Contributions of Lexical Morphology to English Learners' Academic Vocabulary Learning

Difficulties in reading comprehension among English Learners are widely acknowledged, and a key source of these difficulties is limited vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary demands become particularly acute for English Learner adolescents in middle and high school, when subject area reading is loaded with academic vocabulary words that represent abstract meanings and are essential for comprehension.Crosson and colleagues are investigating the effectiveness of a literacy intervention that targets academic vocabulary with English Learners in grades 6-8. The key innovation of this intervention is an approach called 'lexical morphology' that takes advantage of the rich language resources that English Learners bring to school by teaching them to use home language resources for cross-linguistic connections and word analysis. For example, students who are native Spanish-speakers learn to analyze how the common word, nuevo (new), links to the Latin root, nov, meaning 'new,' and supports learning several academic words in English that share the root such as innovative, renovate, and novice.The goal is to investigate the mechanisms by which the instructional approach affects vocabulary growth and reading, specifically by examining impact on depth of word knowledge, word analysis skill, and reading fluency. These skills underlie reading comprehension and thus are critical to the academic success of English Learners.,