Vocabulary Instruction and Children's Comprehension of Basal Stories

Abstract

THE PURPOSE of this research was to determine the effects of preteaching vocabulary of differing levels of importance to a text using two different methods of instruction on children's comprehension of basal stories. One hundred and twenty average and above-average fifthgrade readers participated in two group sessions. During the first session, small groups of subjects received a vocabulary lesson on one set of five words (central or noncentral), using one of two methods of instruction (dictionary or concept) for one of two stories. Twenty-four hours later the second session was held, and two comprehension measures (recall and questions) and two vocabulary measures (definition and example) were administered. The results of the word-level treatment indicated that preteaching unfamiliar vocabulary enhanced children's comprehension of story ideas that were related to the instructed vocabulary regardless of level of importance. The results of the instructional method treatment were unclear due to interactions with story. The results also suggested that comprehension questions designed to evaluate students' understanding of story ideas that were related to the instructed vocabulary provided a more sensitive measure of children's comprehension than a general recall measure.