A.
Specific Aims Models of reading have long considered vocabulary knowledge an important source of variation inreading comprehension, particularly as it affects higher-level language processes such asgrammatical processing and construction of schemata and text models (Adams & Collins, 1977; Chall,1987; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; see also the results of cross-project analyses cited in theResearch Overview above). More recently, vocabulary has taken an even more central role in modelsof reading as research uncovers its influence on earlier reading and reading-related skills, includingphonological, orthographic, and morphosyntactic processes (Anglin, 1993; Carlisle & Nomanbhoy1993; Muter & Diethelm, 2001; Verhallen & Schoonen, 1993; Wang & Geva, 2003). It is wellestablished that children who speak a language other than English at home lag behind theirmonolingual peers in vocabulary (Oiler, 2002) and that their rate of development is insufficient to closethe gap. Fourth grade outcomes for children in the Subproject 2 sample of the current ProgramProject indicated that they were performing well below grade level in oral language proficiency,scoring at the high first grade level on the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (WLPB) PictureVocabulary subtest. This is consistent with data from the National Center for Education Statistics(2003) that indicate fourth grade performance on the NAEP reading test shows a 22-29 point scalescore advantage for children living in homes where a language other than English was never usedcompared with children who lived in homes where a language other than English was always used.To address these issues, the proposed project will focus on the vocabulary development of Englishlanguagelearners (ELLs) in the early elementary grades. Our goals in Subproject 3 are to describeELLs' vocabulary knowledge (Study 1), and use that information to design and evaluate a series ofinterventions to improve students' vocabulary knowledge (Studies 2 and 3) to determine whichinstructional strategies are most effective for teaching which kinds of words.
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