Language and Learning: Supporting vocabulary skills of adolescents within urban educational contexts

Author(s):

Sarah Spencer(presenting / submitting)Judy Clegg Joy Stackhouse

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

31. LEd – Network on Language and Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

31 SES 02, Educational Performance of Adolescents - Language and Influencing Factors

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

15:15-16:45

Room:

B006 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Christoph Gantefort

Contribution

International research has suggested that children in urban, low socioeconomic contexts are at increased risk of language difficulties (Law, McBean and Rush 2011; Locke and Ginsborg 2003; Justice et al 2005; Reilly et al 2009). Much of this research has focused on the vocabulary skills of young children in relation to school readiness (Farkas and Beron 2004; Hart and Risley 1992; Whitehurst and Fischel 2000).

There is less research into adolescent language proficiency in low socioeconomic contexts, though early findings do raise concern. For example, the comprehensive longitudinal Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development followed the language, literacy and educational outcomes over 100 children from urban backgrounds, 47 of whom completed vocabulary assessments when aged 11-12 years. Results suggest that vocabulary knowledge in early childhood was correlated with reading comprehension and educational attainment throughout schooling and into adolescence. Further research with has also suggested that adolescents from urban low socioeconomic contexts are at risk of poor vocabulary knowledge which may impact on engagement with education (Myers and Botting 2008).

There is a strong rationale for international research into adolescent vocabulary skills in low socioeconomic contexts, given the potential implications for literacy and learning in the classroom. Vocabulary demands in school are high: School-aged children are thought to learn between 2,000 and 3,000 new words per year (Nagy and Scott, 2000). Furthermore, the process of learning new words during adolescence often involves the derivation of meaning based on prior knowledge of other words, leading to a ‘Matthew Effect’ for young people with limited vocabulary knowledge (Nippold 2007; Snow et al 2007). Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) outline the importance of vocabulary knowledge for accessing the curriculum: they refer to all-purpose academic words (also known as Tier 2 words) which are abstract and occur in multiple contexts; words such as ‘coincidence’, ‘industrious’, ‘fortunate’, ‘introduce’. While more low-frequency, subject-specific words curriculum words may be taught in the classroom (e.g. ‘peninsula’, ‘isotope’, ‘stanza’), these all-purpose academic feature across the curriculum in schools but are rarely explicitly taught (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan 2002). Low vocabulary skills will potentially impact on adolescents’ learning in urban, low socioeconomic areas in different contexts across Europe.

There is emerging evidence to suggest that adolescents from urban, low socioeconomic backgrounds are at increased risk of low levels of vocabulary knowledge. Given the potential educational consequences of this, there is a need for greater understanding of adolescent vocabulary knowledge in urban, low socioeconomic areas in different European contexts. There is also a need to explore approaches to increasing adolescents’ language proficiency, including vocabulary knowledge, in such educational contexts.

This paper will present mixed-method data from a three-stage research project. This paper aims to discuss and encourage debate about the issue of adolescent language proficiency in urban, low socioeconomic backgrounds. It will:

Explore the nature of language difficulties of adolescents from urban, low socioeconomic areas;
Report adolescents’ own perceptions of their own language skills;
Discuss the results of an intervention project designed to support urban adolescents’ vocabulary knowledge.

Method

Stage 1: Examining adolescents’ language abilities in relation to learning in the classroom. One hundred adolescents from an urban, low socioeconomic area completed a battery of standardised language assessments, which were then compared to the assessment standardised means and a comparison group of 48 adolescents from an average socioeconomic background. A variety of language skills were assessed (expressive vocabulary, understanding sentences and longer spoken paragraphs, receptive vocabulary, narrative skills and sentence use). Participants were aged between 13 and 14 years and attended mainstream schools. Educational outcomes upon leaving school were analysed in comparison to language assessment scores. Stage 2: Listening to adolescents’ perspectives. Forty-two adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years were interviewed about their own language skills: 21 attended a school in an urban, low socioeconomic area; 21 attended school in a more affluent area. A comparison design using interviews was selected because: a) interviews with adolescents about their perceptions of their own talking are rare; b) interviewing is well suited to the exploration of attitudes, values, beliefs and motives, allowing a rich corpus of data to be gathered. Semi-structured interviews were used in order to facilitate a detailed exploration of different aspects of language and allow comparison across different groups, whilst at the same time providing leeway for participants’ own interpretation and priorities. Interviews were carried out by the first author who had been spending time in both schools during the previous 6 months and so was familiar with the participants. Thematic Analysis was used to examine and compare interview extracts from the two groups of adolescents. Stage 3: Supporting adolescents’ vocabulary knowledge. Thirty-five adolescents aged between 12 and 14 years took part in a ten-week intervention programme targeting their knowledge of all-purpose academic words. The intervention sessions targeted knowledge of 10 all-purpose academic words that could be used across the curriculum. The Academic Word List (Victoria University, Wellington 2013) was used to select words for inclusion in the study, with input from teaching staff. The resulting list consisted of 10 highly functional academic words. The adolescents completed a battery of language assessments before intervention and a Word Learning Profile was used to measure their understanding of the targeted words throughout the project. This stage of the project had a delayed intervention group as a control, and tested knowledge of both taught and control vocabulary items.

Expected Outcomes

Stage 1: Adolescents from low socioeconomic area had increased risk of undetected language difficulties, in particular in relation to vocabulary skills. Up to 21% of these adolescents had undetected language difficulties (Spencer, Clegg and Stackhouse 2012). There were also associations between language scores and educational outcomes (Spencer, Clegg and Stackhouse, in review). Stage 2: Interviews suggested that adolescents from an urban area had fewer positive self-evaluations of their own language skills and described the importance of using ‘big words’ in selected contexts within schools. Furthermore, adolescents in both schools reflected on language in relation to signalling their identity and group membership. Identity was linked by participants to social class, and some adolescents were critical of the association between their language skills and their educational outcomes (Spencer Clegg and Stackhouse 2013). Stage 3: Provisional analysis shows that the intervention programme impacted positively on adolescents’ knowledge of all-purpose academic words. The intervention groups made progress in their knowledge of the targeted academic words, when compared to a delayed intervention cohort. The lack of progress during the repeated baseline period suggests that change in word knowledge was a result of the intervention and not an effect of maturation. The paper will discuss the following issues: 1) The need for schools to support adolescents’ language skills in urban, low socioeconomic contexts, particularly focusing on word learning skills. 2) The challenge of designing educational support for language which takes into account sociolinguistic factors. 3) The need to situate the projects’ findings in a European context, making links with similar urban communities outside of the UK. It will also include discussion of how European policy on language learning and language interventions relate to the findings.

References

Beck, I., McKeown, M., and Kucan, L. (2002) Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: Guilford. Farkas, G. and Beron, K. (2004) 'The detailed age trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge: differences by class and race', Social Science Research, 33(3), 464-497. Hart, B. and Risley, T. R. (1992) 'American parenting of language-learning children – Persisting differences in family child interactions observed in natural home Developmental Psychology, 28(6), 1096-1105. Law, J., K. McBean, and R. Rush. (2011). Communication skills in a population of primary school-aged children raised in an area of pronounced social disadvantage. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 46: 657–664. Locke, A., and Ginsborg, J. (2003). Spoken language in the early years: the cognitive and linguistic development of three- to five-year old children from socio-economically deprived backgrounds. Educational and Child Psychology, 20(4), 68-79. Myers, L. and Botting, N. (2008) 'Literacy in the mainstream inner-city school: Its relationship to spoken language', Child Language Teaching & Therapy, 24(1), 95-114. Nagy, W.E., and Scott, J.A. (2000). Vocabulary Processes. In M.L. Kamil, P.D. Pearson, R. Barr and P.B. Mosenthal (Eds.) Handbook of Reading Research, volume 3. New Jersey, USA: Lawrence Erlbaim Associates. Nippold, M.A. (2007). Later Language Development: School-aged children, adolescents, and young adults. Texas: Pro-ed. Reilly, S., Bavin, E., Bretherton, L., Conway, L., Eadie, P., Cini, E., Prior, M.,Ukoumunne, O., and Wake, M. (2009) The Early Language in Victoria Study; A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Communication Skills and Expressive Vocabulary at 8, 12, and 24 months. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 11(5) p344-357 Snow, C. E., Porche, M. V., Tabors, P. O., and Harris, S. R. (2007). Is literacy enough? Pathways to academic success for adolescents. Brookes Publishing Company. Spencer, S., Clegg, J. and Stackhouse, J. (2013) 'Language, social class and education: listening to adolescents' perceptions', Language and Education, 27(2), 129-143. Spencer, S., J. Clegg, and J. Stackhouse. (2012). Language and Disadvantage: A comparison of the language abilities of adolescents from two different socioeconomic areas. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 47: 274-284. Spencer, S., Clegg, J. and Stackhouse, J. (in review) Investigating the contribution of language ability to variation in adolescents' educational attainment in a context of socioeconomic disadvantage. Whitehurst, G.J., and Fischel, J.E. (2000). A developmental model of reading and language impairments arising in conditions of economic poverty. In D. Bishop & L. Leonard (Eds.), Speech and language impairments in children. East Sussex: Psychology Press.

Author Information

Sarah Spencer (presenting / submitting)

University of Sheffield

Sheffield

Judy Clegg

University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

Joy Stackhouse