Vocabulary is highly correlated with reading comprehension skills. Many students are likely to skip over unfamiliar words and might never learn them without a structured approach to defining, understanding and practicing new words. By having students learn and describe novel terms in their own words, they are more fully understanding the word, as opposed to memorizing a rote definition.
Best-suited for students with weaker: Long-term Memory, Working Memory (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)