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
- Academic Word List at ESLdesk.com – an easy to use online resource to access AWL by sublist.
- New General Services List
- Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000)
