Word Knowledge and Comprehension Effects of an Academic Vocabulary Intervention for Middle School Students

Abstract

This article presents findings from an intervention across sixth and seventh grades to teach academic words to middle school students. The goals included investigating a progression of outcomes from word knowledge to comprehension and investigating the processes students use in establishing word meaning. Participants in Year 1 were two sixth-grade reading teachers and 105 students (treatment n = 62; control n = 43) and in Year 2, one seventh-grade reading teacher and 87 students (treatment n = 44; control n = 43) from the same public school. In both years, results favored instructed students in word knowledge, lexical access, and morphological awareness on researcher-designed measures. In Year 2, small advances were also found for comprehension. Transcripts of lessons shed light on processes of developing representations of unfamiliar words.

Vocabulary Instruction: A Critical Analysis of Theories, Research, and Practice

“…This paucity is alarming, as it suggests that the focus on vocabulary instruction within research dwindles as students get older. McKeown et al echoed this concern, noting the lack of intervention studies focusing on word learning that have been conducted with middle-and high-school students [18].…”

“…The only practice that was seldom suggested for use in the classroom was syntactic feature analysis, which requires teachers to draw attention to different forms of the target word, and how they relate to certain parts of speech [144]. Knowledge of a word extends beyond its meaning to its form and use, which includes its grammatical functions [18]. Given our findings, it is reasonable to conclude that recommendations for vocabulary instruction published in RT and JAAL focus primarily on activities to develop meaning and form, with little acknowledgment of use [146].…”

“…Still, a large corpus of vocabulary remains crucial in the middle and high school grades, as learners are increasingly required to define and use challenging academic words [18]. Many older students struggle with vocabulary; in the US, results from the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that only 36% of eighth graders read at a basic level, with vocabulary cited as one of the primary barriers to reading comprehension [19].…”

Learning the words AND knowing the concepts: an in‐depth study of one expert teacher's use of language as a cultural tool to support inquiry

“…Ann was selected for this teacher–researcher partnership because she possessed markers of expertise that gave weight to her instructional decision‐making: leadership experiences within her building and school district in both science and English/Language Arts (ELA), and multiple experiences in select national on‐site science research opportunities (Hayden & Baird, ). She viewed science content holistically and longitudinally, thinking about standards and outcomes: what students would need to know and do in her science classroom, real life experiences she could connect to content, and how to explain concepts in terms students would understand.…”

“…Kamil et al () advocated the Tier framework (Beck et al, ) for vocabulary selection in science, but only if words are chosen based on importance to specific content learning versus broad vocabulary development. McKeown et al () echoed this caution, advocating teaching ‘optimally useful' words (p. 577). In the Tier framework, basic words that are well known by students are called ‘Tier‐1' and need no further instruction.…”