Promoting Word Consciousness to Close the Vocabulary Gap in Young Word Learners

Abstract

A proposed avenue for increasing students' vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is instruction that promotes students' enthusiasm and attention to words, referred to as word consciousness. This study seeks to investigate, at the utterance level, whether and how word consciousness talk is used in classrooms with young word learners and whether this type of talk is associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge. Using videotaped classroom (N p 27) observations, this study found evidence of word consciousness talk, with variability of use across classrooms. Multilevel modeling revealed that this kind of teacher talk-operationalized as reinforcing students' use of words, affirming students' recognition of word meanings, and helping students make personal connections to words-was positively associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge at the end of kindergarten. Findings from this study can provide guidance for teachers seeking strategies to increase students' general vocabulary knowledge, beyond words taught.

Making Personal Connections to Words to Increase Early Childhood Vocabulary Learning

“…4 January/February 2022 literacyworldwide.org research team transcribed and analyzed recordings of each teacher's vocabulary lessons. Through this process, we found that teachers used, on average, 4.18 personal connections during each required 20-minute vocabulary session, and that while some teachers did not use personal connections at all, some used this strategy over 30 times during a session (Neugebauer et al, 2017). The personal connections strategy contributed significantly to students' general vocabulary knowledge at the end of kindergarten.…”

“…Word consciousness is defined as "metacognition about words, motivation to learn words, and deep and lasting interest in words" (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2008, p. 186). Word consciousness strategies-of which making personal connections to words is one-increase students' interest and curiosity about words which makes them more likely to attend to words in their environment, culminating in growth in general vocabulary knowledge (Graves, 2006;Neugebauer et al, 2017). Empirical work that supports this mechanism for word growth includes research by McKeown and colleagues (2013).…”

“…Our examples in this article focus on Tier 2 words in kindergarten contexts because these were the focus of our larger investigation and thus were the most frequently talked about. However, the theories of vocabulary learning we have presented further suggest the potential of this strategy for content-specific word instruction (Neuman & Wright, 2013) and the empirical work reviewed highlights the usefulness of this strategy for early childhood settings as well as early elementary settings (Cabell et al, 2015;Hadley & Dickinson, 2019;Neugebauer et al, 2017).…”

Cues for word-learning during shared book-reading and guided play in preschool

“…This may mean that adults should be particularly mindful of supporting children with emergent language skills to initiate interactions, perhaps by modeling play or recognizing and building on non-verbal overtures (Kaiser, Hancock, & Nietfeld, 2000). Adults can also cultivate word consciousness, or children's awareness of and attention to words (Neugebauer et al, 2017), as well as the ability to think and ask about words' meanings (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2008). Teaching a child to ask about an unknown word's meaning provides the opportunity for an adult to provide a thoughtful, contingent response that, according to the findings in this study, is a powerful vehicle for word-learning.…”

Lessons from a Decade of Research on Multifaceted Vocabulary Instruction

“…Vocabulary researchers have highlighted the potential impact of word consciousness , a heightened interest in and awareness of words and their meanings, on students’ independent word learning (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Graves, 2016). Recently, Neugebauer et al, (2017) demonstrated that teacher talk associated with word consciousness, such as affirming students’ recognition and use of target words, positively affected students’ word learning. In our projects, the concept of word consciousness appeared often in qualitative data, with teachers frequently describing their students’ burgeoning enthusiasm for words and researchers documenting cases of students’ unprompted attention to unfamiliar or unique words (Manyak & Manyak, 2021).…”