Long-term, Multifaceted Vocabulary Produces Eye-Popping Outcomes

Hello Friends!

Time to turn to my greatest passion in terms of literacy research: Vocabulary instruction. Decades of research has demonstrated that vocabulary knowledge is critical to students’ long-term academic achievement, particularly with regard to reading comprehension (August, Carlo, Dressler & Snow, 2005; Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007; Davis, 1968; Lesaux, Crosson, Kieffer, & Pierce, 2010; Senechal, etc… 2006). Over the past decade, I have conducted three long-term vocabulary instruction research studies, collaborating with teachers in each grade 2-5 to develop, implement, refine, and test multifaceted vocabulary instruction that is feasible for teachers and produces "more than expected growth" in general vocabulary knowledge for students at all levels/language backgrounds. My teacher colleagues and I have published a number of practical descriptions of our instruction in The Reading Teacher over the last few years, and just recently I have finished research articles on the 4th-5th grade study and the 3rd grade study that are winding their way through the review and publication process. I thought that I would share the most salient outcomes from the Vocabulary and Language Enhancement (VALE) studies here.

First, here is a little overview of VALE instruction (at 3rd Grade - the framework stays the same across the grades, but emphases shift a bit...). VALE was designed to address what I consider to be the "3 Domains" of vocabulary instruction: Quality (teaching high-value words intensively), Quantity (providing efficient instruction in larger sets of related content/curriculum words), and Strategy (teaching word-learning strategies). Here is a look at how this played out in 3rd Grade:

General Component	Focus of Instruction	Schedule of Instruction
Word-learning-strategy instruction	Explicit instruction in common affixes, the word-part strategy, and use of context cues to infer word meanings	15 weeks x 2 days a week, 20-30 minutes a day.
Word flooding	Efficient introduction and review of large sets of related content words or words taken from literary read aloud texts.	Approximately 10 content units and 10 read aloud texts during the year. Brief routines (5-15 minutes) for introducing and reviewing vocabulary interspersed on multiple days per week.
Target word instruction	Robust instruction on 12 target words per week	3-4 days a week, 10-20 minutes of activities a day.
Teaching vocabulary for application	Sentence imitating to support application of connectives in writing	20-25 weeks x 2-4 days a week, 10-15 minutes a day.
	Character trait vocabulary to support application of terms in analytic discussion and writing	15-20 weeks. Routines for introducing vocabulary, text analysis, and essay writing interspersed on multiple days per week.

So, how did the kids do? Vocabulary researchers typically give researcher-designed tests of specifically-taught words/strategies and a standardized test of general vocabulary. Commonly, these studies show that students outperform control students on specifically-taught words but not on normed tests of general vocabulary. Our goal in VALE was to teach vocabulary in such a way that the students would, indeed, show accelerated growth in general vocabulary. I use the Gates-MacGinitie test of general vocabulary as a standardized measure and "Normal Curve Equivalents" as the unit to compare our classes vs. the norming sample. In general, the expectation with NCE's is a "0 effect size," meaning that you would expect a class that starts the year at the 50 NCE to end the year at the 50 NCE. Here are the effect sizes for the 3 years of the 3rd Grade study: 1.45, 0.93, 1.17. These effect sizes demonstrate that the VALE students, in each of year of the project, made greatly accelerated growth in general vocabulary knowledge in comparison to the norming population. A clear sense of the practical importance of the VALE students’ growth resulted from calculating their grade-equivalent scores. This conversion revealed that the VALE students made 3.6, 2.3, and 3.2 years of growth in general vocabulary knowledge, respectively, in the course of one academic year! Importantly, there was no signifcant difference in growth between the lower and higher scoring students from fall testing, meaning that all students, on average, made comparable growth regardless of beginning scores.

The Grade 2 study in dual immersion school involved 6 classes, each taught by a team of two teachers, one teaching in Eng and one teaching in Spanish. The vocab instruction occurred in both English and Spanish, although it looked somewhat different in each language. In the second year of the project, the effect size for growth in English vocabulary knowledge across the 6 classes was 0.42. This effect size is on the high end of “small” (range for small = 0.2 -0.5). These outcomes were achieved in a DI setting in which the students spent only ½ as much time in English instruction as the norming group. In simple terms, these students showed greater gains in general Eng vocab than the norming group despite spending ½ as much time in English instruction! There was no significant difference in growth rate between English Learners and native English Speakers - both groups gained equally.

Overall, I am thrilled with these outcomes! As I mentioned at the beginning, it is common for vocab instruction research to produce gains in specifically taught items but not in general vocabulary knowledge. And, while the former is not unimportant, it is the later that really holds the potential - particularly if it were to occur over several years - to impact students' more general academic performance.

Thanks for taking the time to read about the VALE research. Be on the lookout for more info on these projects here on the CLC, including descriptions of the instructional practices. What kind of questions, thoughts, or connections to your setting does the work raise for you?