Developing vocabulary to support writing: a study of EAL learner

Limited research exploring the writing process for EAL children, both within the UK context and internationally (Murphy, 2014), prompted this study of vocabulary development and use in narrative composition. The current dissertation details the stages of conducting an exploratory sequential mixed methods design, focusing on Year 4 second language learners in two West Midlands primary schools. The study placed significant importance on developing EAL children’s vocabulary depth to support written production, exploring teacher practice supplementing dictionary use within an intervention (Smith & Murphy, 2014; Webb & Nation, 2017). This study showed the positive effect of EAL pupils learning target vocabulary in formulaic chunks and set phrases, namely collocations or multi-word vocabulary (units), boosting language and literacy skills (Wray, 2002; 2008; Cameron & Besser, 2004). The findings propose the explicit teaching of thematic sets of formulaic phrases (Cameron & Besser, 2004) to support vocabulary acquisition for written production in a narrative composition, showing a marked development in cohesion and expression of creative ideas in text. The improvement is attributed to a blended, integrated and contextualized pedagogical approach, with frequent multi-modal exposure to target multi-word vocabulary (Lee & Muncie, 2006) aligning to the school curriculum content and design. The results suggest that specific instruction for EAL pupils to use target vocabulary in their writing (Lee & Muncie, 2006) led to greater control of sentence structure, showing elaboration and a sense of flair (Murphy, Kyriacou & Menon, 2015).