Dianna Townsend

Words as Tools: Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition

There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students’ success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this review, we discuss the role of academic vocabulary within academic language, examine recent research on instruction in academic vocabulary, considering both general academic words and discipline-specific words, and offer our perspective on the current state of this research and recommendations on how to continue inquiry and to improve practice in this area. We use the metaphor of ‘words as tools’ to reflect our understanding that instruction in academic vocabulary must approach words as means for communicating and thinking about disciplinary content, and must therefore provide students with opportunities to use the instructed words for these purposes as they are learning them.

English or Spanish? Assessing Latino/a Children in the Home and School Languages for Risk of Reading Disabilities.

This study examined the sensitivity of measures frequently used to identify children at risk for reading disabilities for use with Spanish-speaking English learners. In addition, this study sought to determine whether English learners should be assessed in English, the language of instruction, or in Spanish, their home language. The performance of 49 native English speakers and 81 English learners in the first grade was assessed by standardized measures of cognitive and linguistic processes that underlie reading disabilities. All students were assessed in English, and Latino/a children were given a parallel battery of tests in Spanish. The students were assessed in both the fall and spring sessions of their first-grade year, and the predictive utility of fall scores for end-of-year reading performance was examined. Measures of word recognition, oral reading fluency, and phonological processing in English successfully discriminated between good readers and students at risk for reading difficulties, but not between native English speakers and English learners. The English learners showed significantly greater performance and growth in English than they showed on parallel Spanish measures. In general, the English measures had more predictive utility for reading performance in the spring session for students in both language groups. Furthermore, fall reading skill was a better predictor than language group for reading performance in the spring session. The results from this study suggest that when English learners receive instruction only in English, presenting parallel tasks in their home language adds little value in the process of identifying students who may be at risk for reading difficulties in English.

The Implications of Adolescents' Academic Word Knowledge for Achievement and Instruction.

The purpose of the current study was to determine relationships between orthographic and morphological awareness of academic words and achievement across content areas. Participants (n = 256), diverse seventh and eighth graders, took three word knowledge measures; two standardized achievement measures were used as outcomes. Orthographic awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R2 ranging from 0.02 to 0.08. Morphological awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R2 ranging from 0.06 to 0.16.

Engaging in vocabulary learning in science: the promise of multimodal instruction

ABSTRACT To a science ‘outsider’, science language often appears unnecessarily technical and dense. However, scientific language is typically used with the goal of being concise and precise, which allows those who regularly participate in scientific discourse communities to learn from each other and build upon existing scientific knowledge. One essential component of science language is the academic vocabulary that characterises it. This mixed-methods study investigates middle school students’ (N = 59) growth in academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher’s instructional practices that supported academic language development. Students made significant gains in their production of general academic words, t(57) = 2.32, p = .024 and of discipline-specific science words, t(57) = 3.01, p = .004 in science writing. Results from the qualitative strand of this inquiry contextualised the students’ learning of academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher’s instructional practices and intentions as well as the students’ perceptions of their learning environment. These qualitative findings reveal that both the students and their teacher articulated that the teacher’s intentional use of resources supported students’ academic vocabulary growth. Implications for research and instruction with science language are shared.