Word Meanings Matter Cultivating English Vocabulary Knowledge in Fifth-Grade Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners

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Word Meanings Matter: Cultivating English Vocabulary Knowledge in Fifth-Grade Spanish-Speaking Language Minority LearnersAuthor(s): JEANNETTE MANCILLA-MARTINEZSource: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4 (December 2010), pp. 669-699Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27896759 .Accessed: 12/12/2014 18:58

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Word Meanings Matter: CultivatingEnglish Vocabulary Knowledge in FifthGrade Spanish-Speaking Language

Minority Learners

JEANNETTEMANCILLA-MARTINEZUniversity of llinois at ChicagoChicago, Illinois, United States

This pilot study investigated the effects of a 20-week quasiexperimentalvocabulary intervention aimed at improving Spanish-speaking language

minority students' English vocabulary and writing outcomes.

Participants were twomatched samples of fifth graders (N= 49) in a

predominantly Latino, low-income urban school. Pre- and posttest

analyses revealed that the treatment group gained knowledge of a

larger number of target words than did the contrast group and that thetreatment group students were generally better at determining their

own word knowledge. Further, individual growth modeling revealedthe treatment students' overall writing quality improved over the courseof the 20-week intervention, even though writing instruction was not

part of the intervention, and improvements in students' writing qualitywere larger during the last 10weeks of the intervention. The need for

purposeful activities that provide students with authentic contexts tolearn and productively use newly taught words is discussed.dot: 10.5054/tq.2010.213782

There

areapproximately

98 million ethnicminority group

members(or 33% of the country's population) in the United States, with

Latinos comprising the largest and fastest growing segment of this

population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). Over the past 30 years thenumber of school-age children who spoke a language other than Englishat home, known as language minority (LM) learners, nearly tripled(3.8 million to 10.6 million; U.S. Department of Education, National

Center for Education Statistics, NCES, 2007a), with Spanish being themost common home language. These statistics have clear and immediate

implications for U.S. schools, as the number of Latino children is

expected to continue to increase in the coming decades (Harwood,Leyendecker, Carlson, Asencio, & Miller, 2002). Of concern is that this

rapidly growing population of Spanish-speaking LM learners accounts

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 44, No. 4, December 2010 669

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for a disproportionate percentage of struggling comprehenders (August& Shanahan, 2006; NCES, 2007b). Given that Latino families continueto be

overrepresented amongAmerica's

poor (Suarez-Orozco8c

Paez,2002) and that low-income status is a well-known risk factor associatedwith poor academic outcomes (Hart 8c Risley, 1995), a considerable

proportion of Spanish-speaking Latino students is doubly at-risk forschool failure. It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to

disentangle the effect of LM status from low socioeconomic status onstudent academic outcomes, but it is clear that these variables tend to beconfounded, creating compounding obstacles to successful academicoutcomes for the growing population of low-income LM students. Manyfactors are associated with LM students' reading comprehensiondifficulties, but low levels of vocabulary knowledge continue to emergeas key impediments to successful comprehension (Garcia, 1991; Nagy,1997; Stahl 8c Nagy, 2006; U.S. Department of Health and HumanServices, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Healthand Human Development, NICHD, 2000; Verhoeven, 1990). Despite the

strong and well-established link between vocabulary and comprehension(Anderson 8c Freebody, 1981; Anderson & Nagy, 1991; U.S. Department

of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, RAND

Reading Study Group, 2002), over the past 20 years relatively fewresearchers have conducted

experimentalstudies on the effectiveness of

vocabulary interventions with LM students (August 8c Shanahan, 2006;Calder?n, August, Slavin, Duran, Madden, 8c Cheung, 2005). The

present study strengthens this research domain by assessing theeffectiveness of a pilot vocabulary intervention designed to improvefifth-grade (ages 10-11 years) LM students' literacy outcomes.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Notwithstanding the poor academic outcomes of many LM learners at

all grade levels, reading research has tended to focus on the readingdevelopment of young monolingual English speakers (e.g., NICHD,2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), and that which has been conducted

with LM learners has similarly focused on young children (for a review,see Lesaux, Koda, Siegel, & Shanahan, 2006). Thus research and

practice have focused more on word reading skills than vocabulary and

comprehension skills. However, converging evidence finds that LMlearners tend to develop relatively strong word reading skills, but often

without the necessary language skills to support comprehension (e.g.,

Droop 8c Verhoeven, 2003; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Hutchinson,Whiteley, Smith, & Connors, 2003; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow,2005; Proctor, August, Carlo, & Snow, 2006; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000).

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Thus a distinction between word reading and knowledge of the

meanings of the words being read is especially important in under

standing LM learners' literacy development. It is estimated that studentsneed to know (not simply recognize and/or decode) at least 95% of thewords they encounter in text for successful comprehension (Calder?net al., 2005; Lipson & Wixson, 2003). Estimates of words learned duringa typical school year range from 1,000 (Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990)to 3,000 (Nagy & Herman, 1987); although clearly most of these wordsare learned incidentally, explicit vocabulary instruction has also beenfound to contribute to word learning (e.g., Biemiller, 2003).Considering the early vocabulary knowledge disadvantage that manyLM learners face, a sole reliance on incidental vocabulary learning for

this group of learners is both impractical and negligent. However, onlyfive vocabulary intervention studies have focused on LM learners(Calder?n et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004; Perez, 1981; Ramirez, 1986;

Vaughn-Shavuo, 1990), and only one (Carlo et al., 2004) has targetedupper-elementary students.

Vaughn-Shavuo's (1990) doctoral dissertation investigated the effectof vocabulary instruction by randomly assigning two groups of first-gradeSpanish-dominant children to two groups. Over the course of 3 weeks,31 words were presented to both groups. Group one (the experimentalgroup) received vocabulary instruction focused on elaborated meanings.Specifically, they learned the target words in meaningful paragraphs(i.e., the sentences containing the target words formed narratives), they

were provided with picture cards of the target words that illustrated their

meanings, and they dictated their own sentences using the target words.In contrast, the other group (the control group) received instructionfocused on individual sentence contexts (i.e., the sentences containingthe target words were unconnected). Results showed that the experi

mental group learned more words than the control group. In another

study, Perez's (1981) work with third graders revealed that the

experimental group receiving20 min of

dailyoral

languageinstruction

on word meanings, over the course of about 3 months, showed

significant improvements on word learning over the group receivingregular instruction (i.e., reading text and answering questions). Thethird vocabulary study (Ramirez, 1986) also focused on third-gradeSpanish speakers. In this study, amethod called suggestopedia (a languagelearning method that uses music to create an atmosphere conducive to

learning) was used. Ten words were taught per day in 40-min lessonsover the course of 4 days, and the experimental groups performedsignificantly better than the control. Calder?n and colleagues (2005)

likewise investigated Spanish-speaking third graders' word learning, butthe major goal of their 22- to 25-week intervention (an adaptation of theSuccess for All reading program) was on facilitating students' Spanish-to

WORDMEANINGS MATTER 671



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English transition from a Spanish reading program. However, anadditional goal of the intervention was on building English vocabulary.

Thus,in the 90-min

lessons, vocabularywas a

major focus,as 30 min were

devoted to oral language activities revolving around grade-levelchildren's literature. Their results revealed modest positive effects onstudents' English vocabulary. Finally, and most recently, Carlo and

colleagues (2004) conducted a 15-week vocabulary intervention with

fifth-grade Spanish-speaking LM learners. They found that, while the

impact of their 30- to 45-min a day intervention was greater on

vocabulary than on reading comprehension, there were significantimprovements in both domains.

The scope of vocabulary intervention work with LM learners is sparse,

most notably beyond the primary grades, but findings to date point tothe promising role of vocabulary instruction to improve LM learners'

vocabulary knowledge. Further, the strong and significant correlationbetween vocabulary and reading comprehension among LM learners

(Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Hutchinson et al.,2003; Proctor et al., 2005, 2006; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000) suggests thatLM learners can benefit from targeted vocabulary instruction. Further,even though vocabulary might be expected to also impact writing, which

plays an increasingly prominent role in evaluating students' academic

performance after the primary grades, a key limitation in the field is thatnone of the vocabulary intervention studies conducted to date haveexamined writing outcomes.

Some work with third- and fourth-grade monolingual English speakers suggests that limited vocabulary knowledge contributes to dependence on repetitive uses of the same words and thus to underelaborationof thoughts and ideas in writing (Moats, Foorman, 8c Taylor, 2006).Additionally, Saddler and Graham (2007) note that writers' familiaritywith the writing topic is related to writing performance, suggesting that

background knowledge plays a central role in students' writing quality.Because LM learners tend to have more limited vocabularies and

background knowledge (two highly interrelated areas) than their

monolingual English-speaking counterparts, we can expect LM students'

writing to be greatly impeded. Indeed, the 2002 National Assessment ofEducation Progress writing assessment revealed that only about one

quarter of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders performed at or above the proficientlevel in writing (NCES, 2004), but even more troubling is the fact thatsubstantial differences emerged when examining the data by ethnicity:

At all grade levels, on average, Whites and Asians scored above the 50%percentile, while Blacks and Latinos scored near the 25% percen tile.

It seems reasonable to postulate that vocabulary instruction mightresult in improved writing outcomes, but there is a surprisingly limitedresearch base on the effect of vocabulary instruction on students'

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writing, even amongst native-English-speaking populations (Duin 8cGraves, 1987; Graham 8c Perin, 2007). It is thus difficult to draw even

tentative conclusions about the impact of vocabulary instruction onstudents' writing and particularly difficult to ascertain the nature of this

relationship for Spanish-speaking LM learners. To my knowledge, onlyfour studies have directly investigated the writing development of

Spanish-speaking LM learners (Bermudez & Prater, 1994; Davis, Carlisle,& Beeman, 1999; Ferris & Politzer, 1981; Lanauze & Snow, 1989).However, none of these studies examined the potential relationshipbetween vocabulary and writing development. Students need vocabularyto write, but the only evidence available on the role of vocabulary insecond language writing comes from English-as-a-foreign-language(EFL) college students. The educational context of LM learners differsin substantive ways from that of older EFL students, greatly limiting the

generalizations that can be drawn from EFL work to the LM learner

school-age population. Notwithstanding, EFL studies with collegestudents indeed find that a key determinant in nonnative Englishspeakers' overall writing quality is vocabulary (e.g., Leki & Carson, 1994;

Raimes, 1985; Walters & Wolf, 1996). The lack of empirical research

investigating this potential relationship amongst the large and growingpopulation of school-age LM learners is amajor limitation in the literacyresearch field.

Because receptive vocabulary knowledge generally precedes productive vocabulary knowledge (Laufer, 1998; Meara, 1996; Nation, 1990;

Pearson, Hiebert, & Kamil, 2007), it can be expected that students, andin particular LM learners, will require ample opportunities to actively

use newly taught vocabulary in oral language before they are able to usethe new words in their writing. To date, very few studies have examinedstudents' use of newly taught vocabulary in writing (Bravo 8c Tilson,2006; Lee, 2003; Lee & Muncie, 2006). As part of a larger studyexamining the effects of an integrated science-literacy curriculum, Bravoand Tilson

(2006) analyzedsecond- and

third-gradestudents' use of

science vocabulary in writing, finding that students spontaneously used

newly taught science words in their writing. The authors suggest that useof newly taught vocabulary in writing represents growth in science

knowledge and also indicates that students have productive control overscience vocabulary. However, an analysis of whether students' overall

writing quality showed improvements was not conducted, and the

majority of students in this study were White native English speakers,limiting the generalizations that can be made to LM learners.

The other two studies investigated productive vocabulary use in

writing among secondary school multinative language intermediateEnglish-as-a-second-language students in Canada. Specifically, Lee(2003) investigated correct usage of target vocabulary in the writing of

WORDMEANINGSMATTER 673



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65 students, and Lee and Muncie (2006) investigated learners' (N= 48)

use of target vocabulary and how their target vocabulary use influencedtheir lexical

frequency profile (seeLaufer 8c

Nation, 1995,for

details).Like Bravo and Tilson (2006), Lee (2003) did not investigate the effectsof vocabulary encountered in reading instruction on students' overall

writing quality. Lee and Muncie considered the relationship between

vocabulary encountered in reading and learners' use of the vocabularyin writing, including improvements in writing quality, finding thatteacher elicitation, explicit explanation, discussion and negotiation, and

exposure to target vocabulary increase students' productive vocabularyuse in writing. However, like the other two studies, student income levelswere not reported, effectively limiting our understanding of whether

these findings can be expected to be replicated with low-incomepopulations.

Despite the limited number and limited scope of studies exploringthe relationship between vocabulary instruction and writing, there isreason to believe that vocabulary instruction may indeed be a step in the

right direction to improve the writing skills of LM learners. Drawing onresearch to date, two reasonable hypotheses are that (1) LM learners willuse newly taught words in their writing z/given opportunities to do so ona consistent basis, and (2) vocabulary instruction will strengthen LMlearners' overall

writing qualityover time. To

adequately explorethe

effects of vocabulary instruction on students' literacy outcomes,research-based vocabulary instruction components and strategies must

be attended to.

Components of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

The NICHD (2000) concluded that there is no single best researchbased method for vocabulary instruction, noting that a variety ofmethods are needed, including incidental and structured instruction.

Although indirect instruction is vital to any program aiming to developstudents' vocabulary, direct, carefully designed instruction is also an

integral part of the puzzle. The goal of explicit instruction is for studentsto learn the meanings of words across various contexts to ultimatelyimprove their literacy outcomes. Researchers agree that the specific

words to be taught should be guided by their potential to aid students'

understanding of text and/or concepts and that words students are

likely to encounter relatively frequently should be targeted (e.g., Beck,McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Biemiller & Slonim, 2001; Nation, 2001). In

other words, wordsto

be taught should be functional, cross-disciplinary,and developmentally appropriate (see Beck et al., 2002, for one widelyused system for selecting words).

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Considering the more limited vocabulary levels of many LM learners,vocabulary instruction for LM learners must target students' language

skills not only more intensively, but also more broadly. Because exposureto academic language is largely confined to the regular school day forLM learners, LM learners arguably need more opportunities, bothincidental and structured, to hear and use academic language thannative English speakers. Additionally, effective vocabulary programs forLM learners should specifically target the development of wordconsciousness and of word learning strategies to help LM learners catch

up with monolingual English speakers. Further, the target vocabulary forinstruction should be presented in meaningful, engaging contexts thatare not only relevant to students' interests (e.g., Carlo et al., 2004) but

that also serve to bolster their overall background knowledge. Finally, anarea that is seldom attended to is ensuring that students are provided

with opportunities to actively use newly taught vocabulary, both orallyand in writing. Writing becomes a major form of evaluation after the

primary grades for all students and, on average, over one-quarter ofLatino students write at the below basiclevel (NCES, 2003). Itmay be that,by giving LM learners ample opportunities to write on a consistent basisas part of a vocabulary program, their understanding of the words theyare being taught will be strengthened. That is, the sheer use of newly

taughtwords in

writing mayfoster

learningof the words.

PRESENT STUDY

Given that LM students tend to have both less breadth and less depthof vocabulary knowledge and knowing that vocabulary is strongly relatedto students' overall school success, LM students with limited vocabulariesare very disadvantaged academically. The vocabulary program piloted inthis study draws from the research base on effective vocabularyinstruction and rests on the premise that vocabulary instruction can

reasonably be expected to improve fifth-grade (ages 10-11 years) LMlearners' literacy outcomes. Fifth grade is an optimal school year tointervene, before students enter the more academically demanding

middle school grades when struggling comprehenders rapidly fallfurther behind in all content areas. The study addressed the followingresearch questions:

(1) Following the 20-week vocabulary intervention, do the treatment orcontrast group students gain knowledge of a greater number of

targeted words?

(2) In the treatment group's weekly student essays, what is the extent oftarget vocabulary word use over the course of the 20-weekintervention? Specifically, do students use the target vocabulary

WORD MEANINGSMATTER 675



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words cumulatively, or is their use confined to words taught in thecurrent week? Further, is there any change in the quality (e.g.,coherence and academic

language use)of the

essaysover time?

METHOD

Research Context

The data for this study were taken from one school in theNortheastern United States participating in an on-going study designedto improve students' literacy outcomes. This school, known by the

pseudonym the Mystic School, is a Strategic Education Research

Partnership (SERP) site. SERP is an organization with the overarchinggoal of improving student outcomes by acknowledging the wisdom of

practice and bringing well-established research knowledge to bear.Within this SERP partnership, upper-elementary and middle-school

teachers from the participating schools attend cross-university researchseminars, and researchers collaborate with the teachers on research

projects. The Mystic School is an urban K-8 school serving a 91% Latino,91% low-income population. Seventy-nine percent of the student body is

LM (Spanish), with 46% designated limited English proficient and 8%designated special education. The primary concern of the Mysticteachers centered on students' low levels of vocabulary knowledge and

poor reading comprehension outcomes.

Design and Participants

This quasiexperimental pilot study employed a matched-control

design. As a pilot study exploring the preliminary effects of a vocabularyintervention, piloting of the intervention was limited to one grade level(fifth grade) in the same predominantly Latino, low-income, urban K-8school in the Northeast to carefully monitor the implementation of theintervention. There were only three fifth-grade classrooms in this school;two were mainstream English classrooms, and the other was a selfcontained classroom for recent immigrants and thus did not participate.

One classroom served as the treatment group and the other as thecontrast group.

All 53 students in the two mainstream classrooms participated, buttwo students from the treatment and two students from the contrast

classroom transferred to other schools during the intervention; thus thefinal sample for statistical analyses consisted of 24 students from thetreatment and 25 from the contrast classroom. Except for the number of

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students formerly identified as limited English proficient, with more inthe treatment classroom,1 there were no significant differences in

gender, race, and first language characteristicsacross

the classrooms(see Table 1). The treatment group received the 20-week intervention,starting in January 2007 and ending in May 2007, while the contrast

group continued with the regular, district-wide literacy instruction.

Regular literacy instruction in this school district centered on at least80 min of the reading and writing workshop model in which a

balanced approach to literacy instruction is followed.

Intervention Overview and Implementation

Word Generation (WG), developed through a SERP collaborativeeffort under the leadership of Dr. Catherine Snow, is a research-based20-week vocabulary intervention designed to build students' academic

vocabulary across the content areas. Academic vocabulary refers to wordsthat students are likely to encounter in textbooks and on tests (e.g., inferand element), but not in spoken language. Without explicit instruction onthese types of words, students, and especially LM learners, are likely to

experience difficulty with comprehension. The goal ofWG is to increasestudents' academic vocabulary, in an effort to improve literacy outcomes.

Thefollowing components

areemphasized: (1) building vocabularyknowledge through repeated exposure to frequently occurring academic

words in various contexts, (2) cultivating general word and world

TABLE 1Background Characteristics of Treatment and Contrast Group Students (N

= 49)

Treatment (n = 24) Contrast {n= 25) p value

GenderFemale 17

Male 7Race

Latino 23Black 0

White 0Asian 1

First languageSpanish 23

English/other 1

Formerly limited English proficientYes 17No 7

1411

21130

223

916

1.16

5.07

1.00

5.97

0.28

0.17

0.32

0.01

1Students at the Mystic School are randomly assigned to classrooms and thus the greaternumber of limited-English-proficient students in the treatment group compared with thecontrast group happened by chance.




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knowledge, as well as word study strategies, and (3) engaging students in

weekly persuasive writing. The core program centers on the weekly

presentationof five

high-utility targetwords to be learned in the context

of brief passages outlining controversies currently under debate in theUnited States (ranging from the abilities of women inmath and scienceto global warming).2 The 100 target words are therefore relevant to a

range of settings and subject areas and were selected from the AcademicWord List (Coxhead, 2000), which was originally developed as a support

for instruction to college-level nonnative English speakers and does notinclude words that are in the most frequent 2,000 words of English. The

main criteria in selecting the 100 target words were that they be highutility, high-functional, and cross-disciplinary (see Appendix A for the

full list of WG words). The cross-content focus on a small number ofwords each week aims to enable students to understand the variety of

ways in which words are related, and the multiple exposures to words indifferent contexts (e.g., math and history) seek to provide students with

ample opportunities for deeper understanding of the words. The WGmaterials include a teacher's guide that explains the structure of the

vocabulary program and rationale behind it; a set of 20 engagingparagraphs written about current topics in journalistic style, whichconnect to real word issues and to students' lives; brief instructionalactivities associated with

weekly topicsand

targetwords; and references

to support teachers in implementing WG activities (see http://www.wordgeneration.org/index.html for more detailed information about

WG, including access to the Teacher's Guide and a sample weeklylesson).

Another central component of every WG lesson to build students'academic vocabulary is classroom talk. Aside from improving students'

vocabulary knowledge, the promotion of classroom discussion and talkalso aims to support the development of students' reasoning and their

ability to express their reasoning. Thus the following are key features of

the WG intervention: revoicing by the teacher (i.e., repeating a student'sutterance with the purpose of checking back with them for clearer

interpretation of their statement or position), student repetition (i.e.,having other students repeat or paraphrase another student's position inorder to check on their interpretation of the statement), asking studentsto debate (i.e., giving students opportunities to agree and disagree and

having them state and make clear their reasoning), and partner talk

(i.e., giving students who are less inclined to join whole groupdiscussions the opportunity to talk with a partner to ensure that allstudents are on the same page). Finally, the end-of-week writing activity

2The WG paragraphs are written at a 6th grade readability level, because the WG materialswere specifically developed for use with middle school students (grades 6-8).

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is essential toWG, because the goal is to make writing an integral part ofthe vocabulary program, such that students have the opportunity to

composea

short piece basedon

the controversial topic they havediscussed all week. This provides yet another means of allowing studentsto express their thoughts and opinions. For LM learners, in particular,

writing serves as a nonthreatening way to express their views.

Additionally, the incorporation of a weekly writing component aims to

provide students the opportunity to explore the use of newly taughtvocabulary in their writing, which is critical to cultivate deeper learningof the words.

The teacher was asked to implement WG for at least 15 min daily, 5

days a week. Though the Tuesday toThursday activities varied from week

to week (these were the days that the target vocabulary was discussed inthe content areas of math, science, and social studies), the structure of

WG is such that the first day of the week (typically Monday) begins withthe introduction of the passage and ends (typically Friday) with the

open-ended essay-writing activity.On Monday, the teacher began the weekly WG lesson by introducing

the controversial topic of the week. For example, the teacher would tellthe class that they would be discussing their thoughts on whether rap

music has a negative impact on kids, and she would explicitly tell herstudents that they would be learning five words, which appeared in bold

type in the passage. Before reading the weekly passage with the class,the teacher showed the five weekly target words on large index cards tothe class, one at a time, asking if they knew what the words meant; this

was a way for the teacher to gauge her students' knowledge of the five

target words. Most of the time, the students were asked to complete aword chart for homework, during which they were asked to do one ormore of the following: provide the part of speech and meanings of thewords, provide inflectional forms of the words, identify prefixes andsuffixes, and list any related words. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and

Thursday,the teacher selected from an

arrayof

math, science,and

social studies related activities. For math, there was typically a problemof the day, in which at least two of the five target words were

incorporated into a word problem that resembled the type of word

problem students would likely encounter on state standardized tests.The inclusion of the math problem of the day was not on teachingmath skills per se. Rather, the focus was on exposing students to the

weekly target vocabulary in a math context to the extent possible. Thescience activities tended to consist of cloze paragraphs, in which manyof the five target words needed to be filled in to complete the sentences

dealing with a science topic. Finally, the most typical social studiesactivity was the weekly whole class debate. During the debate, students

were asked to take a stance on the controversial topic they had been




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learning about and to present their view to the group holding an

opposing view. When time permitted, students were allowed to rebutthe

opposing group's argument. Finally,on

Friday,students were

required to take a stand by writing a short persuasive essay about thecontroversial topic they had been discussing. Students were encouragedto use the five weekly target WG words, as well as previously learned

target words, in their essays. However, this was not required. On

average, students tended to finish writing their persuasive essay inabout 10 min. Importantly, the teacher did not provide any writinginstruction related to the WG intervention or give students feedback onthe weekly essays they produced.

The treatment group teacher completed a weekly feedback form to

report on the implementation of the intervention (see Appendix B). Shecompleted the form each of the 20 weeks. Her responses indicated thatshe had implemented WG every week. Additionally, 38 observations inthe treatment classroom and 12 in the contrast classroom were

conducted, to ensure that the treatment teacher was implementingWG as expected and that the contrast teacher was continuing with the

regular instruction and not implementing WG or some other instructional program targeting academic language specifically. The directclassroom observations revealed that, on average, the teacher imple

mented WG for about 20 min aday.

In accordance with the teacher

reports on the weekly form, the direct observations confirmed that theintervention was being implemented faithfully, even during the periodsof district-mandated testing.

Measures

Students in the treatment and contrast groups were administered

pretests in the fall of 2006 and posttests in the spring of 2007. Pretestmeasures included researcher-developed and standardized (for match

ing purposes) group and individually administered tests of languagecomprehension, word reading, reading comprehension, and writing.Posttest measures included the researcher-developed tests only. Allmeasures were administered during the school day.

Researcher-Developed Measures

Two measures of students' knowledge of the target vocabulary wordswere administered. The multiple-choice (MC) test and the vocabularyself-check (VSC) were both group administered. The MC test was

comprised of a randomly selected sample of 30 of the 100 target WGwords. Following standard format, students silently read a phrase orshort sentence in which the target word was printed in bold type, and

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they selected the appropriate meaning of the target word from a list offour choices. For example, students read the following sentence: The

building collapsed after the earthquake. After reading the sentence, studentswere required to choose the word or group of words that mean the sameor almost the same as the underlined word. In this example, theirchoices were: (a) exploded, (b) fell apart, (c) stayed standing, and (d)collated. Based on work by Dale (1965) and Wesche and Paribakht(1996), the VSC assesses students' familiarity with the same 30 words3

and 10 pseudowords. Students rated their own knowledge of the words

using the following scale: (1) I do not know it, (2) I have heard it, (3) Iknow something about it, and (4) I know it well and can use it.

Responses on the VSC were averaged for analysis, such that an overall

average score close to four indicated students reported knowing thewords well enough to use them, whereas an average score close to oneindicated that students reported knowing few word meanings. On thefall pretest, only 4 of the 30WG words were reportedly known by 80% or

more of all students, indicating' that the WG target words merited

explicit instruction. Further, the 10 pseudowords were reported asunknown by 49 (88%) of all students, suggesting that students were

generally able to assess their own word knowledge. Both the MC andVSC pretests significantly correlated with the standardized literacymeasures (see Appendix C).

Additionally, students in the treatment group wrote persuasive essayson a weekly basis. All essays were transcribed by three trained researchassistants and scored using a researcher-developed rubric that consistedof three sections: ideas, overall cohesion/structure, and academic

language (see Appendix D). Interrater agreement was .81 (Kendall'sCoefficient of Concordance), and raters were blind to the time (i.e.,week) in which the essays were produced. Analyses of the essaysprovided information on WG target word use, as well as on overall

writing quality.

Standardized Measures

Vocabulary, listening comprehension, and reading comprehensionwere assessed using the Group Reading Assessment and DiagnosticEvaluation (GRADE) (Williams, 2002). The GRADE is an untimedgroup-administered reading test that includes vocabulary, listeningcomprehension, sentence comprehension, and passage comprehensionsub tests. The Reading Vocabulary sub test measures students' vocabularyknowledge without the benefit of contextual clues. Students silently read

3There was oneexception

to this set of 30randomly

selected WGtarget

words for the

pretest: reluctant appears on the self-check and not on the multiple-choice test; culture

appears on the multiple-choice test and not on the self-check. This was corrected for the

posttest.




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a phrase or short sentence in which one of the words is printed in bold

type, and they select the appropriate meaning of the word from a list offour or five choices. The

Listening Comprehensionsubtest measures

students' linguistic comprehension without printed cues. Students listento a sentence or pair of sentences that are read aloud by the testadministrator, and they then select one of four pictures that best

matches what was read aloud to them. Finally, the Sentence and PassageComprehension subtests yield the comprehension composite.Sentence Comprehension measures students' comprehension of asentence as a whole thought or unit. Students silently read shortsentences in which one of the words ismissing (as indicated by a blank),and they then select the appropriate word from a list of choices. PassageComprehension measures students' comprehension skills with anextended passage. After silently reading a passage with one or more

paragraphs, students answer multiple-choice questions about the

passage. Level 5, Form A was used at pretest. Internal consistencyreliability was reported as .95.

Word reading accuracy and fluency were assessed individually usingthe Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE; Torgesen, Wagner, &

Rashotte, 1999). The Sight Word Efficiency subtest assesses the numberof real words a student can read in 45 s; the Phonemic Decoding

Efficiencysubtest assesses the number of

pronounceablenonsense

words a student can read in 45 s. The TOWRE subtests were combinedfor analysis (r

= .8219, p= < 0.0001). Internal consistency reliability was

reported as .95 and scorer reliability as .99.

RESULTSResearch question 1: Following the 20-week vocabulary intervention,

do the treatment or contrast group students gain knowledge of a greaternumber of targeted words?

Analytic Approach

First, the treatment and contrast groups were compared on allmeasures (researcher-developed and standardized) prior to the

beginning of the intervention. Next, posttest performance on the

researcher-developed measures was examined by conducting Bonferoni?-tests on the gain scores (change from pretest to posttest). Finally,standardized effect sizes (Cohen's d; Cohen, 1988) were computedusing differences inmean performance divided by the pooled standarddeviation.

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Pretest Performance

Exceptfor the

TOWRE,on which the treatment

groupscored

slightlyhigher, the treatment and contrast groups were very well matched at

pretest (see Table 2).

Posttest Performance

Table 3 presents the results of posttest performance, including means,standard deviations, gain scores, significance tests, and effect sizes on the

researcher-developed measures.

Word Generation Multiple-Choice TestThe treatment group students gained knowledge of approximately six

target WG vocabulary words, whereas the contrast group students gainedknowledge of about one. Only 30 of the 100 taught WG vocabulary wordswere randomly included in the MC test, and thus a gain of 6 target wordson the MC test translates into gained knowledge of approximately 20

target words and a gain ratio of 1 into approximately 3. Put differently,students in the treatment group went from knowing about 65% of the

target words at pretest to knowing about 83% at posttest, whereasstudents in the contrast

groupwent from

knowing65% of the

targetwords at pretest to knowing about 68% at posttest. The difference in the

gain was statistically significant, with an impressive effect size (d=

1.24).

TABLE 2Fall Pretest Scores on All Literacy Measures for the Treatment and Contrast Group Students (N= 49)

Treatment Contrast Bonferroni Effect(n= 24) (w 25) Rvalues size

WG multiple-choice testa Mean 19.71 19.96 1.00.06SD 4.16 4.63

WG real words self-checkb Mean 2.97 2.97 1.00.00SD 0.37 0.55

WG nonsense words self- Mean 1.28 1.44 0.46.36checkc SD 0.32 0.55GRADE vocabulary compre- Mean 15.08 13.84 1.00.28hensiond SD 4.35 4.63GRADE listening compre- Mean 13.50 13.36 1.00.07hensione SD 1.77 2.18TOWRE word reading flu- Mean 56.06 48.50 0.04 .86

ency composite SD 8.23 9.39GRADE comprehension Mean 28.67 26.32 1.00 .25

compositef SD 8.83 9.91

Note. SD = standard deviation. aMaximum = 30. bMaximum = 4. 'Maximum = 4 (a highaverage is not desirable, as it indicates that students reported knowing nonsense words well

enough to use them). dMaximum= 35. ' Maximum = 17.

fMaximum = 39.




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TABLE 3Spring Posttest and Gain Scores on Researcher-Developed Measures for the Treatment andContrast Group Students (n

=49)

Spring scores Gain scores

WG multiplechoice testa

WG real wordsself-Checkb

WG nonsense

Treatment Contrast Treatment Contrast Bonferroni Effect

(n= 24) {n= 25) (n= 24) (n= 25) Rvalues sizeMean

SDMean

SDMean

words self-checkc SD

25.293.143.640.291.290.30

21.124.223.410.471.770.60

5.583.720.670.350.0030.27

1.163.400.440.440.330.55

0.0005 1.24

0.1200 0.58

0.0400 0.80

Note. SD = standard deviation. aMaximum = 30. bMaximum = 4 (a higher average is desirable,

as it indicates that students reported knowing real words well enough to use them). cMaximum= 4 (a higher average is not desirable, as it indicates that students reported knowing nonsensewords well enough to use them).

Word Generation Vocabulary Self-Check

Although there were no significant differences between the two

groups on the VSC for real words, the direction of the effects suggestthat, on average, students in the treatment group reported knowing

more of the target words from pretest to posttest. On the VSC fornonsense words, the treatment group reported knowing a significantlylower number of known nonsense words than the contrast group. Infact, except for two nonsense words reported as known well enough to

use by one student in the treatment group, none of the students in thetreatment group reported knowing the nonsense words well enough to

use them. However, each of the 10 nonsense words were consistentlyreported as known well enough to use them by students in the contrast

group.Research question 2: In the treatment group's weekly student essays,

what is the extent of target vocabulary word use over the course of the20-week intervention?

Specifically,do students use the

target vocabularywords cumulatively or is their use confined to words taught in thecurrent week? Further, is there any change in the quality (e.g.,coherence and academic language use) of the essays over time?

Analytic Approach

All available essays were transcribed in the codes for the human

analysis of transcripts (CHAT) format of the child language data

exchangesystem

(MacWhinney,1995;

MacWhinney& Snow, 1985,

1990), and the computerized language analysis (CLAN) program(MacWhinney, 2000) was used for analysis. The focus of analysis was

684 TESOLQUARTERLY



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on whether students used the newly taught WG vocabulary words in their

writing. Thus all essays were corrected prior to being scored with the

researcher-developed writing rubric (see Appendix E foran

example).Frequency counts of the weekly target words, as well as of past targetwords, were run in CLAN. To determine whether students' overall

writing quality improved across the 20-week intervention, individual

growth modeling (IGM) using the multilevel model for change (Singer& Willett, 2003) was used. The analyses were conducted in a personperiod dataset that contained the longitudinal data on all sampledchildren, using SAS PROC MIXED4 with full maximum likelihoodestimation. The use of IGM allows for robust estimates of growth, even

with occasional missing or incomplete data points for individual

children. As suggested by Singer and Willett (2003), the likelihoodratio test was used as the primary criterion for evaluating model fit, andthe Akaike and Bayesian information criteria were also provided asadditional indicators of goodness of fit.

Target Word Use

Over the course of the 20-week intervention, students used an averageof two of the five weekly target words in their weekly essay (SD

=1.21).

Further, on average, 10 previously taught words were used in the weeklyessays from week 2 to week 20; the use of previously taught words was

greater toward the end of the intervention: Students used an average of8 past target words during weeks 2-10 compared with an average of 12

during weeks 11-20. At the individual level, there was substantial

variability in the total number of past target words individual studentsused across the 20-week intervention; 21% of the students used morethan 12 past target words in their essays, 42% used 6-11 past target

words, and 33% used 5 or fewer past target words.

Writing Quality

The final area of investigation involved examining whetherstudents' overall writing quality improved over the course of the 20

week intervention. Individual Growth Modeling results indicate thatthe average writing quality score at the beginning of the intervention

was 4.53 (SD= 1.05; scale of 0-9 points), with an average growth of

.04 points per week (see Table 4). This corresponds to an averagewriting quality growth of .71 points (nearly 1 full point) over the

4SAS PROC MIXED is a generalization of the general linear model (GLM) ; it fits the widerclass of mixed linear models, incorporating random effects, allowing for the specificationof covariance structures, and providing a better mechanism for handling missing values.




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TABLE 4Individual Growth Modeling Results for Students' Writing Quality Growth (N

= 24)

Model 1 Model 2Fixed effectsInitial status

Weeks 1-20Weeks 1-10Weeks 11-20

4.5308***0.0353***

4.5931***

0.02910.0406*

Variance componentsLevel 1Level 2

Wi thin-personBetween-person

0.6988***1.0636***

0.6988***1.0633***

Deviance (?2 LL)AICBIC

1,393.40

1,401.401,406.20

1,393.30

1,403.301,409.20

Note. Model 1 overall average writing quality growth across the 20-week vocabulary intervention;Model 2 = writing quality growth across weeks 1-10 versus weeks 10-20. AIC

= Akaikeinformation criterion; BIC = Bayesian information criterion; LL

= lower limit. < 0.001.

course of the 20-week intervention, translating into a substantial effectsize (d

=.67).

The growth trajectories were broken up into separate linear

components to investigate the possibility of differential growth between

the early and the later period of the intervention (Raudenbush & Bryk,2002). Writing quality was significant only during the last 10weeks of theintervention (see Figure 1): 0.03 points per week during the first10 weeks (or .29 points over the course of the first 10 weeks) did notreach significance, but .04 points per week during the last 10 weeks ofthe intervention was statistically significant. These differential results,though subtle, are substantively important, as they suggest that theeffects on students' writing would have gone undetected had the

vocabulary intervention lasted only 10 weeks.

A Note on Essay Length

A long-standing finding in the writing field is that essay lengthcorrelates with overall writing quality (e.g., Hiller, Marcotte, & Martin,1969). This may raise the question of whether students in the presentstudy were merely writing more and thus producing more high-qualityessays over time. As expected, essay length was correlated withstudents' overall writing quality (r

= .45, p < .05). However, essaylength remained stable throughout the duration of the intervention

(mean=

90, SD=

18), indicating that students were not writing moreover the course of the intervention. Indeed, controlling for essaylength, the correlation between target word use and writing quality

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5.5

Average growth= .71points over the 20-weeks (


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knowledge. This word awareness is critical for comprehension, withresearch underscoring the need to encourage students to ask when theydo not know the

meaningsof words

(Biemiller, 2003;Graves &

Watts,2002; Nagy & Scott, 2000). Taking these findings together, and given the

stability of low vocabulary among LM students at all grade levels, theeffects of explicit vocabulary instruction (even if for just a few minutes a

day) should not be underestimated.In addition to examining effects on vocabulary, this study was

designed to explore the extent to which newly taught words would

appear in students' writing. The results of the current study begin toshed light on this relationship amongst LM learners in the UnitedStates, with analyses revealing that some transfer occurs relatively

quickly. In fact, use of newly taught words in writing suggests that thewords are at least partially in students' lexicons. Further, it was

encouraging to find that students used target words from previousweeks in their essays. Not surprisingly, a greater number of past targetwords were used during the final 10 weeks of the intervention. A keyimplication?highlighting the fact that students need opportunities to

use newly taught words?is that it will take time for students tointernalize the newly taught words before they are willing or able to

productively use them in writing. For example, research shows that ittakes 5-16 exposures to new words for receptive word knowledge(Nation, 1990). Because productive word knowledge ismore difficult,

presumably, it should take even longer for students to use words intheir writing. The key takeaway point is thus that finding multiple waysof exposing students to the newly taught words is critical.

The final area of investigation involved examining the effects of theintervention on writing quality. The dearth of research exploring this

relationship amongst school-age LM learners effectively limits our

understanding of whether increased vocabulary knowledge results inbetter writing quality, whether opportunities to write results in better

vocabulary,or whether there is a

reciprocal relationship. Thoughthe

current study does not provide any definitive answers about the natureof these relationships, results of this study do suggest that thecombination of vocabulary instruction (including other aspects of theintervention, such as the weekly debates that fostered increased

language use) and having students write on a weekly basis likelycontributes to students' overall writing quality gains. Importantly,during the course of the 20-week intervention, feedback on the essayswas not provided by the teacher, and the teacher did not provideinstruction focused on persuasive or argumentative writing. Further,

the writing quality gains cannot be attributed to increased essay length,as students did not produce longer essays over time. A possibility to befurther explored, then, is that students' writing quality improved

688 TESOLQUARTERLY



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because they were practicing and because they had accumulated a storeof new words that could make their writing more precise and effective.

Importantly, improvements in students' writing quality were smallerduring the first 10 weeks of the intervention, underscoring the need forsustained vocabulary instruction combined with ample opportunitiesfor students to write. A clear implication from this study is thus thatsustained vocabulary instruction is needed to detect improvements instudents' writing.

Implications for Research

In thispilot study, only researcher-developed

measures wereadministered at posttest, because effects on standardized measures

were not expected. As Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) noted more than twodecades ago, a relatively high number of explicitly taught words mustbe present in standardized measures for them to be sensitive to theeffects of vocabulary instruction; only 2 of the 30 words on the GRADEstandardized vocabulary test were target WG words. Regarding readingcomprehension outcomes, WG exposed students to a wide range of

topics, from global warming to the death penalty, and therefore helpedbroaden students' general background knowledge. Background knowl

edge is a strong predictor of students' reading comprehensionperformance (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Anderson & Pearson,1984; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998), and it is likely that the value of theintervention for reading comprehension outcomes will be evident overtime, as students encounter passages about (or related to) the topicsthey have been exposed to through WG. Thus the benefits of WG onstudents' reading comprehension can be expected to be cumulative,rather than immediately following the 20-week intervention. The

pervasive challenge, however, is that interventions are commonlyimplemented for short periods of time with the expectation of large,immediate gains. Accordingly, many interventions with high potentialare erroneously deemed ineffective and consequently terminated onthe basis of weak results. An implication of this research is that

vocabulary instruction can be effective for LM learners and shouldbecome part of students' every day curriculum, sustained throughoutthe school years. Refining the elements of effective vocabularyinstruction to meet the differentiated needs of students will be acritical next step, but it should be clear that lasting gains can only be

expected with well-designed and, equally importantly, sustained

vocabulary instruction. Further, the effects of vocabulary instructionshould be evaluated more robustly (e.g., examining effects on writing).For the growing population of LM learners who enter school with low




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levels of vocabulary, vocabulary instruction must be a part of theirschool day.

Limitations and Future Research

First, the demonstrated literacy gains found in this quasiexperimentalpilot study cannot be causally related to the intervention; a randomized

study is a necessary next step. Second, as was the case in this study,multiple-choice tests are widely used to index students' vocabularyknowledge, but future work should incorporate measures of vocabularythat attend to depth of word knowledge. Third, the relatively small samplesize limited the feasibility of investigating whether, as some research hasfound, the effect of vocabulary instruction varies by ability levels, withlower performing students exhibiting greater benefits (e.g., Nelson &

Stage, 2007). On a related note, a monolingual-English-speakingcomparison group would help disentangle whether vocabulary instructionhas differential effects for LM versus non-LM students, and the extent ofthose differential effects on various literacy measures. Finally, longitudinalstudies designed to track students' literacy progress, including writing,over time are needed to robustly evaluate the components of effective

vocabulary instruction for different types of learners. In the present study,

an open question iswhether the demonstrated gains will be lasting onesand whether gains on comprehension can be expected. Notwithstandingthese limitations, students in the study are representative of a growingpopulation of learners in the United States?children from Spanishspeaking homes enrolled in urban, generally low-income, schools?andthe present pilot vocabulary intervention study thus extends previous

work and strengthens our understanding of the effects of vocabularyinstruction on upper-elementary LM students.

CONCLUSION

Because vocabulary knowledge is cumulative, greater instructionalattention to vocabulary is needed starting in and continuing well beyondthe primary grades. This point must be underscored for LM learners, whotend to have fewer English language models and thus more limitedvocabularies compared to native English speakers. Further, aside from

increasing students' vocabulary knowledge, it appears that explicit vocabularyinstruction has the potential for increasing students' overall writing quality,even without explicit writing instruction. This pilot study suggests that

sustained vocabulary instruction, not short-term interventions, are neededand that purposeful activities that provide students with authentic contexts tolearn and productively use newly taught words are integral components of

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effective vocabulary instruction. Until vocabulary becomes an integral, dailyaspect of the K-12 curriculum, all students, and in particular LM learners,

may continue to learn to read (i.e., decode), but the development ofvocabulary and writing skills is simultaneously essential for academic success.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Catherine E. Snow, Nonie K. Lesaux, and Terrence Tivnan fortheir helpful comments on this manuscript. This study was made possible by the

Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), funded by the CarnegieCorporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The SpencerFoundation.

THE AUTHOR

Jeannette Mancilla-Mart?nez is an Assistant Professor in Literacy, Language, andCulture at the Universityof Illinois at Chicago. Her primary research interest is the

language and literacy development of at-risk populations, including students who

struggle with reading, language minority learners, and immigrant students.

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Appendix A

100Word Generation Target Vocabulary Words

Week 11.Analyze2. Factor3. Function4. Interpret5. Structure

Week 521. Considerable22. Contribute23. Demonstrate24. Sufficient25. Valid

Week 26. Context7. Indicate8. Variable9. Create10. Benefit

Week 626. Rely27. React28. Alternative29.

Justify30. Proportion

Week 311. Complexity12. Culture13. Element14. Resourceful15. Tradition

Week 731. Access32. Civil33. Despite34.

Integrate35. Promote

Week 416. Design17. Features18. Impact19. Potential20. Transfer

Week 836. Attribute37. Cycle38. Hypothesis39.

Project40. Statistics

WORD MEANINGS MATTER 695



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Week 941. Compounds42. Conflict

43. Fundamental44. Substitution45. Alter

Week 1361. Advocate62. Contrary63. Reverse64. Release65. Prohibited

Week 1781. Decades82. Violation83. Temporary84. Unified85. Incompatible

Week 1046. Modified47. Monitor

48. Adjustment49. Transition50. Exposure

Week 1466. Phenomenon67. Priority68. Transmission69. Intervention70. Suspended

Week 1886. Bulk87. Accommodate88. Unethical89. Route90. Confine

Week 1151. Acknowledge52. Incidence

53. Incorporate54. Initiatives55. Transport

Week 1571. Abandon72. Biased73. Contemporary74. Dramatic75. Exploit

Week 1991. Collapse92. Conceive93. Incline94. Intrinsically95. Nonetheless

Week 1256. Diversity57. Enhance

58. Migration59. Presumed60. Reveal

Week 1676. Accumulation77. Contradict78. Exhibit79. Inevitable80. Manipulate

Week 2096. Convince97 Enormous98. Integrity99. Persistent100. Reluctant

Appendix

Word GenerationWeekly

Teacher Form

Grade_Subject Area_Day of Week_Please fill in this anonymous questionnaire for WEEK_of Word Generation (WG).

1.What activity did you do inWG this week?

2.Word Generation went well this week.Yes_No_Because

of(check all that

apply):_Student enthusiasm

_Design of Materials

_Support from teachers/coach/administrator_My own preparation_Other_

3. I had enough time for WG this week.Yes_No_

Because of (check all that apply):_Students' actions/interest level

_Support (or lack of support) from others

_My own preparation_Nature of preexisting curriculum

_Nature of WG ma

Documents

Word Meanings Matter Cultivating English Vocabulary Knowledge in Fifth-Grade Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners