# Presentation: 160410

## Discussion of three presentations exploring vocabulary acquisitionwith English learners

- Judith A. Scott
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- IES conference -2008

**Notes:**
Although the title of this session is Interventions to improve academic outcomes for ELLs I am going to focus specifically on vocabulary acquisition as it relates to academic outcomes and ELs

## What’s Hot and What’s Not

- Vocabulary

**Notes:**
First, I want to thank IES for supporting these three groups and all the work that is being done on vocabulary acquisition, particularly vocabulary work that focuses on English Language learners. 
-- 
Been studying vocabulary processes for about twenty years. During most of that time,  look at the International Reading Association annual list of what’s hot and not, Vocabulary studies-- ice cold.

## What’s Hot and What’s Not

- Vocabulary

## What’s Hot and What’s Not

- English language learners

**Notes:**
In the mid-80s, when I worked on Becoming a Nation of Readers, English language learners were barely mentioned, Now, work with this population has become much more prevalent.

I see work that focuses on vocabulary and the needs of Els as central, hot and exciting in the natioal research agenda.  These projects are at the fore front of this work.

## Overarching themes

- Importance of developing multi-layered knowledge about words
- Need for sophisticated measurement tools
- Importance of clarity in defining populations of English language learners
- Need to develop the identity of English learners as “border-crossers” who embrace academic learning

**Notes:**
I’m organizing my discussion today around four common threads that I saw in the powerpoints.  Two of them related to  vocabulary instruction 
And two are more central, in general, to our work on Els. 

## Importance of developing multi-layered knowledge about words

- Multiple opportunities to see, hear and use the words
- Incrementality of word learning
- Multiple facets and rich connections are important for building rich word schemas

**Notes:**
Importance of multilayered word schemas -- Multiple opportunities to see, hear and use the words, - word knowledge builds up over time and its an incremental process.  

This concept is central in all three projects:  
 ICON project ( Bridget and PatricK) Richness of the computer interface.   The way  they are exploring semantic depth is  very creative. I think they are seeing the power of this approach.
Texas A &M group-- combined word knowledge and world knowledge in thematically related units, 
Quest - put this into practice in several places --through introducing the words in a variety of forms and across and within units, Multiple places within the curriculum. For instance -- in guided reding ( permeable, permeate)

Particularly pleased to see the explicit attention that the Quest group gave to different forms of words (nouns, verbs adjectives) 

## Erupt

- Eruption

- Eruptive

- Rupture

- Volcano

- Lava

- Anger

**Notes:**
If you know a word ERUPT -- all these different connections. 

Helping Els see these sort of links is so important and all the projects are doing a good job of helping students make those connections.

## Need for sophisticated measurement tools

- Traditional means of measuring vocabulary inadequate for the purpose of research.
-  Pearson, Hiebert & Kamil (2007)

**Notes:**
If you are using a standardized test, chances are very low that the words students have encountered in your curriculum will be tested. 

Results of the Texas A&M group point this out clearly. 
As Pearson, Hiebert and Kamil  state in their (2007) RRQ article: 
We know quite a bit about vocabulary acquisition, and yet this knowledge has not filtered into assessments of vocabulary knowledge, or assessments of reading comprehension, beyond the idea of adding context (Pearson, Hiebert, & Kamil, 2007). Although measures of vocabulary knowledge have been included in reading assessments since the 1920s, the traditional means of assessing vocabulary have recently come under fire for being "driven by tradition, convenience, psychometric standards and a quest for economy of effort” (Pearson, Hiebert & Kamil, 2007, p.282).  This hampers both research and decision making, for most of the measures do not reflect our current understanding of the nature of word learning (Scott, Hiebert & Lubliner, 2006).  Instead, the words on current large-scale vocabulary assessments are chosen arbitrarily, with no theoretically grounded principles, theories or frameworks to guide their selection for the tests (Pearson, Hiebert & Kamil, 2007). Words are chosen for their discriminatory power and their ability to operate in psychometerically appropriate ways to differentiate students, without consideration of the complexity and mulitfaceted nature of word learning (Pearson, Hiebert & Kamil, 2007). 

Think eveyone who is working in vocabulary research struggles with issues of appropriate tools for measurement 

## Defining English language learners

**How are studies defining ****who is or is not an ****English language learner?**

**Notes:**
Moving on to looking at Els. 

I only had ppts so you may all address this further in your papers, but I know we’ve struggled with determining who are the  Els in our classrooms, 
I think its important to ask whether the state or school designation as ELLs make sense, and  what are criteria are being used to determine EL status.

  The ICOn study talks only about mono-lingual and bi-lingual students.  If a student is truly biingual (perhaps raised from birth speaking both languages) their proficiency in English may match English mono-lingual students. 

The texas A &M group look at ethnicity and bilingual statusl, and a complication of their study is that 23% of the intervention students are rated as bilingual but only 6% of the control students (4 students) are bilingual.  I didn’t see any other grouping of ELLs, But, that may explain why the Non-ELL students have lower scores than the ELLs on the PPVT in the graph (slide 18.

And the Quest group is studying over 1000 students so I imagine they are using some standardized measure of EL status. 
What we found in our project in California, after interviewing some of students, is that we have students classifieds ELLs by the California English Language Development test who vary widely in their Spanish proficiency ( in both oral and written Spanish)  and that makes it difficult for them to draw on Spanish to understand English cognates.

Something we need to pay attention to...

## Developing the identity of English learners as “border-crossers”

**Students tend to keep Spanish and English separate**
**“ ****I leave Spanish at the door when I walk into the classroom.”**

## “Sometimes, like, you separate them [the languages]...like when you’re doing English, just focus on English.  Then when you’re doing Spanish, just focus on Spanish.  And if you need help, just think of both.”  	- Ariana, a fourth-grade English Learner

**Notes:**
We need to help students develop this sense that they can draw on the resources that they have in Spanish to them with English vocabulary learning
Want to encourage the researchers to think about how to help students develop this sense of strategic, effective “border-crossing” into the world of 
Academic English.  

In vocabulary research, we often neglect to the social, political historical aspects of students’ lives, I want to encourage us to take a more ecological view of
learning that sees it as mulitfaceted as well. I maintain that both the sociocultural and the cognitive perspectives are necessary to facilitate academic success for students who are traditionally underserved by schools. Verbal activities, including word learning, are socially organized and embedded within cultural systems of meaning.
. Words are best learned  in the process of acquiring knowledge of the language practices within particular sociolinguistic environments (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).
students who feel that the literate identities they are already forming in their homes and communities are respected and reinforced at school are ready to expand on those identities; and second, students need to see themselves as full participants in the classroom community in which academic language functions as a powerful tool (Dutro, Kazemi, & Balf, 2005; Gee, 2004). :There is no reason to continue to believe that all children or adult literacy learners will enter the classroom door with the same notions of what literacy is, what and who it is for, who engages with it, where, and when. What little data we have to date suggest that print literacy instruction that builds on the literacy worlds and practices of the learners stands a much better chance of succeeding than that which does not.