Iterative Development of a Home Review Program to Promote Preschoolers' Vocabulary Skills: Social Validity and Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Purpose This article describes the iterative development of a home review program designed to augment vocabulary instruction for young children (ages 4 and 5 years) occurring at school through the use of a home review component. Method A pilot study followed by two experiments used adapted alternating treatment designs to compare the learning of academic words taught at school to words taught at school and reviewed at home. At school, children in small groups were taught academic words embedded in prerecorded storybooks for 6 weeks. Children were given materials such as stickers with review prompts (e.g., “Tell me what brave means”) to take home for half the words. Across iterations of the home intervention, the home review component was enhanced by promoting parent engagement and buy-in through in-person training, video modeling, and daily text message reminders. Visual analyses of single-subject graphs, multilevel modeling, and social validity measures were used to evaluate the additive effects and feasibility of the home review component. Results Social validity results informed each iteration of the home program. The effects of the home program across sites were mixed, with only one site showing consistently strong effects. Superior learning was evident in the school + home review condition for families that reviewed words frequently at home. Although the home review program was effective in improving the vocabulary skills of many children, some families had considerable difficulty practicing vocabulary words. Conclusion These studies highlight the importance of using social validity measures to inform iterative development of home interventions that promote feasible strategies for enhancing the home language environment. Further research is needed to identify strategies that stimulate facilitators and overcome barriers to implementation, especially in high-stress homes, to enrich the home language environments of more families.

Strategy Use in Second Language Vocabulary Learning and Its Relationships With the Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge: A Structural Equation Modeling Study

“…Vocabulary learning strategies refer to "a wide spectrum of strategies used as part of an on-going process of vocabulary learning" (Gu and Johnson, 1996, p. 669). In line with O' Malley and Chamot's (1990) classifications of LLSs, Gu and Johnson (1996) developed an elaborate list of metacognitive and cognitive strategies that may be used from initial contact with words to putting them to use, which include categorizations such as selective attention, self-initiation, guessing, dictionary use, note-taking, memorization strategies, and activation. Schmitt (1997) and Fan (2003) have also constructed VLS questionnaires, based on O' Malley and Chamot's (1990) and Oxford's (1990) frameworks.…”

“…Studies on use of VLSs (Gu and Johnson, 1996;Lawson and Hogben, 1998;Fan, 2003;Gu, 2003) have found that successful learners used a wider variety of VLSs in an orchestrated manner, with their own characteristics. Studies have also found that individual differences and learning contexts can exert influence on the choice and use of VLSs.…”

“…Scholarly efforts in the field of language learning strategies (LLSs) (see, e.g., O'Malley and Chamot, 1990;Oxford, 1990;Cohen, 1998) have been fundamental to the development of inventories of vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs). Using VLS inventories, researchers have explored a variety of issues, including what VLSs are adopted by successful and unsuccessful language learners (Gu and Johnson, 1996;Lessard-Clouston, 1996;Lawson and Hogben, 1998;Fan, 2003;Gu, 2003), what factors may influence the use of VLSs (Gu, 2002;Catalán, 2003), and how this use relates to breadth of vocabulary knowledge (VK) (Gu and Johnson, 1996;Kojic-Sabo and Lightbown, 1999) and to its depth (e.g., Nassaji, 2006;Zhang and Lu, 2015). Along these lines of inquiries, an updated investigation of use of VLSs among a different pool of Chinese participants may be warranted, given that the most well-known large-scale investigation of the use of VLSs in the Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context was conducted among Beijing Normal University students more than 15 years ago (i.e., Gu and Johnson, 1996;Gu, 2002), and considering that Chinese learners have been regarded as different from western ones (e.g., Watkins and Biggs, 1996;Gu, 2002).…”

“…Using VLS inventories, researchers have explored a variety of issues, including what VLSs are adopted by successful and unsuccessful language learners (Gu and Johnson, 1996;Lessard-Clouston, 1996;Lawson and Hogben, 1998;Fan, 2003;Gu, 2003), what factors may influence the use of VLSs (Gu, 2002;Catalán, 2003), and how this use relates to breadth of vocabulary knowledge (VK) (Gu and Johnson, 1996;Kojic-Sabo and Lightbown, 1999) and to its depth (e.g., Nassaji, 2006;Zhang and Lu, 2015). Along these lines of inquiries, an updated investigation of use of VLSs among a different pool of Chinese participants may be warranted, given that the most well-known large-scale investigation of the use of VLSs in the Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context was conducted among Beijing Normal University students more than 15 years ago (i.e., Gu and Johnson, 1996;Gu, 2002), and considering that Chinese learners have been regarded as different from western ones (e.g., Watkins and Biggs, 1996;Gu, 2002). There may also be a need for statistical validation of the classifications of VLSs in several influential VLS questionnaires (e.g., Gu and Johnson, 1996) using factor analyses, so that with their inner structures tested, that reliance on the total or the average scores of items under certain or all categories as a measure of the use of VLSs, a practice many have criticized (e.g., Tseng et al, 2006), could be avoided, because initial items were examined and sifted and scores gained from individual items were weighted (e.g., Fabrigar et al, 1999;Zhang and Lu, 2015).…”

“…Along these lines of inquiries, an updated investigation of use of VLSs among a different pool of Chinese participants may be warranted, given that the most well-known large-scale investigation of the use of VLSs in the Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context was conducted among Beijing Normal University students more than 15 years ago (i.e., Gu and Johnson, 1996;Gu, 2002), and considering that Chinese learners have been regarded as different from western ones (e.g., Watkins and Biggs, 1996;Gu, 2002). There may also be a need for statistical validation of the classifications of VLSs in several influential VLS questionnaires (e.g., Gu and Johnson, 1996) using factor analyses, so that with their inner structures tested, that reliance on the total or the average scores of items under certain or all categories as a measure of the use of VLSs, a practice many have criticized (e.g., Tseng et al, 2006), could be avoided, because initial items were examined and sifted and scores gained from individual items were weighted (e.g., Fabrigar et al, 1999;Zhang and Lu, 2015). Most importantly, the relationships between VLSs and breadth and depth of VK need further research.…”