Does Rare Vocabulary Use Distinguish Giftedness From Typical Development? A Study of School-Age African American Narrators.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine rare vocabulary produced in the spoken narratives of school-age African American children.

Method: Forty-three children from general and gifted classrooms produced 2 narratives: a personal story and a fictional story that was based on the wordless book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). The Wordlist for Expressive Rare Vocabulary Evaluation (Mahurin-Smith, DeThorne, & Petrill, 2015) was used to tally number and type of uncommon words produced in these narratives.

Does language learning disability in school-age children affect semantic word learning when reading?

Purpose: The study was undertaken to determine how position of informative context, rate of word presentation and part of speech impacted novel word learning during reading in children with language learning disability.

Method: Children with language learning disability (LLD; n = 13), age-matched peers (n = 13) and vocabulary-matched peers (n = 13) read four narrative passages containing 10 nouns and 10 verbs. Informative context provided clues to word meanings and was either adjacent or non-adjacent to the target words.

Learning word meanings during reading: effects of phonological and semantic cues on children with language impairment.

Phonological and semantic deficits in spoken word learning have been documented in children with language impairment (LI), and cues that address these deficits have been shown to improve their word learning performance. However, the effects of such cues on word learning during reading remain largely unexplored. This study investigated whether (a) control, (b) phonological, (c) semantic, and (d) combined phonological-semantic conditions affected semantic word learning during reading in 9- to 11-year-old children with LI (n = 12) and with typical language (TL, n = 11) from low-income backgrounds.

Vocabulary Intervention for School-age Children with Language Impairment: A Review of Evidence and Good Practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence to support direct vocabulary intervention practices for primary school-age children with language impairment (LI). A rationale for providing direct vocabulary intervention for children with LI is outlined by reviewing typical and atypical vocabulary acquisition, evidence of instructional strategies from research in mainstream and special education is summarised, and suggestions for vocabulary intervention activities that facilitate deep word knowledge are provided. Suggestions for choosing appropriate vocabulary, using strategies during direct intervention, and conducting activities that increase depth of vocabulary knowledge are included.

Learning word meanings during reading by children with language learning disability and typically-developing peers.

This study investigated whether children with language learning disability (LLD) differed from typically-developing peers in their ability to learn meanings of novel words presented during reading. Fifteen 9-11-year-old children with LLD and 15 typically-developing peers read four passages containing 20 nonsense words. Word learning was assessed through oral definition and multiple-choice tasks.