“If You Teach a Child to Fish…” Teaching Children How to Learn New Words

Authors: Ju Hee Kim, Jiayu Yu, Dawna Duff

Field of Study: Science, Technology, Engineering, and/or Math

Faculty Mentors: Dawna Duff

Easel: 4

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: Many school aged children do not have enough vocabulary to support reading comprehension, and have difficulty learning new words from context. Asking children to generate definitions about new words and explain the reasons for their answers improved the definitions that they generated during treatment (Cain, 2007). The current study aims to determine whether this intervention results in improvements in word learning in real world contexts. Children with typical language development (grades 4-6, n=10) received this intervention across three sessions. Before and after the intervention, participants read 8 paragraphs containing new words, defined the new words, and answered yes/no questions about word meaning. Responses were scored to form a Measure of Semantic Knowledge (Duff, 2019). Scores will be analyzed using mixed effect models, to evaluate differences pre and post intervention. Results will contribute to our understanding of effective strategies to improve contextual word learning in school-aged children.