Beck and McKeown's "Increasing Young Low-Income Children’s Oral Vocabulary Repertoires through Rich and Focused Instruction" (2007) details 2 studies that show the importance of rich and extended vocabulary instruction for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.
Study 1
Research Question. In study 1, the research question was, "How well do students in kindergarten and first grade learn vocabulary through direct instruction compared to those who are just exposed to the words in text (incidental acquisition)?"
Participants. Participants in this first study were in four kindergarten classes and four first graders from the same small, urban school district. Although the study began with 119 students, pre-test and post-test data was collected on a total of 98 students (46 in the control condition and 53 in the experimental condition). Further, the school was one of high poverty, and of those in the study, all were African-American and 82% were eligible to receive free or reduced lunch. There were 4 participating teachers in the experimental group, all female, 2 Caucasian and 2 African American, with teaching experience ranging from 2 to 25 years. The 4 teachers in the control group were also all female. 3 were Caucasian and one was Asian American. Their teaching experience ranged from 4 to 24 years.
Materials. In the experimental group, the vocabulary instruction was taken from Text Talk, a research-based approach using read-alouds. Because young students have higher listening comprehension capacities than they do reading comprehension capacities, teachers are able to read books aloud to them that are higher than their instructional reading levels, thus exposing them to more sophisticated language and language structure, as well as to story grammar. Texts chosen for this study were "conceptually challenging enough so that grappling with ideas and taking an active stance toward constructing meaning are required" (p. 255). Texts were chosen that had the following qualities:
- complex events
- a traditional event structure
- unfamiliar ideas and topics
- figurative language, requiring students to dig deeper for meaning
- stories told primarily through text rather than pictures
Rich Instruction occurred after reading so as not to distract from the reading itself and so that students would have the rich context of the story in which to situate the new words. Rich Instruction involves:
- placing the word in the context of the story--referring back to its use in the text
- explaining the word's meaning in kid-friendly language
- providing examples of the words in other contexts
- asking students to categorize whether or not given examples were examples of the word
- reinforcing the "phonological and meaning representations" of the word (p. 256)
- revisiting the words the remainder of the weeks, through a variety of activities such as keeping a word wall and encouraging students to use or find examples of the words
Teachers in the control group used their regular materials.
Main Findings. In both kindergarten and first grade, students receiving the Rich Instruction in vocabulary made significant gains in comparison to the control group, who received daily read-alouds from books of similar quality/difficulty as those used in Text Talk.
Instructional Implications. Therefore, direct instruction DOES result in students' increasing their vocabulary knowledge. However, the instruction must be more than the typical "look it up in the dictionary, take a test on Friday" approach. The instructional method used in study 1 provided students with several encounters of the word and the word was rooted in context. Further, the words were chosen with care, rather than just at random or on the basis of the word simply being one with which students might be unfamiliar. Also, the definition was provided for the students (which is key because dictionary definitions can actually confuse the child more). The practice of having students categorize situations based on whether or not they were examples of the target word is also an important one, as even my high school students struggle with this skill.
Study 2
Beck and McKeown realized that even with rich, targeted vocabulary instruction, students in the experimental group still did not learn all of the words, so they designed the second study.
Research question. The question in this study was whether students would learn more vocabulary words if the instruction was sustained for longer periods of time.
Participants. 3 kindergarten and 3 first grade classes participated in this study. These students were at another school in the same district as in study 1. Data was reported for 36 kindergartners and 40 1st graders. The 6 teachers involved were all female; 5 were Caucasian and 1 was African-American. Teaching experience ranged from 7 to 32 years.
Materials. The text talk read-alouds with Rich Instruction were used with each group. 7 trade books were used, and 6 words were chosen from each book in the same manner as in study 1. From each set of words, 3 were randomly assigned to the Rich Instruction group and 3 were assigned to the More Rich Instruction group, the group which received the more sustained vocabulary instruction. In the 2nd condition, students were taught all 6 words using the Rich Instruction format. Additionally, on 3 of the words, they received More Rich Instruction, consisting of the same types of activities. This group had 2 review cycles during which previous words were revisited.
Main Findings. At both grade levels, the students receiving the More Rich Instruction treatment made significantly higher vocabulary gains than those receiving the Rich Instruction treatment, proving that there was not a ceiling on vocabulary learning for young children and that more instruction words nets greater gains.
Instructional Implications. Even very young students can be taught sophisticated vocabulary if the teaching is done in a systematic, sustained manner. As Beck and McKeown explain, "The earlier word meanings are learned, the more easily they are accessed later in life" (p. 262). In other words, they build deeper contexts with these words and understand them more fully. They have a more complete semantic map with each word, which will help them as they read texts that might contain other words they don't know. We SHOULD be directly teaching vocabulary, and we should be doing it in a carefully planned manner to maximize the number of words learned (breadth) as well as the depth to which they are learned.
With such rich instruction, the Matthew Effect can be counteracted, and we all know that the gap is easiest to close early on, before students with less vocabulary knowledge get discouraged, stop reading, and learn less vocabulary even as their more "knowledged" (privilaged?) peers take off as readers and learn more and more words!
Reading Models. These studies particularly invoke LaBerge and Samuels's Automaticity Theory and Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory in that the authors state, "Accessing word meaning is more efficient and robust for words acquired earlier" (p. 262). When students learn words in the primary grades, they are able to access them automatically, which allows them to focus on comprehending the text more fluidly, rather than searching for word meanings. Also, as Adams's model indicates, when a known word is activated, the context and meaning processors can work together to aid in word recognition. The meaning processor can help the reader place the word in the appropriate context. Gough's revised model (Component Model of Reading) incorporates vocabulary as a key component to comprehension.
Vocabulary knowledge is a key component to the reading process and its instruction should be as paramount as decoding. Imagine trying to read in a language where you know few of the words, such as Spanish. The letters are mainly the same. You may know how to pronounce the words. But if you can't access the meaning of the words, what have you done?
Comments
Post a Comment