The document discusses the importance of vocabulary for students' academic success. It states that students with larger vocabularies can understand new ideas and concepts more quickly than those with limited vocabularies. Research shows a strong correlation between word knowledge and reading comprehension, so inadequate vocabulary growth will negatively impact reading ability. The document calls for more vocabulary instruction at all grade levels and notes students should add an average of 2,000-3,000 new words per year to their reading vocabularies. It provides some keys to effective vocabulary instruction such as developing a love of language, reading extensively, and teaching individual words and word learning strategies.