Comparing effects of instruction on word meaning and word form on early literacy abilities in kindergarten
Publication year
2019Number of pages
25 p.
Source
Early Education and Development, 30, 3, (2019), pp. 375-399ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ BSI OLO
SW OZ DCC PL
Journal title
Early Education and Development
Volume
vol. 30
Issue
iss. 3
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 375
Page end
p. 399
Subject
Learning and Plasticity; Psycholinguistics; Language in InteractionAbstract
Research Findings: The present study compared effects of explicit instruction on and practice with the phonological form of words (form-focused instruction) versus explicit instruction on and practice with the meaning of words (meaning-focused instruction). Instruction was given via interactive storybook reading in the kindergarten classroom of children learning Dutch. We asked whether the 2 types of instruction had different effects on vocabulary development and 2 precursors of reading ability - phonological awareness and letter knowledge - and we examined effects on these measures of the ability to learn new words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences. Learners showed similar receptive target-word vocabulary gain after both types of instruction, but learners who received form-focused vocabulary instruction showed more gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge than learners who received meaning-focused vocabulary instruction. Level of ability to learn pairs of words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences predicted gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary and in letter knowledge in the form-focused instruction group only. Practice or Policy: A focus on the form of words during instruction appears to have benefits for young children learning vocabulary.
Subsidient
NWO (Grant code:info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/NWO/Gravitation/024.001.006)
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [188575]
- Electronic publications [87941]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [25132]
- Open Access publications [57359]
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