Vocabulary instruction and Mexican–American bilingual students: how two high school teachers integrate multiple strategies to build word consciousness in English language arts classrooms

Abstract

Despite the significance of vocabulary knowledge to student learning, limited studies have examined English language arts (ELA) teachers' skills and practices that may be effective for building word consciousness in high school Mexican–American bilingual students. The research objective of the present study is to examine how two high school ELA teachers use multiple strategies to build word consciousness in Mexican–American bilingual students. The study was conducted over 16 weeks. The sources of data were classroom observations, classroom videos, interviews, field notes, and teaching artifacts. The findings showed that the teachers integrated a variety of teaching strategies, including word analysis, cognate use, explicit scaffolding, online word search strategies, visual imaging, semantic mapping, and semantic feature analysis to connect instruction to background knowledge of their Mexican–American bilingual students and foster word consciousness in them. The findings suggest that it is crucially important that ELA teachers use multiple teaching strategies to make connections between vocabulary instruction and background knowledge that students bring from home and communities.