This dissertation is a program evaluation of the Building Blocks of Comprehension vocabulary program, which was first implemented during the 2019-2020 school year by the English department at the school site. The study aimed to investigate the impact of morphological instruction on student vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension.…

The fast pace and relative ease at which individuals with typical language acquire and use words belie the complexity and vulnerability of lexical representation development (i.e., word learning) and lexical-semantic processing. Lexical-semantic processing impairments are common in both developmental and acquired communication disorders and, even…

The completion of developmental community college (DCC) courses is a crucial step in community college education to reach the national goal of increasing college success. DCC students are a unique population who require specific strategies such as vocabulary retention (VR) to achieve academic success. Prior research on vocabulary has been limited…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a rich vocabulary intervention on the comprehension and vocabulary learning of third-grade students with language learning disorders (LLD). The study used a repeated acquisition design (RAD), a single case design involving the repeated delivery of a vocabulary intervention on different sets…

While the extant literature emphasizes the role of Phonological Awareness (PA) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) in children's developing reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition skills, there has been a paucity of information on the contributions made by other factors such as Morphological Awareness (MA). Although evidence of a…

Researchers have studied children's exposure to television and the impact it has on children's academic development, and have discovered that educational television programs may positively influence children's vocabulary growth (Fuenzalida, 2017; Heintz & Wartella, 2012; Larson & Rhan, 2015; Linebarger, Moses, Liebeskind, & McMenamin,…

This study aimed to investigate the following questions: Does the use of thinking maps and semantic mapping during explicit vocabulary instruction affect content specific science vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in fourth grade students? and What are student perceptions of using thinking maps and semantic maps to learn new vocabulary? To…

The quantitative study examined 325 classroom scores of phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge across time at the beginning (BOY), middle (MOY), and end (EOY) of the year in Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K). The study also investigated the association between Pre-K classroom instructional interactions that supported phonological awareness and…

It was still true that some children came to school with a smaller vocabulary than their peers (David, 2010, Duff & Brydon, 2020; Templin, 1957; White, Graves, & Slater, 1990). If students did not have enough word knowledge to access the correct meanings of the words they read in text, they failed to comprehend those texts and struggled to…

Proficient reading requires the ability to analyze words for various properties, including pronunciation, meaning, and syntactical function. However, most instruction in word analysis is limited to phonics instruction provided in the early elementary grades. For older students, whose words largely center units of meaning, or morphemes, early…

Sociolinguistic variation (SLV) entails that language is affected by social context (i.e. register, pragmatics). Interest in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a second language (L2-SLV), as a key component of communicative competence, has grown exponentially over the past thirty years (Geeslin & Long, 2014). Researchers have…

Children learn words in a social environment. In my dissertation, I examine how caregivers' social cues facilitate young children's word learning in settings that mirror their typical, dynamic learning environments. In Chapter 1, I overview prior work examining how social cues may support word learning, focusing on possible mechanisms underlying…

The appropriate amount of first language (L1) and second language (L2) to use in L2 learning has been constantly debated (e.g., Cummins, 2007; Hall & Cook, 2012). This study situates the debate of L1 and L2 use in the context of vocabulary learning from reading. By examining the potential moderating factors on the comparison of L1 and L2…

This dissertation articulates and defends a view about linguistic competence called 'variabilism'. According to variabilism, the epistemic demands of full linguistic competence vary in a particular way. More specifically, variabilism holds that different individual lexical application conditions (individually essential metaphysical ways of being…

As the United States continues to grow with English language learners entering schools, teachers must focus on helping them improve their reading comprehension. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of vocabulary instruction implemented by teachers impedes the development of English language learners' reading comprehension. The purpose…