Strategy use and metalinguistic awareness in vocabulary learning while reading: two microgenetic case studies of fifth grade readers

UnrestrictedGenerating both qualitative and quantitative data, this study examined the strategies and metalinguistic knowledge displayed by two at-risk fifth grade readers using verbal, think-aloud reports analyzed from the perspective of microdevelopment. Readers identified unfamiliar words as they read from A Wrinkle in Time for seven thirty-minute sessions and for one thirty-minute session from an Open Court Reading selection. Both readers received declarative and procedural scaffolding as they read individually with the investigator. However, one of the readers received 38% more scaffolding then the other. From the perspective of microdevelopment, the reader who received more scaffolding presented greater points of instability over the course of the eight think-alouds. At the same time, this reader developed a more adaptive stance towards the definition task, and showed an improved ability to derive the meanings of unfamiliar words from text. First and second half comparisons showed that while the reader who received far less scaffolding showed a greater uptake of different types of metalinguistic awareness, the reader who demonstrated a reduced amount of uptake of metalinguistic awareness from the scaffolding was nonetheless able to learn more about unfamiliar words in the second half of the study than in the first half, while the reader who showed a greater uptake progressed in a more linear fashion. The reader who achieved a more adaptive stance towards the definition task showed an improved ability to use contextual information to constrain the meanings of unfamiliar words, reread more often, and demonstrated an emergent ability to integrate the use of several different word learning strategies.; Both readers experienced difficulty with morphological analysis, or examining words at the word-level, and features of decontextualized text, such as character dialogue, author's intent with word choice, the development of characters by the author and with the mood or tone conveyed by the author. However, both readers developed a greater ability to use multiple hypotheses for deriving the meanings of unfamiliar words, and displayed greater knowledge about the nuanced meanings of words in context. This study addressed the National Reading Panel's concern over our lack of knowledge regarding the balance between direct and indirect approaches for learning words while reading. In the present study, the reader who received more scaffolding, or guided practice and instructional input, progressed at a more desirable rate, whereas the reader receiving less guidance, made modest gains in the development of skills involved with deriving the meanings of unknown words. As both readers experienced difficultywith the transfer of skills to a different text, additional research is required to examine how readers function under different reading situations and on the lasting effects that scaffolding might have. Several conclusions from the results of this study were drawn. Namely, that while studies on incidental word learning have shown that students tend to learn something about the unfamiliar words that they encounter while reading, that at-risk students benefit from instructional input, and might learn less about words as they read independently in the absence of such input. Concern over Matthew effects, and the necessity of voluminous amounts of reading for learning words incidentally, further corroborates these conclusions. However, the ability of the reader who received more scaffolding to achieve an adaptive stance towards the definition task rather quickly indicates that readers might become effective word learners when reading on their own with very little instruction.; From this perspective, independent reading for deriving the meanings of unfamiliar words is potentially a great avenue for vocabulary acquisition for even struggling readers. A model for making instructional decisions regarding derivationprocesses is proposed