Summer Reading: Predicting Adolescent Word Learning from Aptitude, Time Spent Reading, and Text Type

Joshua Fahey Lawrence

doi:10.1080/02702710802412008

Abstract

Mostly low-income African American and Hispanic teens (N = 192) were tested in (a) passage comprehension, (b) vocabulary ability, (c) cloze task performance, and (d) listening comprehension in the spring and vocabulary in the fall. Students were surveyed about reading (a) narrative, (b) expository, (c) teen culture, and (d) online texts. Interaction terms created by the product of cloze task scores with the time and frequency of student narrative and expository reading were both significant predictors of fall vocabulary. Online reading was popular but did not predict vocabulary gains. Teen culture reading predicted vocabulary loss. Text type and student profiles both play a role in predicting fall vocabulary scores from summer reading.

Highlights

Low-income African American and Hispanic teens (N = 192) were tested in (a) passage comprehension, (b) vocabulary ability, (c) cloze task performance, and (d) listening comprehension in the spring and vocabulary in the fall
Text type and student profiles both play a role in predicting fall vocabulary scores from summer reading
In this article I use an expansive definition of literacy that includes reading Web sites, E-mail, comic books, magazines, and music lyrics and use regression analysis to determine how time spent engaged in readings various text types predicts changes in academic vocabulary achievement

Summary

Introduction

In this article I use an expansive definition of literacy that includes reading Web sites, E-mail, comic books, magazines, and music lyrics and use regression analysis to determine how time spent engaged in readings various text types predicts changes in academic vocabulary achievement. Nagy, Herman, and Anderson (1985) were among the first to experimentally research how students learn new words when they encounter them in text. A subsequent meta-analysis of 19 experimental studies suggested that students learn about 15% of the new words they encounter in text (Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999). The present study addresses the specific skills that predict vocabulary achievement by examining aptitude-exposure interactions between a set of implicated reading subprocesses and the amount of time students spend reading various text types during the summer

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