ERIC Number: EJ1478103
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jul
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0034-0553
EISSN: EISSN-1936-2722
Available Date: 2025-06-11
How Much Should I Read? An Analysis of Word Learning Opportunities in Children's Novels
Zuowei Wang1; Tenaha O'Reilly1; Michael Flor1; Beata Beigman Klebanov1; Kelly Bruce2
Reading Research Quarterly, v60 n3 e70025 2025
With only about a third of students in US public schools achieving the NAEP Proficient level, many educators believe students are not getting enough reading practice. However, how much reading practice is enough? This study quantifies the relationship between the amount of book reading and the expected number of words learned. We collected 45 children's novels, M(Lexile) = 994 L, or Grade 6, and assembled a corpus of 3.2 million words. When reading a book from the corpus, sixth graders would on average encounter over 1000 word types above their grade level. We estimated that they could learn about 300 of these words, based on word repetitions and literature on incidental word learning. Through simulation, we demonstrated that sixth graders would need to read half a million words from the corpus to learn 2000 words incidentally. The implications for using book reading to promote vocabulary growth are discussed.
Descriptors: Novels, Childrens Literature, Reading Achievement, Recreational Reading, Grade 6, Vocabulary Development, Incidental Learning, Learning Processes, Reading Processes, Word Frequency, Simulation, Computational Linguistics
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 6; Intermediate Grades; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1ETS Research Institute, Princeton, New Jersey, USA; 2Retired from ETS, Princeton, New Jersey, USA