quite honest, even after I looked up the definition and read the word in context. I still felt a little puzzled to what the word ecumenical actually meant. At that point in my journey, I did not feel comfortable with using this word in a sentence. When I browsed through pictures, I found myself feeling more comfortable with this word and it's meaning.
Reflective Commentary: As I preparing this last blog post, I was thinking "Oh geez, I'm going to have to say this word aloud to my classmates tonight." Luckily, I was able to find the pronunciation on a dictionary.com smart phone app. What I found most interesting about my journey to obtaining full word knowledge was the process I took. I felt as if I was "code switching" between the internet, my Handbook (a printed text), and even my smart-phone app (Alexander & Jetton, 2000, p. 294) to gain full understanding of the word. Although I was not switching disciplines, I was switching to and from various resources to help me define the word, ecumenical. As I navigated through these resources, I found myself using different cognitive processes to identify the information I needed. For example, when I used my handbook, I used the index to find the chapter on vocabulary processes. I didn't encounter any pictures/or visuals to help me within this text. The genre of this text is expository in nature in that it seeks to "inform readers by presenting information that explains principles and general behavioral patterns" (Alexander & Jetton, 2000, p.290). Then as means for gaining for word knowledge, I used the internet to find a concise defintion. While I probably could have used that very same website, dictionary.com, to pronounce the word, I switched to my phone because I knew I had an app that pronounced words for me.
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