A comparison of adolescents\u27 ability to infer vocabulary meaning under two reading conditions

Learning new vocabulary once a child reaches adolescence is largely dependent on wide reading. Students who are already struggling with vocabulary comprehension will be less likely than their typically developing peers to learn new words through reading when the surrounding text is also unfamiliar. Perhaps providing students with multiple types of contextual support (graphic and textual) will facilitate bridging that comprehension gap. To examine this, the investigator will compare vocabulary comprehension of adolescents under two different contextual reading conditions. The subjects (n=30) will read a passage from a classic novel and will then read another passage from the graphic novel adaptation of that novel. Vocabulary words from the passages (several from each reading condition) will be identified as unfamiliar to the subjects prior to reading these passages. After reading each passage, each subject will complete a brief vocabulary probe testing his or her ability to infer the meaning from the context of the passage. Subjects will be divided into two groups and the reading conditions will be counterbalanced to minimize specific vocabulary word effects. The investigator hypothesizes that the meanings of more vocabulary words will be correctly inferred when presented under the graphic novel condition than under the text only condition. Differences in subjects’ abilities to infer the correct meanings of the selected vocabulary words under each reading condition will be analyzed and discussed. Implications for differential reading instruction for struggling adolescent readers will be addressed