Post

Teaching Academic Vocabulary to English Learners

Research in Brief

From the Center for Reform and Research in Education

A new study published in the American Educational Research Journal, December 2014, has shown the benefit of teaching academic vocabulary to children whose first language is not English to support learning English and academic content in English, at the same time.
 
In 14 middle schools in California, 50 teachers were assigned to treatment or control conditions for the study. A total of 2,082 sixth-grade students participated; 71% spoke another language — mostly Spanish — at home. The teachers followed Academic Language Instructions for All Students (ALIAS), a 20-week program teaching academic vocabulary; words that are not subject-specific but often appear in sixth-grade textbooks (e.g., expanse, integrated, generate, according to). Students improved their vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness skills, and comprehension of expository texts and improved their performance on a standardized measure of written language skills. Of note is that the effects were generally larger for children whose home language was not English and for those who started the intervention with underdeveloped vocabulary knowledge.
 
The program, 20 weeks in length, featured nine 2-week units, each consisting of a 9-day lesson cycle, and two 1-week review units. Each daily lesson in the cycle was designed to take 45 minutes. The 45-minute lessons were implemented in the context of the participating schools’ ELA block, which lasted between 90 and 120 minutes a day.

Other Resources

Log in