Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2017

Publication Title

The Elementary School Journal

Volume

118

Issue

1

Pages

28-54

Abstract

A proposed avenue for increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is instruction that promotes students’ enthusiasm and attention to words, referred to as word consciousness. This study seeks to investigate, at the utterance level, whether and how word consciousness talk is used in classrooms with young word learners and whether this type of talk is associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge. Using videotaped classroom (N = 27) observations, this study found evidence of word consciousness talk, with variability of use across classrooms. Multilevel modeling revealed that this kind of teacher talk—operationalized as reinforcing students’ use of words, affirming students’ recognition of word meanings, and helping students make personal connections to words—was positively associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge at the end of kindergarten. Findings from this study can provide guidance for teachers seeking strategies to increase students’ general vocabulary knowledge, beyond words taught.

Comments

Author Posting. © The University of Chicago 2017. This article is posted here by permission of The University of Chicago for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in The Elementary School Journal, vol. 118, no. 1, 2017, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/692986.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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