William E. Nagy

Learning Words from Context.

SCHOOL CHILDREN appear to increase their vocabularies by thousands of words per year. Many have hypothesized that a large proportion of this growth occurs through incidental learning from written context. However, experimental research has until now failed to provide unequivocal support of this hypothesis. The present study attempted to determine whether students do acquire measurable knowledge about unfamiliar words while reading natural text. Fifty-seven eighth-grade students of average and above average reading ability read either an expository or a narrative text about 1,000 words in length. After reading, subjects completed two vocabulary assessment tasks on 15 target words from each passage (thus serving as controls for the passage not read), an individual interview and a multiple-choice test, both designed to tap partial knowledge of word meanings. Results of within-subject, hierarchical regression analyses showed small but statistically reliable gains in word knowledge from context. Tentative extrapolations from the results and current estimates of the volume of childrens reading lead us to believe that incidental learning from context accounts for a substantial proportion of the vocabulary growth that occurs during the school years.

How Many Words are There in Printed School English

THE PURPOSE of this research was to determine the number of distinct words in printed school English. A detailed analysis was done of a 7,260 word sample from the Carroll, Davies and Richman, Word Frequency Book. Projecting from this sample to the total vocabulary of school English, our best estimate is that there are about 88,500 distinct words. Furthermore, for every word a child learns, we estimate that there are an average of one to three additional related words that should also be understandable to the child, the exact number depending on how well the child is able to utilize context and morphology to induce meanings. Based on our analysis, a reconcilation of estimates of childrens vocabulary size was undertaken, which showed that the extreme divergence in estimates is due mainly to the definition of word adopted. Our findings indicate that even the most ruthlessly systematic direct vocabulary instruction could neither account for a significant proportion of all the words children actually learn, nor cover more than a modest proportion of the words they will encounter in school reading materials.

Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness.

A study investigated the factors influencing the English word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. Beginning readers were administered tests of letter naming, Spanish phonological awareness, Spanish and English word recognition, and Spanish and English oral proficiency. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that the readers performance on EngIish word and pseudoword recognition tests was predicted by the levels of both Spanish phonological awareness and Spanish word recognition, thus indicating cross-language transfer. In contrast, neither English nor Spanish oral proficiency affected word-identification performance. Results suggest a specific way in which first-language learning and experience can aid children in the beginning stages of reading

Learning Word Meanings From Context During Normal Reading

This study investigated incidental learning of word meanings from context during normal reading. A total of 352 students in third, fifth, and seventh grades read either expository or narrative passages selected from grade-level textbooks, and after six days were tested on their knowledge of difficult words from the passages. Small but reliable gains in knowledge of words from the passages read were found at all grade and ability levels. Effects of word and text properties on learning from context were examined in some detail. Word properties investigated included length, morphological complexity, and part of speech. Text properties included the strength of contextual support for each word, readability as measured by standard formulas, and several measures of density of difficult words. Among the word properties, only conceptual difficulty was significantly related to learning from context. Among the text properties, learning from context was most strongly influenced by the proportion of unfamiliar words that were conceptually difficult and by the average length of unfamiliar words.

Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students

Using structural equation modeling the authors evaluated the contribution of morphological awareness, phonological memory, and phonological decoding to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, spelling, and accuracy and rate of decoding morphologically complex words for 182 4th- and 5th-grade students, 218 6th- and 7th-grade students, and 207 8th- and 9th-grade students in a suburban school district. Morphological awareness made a significant unique contribution to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and spelling for all 3 groups, to all measures of decoding rate for the 8th/9th-grade students, and to some measures of decoding accuracy for the 4th/5th-grade and 8th/9th-grade students. Morphological awareness also made a significant contribution to reading comprehension above and beyond that of reading vocabulary for all 3 groups.

The acquisition of English derivational morphology

Abstract Three paper-and-pencil measures were administered to students in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades to assess different aspects of their knowledge of English derivational suffixes. Children appear to develop a rudimentary knowledge of derivational morphology—the ability to recognize a familiar stem in a derivative—before fourth grade. Knowledge of the syntactic properties of derivational suffixes appears to increase through eighth grade. Knowledge of the distributional properties of suffixes also increases, with sixth-grade students showing an increase in overgeneralization errors parallel to that found for inflectional suffixes in much younger children.

Relationship of Morphology and Other Language Skills to Literacy Skills in At-Risk Second-Grade Readers and At-Risk Fourth-Grade Writers.

Structural equation modeling evaluated the contribution of phonological, orthographic, morphological, and oral vocabulary factors to word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension outcomes in 98 2nd graders at risk for passing state standards in reading and to those same outcomes plus composing in 97 4th graders at risk for passing state standards in writing. For 2nd-grade children, morphology contributed uniquely to reading comprehension, and oral vocabulary and orthography contributed uniquely to word reading. For 4th-grade children, morphology and oral vocabulary did not contribute uniquely to any outcomes, but morphology and word reading were correlated, and orthography and phonology contributed uniquely to decoding words with affixes. Fourth graders are still learning to coordinate orthographic, phonological, and morphological cues in written words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

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.

Instructional treatment associated with changes in brain activation in children with dyslexia

Objective: To assess the effects of reading instruction on fMRI brain activation in children with dyslexia. Background: fMRI differences between dyslexic and control subjects have most often involved phonologic processing tasks. However, a growing body of research documents the role of morphologic awareness in reading and reading disability. Methods: The authors developed tasks to probe brain activation during phoneme mapping (assigning sounds to letters) and morpheme mapping (understanding the relationship of suffixed words to their roots). Ten children with dyslexia and 11 normal readers performed these tasks during fMRI scanning. Children with dyslexia then completed 28 hours of comprehensive reading instruction. Scans were repeated on both dyslexic and control subjects using the same tasks. Results: Before treatment, children with dyslexia showed less activation than controls in left middle and inferior frontal gyri, right superior frontal gyrus, left middle and inferior temporal gyri, and bilateral superior parietal regions for phoneme mapping. Activation was significantly reduced for children with dyslexia on the initial morpheme mapping scan in left middle frontal gyrus, right superior parietal, and fusiform/occipital region. Treatment was associated with improved reading scores and increased brain activation during both tasks, such that quantity and pattern of activation for children with dyslexia after treatment closely resembled that of controls. The elimination of group differences at follow-up was due to both increased activation for the children with dyslexia and decreased activation for controls, presumably reflecting practice effects. Conclusion: These results suggest that behavioral gains from comprehensive reading instruction are associated with changes in brain function during performance of language tasks. Furthermore, these brain changes are specific to different language processes and closely resemble patterns of neural processing characteristic of normal readers.

Growth in Phonological, Orthographic, and Morphological Awareness in Grades 1 to 6.

Growth curve analyses showed that (a) word-level phonological and orthographic awareness show greatest growth during the primary grades but some additional growth thereafter, and (b) three kinds of morphological awareness show greatest growth in the first three or four grades but one—derivation—continues to show substantial growth after fourth grade. Implications of the findings for the role of three kinds of linguistic awareness—phonological, orthographic, and morphological—in learning to read and spell words are discussed. A case is made that phonological awareness, while necessary, is not sufficient for learning to read English—all three kinds of linguistic awareness that are growing during the primary grades need to be coordinated and applied to literacy learning. This finding and a review of the research on linguistic awareness support the conclusion that the recommendations of the National Reading Panel need to be amended so that the research evidence supporting the importance of both orthographic and morphological awareness, and not only phonological awareness, is acknowledged. Moreover, evidence-based strategies for teaching each of these kinds of linguistic awareness and their interrelationships need to be disseminated to educational practitioners.