Must know Grade 8 Technology Education Concepts and Vocabulary

Explicit vocabulary instruction is key to building conceptual understanding as words carry domain concepts. The value of explicit vocabulary instruction is lost in the absence of a principled isolation of the right words to give focused attention. The key or ‘must-know’ vocabulary should find expression and resonance in all languages. The present study, a precursor to an empirical study on the extent to which African languages can handle concept vocabulary in the teaching of Technology, isolates the key must-know Grade 8 Technology Education vocabulary in English. Vygotsky’s (1986) theory of scientific concept development informed the distinction between scientific and everyday concepts. Ha and Hyland’s (2017) Technicality Analysis Model (TAM) and its five levels of technicality informed the judgment-based methods that were used to determine key Technology Education vocabulary at Grade 8 level. Over and above the model, some criteria emanated from the defining characteristics, the contextual clues, as well as Chung and Nation’s (2004) four-step rating scale. The criteria applied yielded 80 key vocabulary, largely technical and substantive and bearing threshold concepts. The study recommends combining the words of the Tier 3 with the more general academic vocabulary of the Tier 2 to narrow the instructional focus and increase the conceptual understanding of the teaching of Grade 8 Technology.