Exploring Bilingual Students’ Performance on Cognates in a Large-Scale Multidimensional Vocabulary Test

• In Event: Examining Vocabulary Practices Through the Lenses of Linguistic Frameworks and Analytic Tools

Abstract

According to the 2010 U.S. census data, 23% of the population under the age of 18 is Hispanic. Many of these students are fluent bilinguals, proficient speakers of both Spanish and English. Spanish and English share 10,000 to 15,000 cognates or word pairs with the same meaning and similar spelling and pronunciation (Nash, 1997). Thus when learning English vocabulary, bilingual students may have a strategic advantage in cognate recognition, especially as many technical cognates are low-frequency English words and high-frequency Spanish words (Bravo, Hiebert, & Pearson, 2007; Lubliner & Hiebert, 2011). A study of Spanish-English cognate patterns, frequency, and transparency by Lubliner and Hiebert (2011) affirms that cognates offer bilingual students a productive source for English vocabulary growth.
For elementary students, the innate bilingual advantage of cognates has been disputed. Hancin-Bhatt and Nagy (1994) uncovered a developmental trend in cognate awareness, with older bilingual students recognizing and understanding cognates more readily than students in elementary school. Studies by Garcia, Nagy, and their colleagues indicate that teaching Spanish speaking students to use cognate awareness can lead to gains on English vocabulary assessments that included cognates, but that cognate knowledge is often not utilized without such instruction (Garcia, 1991; Garcia & Nagy, 1993; Nagy, Garcia, Durgunoglu, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993). However, other researchers including Proctor and Mo (2009) and Malabonga, Kenyon, Carlo, August, & Louguit, (2008) have challenged the developmental notion of cognate recognition.
This paper re-examines the question of cognate awareness in fourth and fifth grades using results from VASE (Vocabulary Assessment Study in Education), a large-scale vocabulary assessment based on the curriculum in California. VASE draws on teacher-identified "conceptually new or unfamiliar" English words from textbooks and novels commonly used in fourth- or fifth-grade classrooms. Each item assesses multiple dimensions of word knowledge including semantic relationships, morphology, words in context, definitions, and parts of speech. VASE is a measure of vocabulary knowledge and growth that assesses both breadth and depth of word learning in fourth and fifth grades.
In fall 2011, 2242 fourth graders and 2088 fifth graders in districts across California took one of the five draft forms of the VASE Assessment. Spanish-English cognates made up at least 25 percent of the words on each draft test. The analyses for this paper compare the VASE scores of proficient Spanish-English bilingual test takers with those of their monolingual English peers on cognate and comparable non-cognate items. They also include an in-depth look at the multiple dimensions of vocabulary knowledge that cognate awareness may facilitate. Preliminary results offer evidence that proficient Spanish-English bilingual students in grades four and five are cognate-aware, and that this awareness facilitates their performance on the VASE Assessment of English vocabulary. They highlight the importance of recognizing Spanish-English cognates in the development of vocabulary tests for the elementary grades and indicate that proficient bilingual students are often able to draw on their knowledge of Spanish as they address English vocabulary.

Authors

• Judith A. Scott, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Susan Leigh Flinspach, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Jack L Vevea, University of California - Merced