Poster #71 - Effects of Spanish and English definition supports on a word-knowledge application task among 4th grade Spanish-English bilinguals

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

The use of monolingual and bilingual dictionary definitions to support vocabulary learning is a ubiquitous practice in English Learner (EL) instruction, yet the field lacks experimental work that tests the effects of dictionary definitions on EL learning of academic words. Research on native English speakers suggests that definitions are not conducive to word mastery (Stahl & Nagy, 2006). However, research on testing accommodations for ELs suggests that English dictionaries do aid comprehension of texts containing unfamiliar words (Kieffer, Lesaux, Rivera, & Francis, 2009).

We designed an experiment to examine whether Spanish-speaking 4th grade EL were able to use Spanish or English definitions in combination with contextual information to learn the meaning of academic English words. A total of 196 students (110 pre-Covid and 86 post-Covid) from 14 schools in a district in southern Florida participated in the study. Students were randomly assigned to one of three between-subject conditions where they were presented English, Spanish, or no definitions and were asked to independently learn the meaning of cognate and noncognate target words appearing in low or high context sentences. We tested students’ ability to apply knowledge about the words via a cloze task that required listening to and reading a short passage.

The research questions guiding our analyses were: 1) Do English definitions increase 4th grade Spanish-speaking ELs’ application of word knowledge relative to either the Spanish definitions or the no-definition conditions?; 2) Does the ability to apply definition information vary as a function of contextual support?; 3) Does the ability to apply definition information vary as a function of cognate status after controlling for differences in difficulty between cognates and noncognates?; and 4) Is the effect of definitions moderated by English or Spanish vocabulary knowledge as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson picture-vocabulary subtests?

Analyses of the three-way interaction between Definition Condition (three levels: Spanish definitions, English definitions, no definitions) Contextual Support (two levels: high and low), and Cognate Status (two levels: cognates and noncognates), was not significant, nor were any of the two-way interactions. All three analyses of main effects were significant. For the Definition Condition effect, English (52.1%) was higher than both Spanish (46.6%) and Control (43.1%), which were not different from each other. The effect for Contextual Support was such that performance on high-context sentences (49.8%) was superior to low-context sentences (44.7%), as expected. Unexpectedly, performance on matched cognates (42.0%) was significantly lower than matched noncognates (52.6%). The results suggest that English learners benefit from definitions presented in English, and that when definitions are presented alongside highly contextualized examples of word use, they can benefit EL’s application of word knowledge during English text comprehension.

Contrary to results in our prior experiment testing knowledge of definitions that showed benefits from Spanish definitions for students with high Spanish-vocabulary scores (authors, 2019), the tests of moderation of Spanish vocabulary on the application of word knowledge during reading was not significant in this study. We plan to conduct sensitivity analyses testing differences in the patterns of results across the pre-COVID and post-COVID cohorts.

Authors

• Maria Soledad Carlo, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author

• Mary Avalos, University of Miami

• Jeffrey M Williams, University of South Florida

• Jason Anthony

• Thanh Pham, University of South Florida