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

Word Meanings Matter: Cultivating English Vocabulary Knowledge in FifthGrade Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners JEANNETTE MANCILLA-MARTINEZ University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, Illinois, United States This pilot study investigated the effects of a 20-week quasiexperimental vocabulary intervention aimed at improving Spanish-speaking language minority students’ English vocabulary and writing outcomes Participants were two matched 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 the treatment group students were generally better at determining their own word knowledge Further, individual growth modeling revealed the treatment students’ overall writing quality improved over the course of the 20-week intervention, even though writing instruction was not part of the intervention, and improvements in students’ writing quality were larger during the last 10 weeks of the intervention The need for purposeful activities that provide students with authentic contexts to learn and productively use newly taught words is discussed doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.213782 here are approximately 98 million ethnic minority 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 the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at 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 the most 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 T TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 44, No 4, December 2010 669 for a disproportionate percentage of struggling comprehenders (August & Shanahan, 2006; NCES, 2007b) Given that Latino families continue to be overrepresented among America’s poor (Suarez-Orozco & Paez, 2002) and that low-income status is a well-known risk factor associated with poor academic outcomes (Hart & Risley, 1995), a considerable proportion of Spanish-speaking Latino students is doubly at-risk for school failure It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to disentangle the effect of LM status from low socioeconomic status on student academic outcomes, but it is clear that these variables tend to be confounded, creating compounding obstacles to successful academic outcomes for the growing population of low-income LM students Many factors are associated with LM students’ reading comprehension difficulties, but low levels of vocabulary knowledge continue to emerge as key impediments to successful comprehension (Garcia, 1991; Nagy, 1997; Stahl & Nagy, 2006; U.S Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NICHD, 2000; Verhoeven, 1990) Despite the strong and well-established link between vocabulary and comprehension (Anderson & 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 few researchers have conducted experimental studies on the effectiveness of vocabulary interventions with LM students (August & Shanahan, 2006; Calderon, August, Slavin, Duran, Madden, & Cheung, 2005) The present study strengthens this research domain by assessing the effectiveness of a pilot vocabulary intervention designed to improve fifth-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 reading development 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 LM learners tend to develop relatively strong word reading skills, but often without the necessary language skills to support comprehension (e.g., Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Hutchinson, Whiteley, Smith, & Connors, 2003; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; Proctor, August, Carlo, & Snow, 2006; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000) 670 TESOL QUARTERLY Thus a distinction between word reading and knowledge of the meanings of the words being read is especially important in understanding LM learners’ literacy development It is estimated that students need to know (not simply recognize and/or decode) at least 95% of the words they encounter in text for successful comprehension (Calderon et al., 2005; Lipson & Wixson, 2003) Estimates of words learned during a typical school year range from 1,000 (Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990) to 3,000 (Nagy & Herman, 1987); although clearly most of these words are learned incidentally, explicit vocabulary instruction has also been found to contribute to word learning (e.g., Biemiller, 2003) Considering the early vocabulary knowledge disadvantage that many LM learners face, a sole reliance on incidental vocabulary learning for this group of learners is both impractical and negligent However, only five vocabulary intervention studies have focused on LM learners (Calderon et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004; Perez, 1981; Ramirez, 1986; Vaughn-Shavuo, 1990), and only one (Carlo et al., 2004) has targeted upper-elementary students Vaughn-Shavuo’s (1990) doctoral dissertation investigated the effect of vocabulary instruction by randomly assigning two groups of first-grade Spanish-dominant children to two groups Over the course of weeks, 31 words were presented to both groups Group one (the experimental group) 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 instruction focused on individual sentence contexts (i.e., the sentences containing the target words were unconnected) Results showed that the experimental group learned more words than the control group In another study, Perez’s (1981) work with third graders revealed that the experimental group receiving 20 of daily oral language instruction on word meanings, over the course of about months, showed significant improvements on word learning over the group receiving regular instruction (i.e., reading text and answering questions) The third vocabulary study (Ramirez, 1986) also focused on third-grade Spanish speakers In this study, a method called suggestopedia (a language learning method that uses music to create an atmosphere conducive to learning) was used Ten words were taught per day in 40-min lessons over the course of days, and the experimental groups performed significantly better than the control Calderon and colleagues (2005) likewise investigated Spanish-speaking third graders’ word learning, but the major goal of their 22- to 25-week intervention (an adaptation of the Success for All reading program) was on facilitating students’ Spanish-toWORD MEANINGS MATTER 671 English transition from a Spanish reading program However, an additional goal of the intervention was on building English vocabulary Thus, in the 90-min lessons, vocabulary was a major focus, as 30 were devoted to oral language activities revolving around grade-level children’s literature Their results revealed modest positive effects on students’ 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 significant improvements 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 to the promising role of vocabulary instruction to improve LM learners’ vocabulary knowledge Further, the strong and significant correlation between 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 that LM 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 that none of the vocabulary intervention studies conducted to date have examined 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 underelaboration of thoughts and ideas in writing (Moats, Foorman, & Taylor, 2006) Additionally, Saddler and Graham (2007) note that writers’ familiarity with 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 of Education Progress writing assessment revealed that only about onequarter of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders performed at or above the proficient level in writing (NCES, 2004), but even more troubling is the fact that substantial 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% percentile It seems reasonable to postulate that vocabulary instruction might result in improved writing outcomes, but there is a surprisingly limited research base on the effect of vocabulary instruction on students’ 672 TESOL QUARTERLY writing, even amongst native-English-speaking populations (Duin & Graves, 1987; Graham & Perin, 2007) It is thus difficult to draw even tentative conclusions about the impact of vocabulary instruction on students’ writing and particularly difficult to ascertain the nature of this relationship for Spanish-speaking LM learners To my knowledge, only four 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 relationship between vocabulary and writing development Students need vocabulary to write, but the only evidence available on the role of vocabulary in second language writing comes from English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) college students The educational context of LM learners differs in 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 college students indeed find that a key determinant in nonnative English speakers’ 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 growing population of school-age LM learners is a major limitation in the literacy research 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, and in particular LM learners, will require ample opportunities to actively use newly taught vocabulary in oral language before they are able to use the new words in their writing To date, very few studies have examined students’ use of newly taught vocabulary in writing (Bravo & Tilson, 2006; Lee, 2003; Lee & Muncie, 2006) As part of a larger study examining the effects of an integrated science-literacy curriculum, Bravo and Tilson (2006) analyzed second- and third-grade students’ use of science vocabulary in writing, finding that students spontaneously used newly taught science words in their writing The authors suggest that use of newly taught vocabulary in writing represents growth in science knowledge and also indicates that students have productive control over science 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 intermediate English-as-a-second-language students in Canada Specifically, Lee (2003) investigated correct usage of target vocabulary in the writing of WORD MEANINGS MATTER 673 65 students, and Lee and Muncie (2006) investigated learners’ (N 48) use of target vocabulary and how their target vocabulary use influenced their lexical frequency profile (see Laufer & Nation, 1995, for details) Like Bravo and Tilson (2006), Lee (2003) did not investigate the effects of 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 vocabulary in writing, including improvements in writing quality, finding that teacher elicitation, explicit explanation, discussion and negotiation, and exposure to target vocabulary increase students’ productive vocabulary use in writing However, like the other two studies, student income levels were not reported, effectively limiting our understanding of whether these findings can be expected to be replicated with low-income populations Despite the limited number and limited scope of studies exploring the relationship between vocabulary instruction and writing, there is reason to believe that vocabulary instruction may indeed be a step in the right direction to improve the writing skills of LM learners Drawing on research to date, two reasonable hypotheses are that (1) LM learners will use newly taught words in their writing if given opportunities to so on a consistent basis, and (2) vocabulary instruction will strengthen LM learners’ overall writing quality over time To adequately explore the 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 of methods are needed, including incidental and structured instruction Although indirect instruction is vital to any program aiming to develop students’ vocabulary, direct, carefully designed instruction is also an integral part of the puzzle The goal of explicit instruction is for students to learn the meanings of words across various contexts to ultimately improve 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, words to be taught should be functional, cross-disciplinary, and developmentally appropriate (see Beck et al., 2002, for one widely used system for selecting words) 674 TESOL QUARTERLY 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 exposure to academic language is largely confined to the regular school day for LM learners, LM learners arguably need more opportunities, both incidental and structured, to hear and use academic language than native English speakers Additionally, effective vocabulary programs for LM learners should specifically target the development of word consciousness and of word learning strategies to help LM learners catch up with monolingual English speakers Further, the target vocabulary for instruction should be presented in meaningful, engaging contexts that are not only relevant to students’ interests (e.g., Carlo et al., 2004) but that also serve to bolster their overall background knowledge Finally, an area that is seldom attended to is ensuring that students are provided with opportunities to actively use newly taught vocabulary, both orally and in writing Writing becomes a major form of evaluation after the primary grades for all students and, on average, over one-quarter of Latino students write at the below basic level (NCES, 2003) It may be that, by giving LM learners ample opportunities to write on a consistent basis as part of a vocabulary program, their understanding of the words they are being taught will be strengthened That is, the sheer use of newly taught words in writing may foster learning of the words PRESENT STUDY Given that LM students tend to have both less breadth and less depth of vocabulary knowledge and knowing that vocabulary is strongly related to students’ overall school success, LM students with limited vocabularies are very disadvantaged academically The vocabulary program piloted in this study draws from the research base on effective vocabulary instruction and rests on the premise that vocabulary instruction can reasonably be expected to improve fifth-grade (ages 10–11 years) LM learners’ literacy outcomes Fifth grade is an optimal school year to intervene, before students enter the more academically demanding middle school grades when struggling comprehenders rapidly fall further behind in all content areas The study addressed the following research questions: (1) Following the 20-week vocabulary intervention, the treatment or contrast group students gain knowledge of a greater number of targeted words? (2) In the treatment group’s weekly student essays, what is the extent of target vocabulary word use over the course of the 20-week intervention? Specifically, students use the target vocabulary WORD MEANINGS MATTER 675 words cumulatively, or is their use confined to words taught in the current week? Further, is there any change in the quality (e.g., coherence and academic language use) of the essays over time? METHOD Research Context The data for this study were taken from one school in the Northeastern United States participating in an on-going study designed to 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 overarching goal 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 research seminars, 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 Mystic teachers 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 vocabulary intervention, piloting of the intervention was limited to one grade level (fifth grade) in the same predominantly Latino, low-income, urban K-8 school in the Northeast to carefully monitor the implementation of the intervention 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 the contrast group All 53 students in the two mainstream classrooms participated, but two students from the treatment and two students from the contrast classroom transferred to other schools during the intervention; thus the final sample for statistical analyses consisted of 24 students from the treatment and 25 from the contrast classroom Except for the number of 676 TESOL QUARTERLY students formerly identified as limited English proficient, with more in the treatment classroom,1 there were no significant differences in gender, race, and first language characteristics across 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 least 80 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 collaborative effort under the leadership of Dr Catherine Snow, is a research-based 20-week vocabulary intervention designed to build students’ academic vocabulary across the content areas Academic vocabulary refers to words that students are likely to encounter in textbooks and on tests (e.g., infer and element), but not in spoken language Without explicit instruction on these types of words, students, and especially LM learners, are likely to experience difficulty with comprehension The goal of WG is to increase students’ academic vocabulary, in an effort to improve literacy outcomes The following components are emphasized: (1) building vocabulary knowledge through repeated exposure to frequently occurring academic words in various contexts, (2) cultivating general word and world TABLE Background Characteristics of Treatment and Contrast Group Students (N 49) Contrast (n 25) x2 p value 17 14 11 1.16 0.28 23 0 21 5.07 0.17 23 22 1.00 0.32 17 16 5.97 0.01 Treatment (n 24) Gender Female Male Race Latino Black White Asian First language Spanish English/other Formerly limited English proficient Yes No Students at the Mystic School are randomly assigned to classrooms and thus the greater number of limited-English-proficient students in the treatment group compared with the contrast group happened by chance WORD MEANINGS MATTER 677 knowledge, as well as word study strategies, and (3) engaging students in weekly persuasive writing The core program centers on the weekly presentation of five high-utility target words to be learned in the context of brief passages outlining controversies currently under debate in the United States (ranging from the abilities of women in math and science to global warming).2 The 100 target words are therefore relevant to a range of settings and subject areas and were selected from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), which was originally developed as a support for instruction to college-level nonnative English speakers and does not include 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 of words each week aims to enable students to understand the variety of ways in which words are related, and the multiple exposures to words in different contexts (e.g., math and history) seek to provide students with ample opportunities for deeper understanding of the words The WG materials include a teacher’s guide that explains the structure of the vocabulary program and rationale behind it; a set of 20 engaging paragraphs written about current topics in journalistic style, which connect to real word issues and to students’ lives; brief instructional activities associated with weekly topics and target words; 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 weekly lesson) 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 talk also 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’s utterance 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 in order to check on their interpretation of the statement), asking students to 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 group discussions the opportunity to talk with a partner to ensure that all students are on the same page) Finally, the end-of-week writing activity 678 The WG paragraphs are written at a 6th grade readability level, because the WG materials were specifically developed for use with middle school students (grades 6–8) TESOL QUARTERLY 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 for an example) Frequency counts of the weekly target words, as well as of past target words, 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 sampled children, using SAS PROC MIXED4 with full maximum likelihood estimation 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 likelihood ratio test was used as the primary criterion for evaluating model fit, and the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria were also provided as additional indicators of goodness of fit Target Word Use Over the course of the 20-week intervention, students used an average of 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 weekly essays from week to week 20; the use of previously taught words was greater toward the end of the intervention: Students used an average of 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 students used across the 20-week intervention; 21% of the students used more than 12 past target words in their essays, 42% used 6–11 past target words, and 33% used or fewer past target words Writing Quality The final area of investigation involved examining whether students’ overall writing quality improved over the course of the 20week intervention Individual Growth Modeling results indicate that the 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 average writing quality growth of 71 points (nearly full point) over the SAS PROC MIXED is a generalization of the general linear model (GLM); it fits the wider class of mixed linear models, incorporating random effects, allowing for the specification of covariance structures, and providing a better mechanism for handling missing values WORD MEANINGS MATTER 685 TABLE Individual Growth Modeling Results for Students’ Writing Quality Growth (N 24) Model Fixed effects Initial status Weeks 1–20 Weeks 1–10 Weeks 11–20 4.5308*** 0.0353*** Model 4.5931*** 0.0291 0.0406* Variance components Level Within-person Level Between-person Deviance (22 LL) AIC BIC 0.6988*** 1.0636*** 1,393.40 1,401.40 1,406.20 0.6988*** 1.0633*** 1,393.30 1,403.30 1,409.20 Note Model 15 overall average writing quality growth across the 20-week vocabulary intervention; Model writing quality growth across weeks 1–10 versus weeks 10–20 AIC Akaike information criterion; BIC Bayesian information criterion; LL lower limit ***p , 0.001 course of the 20-week intervention, translating into a substantial effect size (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 10 weeks of the intervention (see Figure 1): 0.03 points per week during the first 10 weeks (or 29 points over the course of the first 10 weeks) did not reach significance, but 04 points per week during the last 10 weeks of the intervention was statistically significant These differential results, though subtle, are substantively important, as they suggest that the effects 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 length correlates with overall writing quality (e.g., Hiller, Marcotte, & Martin, 1969) This may raise the question of whether students in the present study were merely writing more and thus producing more high-quality essays over time As expected, essay length was correlated with students’ overall writing quality (r 45, p , 05) However, essay length remained stable throughout the duration of the intervention (mean 90, SD 18), indicating that students were not writing more over the course of the intervention Indeed, controlling for essay length, the correlation between target word use and writing quality 686 TESOL QUARTERLY FIGURE Comparison of individual growth modeling results for students’ writing quality growth across weeks 1–10 (not statistically significant) and their writing quality growth across weeks 10–20 (statistically significant; n 24) remained significant (r 42, p , 05), suggesting that the observed relationship between target word use and writing quality was not an artifact of essay length DISCUSSION This 20-week pilot vocabulary intervention aimed to evaluate the extent to which upper-elementary predominantly Spanish-speaking LM students’ literacy outcomes would improve as a result of explicit vocabulary instruction Results underscore the promise of the WG vocabulary intervention for LM learners There are multiple implications and discussion points—practical and theoretical—to address when interpreting the results of this pilot study WG was implemented for only 15–20 a day, and yet the treatment group students, more of whom were formerly identified as limited English proficient, gained knowledge of a substantially larger number of words than the contrast group Finding that upper-elementary LM learners were able to learn the meanings of words intended for collegelevel nonnative English speakers is noteworthy Further, at posttest, the treatment group reported knowing the meanings of fewer nonsense words than the contrast group This difference in performance suggests that the treatment group had a heightened awareness of their word WORD MEANINGS MATTER 687 knowledge This word awareness is critical for comprehension, with research underscoring the need to encourage students to ask when they not know the meanings of 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, the effects 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 to shed light on this relationship amongst LM learners in the United States, with analyses revealing that some transfer occurs relatively quickly In fact, use of newly taught words in writing suggests that the words are at least partially in students’ lexicons Further, it was encouraging to find that students used target words from previous weeks in their essays Not surprisingly, a greater number of past target words were used during the final 10 weeks of the intervention A key implication—highlighting the fact that students need opportunities to use newly taught words—is that it will take time for students to internalize the newly taught words before they are willing or able to productively use them in writing For example, research shows that it takes 5–16 exposures to new words for receptive word knowledge (Nation, 1990) Because productive word knowledge is more difficult, presumably, it should take even longer for students to use words in their writing The key takeaway point is thus that finding multiple ways of exposing students to the newly taught words is critical The final area of investigation involved examining the effects of the intervention 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 in better writing quality, whether opportunities to write results in better vocabulary, or whether there is a reciprocal relationship Though the current study does not provide any definitive answers about the nature of these relationships, results of this study suggest that the combination of vocabulary instruction (including other aspects of the intervention, such as the weekly debates that fostered increased language use) and having students write on a weekly basis likely contributes to students’ overall writing quality gains Importantly, during the course of the 20-week intervention, feedback on the essays was not provided by the teacher, and the teacher did not provide instruction 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 be further explored, then, is that students’ writing quality improved 688 TESOL QUARTERLY because they were practicing and because they had accumulated a store of new words that could make their writing more precise and effective Importantly, improvements in students’ writing quality were smaller during the first 10 weeks of the intervention, underscoring the need for sustained vocabulary instruction combined with ample opportunities for students to write A clear implication from this study is thus that sustained vocabulary instruction is needed to detect improvements in students’ writing Implications for Research In this pilot study, only researcher-developed measures were administered at posttest, because effects on standardized measures were not expected As Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) noted more than two decades ago, a relatively high number of explicitly taught words must be present in standardized measures for them to be sensitive to the effects of vocabulary instruction; only of the 30 words on the GRADE standardized vocabulary test were target WG words Regarding reading comprehension outcomes, WG exposed students to a wide range of topics, from global warming to the death penalty, and therefore helped broaden students’ general background knowledge Background knowledge is a strong predictor of students’ reading comprehension performance (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998), and it is likely that the value of the intervention for reading comprehension outcomes will be evident over time, as students encounter passages about (or related to) the topics they have been exposed to through WG Thus the benefits of WG on students’ reading comprehension can be expected to be cumulative, rather than immediately following the 20-week intervention The pervasive challenge, however, is that interventions are commonly implemented for short periods of time with the expectation of large, immediate gains Accordingly, many interventions with high potential are erroneously deemed ‘‘ineffective’’ and consequently terminated on the basis of weak results An implication of this research is that vocabulary instruction can be effective for LM learners and should become part of students’ every day curriculum, sustained throughout the school years Refining the elements of effective vocabulary instruction to meet the differentiated needs of students will be a critical 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 instruction should be evaluated more robustly (e.g., examining effects on writing) For the growing population of LM learners who enter school with low WORD MEANINGS MATTER 689 levels of vocabulary, vocabulary instruction must be a part of their school day Limitations and Future Research First, the demonstrated literacy gains found in this quasiexperimental pilot 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’ vocabulary knowledge, but future work should incorporate measures of vocabulary that attend to depth of word knowledge Third, the relatively small sample size limited the feasibility of investigating whether, as some research has found, the effect of vocabulary instruction varies by ability levels, with lower performing students exhibiting greater benefits (e.g., Nelson & Stage, 2007) On a related note, a monolingual-English-speaking comparison group would help disentangle whether vocabulary instruction has differential effects for LM versus non-LM students, and the extent of those differential effects on various literacy measures Finally, longitudinal studies 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 is whether the demonstrated gains will be lasting ones and whether gains on comprehension can be expected Notwithstanding these limitations, students in the study are representative of a growing population of learners in the United States—children from Spanishspeaking homes enrolled in urban, generally low-income, schools—and the present pilot vocabulary intervention study thus extends previous work and strengthens our understanding of the effects of vocabulary instruction on upper-elementary LM students CONCLUSION Because vocabulary knowledge is cumulative, greater instructional attention to vocabulary is needed starting in and continuing well beyond the primary grades This point must be underscored for LM learners, who tend to have fewer English language models and thus more limited vocabularies compared to native English speakers Further, aside from increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge, it appears that explicit vocabulary instruction 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 needed and that purposeful activities that provide students with authentic contexts to learn and productively use newly taught words are integral components of 690 TESOL QUARTERLY effective vocabulary instruction Until vocabulary becomes an integral, daily aspect of the K-12 curriculum, all students, and in particular LM learners, may continue to learn to read (i.e., decode), but the development of vocabulary and writing skills is simultaneously essential for academic success ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Catherine E Snow, Nonie K Lesaux, and Terrence Tivnan for their helpful comments on this manuscript This study was made possible by the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), funded by the Carnegie Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The Spencer Foundation THE AUTHOR Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez is an Assistant Professor in Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of 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 REFERENCES Anderson, R C., & Freebody, P (1981) Vocabulary knowledge In J T Guthrie (Ed.), Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews (pp 77–117) Newark, DE: International Reading Association Anderson, R C., & Nagy, W E (1991) Word meanings In R Barr, M L Kamil, P Mosenthal & P D Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol II pp 231– 256) White Plains, NY: Longman Anderson, R C., & Pearson, P D (1984) A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading comprehension In P D Pearson, R Barr, M L Kamil, & P Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (pp 255–291) New York, NY: Longman August, D., & Shanahan, T (Eds.) 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_ 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 _ 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 materials _Other _ I struggled with the WG materials this week 696 TESOL QUARTERLY Yes _ No _A little _ If you said Yes or A little, it’s because of (check all that apply): _School resources (e.g., photocopier, etc.) _WG content was hard to prepare _WG did not fit with the rest of my lesson _Amount of time required _Lack of support _Other _ I talked with other teachers about WG this week Yes _ No If Yes, it’s because (check all that apply): _Their knowledge is of help to me _To vent frustration _To exchange information _To coordinate WG lesson plans _Other _ If No, it’s because I talked with a literacy coach about WG Yes _ No If Yes, it’s because (check all that apply): _I needed general advice on vocabulary instruction _To vent frustration about WG _To get help with this WG lesson _Other _ If you said vent frustration it’s because I will make changes to how I WG next week Yes _ No If Yes, explain briefly: _ Any comments? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ WORD MEANINGS MATTER 697 Appendix C Correlations Among All Measures at Pretest, Partialing Out GRADE Vocabulary (N 49) Definitions of Headings 1–7 WG Multiple Choice WG Vocabulary Self-check: Real Words WG Vocabulary Self-check: Nonsense Words GRADE Vocabulary GRADE Listening Comprehension TOWRE Composite GRADE Comprehension Composite 1.0 34* 54* 1.0 22 66*** 1.0 — 36* — 28, 09 09 49*** 18 2.08 66*** 51*** 44** 37** 49*** 42** 35* 2.35* 2.12 — 03 1.0 — 2.17 06 — — 2.34* 40** 2.58*** 1.0 22 2.02 33* 1.0 21 73*** 46*** 2.22 74** 50*** 55*** 1.0 Note Correlations above the diagonal are uncontrolled, and correlations below the diagonal display results on control for GRADE vocabulary Key: ,p , 10, *p , 05, **p , 01, ***p , 001 Appendix D Word Generation Weekly Writing Rubric Ideas Did not succeed in articulating coherent ideas Score Expressed (or attempted) an argument, but only some or insufficient evidence Overall Cohesion/Structure Lack of organiza- Some organizaOverall, writing is tional pattern; tion; can deciorganized and commore like a non- pher ideas, but municates ideas related list usually with with relative ease effort Academic Language Writing is conUses mostly Uses several acastrained by lack grade-level voca- demic words to of vocabulary bulary express ideas TOTAL SCORE 698 Expressed a couple of ideas or claims, not an argument Expressed a welldeveloped argument, elaborates /3 /3 Writing is well organized and effective in communicating ideas (organization bolsters the argument) Word choices are varied and purposeful throughout the piece /3 /9 TESOL QUARTERLY Appendix E Example of a Word Generation Essay Correction Below you will find an example of a corrected essay Student text was always preserved, except for capitalization, spelling errors to the extent that they could be identified (e.g., "weare" for "wear"), and run-on sentences Note that incorrect spelling, stemming from incorrect word choices such as "their" for "there," were preserved WEEK ESSAY: SCHOOL UNIFORMS Original Student Text I believe Their chould Not be sticter dress codes because most of the student in school Now that they have to weire their uniform and they weare them but some of the student belive their chould be strick dress code and I think its Not fair for kids to wear their uniform every single day and I think its ok if the student don’t wear their uniform on special days and or fridays because dose are the days that the kids don’t like to wear their unifor so I belive their chould Not be strick dress code because it’s Not fair for the student to be wearing the same thing every single day for school and spechily of friadays and on special days so that what I believe that their chould Not be strict dress codes and I think the kids keep modtify of what they wear or what they don’t wear And I think is time to trastion of the uniform Corrected Text I believe their should not be stricter dress codes because most of the student in school now that they have to wear their uniform They wear them but some of the student believe their should be strict dress code I think it’s not fair for kids to wear their uniform every single day I think it’s ok if the student don’t wear their uniform on special days and/or Fridays because those are the days that the kids don’t like to wear their uniform I believe their should not be strict dress code because it’s not fair for the student to be wearing the same thing every single day for school and especially on Fridays and on special days That what I believe that their should not be strict dress codes and I think the kids keep modify of what they wear or what they don’t wear and I think is time to transition of the uniform WORD MEANINGS MATTER 699