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Comparing vocabulary development in Spanish-
and Chinese-speaking ELLs: the effects
of metalinguistic and sociocultural factors
Xi Chen ·Gloria Ramirez ·Yang C. Luo ·
Esther Geva ·Yu-Min Ku
©Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract This study evaluated the impact of two metalinguistic factors, English
derivational awareness and English–Spanish cognate awareness, and the impact of
two sociocultural factors, maternal education and children’s length of residence in
Canada, on English Language Learners (ELLs)’ vocabulary knowledge. The par-
ticipants of the study were 89 Spanish-speaking ELLs, 77 Chinese-speaking ELLs,
and a comparison group of 78 monolingual English-speaking children in Grades 4
and 7. The sample included both first-generation (born outside of Canada) and
second generation (born in Canada) immigrant children. The study yielded several
important findings. First, it confirmed the strong link between derivational aware-
ness and vocabulary knowledge observed in the previous research, and extended this
relationship to two groups of ELLs from different first language backgrounds.
Second, this study unveiled differences in vocabulary learning between Spanish-
speaking and Chinese-speaking ELLs. While Spanish-speaking children were able
to utilize the cognate strategy to learn English words, this strategy was not available
for Chinese-speaking ELLs. With respect to the sociocultural factors, length of
residence in Canada was significantly related to ELLs’ vocabulary development.
Interestingly, length of residence in Canada only influenced the development of
noncognate vocabulary, but not cognate vocabulary, in Spanish-speaking ELLs,
which provides additional evidence for these children’s use of the cognate strategy.
X. Chen (&) · Y. C. Luo · E. Geva
Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West,
9-221, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
e-mail: xchenbumgardner@gmail.com
G. Ramirez
Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada
Y.-M. Ku
National Central University, Jhongli City, Taiwan
123
Read Writ
DOI 10.1007/s11145-011-9318-7
Finally, maternal education was not related to English vocabulary development. The
theoretical and educational implications of these findings were discussed.
Keywords Vocabulary · English language learner (ELL) ·
Morphological awareness · Cognate awareness · Length of residence ·
Maternal education
Introduction
Vocabulary is a great challenge in literacy development for language minority
children across different societies (e.g., Carlo et al., 2004; Droop & Verhoeven,
2003; Jean & Geva, 2009; Verhallen & Schoonen, 1993). In English-speaking
countries, children who are native speakers of English have already learned 5,000–
7,000 words by the time they enter primary school (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001). In
comparison, the number of English words English Language Learners (ELLs) know
is significantly lower (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow 2005; Cunningham &
Allington, 2009; Jean & Geva, 2009; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; Umbel,
Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller, 1992). Umbel et al. (1992) found that even Spanish-
speaking ELLs from middle to high socioeconomic status (SES) scored below the
mean of the norming sample on receptive vocabulary in first grade. According to
Cummins (2000), it usually takes ELLs 7–10 years to catch up with their peers in
academic vocabulary. However, some ELLs may still lag behind even after an
extended period of schooling in an English mainstream classroom (Geva & Farnia,
2009). A serious consequence of the delay in vocabulary development is that ELLs
are less able to comprehend text at the grade level than native speakers of English
(August et al., 2005).
Research has uncovered several factors that facilitate children’s vocabulary
development. One such factor is morphological awareness, the ability to recognize
that words can be segmented into smaller units of meaning (Carlisle, 1995). While
the importance of morphological awareness for vocabulary learning is well-
documented in English monolingual children (Anglin, 1993; Nagy, Beringer, &
Abbott, 2006; Nagy & Scott, 2000; White, Power, & White, 1989; Wysocki &
Jenkins, 1987), few studies have examined this relationship in ELLs. In the present
study, we investigated the contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary in
Spanish-speaking ELLs and Chinese-speaking ELLs. Another factor that influences
ELLs’ vocabulary is cognate awareness. There is preliminary evidence that cognate
awareness facilitates English vocabulary learning in Spanish-speaking ELLs (Carlo
et al., 2004; Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994; Nagy, Garcia, Durgunoglu, & Hancin-
Bhatt, 1993). However, cognate awareness is not universal to all ELLs. Chinese-
speaking ELLs do not have opportunities to develop cognate awareness, due to the
fact that Chinese and English do not share any cognates. Using Chinese-speaking
ELLs as a baseline, the present study sought to investigate whether cognate
awareness would enhance vocabulary learning in Spanish-speaking ELLs.
In addition to metalinguistic factors, the present study also explored the effects of
two sociocultural factors, length of residence in Canada and maternal education,
X. Chen et al.
123
on ELLs’ vocabulary learning, as a number of reports have documented the
importance of these factors in the literacy development of language minority
students (Golberg, Paradis, & Crago, 2008; Jia, 1998; Lesaux & Geva, 2006).
Traditionally, researchers have examined the vocabulary development of ELLs
from either a psycholinguistic or a sociocultural perspective. Since research
evidence has shown that both psycholinguistic and sociocultural factors play a role
in ELLs’ vocabulary development, we integrate the two paradigms in the present
study to provide a more comprehensive picture.
Morphological awareness and vocabulary
In this study we focused on one specific aspect of morphological awareness—
derivational awareness. Spanish and English share many common features in
derivational morphology. In both languages, derivational suffixes often change the
syntactic property and meaning of a word, e.g., communicate–communication,in
English, and comunicar –comunicacio
´n, in Spanish. There are restrictions in terms
of the syntactic category to which a derivational suffix can attach. For example, in
English, the suffix –ize converts an adjectives to a verb, and -yturns a noun into an
adjective (Tyler & Nagy, 1989); in Spanish the suffix –oso converts a noun into an
adjective, and –ción changes a verb into a noun. Furthermore, Spanish and English
share a number of derivational suffixes from Greek and Latin origin, e.g., –al in
environmental in English and ambiental in Spanish.
In contrast, compound morphology predominates in Chinese vocabulary
(Packard, 2000). Over 70% of Chinese words are compound words formed by
combining two root words (Xing, 2006), e.g., 猪肉/zhu1rou4/(pig meat/pork),
花瓶/hua1ping2/(flower bottle/vase). The number of derivational morphemes is
considerably smaller in Chinese than in the typical Indo-European language (Li &
Thompson, 1981). Although rules have been proposed to distinguish between roots
and derivational suffixes in Chinese (Packard 2000), the two types of morphemes
can still be easily confused, even by a native speaker who does not specialize in
linguistics.
1
For example, 员/yuan/(person whose job is X) in 教员/jiao4yuan2/
(teach person/instructor) is a bound root, whereas 者/zhe3/(person who does X) in
自愿者/zhi1yuan4zhe3/(“self desire person”/volunteer) is a derivational suffix.
There are at least two ways in which derivational awareness facilitates
vocabulary learning. First, understanding the structure of derived words helps
children extract the meaning of these words from constituent morphemes. When
children encounter an unknown derived word, e.g., friendliness, they are often
familiar enough with the root morpheme, e.g., friend, to make a reasonable guess
about the word meaning (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Further, derivational suffixes
determine the syntactic property of derived words. Knowledge of their syntactic and
distributional properties enable children to understand and produce new vocabulary
more effectively, particularly in sentence contexts (Carlisle, 2007; Mahony, 1994;
1
According to Packard (2000), there are at least two criteria that can be used to distinguish between
bound roots and derivational suffixes in Chinese: (1) derivational affixes are more general in meaning
than bound roots, and (2) derivational suffixes are more productive than bound roots.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
Tyler & Nagy, 1989). For example, the suffix –ize signifies that a derived word is a
verb. With this knowledge, children may be able to figure out the exact meaning of
categorize provided that the root morpheme category is known.
Research has shown that the ability to perform morphological analysis facilitates
vocabulary learning in children who are native speakers of English (Anglin 1993;
Freyd & Baron, 1982; Reed, 2008; Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987). This ability develops
with age and reading experience and is more evident in children in grade four and
above (Carlisle, 2000). Many studies have found that derivational awareness
explains unique variance in vocabulary and reading comprehension after controlling
for other reading related variables such as nonverbal skills, phonological awareness,
and word reading (Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Deacon & Kirby, 2004;
Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006). For
example, Carlisle and Fleming (2003) observed in a longitudinal study that third
graders’ derivational awareness was predictive of their vocabulary 2 years later.
Similarly, Nagy et al. (2006) found that derivational awareness made a unique
contribution to vocabulary in children ranging from grade four to grade nine. They
also observed that derivational awareness and vocabulary were so closely associated
in some subgroups of children that the contribution of derivational awareness to
reading comprehension in these groups was mediated through vocabulary (e.g.,
Nagy et al. 2006).
In fact, the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary is
likely to be reciprocal in nature. It appears that vocabulary forms the foundation for
developing morphological awareness (Hao, Chen, Dronjic, Shu, & Anderson, in
press; Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007). For example, Nicoladis et al. (2007)
showed that for French–English bilingual children between the ages of 4 and
6 years, mastery of past tense morphology in both languages corresponded to type
and token frequency of the verbs they were exposed to. Hao et al. (in press)
demonstrated that Chinese children in kindergarten were better at identifying the
shared morpheme in two compound words when word meanings were closely
related. On the other hand, a number of intervention studies have found that training
on different aspects of morphological awareness led to improved vocabulary,
reading or writing skills, suggesting a causal connection between morphological
awareness and literacy (Carlo et al., 2004; Chow, McBride-Chang, Cheung, &
Chow, 2008; Nunes, Bryant, & Olsson, 2003).
Due to lack of systematic research, much less is known about the role of
derivational awareness in vocabulary development among ELLs. Only several studies
have been conducted in this area. Kieffer and Lesaux (2008) followed Spanish-
speaking ELLs from grade four to grade five. The researchers observed strong
associations between English derivational awareness, English vocabulary, and
English reading comprehension in each grade. However, grade four derivational
awareness did not make a unique contribution to grade five reading comprehension
after vocabulary and word reading were controlled for. The contribution of
derivational awareness to vocabulary and reading comprehension has also been
observed in Chinese-speaking ELLs. In a more recent 1-year longitudinal study, Lam,
Chen, Geva, Luo, and Li (accepted) showed that for Chinese-speaking ELLs in Grade
1, English derivational awareness accounted for unique variance not only in
X. Chen et al.
123
concurrent English vocabulary, but also in subsequent English vocabulary and
English reading comprehension a year later. These findings suggest that English
derivational awareness is important for English vocabulary learning in young ELLs
who speak Chinese as their first language, despite the fact that Chinese has few
derived words.
Cognate awareness and vocabulary
Cognates are words in different languages that are of a common historical origin
(Whitley 2002). Cognates are often similar in pronunciation, spelling and meaning.
For example, the English word advance is avance in Spanish and avancer in French.
Following previous research (Cunningham & Graham, 2000; Malabonga, Kenyon,
Carlo, August, & Louguit, 2008; Nagy et al., 1993), we define cognate awareness as
the ability to recognize the cognate relationship between words in two languages.
Cognate awareness is a metalinguistic understanding because it requires children to
reflect on the lexical relationship between two languages.
There are several reasons why English–Spanish cognate awareness facilitates
vocabulary learning for Spanish-speaking ELLs. Spanish and English share a large
number of cognates, estimated at 10,000–15,000 words, which account for one-third
to one-half of an educated person’s active vocabulary (Nash, 1997). In many cases,
cognate words in Spanish and English are identical in spelling and meaning, e.g.,
vision,personal,fundamental. Even when there are spelling differences across the
two languages, changes are often small and predictable, e.g., action-acción, nation-
nación, curious-curioso, delicious-delicioso. As a result, it is relatively easy to guess
the meaning of an English word when its Spanish cognate is known. However,
unlike derivational awareness, which has been shown to enhance vocabulary
learning in ELLs from different first language backgrounds (Kieffer & Lesaux,
2008; Lam et al., accepted), cognate awareness only develops in ELLs whose first
language is etymologically related to English. Chinese and English do not have any
cognates, rendering it impossible for Chinese-speaking ELLs to take advantage of
the cognate strategy in learning English vocabulary.
It is not clear when Spanish-speaking ELLs first become aware of cognates, since
most previous studies on cognate awareness involved children in Grade 4 and
above. Based on available evidence, relatively balanced Spanish–English bilinguals
have developed a reasonable level of cognate awareness by grade four and this
awareness increases with grade level (e.g., Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994). On the
other hand, there are large individual differences in cognate awareness even in older
children (Garcia & Nagy, 1993). Garcia (1988,1991) observed that some Spanish-
speaking ELLs in Grades 5 and 6 were still not able to identify obvious cognates
between English and Spanish. Since all the Hispanic children in the sample were
enrolled in English only classes, it is possible that the Spanish proficiency of these
students was not sufficiently developed to reap the benefits of cognates. Taken
together, degree of bilingualism appears to be a key factor that affects Spanish-
speaking ELLs’ cognate awareness. According to Nagy et al. (1993), additional
factors may include L1 proficiency, orthographic and phonetic similarity, and
knowledge of derivational morphology.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
While it is widely recognized that cognate awareness facilitates vocabulary
learning in adult second language learners (e.g., Bellomo, 1999; Hammond &
Simmons, 1987; Moss, 1992), only a small number of studies has explored this
relationship in ELL children. Employing the think-aloud protocol, Jime
´nez, Garcia,
and Pearson (1996) reported that sixth and seventh grade Spanish-speaking ELLs
who were successful readers used cognate strategies to understand English narrative
and expository passages. Nagy et al. (1993) showed that for Spanish-speaking ELLs
in grades four, five, and six, the ability to identify English words with Spanish
cognates while reading passages predicted their understanding of the meaning of
these words. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between Spanish
vocabulary and knowledge of English words with Spanish cognates words in
children who were adept at identifying cognates, but not in children who recognized
few cognates. This finding suggests that cognate awareness is the key to using
Spanish lexical knowledge in English vocabulary learning.
Proctor and Mo (2009) compared the performance of 16 English monolingual
students and 14 Spanish–English bilingual students in grade four on an English
vocabulary test consisting of both cognate and non-cognate items. Although the two
groups of children did not perform differently in either cognate or overall
vocabulary, the Spanish–English bilinguals demonstrated a significantly higher
correct cognate-to-total-ratio, which was taken as evidence that cognate awareness
helps bilingual Spanish–English students narrow the gap in vocabulary develop-
ment. Spanish–English bilinguals’ cognate awareness, however, might have been
underestimated because the sample was composed of poor readers participating in a
reading intervention. A study involving typically developing Spanish-speaking
children is likely to yield stronger results. In addition, the sample size of Proctor and
Mo (2009) was quite small, which undermines the generalizability of the results.
These limitations point to the need for more research in this area.
Sociocultural factors and vocabulary
In addition to the metalinguistic factors, the present study explored the impact of
two sociocultural factors, maternal education and length of residence in Canada, on
ELLs’ vocabulary development. Maternal education is considered a proxy to SES
(Lucchese & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007). This and other related SES variables have
been shown to influence children’s vocabulary development (Conger, McCarthy,
Yang, Lahey, & Kropp, 1984; McLoyd, 1990; Hart & Risley, 1995). Parents with
higher levels of education are known to provide better quality social, human, and
economic resources to their children (USDE NCES, 2001 cited in Lucchese &
Tamis-LeMonda, 2007), which positively impacts home language and literacy
experiences.
Variations in vocabulary acquisition among ELLs have also been attributed to
sociocultural variables (Cobo-Lewis, Pearson, Eilers, & Umbel, 2002; Goldenberg,
Rueda, & August, 2006; Lesaux & Geva, 2006). Cobo-Lewis et al. (2002) reported
that Spanish-speaking children from higher SES families achieved a higher level of
English vocabulary than those from lower SES families. Goldenberg et al. (2006)
X. Chen et al.
123
identified maternal education as the best predictor of vocabulary growth in a
longitudinal study that followed 5-year-old ELLs for 2 years. In a synthesis on
literacy development in language minority students, Lesaux and Geva (2006)
concluded that sociocultural factors such as parental education level and home
literacy affect these children’s second language reading comprehension.
Notably there is often a disassociation between parental education and family
income in immigrant families (Louie, 2004). In Canada, the average education level
of certain immigrant groups is higher than the rest of Canadians, whereas the
income of immigrants, particularly recent immigrants, is below average (Statistics
Canada, 2008). Since maternal education is more likely to reflect the quality of
language interaction and literacy practices in immigrant populations, we focused on
the effect of maternal education on vocabulary learning in the present study. We
expected that ELLs whose parents had a higher level of education would develop
more advanced English vocabulary.
In addition to SES factors, the amount of language input contributes to
vocabulary development both before and after children begin to receive literacy
instruction (Biemiller, 1999; Tomasello, 2003; Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002).
For ELLs, age of arrival/length of residence in the new country is an important
indicator of English language exposure and influences ELLs’ English proficiency
(Jia, 1998). It is estimated that a minimum of 5 years is needed for ELLs to catch up
in academic vocabulary with their English monolingual peers (Collier, 1987,1989;
Collier & Thomas, 1988,1989; Cummins, 1994). In a recent study, Ramirez, Chen,
Geva, and Luo (2011) reported that length of residence in Canada significantly
predicted English derivational awareness in Spanish- and Chinese-speaking ELLs in
Grades 4 and 7. Due to the close relationship between derivational awareness and
vocabulary, it is likely that length of residence is also a significant predictor of
English vocabulary for these children.
The present study
To reiterate, the present study investigated the role of two metalinguistic factors,
English derivational awareness and English–Spanish cognate awareness, and two
sociocultural factors, maternal education and length of residence in Canada, in
English vocabulary development in ELLs from Spanish-speaking and Chinese-
speaking backgrounds. To our knowledge, it is one of the first studies that integrate
cognitive and sociocultural factors in studying children’s literacy development. As
previously noted, since cognitive and sociocultural factors have been shown to
contribute to children’s literacy development separately, it is desirable to combine
the two to provide a more comprehensive framework. Our study is also one of the
first to include ELLs from two different first language backgrounds, in attempts to
better represent this diverse population, and to reveal the similarities and differences
in vocabulary development in different groups of ELLs.
The participants of the present study were Spanish-speaking and Chinese-
speaking ELLs, and monolingual children who were native speakers of English in
Grades 4 and 7. The monolingual children were included to provide a baseline for
the comparisons. We targeted children in upper elementary and middle school for
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
several reasons. First, research examining ELLs’ vocabulary development in these
age groups is scarce and thereby is much needed. Second, Grade 4 is considered a
critical turning point in literacy development from learning to read to reading to
learn (Chall, 1983). Starting in Grade 4, there is a dramatic increment in
morphologically complex words in the reading materials of content areas (Anglin,
1993; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). Thus, derivational awareness may play an important
role in vocabulary development in these age groups. Furthermore, most previous
studies on cognate awareness have examined children in Grade 4 and above (e.g.,
Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994) because older children are more likely to have the
proficiency levels required in L1 and L2 to use the strategy.
We had several predictions based on previous research. We anticipated that
derivational awareness would significantly predict vocabulary in both Spanish-
speaking and Chinese-speaking ELLs. We examined this hypothesis with regression
analyses, in which we controlled for phonological awareness and word reading due
to their importance for literacy development, in addition to controlling for age,
grade, and nonverbal ability. We were also interested in exploring whether there
would be a difference in the strength of the association between derivational
awareness and vocabulary in the two groups of ELLs, reflecting the influence of the
morphological features of each group’s first language. With respect to cognate
awareness, we expected that it would enhance English vocabulary learning in
Spanish-speaking ELLs. This hypothesis was examined by comparing Spanish-
speaking and Chinese-speaking ELLs’ performance on cognate versus noncognate
items selected from the PPVT test. We predicted that Spanish-speaking ELLs would
outperform their Chinese-speaking peers on English words with Spanish cognates,
whereas the two groups would perform more similarly on English only words.
We also expected to see the impact of the two sociocultral factors on ELLs’
vocabulary development. Both maternal education and length of residence in
Canada should be positively related to ELLs’ vocabulary development. The effect
of length of residence, however, may vary depending on children’s first language
background and type of vocabulary. Length of residence may have a smaller effect
on cognate vocabulary in Spanish-speaking ELLs because they can transfer
vocabulary knowledge from Spanish to learn these words. The effect may be larger
on noncognate vocabulary for Spanish-speaking ELLs, and on both types of
vocabulary for Chinese-speaking ELLs. These observations, if confirmed, would
demonstrate an interaction between the cognitive and sociocultural factors.
Method
Participants
Participants of the study included 260 fourth and seventh graders from 22 schools
located in a large multicultural Canadian city. The children were participating as a
part of a larger study on bilingual reading development. Eight children were
excluded from the sample because they scored below the 10th percentile on
nonverbal reasoning or had a known learning disability. Eight children were
X. Chen et al.
123
excluded because they had resided in Canada for less than 2 years. The final sample
included 244 children, of which 42% were boys and 58% were girls. There were 89
Spanish-speaking ELLs (39 fourth graders, 20 girls; 50 seventh graders, 25 girls), 77
Chinese-speaking ELLs (36 fourth graders, 22 girls; 41 seventh graders, 21 girls),
and 78 monolingual English-speaking children (39 in each grade, 24 girls in Grade 4
and 25 girls in Grade 7). English was the language of instruction for all the children.
The mean age by grade for each group of children is reported in Table 1.
According to the family questionnaire (see Measures for more information about
this instrument), 48% of the Spanish-speaking children were born outside Canada.
These children came from 13 different Latin-American countries. Eighty-three
percent of the Chinese children were born outside Canada and the majority came
from Mainland China. The age of arrival in Canada ranged from 14 to 111 months
for the Spanish-speaking ELLs (M=31.58 months, SD =41.2) and from 2 to
120 months for the Chinese-speaking ELLs (M=80 months, SD =34.9). On
average, the Spanish-speaking ELLs have lived in Canada for 104 months
(M=94.79 months for the fourth graders and M=112.42 months for the seventh
graders). The Chinese-speaking ELLs have lived in Canada for 63 months
(M=73.47 months for the fourth graders and M=53.86 months for the seventh
graders). Approximately 75% of the Spanish-speaking ELLs and 65% of the
Chinese-speaking ELLs used first language to communicate with their parents at
home. About 48% of the Spanish-speaking ELLs and 87% of the Chinese-speaking
attended heritage language classes offered at no cost by their school boards for
2.5 hours per week. The average maternal education was high school for the
Spanish-speaking ELLs, and college for the monolinguals and the Chinese-speaking
ELLs. The demographic information is summarized in Table 1.
Measures
Family questionnaire
A family questionnaire was designed by the researchers to collect information about
home language use, immigration experience, and parental education. The
questionnaire was provided in both English and the child’s first language, and
parents completed the questionnaire in their preferred language. Maternal education
and length of residence in Canada were two variables used in subsequent data
analyses. Parents were asked to indicate their education level on a 1 to 6 Likert
scale, where 1 =primary school, 2 =junior high school, 3 =high school,
4=college, 5 =university degree, 6 =graduate degree.
Nonverbal reasoning
Nonverbal ability was measured with the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices
(Raven, 1958; Raven, Raven, & Court, 2000). This test requires the child to
complete visual-spatial matrixes by choosing the missing piece from six or eight
patterned segments. This test has 60 items.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
Table 1 Means and standard deviations for all measures for Spanish-speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking ELLs, and monolinguals
Measures Spanish-speaking ELLs Chinese-speaking ELLs Monolinguals
Grade 4
n=39
20 female
Grade 7
n=50
25 female
Combined Grade 4
n=36
22 female
Grade 7
n=41
21 female
Combined Grade 4
n=39
24 female
Grade 7
n=39
25 female
Combined
Demographic/sociocultural variables
Age in months 117.26 (3.80) 150.76 (5.56) 136.08 (17.41) 114.58 (5.05) 150.78 (4.04) 133.86 (18.73) 116.31 (4.67) 150.69 (4.80) 133.50 (17.93)
Maternal
education
a
3.41 (1.18) 3.09 (1.19) 3.23 (1.19) 4.43 (1.35) 4.51 (1.11) 4.47 (1.22) 4.55 (1.02) 3.94 (1.25) 4.24 (1.17)
Months in Canada 94.79 (29.83) 112.42 (49.93) 104.25 (42.52) 73.47 (33.44) 53.86 (38.79) 63.25 (37.39) N/A N/A N/A
Nonverbal ability 6.11 (12.19) 68.00 (10.16) 62.79 (12.52) 74.95 (10.39) 80.46 (10.29) 77.88 (10.63) 65.64 (10.47) 74.19 (10.94) 69.91 (11.47)
Metalinguistic/literacy variables
Phonological
awareness
b
9.69 (3.21) 8.66 (3.17) 9.11 (3.21) 10.31 (3.12) 8.22 (3.40) 9.19 (3.41) 10.74 (2.76) 9.67 (3.05) 10.21 (2.94)
Morphological
production
62.11 (15.09) 69.70 (19.64) 66.38 (18.10) 64.09 (23.65) 63.32 (29.52) 63.68 (26.77) 72.55 (10.53) 83.38 (12.45) 77.97 (12.68)
Morphological
structure
67.05 (17.16) 73.10 (19.45) 70.45 (18.63) 72.50 (20.82) 72.32 (24.59) 72.40 (22.76) 76.54 (13.96) 84.23 (14.98) 80.38 (14.90)
Word reading 68.49 (9.84) 79.63 (8.81) 74.75 (10.77) 71.09 (14.39) 74.90 (13.29) 73.12 (13.86) 74.76 (10.55) 82.35 (9.37) 78.56 (10.62)
Vocabulary 62.99 (7.66) 69.63 (9.33) 66.72 (9.21) 66.34 (11.70) 65.24 (15.08) 65.76 (13.53) 73.12 (6.94) 78.03 (6.26) 75.58 (7.03)
Reading
comprehension
61.25 (10.14) 67.22 (11.45) 64.61 (11.23) 69.60 (16.17) 72.70 (17.04) 71.25 (16.60) 76.57 (9.70) 80.77 (12.85) 78.67 (11.51)
a
Maternal education was measured on a 1–6 scale, where 1 =primary school, 2 =junior high school, 3 =high school, 4 =college, 5 =university degree, 6 =graduate
degree
b
Phonological awareness is reported in standard scores
X. Chen et al.
123
Phonological awareness
This skill was measured using the Elision subtest of the Complete Test of
Phonological Processing (CTOPP) (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999). Children
were asked to delete phonemes (individual sound) from words and give the
remaining part. For example, say cat, now say it without /k/. The test contains 5
practice items and 20 test items involving initial, middle and last phoneme deletion.
The test was discontinued after three consecutive errors.
Word reading
The Letter-Word Identification subtest from the Woodcock Language Proficiency
Battery (Woodcock, 1984) was used to assess word recognition skills. Children
were required to read 62 words of increasing difficulty. The test was discontinued if
the child incorrectly read 6 words in a row.
Morphological production
Adapted from Carlisle (2000), this test evaluated the ability to manipulate
derivational suffixes. The child was presented orally with a target word e.g.,
magic, followed by an incomplete sentence, e.g., The performer was a good__.
The child was then requested to complete the sentence orally with the proper
derived form of the target word, e.g., magician. There were three practice items
and 25 test items. The inter-item reliability was α=.84 for the Spanish-speaking
ELLs, α=.94 for the Chinese-speaking ELLs, and α=.75 for the English-
speaking monolinguals.
Morphological structure
Adapted from Singson, Mahony, and Mann (2000), this measure assessed the
sensitivity to syntactic properties of derivational suffixes in English. The child was
asked to complete a sentence with a missing word by choosing from four words with
the same stem but different derivational suffixes. Half of the test used low-
frequency real words for the answer options, for example, He likes to __ (gratify,
gratuity, grateful, gratification)his desires. To reduce the effect of vocabulary
knowledge, the remaining half offered pseudo word options consisting of a fake root
with a real suffix, for example, What a completely __ (tribacious, tribaism, tribacize,
tribation)idea. The test was administered in an oral plus written format to reduce
the effect of reading ability and to minimize memory load. Children received a
booklet containing instructions, two practice items, and 20 test items. An
experimenter read each sentence four times, each time with one of the options,
while children read silently along with the experimenter and circled the word that
best completed the sentence. The inter-item reliability was α=.77 for the Spanish-
speaking ELLs, α=.86 for the Chinese-speaking ELLs, and α=.72 for the
English-speaking monolinguals.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
Vocabulary
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition, Form III A (PPVT-III A) (Dunn &
Dunn, 1997) was used to assess children’s oral vocabulary. To save testing time,
every third item from the original test was selected to create a shortened version of
60 items. This test was conducted in a group format in which all 60 items were
administered. Each child received a booklet with pictures depicting the four options
for each test item and a scoring sheet. The experimenter read each item twice and
children selected the picture that represented the word heard. The inter-item
reliability was α=.77 for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, α=.89 for the Chinese-
speaking ELLs, and α=.68 for the English-speaking monolinguals.
To examine Spanish-speaking ELLs’ cognate awareness, we divided the 60 items
in the vocabulary test into English words with Spanish cognates, e.g., indigent-
indigente and words that are unique to English, e.g., awarding. The 60 items
consisted of 35 cognates and 25 non-cognates. In the next step, 24 cognate and 24
noncognate items matched on frequency were selected for further analysis. The
frequency index we employed was the Standard Frequency Index (SFI) values in the
Educator’s Word Frequency Guide (EWFG, for more details, see Zeno, Ivens,
Millard, & Duvvuri, 1995). A t test revealed no significant difference in frequency
between the two types of words, t(46) =1.26, n.s. The inter-item reliability was
α=.76 for cognate items and α=.70 for noncognate items. The list of the selected
cognate and non-cognate items is provided in the Appendix.
Procedure
The participants were assessed in a quiet room at their schools during school hours.
The two morphological awareness tests and the word reading test were administered
individually in one 30–45 min session. All the other tests were administered in
groups of 5–15 children under the supervision of two to three trained research
assistants in two group-testing sessions of about 60 min each. Testing at each school
was completed within a period of 2–3 weeks.
Results
The means and standard deviations of all measures are displayed in Table 1. The
numbers of boys and girls in each group of children are also reported in the table.
There was no significant difference in the number of boys and girls, χ
2
=.60,
p=.833. Children’s age and length of residence in Canada are reported in months,
phonological awareness is reported in standard scores. Maternal education is
reported on a six-point scale. Scores for all the other tests are reported in
percentages.
The ELL status of the Spanish- and Chinese-speaking ELLs was confirmed by
their performance on the vocabulary test. Both groups scored significantly lower
than the monolinguals, MD =9.26, p\.001, for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, and
X. Chen et al.
123
MD =9.78, p\.001, for the Chinese-speaking ELLs. There was no difference
between the two ELL groups. A similar pattern was revealed for English word
reading, morphological production and morphological structure. Specifically,
monolingual children significantly outperformed both ELL groups on English word
reading, MD =3.81, p=.038 for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, and MD =5.44,
p=.004 for the Chinese-Speaking ELLs, on morphological production, MD =11.58
for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, and MD =14.28 for the Chinese-Speaking ELLs,
ps \.001; and on morphological structure, MD =9.94, p=.003 for the Spanish-
speaking ELLs, and MD =7.98, p=.028 for the Chinese-Speaking ELLs, but no
difference was found between the two ELL groups on any of the three measures.
Differences were also found in nonverbal ability among the three groups of
children. The Chinese-speaking ELLs scored the highest, followed by the
monolinguals, MD =7.79, who in turn scored higher than the Spanish-speaking
ELLs, MD =15.65, all ps\.001. The performance of the three groups on
phonological awareness did not differ statistically, F(2, 239) =1.95, p=.146.
Bivariate correlations for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking ELLs,
and monolinguals are presented in Table 2. Significant correlations were found
between the two morphological measures across the three language groups, r=.21
for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, r=.65 for the Chinese-speaking ELLs, and r=.43
for the monolinguals, all ps\.05. Across the three groups, both the morphological
production test and the morphological structure test had medium to high correlations
with vocabulary, r=.33 and r=.48 for the Spanish-speaking ELLs,r=.55 and
r=.78 for the Chinese-speaking ELLs,and r=.41 and r=.53 for the
monolinguals, all ps\.01. The phonological awareness measure was also
significantly correlated with vocabulary in all three groups, r=.43 for the Spanish-
speaking ELLs, r=.74 for the Chinese-speaking ELLs, and r=.47 for the
monolinguals, all ps\.01.
Effect of derivational awareness on vocabulary
To examine whether derivational awareness predicted vocabulary in the three
groups of children, we carried out a hierarchical regression analysis for each group
separately. In the regression model, we entered age and grade in Step 1, nonverbal
ability in Step 2, phonological awareness in Step 3, word reading in Step 4, and the
two morphological awareness measures in Step 5. In the initial analyses, we
included interactions between grade and each of the two morphological measures in
Step 6. Because the interaction terms were not significant in any of the models, they
were excluded from the final analyses. The results of the final regression models are
presented in Table 3.
For the Spanish-speaking ELLs, age, grade, and nonverbal ability explained 20%
of the variance in vocabulary. Phonological awareness entered in Step 3 was not a
significant predictor. Word reading accounted for additional 5% of the variance in
step 4, and the two morphological awareness measures in the last step contributed
16% of unique variance in vocabulary. For the Chinese-speaking ELLs, variables in
the first two steps accounted for 18% of the variance in vocabulary. Phonological
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
Table 2 Correlations among all measures for Spanish-speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking ELLs, and
monolinguals
123456789
Spanish-speaking ELLs (n =89)
1. Age in months 1
2. Maternal education −.19 1
3. Months in Canada .18 −.07 1
4. Nonverbal ability .46** −.07 .16 1
5. Phonological awareness .39** .19 .07 .34* 1
6. Morphological
production
−.17 .20 −.06 .08 .08 1
7. Morphological structure .22* .19 .27* .31** .56** .21* 1
8. Word reading .21* .18 .02 .31** .43** .22 .57** 1
9. Vocabulary .52** .10 −.04 .36** .43* .33* .48** .43** 1
10. Reading
comprehension
.27* .15 .16 .40** .50** .28** .57** .52** .51**
Chinese-speaking ELLs (n =77)
1. Age in months 1
2. Maternal education .03 1
3. Months in Canada −.26* .08 1
4. Nonverbal ability .26* .21 .09 1
5. Phonological awareness −.04 .25* .53** .40** 1
6. Morphological
production
−.34** .30** .29* .17 .49** 1
7. Morphological structure .00 .35** .46** .54** .86** .49** 1
8. Word reading −.01 .36** .44** .50** .76** .52** .81** 1
9. Vocabulary .14 .35** .37** .51** .74** .55** .78** .76** 1
10. Reading
comprehension
.08 .37** .40** .59** .80** .40** .81** .72** .71**
English monolinguals (n =78)
1. Age in months 1
2. Maternal education −.24* 1
3. Months in Canada .96** −.23* 1
4. Nonverbal ability .35** .26* .33** 1
5. Phonological awareness .37** .25* .39** .50** 1
6. Morphological
production
−.17 .28* −.12 .29** .36** 1
7. Morphological structure .46** .27* .43** .57** .66** .43** 1
8. Word reading .22 .23* .23* .49** .58** .48** .51** 1
9. Vocabulary .32** .08 .31** .44** .47** .41** .53** .63** 1
10. Reading
comprehension
.20 .37** .23 .58** .61** .47** .61** .58** .52**
*p\.05; ** p \.01
X. Chen et al.
123
Table 3 Regressions examining the role of morphological awareness in vocabulary for Spanish-Speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking ELLs, and monolinguals
Step and predictor Spanish-speaking ELLs Chinese-speaking ELLs Monolinguals
General model summary Coefficients General model summary Coefficients General model summary Coefficients
ΔR
2
ΔFβtΔR
2
ΔFβtΔR
2
ΔFβt
1. Age .16 8.03** .43 1.35 .00 .06 −.23 −.93 .14 6.07** .39 1.17
Grade −.22 −.68 .20 .80 −.30 −.89
2. Nonverbal ability .04 3.63 .06 .63 .18 16.33*** −.11 −1.49 .16 17.27*** .09 .87
3. Phonological awareness .01 1.45 −.02 −.17 .16 18.32*** .00 .01 .08 10.02** .02 .20
4. Word reading .05 5.00* .06 .48 .23 38.88*** .18 1.59 .02 2.41 .00 .01
5. Morphological production .16 10.98*** .42 3.75*** .19 28.31*** .69 5.92*** .12 9.25*** .39 3.15**
Morphological structure .10 .87 .12 1.13 .31 2.66*
*p\.05; ** p \.01; *** p \.001
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
Table 4 Adjusted means (standard errors) of cognate and non-cognate items selected from the PPVT test for Spanish-speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking ELLs, and
monolinguals
Measures Spanish-speaking ELLs Chinese-speaking ELLs Monolinguals
Grade 4
n=39
Grade 7
n=50
Combined
n=89
Grade 4
n=36
Grade 7
n=41
Combined
n=77
Grade 4
n=39
Grade 7
n=39
Combined
n=78
Cognate 75.02 (2.24) 76.34 (1.88) 75.68 (1.45) 67.66 (2.11) 64.01 (2.01) 65.84 (1.54) 79.82 (2.02) 82.07 (2.01) 80.94 (1.41)
Non-cognate 77.05 (1.52) 79.13 (1.20) 78.12 (1.00) 77.84 (1.43) 74.84 (1.43) 75.68 (1.4) 84.07 (1.37) 87.22 (1.37) 85.72 (.96)
X. Chen et al.
123
awareness in Step 3 added 16% of the variance. Word reading explained additional
23% of the variance in Step 4. Above and beyond these controlled variables, the two
morphological awareness measures in Step 5 uniquely contributed 19% of the
variance to vocabulary. For the monolinguals, the variables in the first two steps
explained 30% of the variance, phonological awareness in Step 3 explained 8% of
the variance, whereas word reading entered in Step 4 was not a significant predictor.
The two morphological awareness measures entered in the last step explained
additional 12% of the variance in vocabulary knowledge.
The final beta weights reported in Table 3indicated that morphological production
was the only significant predictor of vocabulary for both the Spanish-speaking ELLs,
t=3.75, p\.001, and the Chinese-speaking ELLs, t=5.92, p\.001. Both
morphological production and morphological structure were significantly predictive
of vocabulary for the monolinguals, t=3.15 and t=.2.66, respectively, ps \.01.
Comparing the three groups’ performance on cognate
and noncognate vocabulary
To examine the role of cognate awareness in Spanish-speaking ELLs’ acquisition of
vocabulary knowledge, we compared the performance on cognate and non-cognate
items selected from the PPVT test across the three groups of children. Table 4
presents the adjusted means and standard errors on cognate and non-cognate items
as a function of language and grade after controlling for nonverbal ability. As
displayed in the table, the Spanish-speaking ELLs performed better than the
Chinese-speaking ELLs on cognate items, while the two groups scored similarly on
non-cognate items. However, both ELL groups scored lower than the English-
speaking monolinguals on either type of items.
A 2 (type of item: cognate vs. non-cognate) 93 (language background: Spanish
vs. Chinese vs. English) 92 (grade: 4 vs.7) repeated measure ANCOVA was
performed on the selected English vocabulary items. Nonverbal ability was
used as a covariate. The results showed a significant main effect of type of item,
F(1, 237) =26.85, p\.001. Overall, children performed better on non-cognates
than on cognates. Although the cognate and non-cognate items were matched on
frequency based on the Educator’s Word Frequency Guide (Zeno et al., 1995), the
mean frequency of non-cognates was descriptively higher, which may provide an
explanation for the better performance on these items. The main effect of language
background was also significant, F(2, 237) =30.81, p\.001.
The main effects of item type and language background were subject to a
significant interaction between the two factors, F(2, 237) =10.81, p\.001.
Follow-up analyses revealed that for cognates, monolinguals scored higher than
both the Spanish-speaking ELLs, MD =1.26, p\.001, and the Chinese-speaking
ELLs, MD =3.63, p\.01. The Spanish-speaking ELLs also scored higher than the
Chinese-speaking ELLs on cognates, MD =2.36, p\.001. For non-cognates, the
monolinguals performed better than either the Spanish-speaking ELLs, MD =1.82,
p\.001, or the Chinese-speaking ELLs, MD =2.25, p\.001, with no significant
difference between the two ELL groups. The main effect of grade was not
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
significant, neither was the interaction between grade and type of item or between
grade and language background.
Effect of sociocultrual factors on cognate and noncognate vocabulary
We then investigated the effects of maternal education and length of residence in
Canada on ELLs’ performance on cognate items and noncognate items, and on the
overall performance on the PPVT test through three separate hierarchical
regressions. These analyses were only conducted for the Spanish-speaking ELLs
and the Chinese-speaking ELLs. In all models, we entered age and grade in Step 1,
nonverbal ability in Step 2, maternal education in Step 3, and months in Canada in
Step 4. Initially, we included the interactions between grade and maternal education
and between grade and months in Canada in Step 5. These interaction terms were
subsequently removed from the final models because they were not significant. The
models are summarized in Table 5.
Table 5 Regressions examining the effect of nonverbal ability, maternal education and months in
Canada on cognate items, non-cognate items, and PPVT for Spanish-speaking ELLs, Chinese-speaking
ELLs, and monolinguals
Step and predictor Spanish-speaking ELLs Chinese-speaking ELLs
General model
summary
Coefficients General model
summary
Coefficients
ΔR
2
ΔFβtΔR
2
ΔFβt
Cognate vocabulary
1. Age .12 5.13** .67 1.83 .01 .20 .30 .78
Grade −.52 −1.42 −.19 −.50
2. Nonverbal ability .09 8.47** .35 2.94** .12 9.25** .22 2.12*
3. Maternal education .00 .34 .06 .57 .01 .94 −.01 −.14
4. Months in canada .00 .01 −.01 −.09 .27 29.91*** .58 5.47***
Noncognate vocabulary
1. Age .14 6.32** .36 1.00 .01 .29 −.11 −.30
Grade −.13 −.36 .10 .26
2. Nonverbal ability .04 3.69 .24 2.09* .15 11.87** .29 2.90**
3. Maternal education .02 2.14 .16 1.57 .06 5.07* −.16 −1.66
4. Months in Canada .05 4.52* .22 2.13* .24 28.30*** .54 5.32***
PPVT
1. Age .14 6.53** .50 1.37 .00 .06 .02 .06
Grade −.24 −.64 .06 .17
2. Nonverbal ability .03 3.13 .23 1.92 .13 9.55** .22 2.21**
3. Maternal education .01 1.13 .11 1.06 .02 1.56 −.04 −.42
4. Months in Canada .00 .01 .01 .08 .31 36.43*** .61 6.04***
*p\.05; ** p \.01; *** p \.001
X. Chen et al.
123
As shown in Table 5, for the Spanish-speaking ELLs, maternal education was not
a significant predictor of any of the three regressions, when it was entered in step 3
after age, grade, and nonverbal ability. Months in Canada, entered in the last step,
predicted 5% of unique variance in non-cognate items. However, this variable was
not a significant unique predictor of either cognate items or the overall performance
on PPVT. For the Chinese-speaking ELLs, maternal education entered after age and
grade was not a significant predictor of any of the three regressions, whereas months
in Canada, entered in the next step, explained 20–30% of the unique variance in
cognate and non-cognate items, as well as in the overall performance of PPVT.
Discussion
The present study evaluated the impact of two metalinguistic factors, derivational
awareness and cognate awareness, and the impact of two sociocultural factors,
maternal education and length of residence in Canada, on ELLs’ vocabulary
knowledge. It was among the first efforts to examine the effects of metalinguistic
and sociocultural factors on literacy development in the same study. Another unique
feature of the study was that we compared the vocabulary development of ELLs
from two different first language backgrounds, with English-speaking monolinguals
serving as the baseline. We hypothesized that derivational awareness would predict
vocabulary in both Spanish-speaking and Chinese-speaking ELLs, whereas cognate
awareness would enhance cognate vocabulary for Spanish-speaking ELLs. We also
predicted that maternal education and length of residence in Canada would be
related to ELLs’ vocabulary development. The effect of the latter, however, may be
smaller on cognate vocabulary in Spanish-speaking ELLs if they can transfer lexical
knowledge from their first language. Evidence for each of these hypotheses is now
discussed.
Our study provides strong evidence that derivational awareness is associated with
vocabulary learning in ELLs. In both Spanish-speaking ELLs and Chinese-speaking
ELLs, derivational awareness made a unique contribution to vocabulary after
controlling for age, nonverbal skills, maternal education, phonological awareness,
and word reading. The finding regarding the Spanish-speaking ELLs confirms that
reported in Kieffer and Lesaux (2008). The finding regarding the Chinese-speaking
ELLs extends Lam et al. (accepted) to older children in grades four and seven. In
our study, the amount of variance in vocabulary explained by derivational
awareness was similar in the Spanish-speaking ELLs (16%) and Chinese-speaking
ELLs (19%), despite the fact that Spanish and Chinese are quite different in terms of
morphological structure. The similarity lends support to the previous finding that the
same set of cognitive and linguistic component skills accounts for reading success in
ELLs as in monolingual children, regardless of ELLs’ language backgrounds (Geva,
2008; Muter & Diethelm, 2001). While the majority of previous studies have
focused on phonological processes (e.g., Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Lipka & Siegel,
2007), our findings extend the framework to include derivational awareness.
Our results underscore the important role of derivational awareness in vocabulary
development in ELLs as compared to monolinguals who are native speakers of
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
English. We found that the amount of variance in vocabulary explained by
derivational awareness was slightly larger in Spanish-speaking ELLs and Chinese-
speaking ELLs than in English-speaking monolinguals (12%). There are at least two
different ways that children acquire new vocabulary. One way is through extensive
exposure to oral and written language, which typically applies to high-frequency
words; another way is through morphological analysis, which applies to low-
frequency complex words (Bybee 1995). Compared to monolinguals, ELLs have
fewer opportunities to learn new words through exposure to English. We speculate
that ELLs compensate their lack of exposure by relying more on morphological
strategies. This type of learning is more likely to occur in intermediate grades and
above, when children have already reached a certain level of morphological
awareness. This possibility needs to be investigated by future studies.
Given the prominent role that phonological awareness plays in literacy
development and the relatively high correlation between phonological awareness
and morphological awareness, it is important to show that morphological awareness
contributes to literacy development over and above phonological awareness (Casalis,
Cole
´, & Sopo, 2004; Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Nagy
et al., 2006; Shankweiler et al., 1995). The present study is one of the first efforts to
provide this evidence for ELLs—Morphological awareness was a unique predictor of
vocabulary in both Chinese-speaking and Spanish-speaking ELLs after controlling
for phonological awareness. Morphological awareness represents a deep under-
standing of the relationship between root words and derived words. As such, the
contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary learning tends to increase
with age and reading experience (Phythian-Sence & Wagner, 2007; Stahl & Nagy,
2006). By contrast, phonological awareness did not explain unique variance in
vocabulary after controlling for morphological awareness in the present study.
Since this study was cross-sectional, it did not provide evidence about whether a
causal relationship exists between morphological awareness and vocabulary. As
noted previously, this relationship is likely to be bidirectional (e.g., McBride-Chang
et al., 2008; Nagy et al., 2003). McBride-Chang et al. (2008) provides empirical
support for the reciprocal relationship in a longitudinal study involving 4-year
old children who were native speakers of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean,
respectively. For all three groups of children, morphological awareness measured at
the beginning of the study predicted unique variance in vocabulary knowledge
9 months to 1 year later, and vocabulary knowledge also predicted unique variance
in subsequent morphological awareness. Future research needs to examine this
relationship among older children and children who are ELLs. Nevertheless,
because a reciprocal relationship is likely to be present, enhancing ELLs’
morphological awareness may be an effective way to increase their vocabulary.
Our study was among the first to directly test the effect of cognate awareness on
vocabulary learning. Notably, in our study, the ELLs regardless of their first
language background scored lower than the monolinguals on both cognate and
noncognate vocabulary. This gap highlights the challenge faced by ELLs in
developing vocabulary knowledge. The most exciting finding, however, is that
the difference in cognate vocabulary between the Spanish-speaking ELLs and the
monolinguals was smaller than that between the Chinese-speaking ELLs and the
X. Chen et al.
123
monolinguals. In other words, cognate awareness is effective in reducing the gap in
vocabulary development for Spanish-speaking ELLs. There are several differences
between the present study and Proctor and Mo (2009). While Proctor and Mo
compared Spanish-speaking ELLs against monolinguals, our study directly
compared two groups of ELLs and yielded stronger evidence for Spanish-speaking
ELLs’ cognate use. Moreover, Proctor and Mo (2009) examined children with
reading difficulties, whereas our study focused on typically developing children.
Our results provide clear evidence that cognate awareness facilitates vocabulary
learning, at least in typically developing Spanish-speaking ELLs.
An interesting feature of Spanish–English cognates is that many low-frequency
English words (e.g., rapid) that appear in scientific and academic texts have Spanish
cognates (e.g., rápido) that are frequently used in daily life (Bravo, Hiebert, &
Pearson, 2007; Cunningham & Graham, 2000; Proctor & Mo, 2009). Moss (1992)
estimated that 30–40% of English words in scientific texts have Spanish cognates, and
the more technical a text is, the higher percentage of cognates it contains. Thus, it is
likely that awareness of English–Spanish cognates enables Spanish-speaking ELLs to
use vocabulary knowledge already developed in their first language to acquire
academic vocabulary in English. However, our study cannot confirm this hypothesis
because we employed a general vocabulary measure. Future studies should replicate
the present study with more dimensions of vocabulary, including academic
vocabulary.
Admittedly, an obstacle in applying the cognate strategy is the existence of false
cognates, which are words across two languages that are similar in spelling but
unrelated in meaning. For example, the Spanish word embarazado looks like the
English word embarrassed, but it actually means pregnant. There is some preliminary
evidence that distinguishing between true and false cognates presents a challenge for
young bilingual children. Chen, Pasquarella, and Deacon (in preparation) showed that
when first graders in Canadian French immersion programs were asked to judge
whether a pair of words were cognates in English and French, false cognates were
mistaken as true cognates about 40% of the time. The Spanish-speaking ELLs in the
present study may encounter the same challenge in using the cognate strategy,
although, it is possible that as ELLs’ reading level increases, so does their ability to
identify false cognates. Nevertheless, since the number of true cognates is quite large
(see Nash 1997), cognate use should remain to be an effective strategy for vocabulary
learning despite the fact that it may occasionally lead to errors.
Future research needs to take into consideration factors that influence the effect
of cognate awareness on vocabulary development. One factor is word frequency.
Cognate awareness may be particularly useful for learning low-frequency English
words for Spanish-speaking ELLs, as many low-frequency English words have
high-frequency Spanish cognates. Another factor that needs to be considered is
contextual clues. The role of cognates in lexical activation has been shown to be
modulated by levels of semantic constraint, i.e., semantic information provided by
words surrounding the target word (Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, & Hartsuiker,
2007; Libben & Titone, 2009; Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; Van Hell 1998). Cognate
facilitation has only been found in contexts with low semantic constraint.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
The research on cognate awareness is still in the beginning stage. Little is known
about the developmental trajectory of cognate awareness or factors that affect its
development. To date, most studies on cognates have involved children in Grade 4
and above. It is important to involve younger children in future studies because
cognate awareness may well develop at an earlier age, as shown by Chen et al. (in
preparation). It is likely that at least three factors are related to the development of
cognate awareness, individual differences in identifying cognates, ELLs’ profi-
ciency in L1, and instruction. Our study has demonstrated that use of the cognate
strategy is linked to Spanish-speaking ELLs’ vocabulary development. Unfortu-
nately, the design of the study and the heterogeneity of the sample do not allow us to
examine the factors that affect cognate use. These factors are certainly worthy of
future research.
Another line for new research lies in examining the relationship between
morphological awareness and cognate awareness. Hancin-Bhatt and Nagy (1994)
found that Spanish-speaking ELLs were better at identifying stems of morpholog-
ically complex words that were cognates. Thus, the ability to recognize cognates
may accelerate the development of morphological awareness. Additionally, there
are systematic mappings between English and Spanish suffixes. For example –al is a
suffix added to a noun root in both English and Spanish to create an adjective (e.g.,
environment-environmental in English; ambiente-ambiental in Spanish). Spanish-
speaking ELLs who are aware of these cross-language connections may use lexical
knowledge from their first language to enhance morphological learning in English.
For example, building on the research reported in the present study, new studies can
test these possibilities by comparing the performance between Spanish-speaking
ELLs and Chinese-speaking ELLs on morphological complex words that contain
cognate and noncogate roots, as well as shared and unique suffixes.
In addition to the cognitive factors, the present study investigated the impact of
two sociocultural factors, length of residence in Canada and maternal education, on
ELLs’ vocabulary development. There was considerable variability in length of
residence in our sample. More than 40% of the Spanish-speaking ELLs and more
than 80% of the Chinese-speaking ELLs were born outside of Canada. The age of
arrival ranged from 14 to 111 months for the Spanish-speaking children
(M=31.58 months, SD =41.2) and from 2 to 120 months for the Chinese-
speaking children (M=80 months, SD =34.9). These statistics indicate that our
sample consisted of ELLs of diverse immigration experience, with many relatively
recent immigrants. With respect to maternal education, the average was college for
the Chinese-speaking ELLs but high school for the Spanish-speaking ELLs. The
parental education levels of the two ELL groups, especially the high education level
of Chinese parents, appear to be representative, as they are similar to those reported
in previous research (Louie, 2004; OCA and The Asian American Studies Program,
2008; Wang & Lo, 2004).
This study offers intriguing evidence on the effect of length of residence in an
English-speaking country, which roughly resembles exposure to English, on the
English vocabulary development of immigrant children. Specifically, we found that
this effect varied as a function of ELLs’ first language background. For Chinese-
speaking ELLs, length of residence in Canada was significantly associated with the
X. Chen et al.
123
performance on the cognate items and the noncognate items selected from the PPVT
test, as well as with the overall performance on the PPVT test. For Spanish-speaking
ELLs, length of residence in Canada was significantly related to noncognate
vocabulary. These significant relationships are consistent with the notion that for
second language learners, exposure to a language is crucial for vocabulary
development in that language, especially when learners’ first language has little
overlap with the second language.
Interestingly, length of residence in Canada was not related to either the
performance on the cognate items or the overall performance on the PPVT test in
Spanish-speaking ELLs. The lack of associations here offers additional support to
Spanish-speaking ELLs’ use of the cognate strategy. It appears that Spanish-
speaking ELLs were able to draw on vocabulary knowledge acquired in their first
language to learn English words with Spanish cognates, which diminished the effect
of length of residence in Canada on these words. On the other hand, exposure to
English was still crucial for acquiring English words without Spanish cognates,
because first language vocabulary knowledge was not helpful in this case. Taken
together, the results on Chinese-speaking and Spanish-speaking ELLs reveal
similarities and differences in English vocabulary learning across groups of ELLs
from different first language backgrounds.
Paradis (2007) found that compared to younger L1 learners, older learners who
began learning English as an L2 after onset of the L1 acquisition accumulated
English vocabulary at a faster rate, possibly due to their greater cognitive maturity
and an existing lexicon in L1 that facilitated the conceptual-lexical mappings
between L1 and L2. It is possible, then, that the ELLs in our study also acquired
English vocabulary at a faster rate than the monolingual children. Unfortunately,
Paradis (2007)’s hypothesis cannot be tested in the present study because we did not
have longitudinal data and there was a large variance in length of residence in our
ELL participants, which means that they cannot be divided into reasonably sized
subgroups according to length of residence in order to examine the rate of
vocabulary acquisition of each subgroup. Nevertheless, this hypothesis should be
evaluated by future research.
With respect of maternal education, it is unexpected that this variable did not
influence vocabulary development in either Chinese-speaking or Spanish-speaking
ELLs in our study. However, the relationship between maternal education and
vocabulary development can be quite complex in ELLs. In the present study, this
relationship seems to be mediated by home language use. A closer examination of
our sample reveals that 98% of the Chinese parents and 92% of the Hispanic parents
spoke the first language to their children most of time, and the percentage of first
language use at home remained largely similar across parents of different education
levels. The lack of variation in first language use at home may explain why maternal
education was not related to ELLs’ vocabulary development. Interestingly, Cobo-
Lewis et al. (2002) observed that parents of low and high SES status spoke the first
language at home for different reasons. The former did so because their English
proficiency was low. For the latter, it was a conscious decision to maintain their
language and culture.
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
The effect of parental education on second language vocabulary development
needs to be systematically investigated by future studies. Most research that has
demonstrated the impact of maternal education is directed at early literacy
development (e.g., Golberg et al., 2008). Our study involved older ELLs, whose
language learning environment and experience was likely to be different from those
in the previous research. For future directions, it may be useful to examine the effect
of maternal education on vocabulary development while holding the percentage of
first language use at home constant. Alternatively, one may compare the vocabulary
development of children whose parents have similar levels of education, but
different degrees of first language use at home.
Finally, it should be pointed out that other than length of residence in Canada and
maternal education, there is a range of sociocultural factors that are worthy of future
research, such as immigration experience, language dominance and preference,
language learning environment at school, and at home (language input and literacy
activities at home). These factors may not only affect ELLs’ vocabulary
development on their own, but also interact with the factors examined by the
present study. In order to be feasible, our study had to be limited to the investigation
of a small number of variables. The primary interest of the present study lies in
combining metalinguistic and sociocultural factors, rather than in examining as
many factors as possible in each of the category. Nevertheless, all the factors
mentioned above should be examined by future research.
In sum, our study yielded several important findings. First, it confirmed the
strong link between derivational awareness and vocabulary knowledge observed in
the previous research, and extended this relationship to two groups of ELLs
from different first language backgrounds. At the same time, our study unveiled
differences in English vocabulary learning between Spanish-speaking and
Chinese-speaking ELLs. While Spanish-speaking children were able to utilize
the cognate strategy to learn English words, this strategy was not available for
Chinese-speaking ELLs. With respect to the sociocultural factors, length of
residence in Canada was significantly related to ELLs’ vocabulary development.
Interestingly, in Spanish-speaking ELLs, length of residence in Canada only
influenced the development of noncognate vocabulary, but neither cognate
vocabulary nor overall vocabulary as measured by PPVT, which provides
additional evidence for these children’s use of the cognate strategy. The
differences observed between the two groups of ELLs demonstrate that L2
vocabulary learning is a complex process affected by multiple factors, including
both L1 characteristics and the learners’ experience, and therefore we must be
careful when making generalizations. Finally, our study showed that maternal
education did not affect English vocabulary development. The effect of this factor
needs to be further investigated.
Several educational implications for vocabulary instruction involving ELLs can
be extrapolated from this study. Given the facilitating effect of derivational
awareness on vocabulary knowledge observed for both Chinese- and Spanish-
speaking ELLs, it appears that immigrant children from diverse first language
backgrounds will benefit from explicit and systematic instruction on morphological
X. Chen et al.
123
analysis. The differences in cognate awareness between Spanish- and Chinese-
speaking ELLs, on the other hand, highlight the importance of differentiated
instruction, as immigrant children from different first language backgrounds bring
different skill sets to English vocabulary learning. Teachers should make the
cognate relationship between Spanish and English words explicit for Spanish-
speaking ELLs, while bearing in mind that this instructional strategy is not useful
for all ELLs. In sum, our results suggest that instruction in some aspects of
metalinguistic awareness, such as derivational awareness, benefits all learners, while
instruction in other areas, such as cognate awareness, benefits only ELLs whose L1
is closely related to English.
Appendix
List of cognate and non-cognate items
Cognate Non-cognate
Items SFI Items SFI
Bus 59.1 Writing 62.3
Surprised 57.1 Farm 61.4
Castle 54.9 Empty 59.4
Vehicle 52.9 Trunk 54.4
Gigantic 49.6 Measuring 53.9
Astronaut 49.3 Climbing 53.2
Carpenter 48.8 Digging 53.0
Helicopter 48.6 Knee 52.5
Monetary 46.5 Closet 51.9
Pedal 46.0 Feather 51.6
Consuming 44.7 Hook 51.5
Perpendicular 44.3 Diving 51.1
Pillar 43.1 Knight 49.5
Calculator 43.0 Blazing 47.9
Cascade 42.9 Links 47.8
Incandescent 42.7 Parachute 46.5
Solo 42.5 Appliance 45.7
Penguin 42.3 Peeling 44.1
Adjustable 42.1 Upholstery 40.6
Periodical 40.9 Lecturing 38.6
Clarinet 40.4 Embossed 38.3
Tubular 39.8 Syringe 36.8
Flamingo 38.3 Replenishing 35.0
Rodent 38.2 Awarding 32.5
Vocabulary development in ELLs
123
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