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Relationship Between Language Skillsand Acquisition Rate of Sight WordsAmong English Language LearnersMatthew K. Burns a & Lori A. Helman aa University of Minnesota , Minneapolis, Minnesota, USAPublished online: 27 May 2009.

To cite this article: Matthew K. Burns & Lori A. Helman (2009) Relationship Between LanguageSkills and Acquisition Rate of Sight Words Among English Language Learners, Literacy Research andInstruction, 48:3, 221-232, DOI: 10.1080/19388070802291547

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ULRI1938-80711938-8063Literacy Research and Instruction, Vol. 48, No. 3, April 2009: pp. 1–25Literacy Research and Instruction

Relationship Between Language Skills and Acquisition Rate of Sight Words Among English Language Learners

Language Skills and Acquisition Rate for ELLM. K. Burns and L. A. Helman

MATTHEW K. BURNS AND LORI A. HELMAN

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

The current study examined the sight word acquisition rate (AR) of 43 second-grade students whowere English language learners (ELL) from three diverse, urban schools. The AR was analyzed inrelation to each student’s oral proficiency in English, and examined whether or not children whoare ELL but have a higher level of English proficiency would demonstrate larger ARs of Englishsight-words than children who demonstrate lower levels of English proficiency. The imagery levelof the word did not effect the accuracy of reading it and a significant and moderate correlation(r = .63) was found between AR and language proficiency. A significant effect was found amongthree levels of English proficiency with children in the lowest level of proficiency demonstrating asignificantly smaller mean AR than those in the highest and middle group. Potential implications forsecond-language reading instruction and future research are discussed.

Keywords aquisition rate, English language learner, sight words

The percentage of students from diverse language backgrounds is growing dramatically inU.S. schools. In the year 2000, 1.7 million students in pre–K to grade 5 were consideredlimited English proficient (LEP). There is an achievement gap in school performance forstudents who come from poverty, non-mainstream cultures, and linguistic-minority back-grounds (Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2005; National Center forEducational Statistics, 2004), and only 7% of LEP students scored at a proficient level ongrade-level measures of reading (Lutkus, Rampey, & Donahue, 2005). This is criticallyimportant because those students who do not learn to read and write at a similar pace totheir peers are at risk of falling even further behind (August & Shanahan, 2006; Juel,1988; Stanovich, 1986).

Children who are English language learners (ELLs) are a group with diverse andsomewhat unmet academic needs. As such, there seems to be a strong need to furtherintensify and individualize instruction for children who are learning English. One methodto individualize instruction and improve individual student learning is to assure an appro-priate match between student skill and task demands (VanDerHeyden & Burns, 2005).Previous research has consistently shown that providing an appropriate level of challenge,material that is no too easy and not too difficult, led to increased learning (Burns, 2002;Gickling & Armstrong, 1978; Shapiro & Ager, 1992; Treptow, Burns, & McComas,2007), but what constitutes an appropriate level of challenge is often misunderstood(Burns, 2004a).

One aspect of an apt challenge level that is often overlooked is the acquisition rate(AR; Gickling & Thompson, 1985), which is the amount of information that a child can

Address correspondence to Matthew K. Burns, University of Minnesota, 341 Education Science Building,56 E. Rive Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. E-mail: burns258@umn.edu

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successfully rehearse and later recall (Burns, 2001). Cesaro’s (1967) seminal researchfound that attempting to complete an instructional set that exceeded a child’s individuallimit resulted in an inability to learn new information and reduced retention of previouslylearned material. Therefore, humans have a limited memory capacity that can be measuredand used to modify instruction. For example, when children exhibit off-task behavior itmay be because of boredom or frustration with the difficulty level of the material. Modify-ing instruction to provide an appropriate challenge reduced off-task behavior (Burns &Dean, 2005a; Gickling & Armstrong, 1978; Treptow et al., 2007). Because a child’s AR isa component of that appropriate challenge level, providing more information than thechild can successfully rehearse and recall also leads to off-task behavior. In previous ARresearch, children with a medically diagnosed attention deficit exhibited acceptable levelsof off-task behavior when the amount of information being taught was within each child’sAR and off-task behavior significantly increased immediately after exceeding the AR(Burns & Dean, 2005b). Knowing a child’s AR may therefore be quite useful information.

Previous research found significant individual differences in the amount of informa-tion children retained during one instructional session (Brainerd & Reyna, 1995). Thus,the amount of information that a child can successfully rehearse may depend on manyvariables and will likely vary between two same-aged children. These individual differ-ences could have been due to several variables including prior experience with the infor-mation (Rabinowitz, Ornstein, Folds-Benett, & Schneider, 1994), content of the material(Schweickert & Boruff, 1986; Semb & Ellis, 1994), and developmental factors (Fry &Hale, 1996; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993; Miller & Vernon, 1996).

Another potential factor that may affect how well a child retains a recently learnedsight-word is the imagery level of the word. A long line of research has demonstrated thatwhen teaching individual sight words, words that are high imagery tend to be retainedmore frequently than words with low imagery (Gickling, Hargis, & Alexander, 1981;Kuwabara, 2001; Jorm, 1977; O’Neil, 2005). The seminal work of Richardson (1975)found that a word can be considered high imagery if it directly elicits a mental image asso-ciated with the word. For example, for most readers upon reading the word “c – a – t,” amental image of some approximation of a feline occurs, but the word “h – o – t” may notgenerate a mental image despite being of equal length and readability.

It is reasonably presumed that children with limited English oral proficiency will nothave as many experiences with English words and may not be able to understand the con-tent of instructional material (Calderón et al., 2005). However, the effect of English profi-ciency on a child’s ability to rehearse and retain new sight-words is unknown. This ispotentially important because rapid word recognition leads to fluent contextual reading,which in turn is highly linked to reading comprehension (Burns et al., 2002; Carnine,Silbert, Kame’enui, & Tarver, 2004; Jenkins, Fuchs, van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003;McCormick & Samuels, 1979). Moreover, word recognition for ELL children may beconnected to oral proficiency, because oral vocabulary is essential in decoding, and wordsthat are part of the student’s vocabulary are easier to decode (National Reading Panel,2000).

Concerted efforts are needed to study the academic development of students who areELLs especially in relation to the co-development of language and literacy (Genesee et al.,2005). Previous research found a relationship among oral language development andvarious components of reading development for English learners (Saunders, Foorman, &Carlson, 2006). Thus, additional research is needed that investigates instructional ques-tions relating to ELL students learning to read and write in order to better guide educa-tional policy and practice for linguistically diverse students. With this imperative in mind,

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Language Skills and Acquisition Rate for ELL 223

the current study built on the growing body of research on acquisition rates for learningnew material, this time with a focus on students learning English as a new language.Therefore, the current study examined the relationship and effect of oral English profi-ciency on the acquisition of sight-words by students learning English as a new language.The following research questions guided the study: (a) is there a significant relationshipbetween English proficiency and acquisition rates of English-sight-words among childrenwho are ELL and (b) do children who are ELL but have a higher level of English profi-ciency demonstrate larger ARs of English sight-words than children who demonstratelower levels of English proficiency? The study also began with an exploratory analysis ofthe effect of word imagery on the students’ ability to correctly read the word whenpresented in isolation.

Method

Participants

The study participants consisted of 43 second-grade students attending one of threeelementary schools in an urban district in the Midwest. Each child received services as anEnglish language learner with Hmong being the child’s first language and the primary lan-guage spoken at home. There was an equal distribution of females (n = 22, 51.2%) andmales (n = 21, 48.8%). Although additional demographic data were not available for thechildren, the student population of the three schools they attended contained 93.1%,85.3%, and 83.9% children who were eligible for the federal free or reduced lunchprogram and 51.0%, 46.6%, an 64.0% English language learners.

Materials

The materials for the study consisted of English words from the Instant Word list (Fry &Kress, 2006), which contains the 300 words that comprise approximately 65% of all writ-ten material. The list is divided into three sets of 100 based on frequency with the first 100comprising approximately 50% of all written material in this country (Fry & Kress, 2006).Words were randomly selected from each of the three 100 word lists and were then judgedto be high or low imagery in the following manner. After being selected, the word wasjudged by two independent researchers as high or low imagery. For the purposes of thisstudy we defined imagery based on Richardson (1975) in which the written word was atangible noun that immediately elicited a mental image. Words that elicited a mentalimage were judged to be high imagery and those that did not were deemed as low imagery.If both researchers consistently judged the word as high or low, it was included in thestudy. The selection of words continued until 20 high imagery and 20 low imagery wordswere selected for each list of the first, second, and third levels of high-frequency words.Thus, a total of 120 (out of a possible 300) words were selected and were written on a 3 × 5inch index card with a landscape orientation in black ink.

Dependent Variables

Language Assessment Scales–Oral. The Language Assessment Scales–Oral (LAS–O; DeAvila & Duncan, 1994) form 1C was used as an assessment of English language profi-ciency. This assessment measures speaking and listening skills, including vocabulary,listening comprehension, and verbal proficiency to come up with a single summary score.

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224 M. K. Burns and L. A. Helman

Summary scores on the LAS–O are then categorized into leveled groups from 1 (“Non-English proficient”) to 5 (“Fluent-English proficient”). Many school districts usethe LAS–O to determine which students should receive ELL services (Del Vecchio &Guerrero, 1995).

Acquisition Rate. The students’ individual ARs were assessed with procedures outlinedby Burns (2001) in previous research. Students were assessed on the Fry graded words toidentify known and unknown words. Each student was taught a series of individualunknown words by rehearsing them among known words at a ratio of one new word toeight known words. The unknown words were individually added into the teachingsequence until the child made three errors while practicing a new word. At this time, thenumber of unknown words folded in and successfully completed was recorded as the AR.For example, Student 1 rehearsed the first four unknown words while making few errors,but he made three errors while completing the fifth word; thus, Student 1’s AR was four.

Research on AR is in its infancy, but previous studies found that ARs can be reliablymeasured for third and fifth grade students (Burns, 2001) and that AR data were highlycorrelated (r = .70) with a standardized norm-referenced measure of memory (Burns &Mosack, 2005). Moreover, AR data predicted developmental trends based on previousmemory research, which supports the validity of decisions made from them (Burns,2004b).

Procedure

After obtaining informed consent and child assent, with forms translated into Hmong,children were presented the 40 Fry words to determine if they were known or unknown.The cards containing the words were presented one at a time to each child in a clusteredrandom order. Forty words taken from the second 100 of the Instant Word list (Fry &Kress, 2006) were presented first. If the child could not correctly identify at least eight ofthese words, then words taken from the first 100 words were used. If the child correctlyidentified all 40 words selected from the second 100 words, then the words selected fromthe third 100 words were also presented. The presentation order of words taken from eachof the three word lists was randomly determined. Words were identified as known if theywere orally read correctly within 2 seconds. Any word not read correctly or requiringmore than 2 seconds to read was considered unknown.

After determining a set of known and unknown words, each child was administeredthe LAS and the AR was assessed. The order of the two assessments was randomlydetermined for each child. Data consisted of the LAS overall raw score, the LAS cate-gory score, and the AR. The first research question inquired about the relationshipbetween English proficiency and the acquisition of English sight-words. This was exam-ined by correlating each child’s LAS overall raw score and their AR using a PearsonProduct Moment correlation. The second research question inquired about differences inAR of English sight-words among children with higher and lower English proficiency.This was examined by grouping children according to the LAS category score, with onegroup consisting of children who earned a category score of 1 or 2 (very limited oralEnglish proficiency), one group of students with a score of 3 (limited English profi-cient), and finally the third group with a LAS category score of 4 or 5 (fluent). Becauseof the relatively small samples sizes for the three groups, a non-parametric analysis wasconducted with these three groups using the AR of English sight-words as the dependentvariable.

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Language Skills and Acquisition Rate for ELL 225

Implementation Integrity and Interobserver Agreement

One school-psychology graduate student with advanced training in assessment and researchmethodology collected the data for the study after being individually trained on all assessmentprocedures. During data collection, 20% of the sessions were observed by the first author tocollect implementation integrity and interobserver agreement data. The former was collectedby using a checklist of procedural steps including the assessment of AR. The number ofcorrectly completed steps was divided by the number of total steps and equaled an overallimplementation integrity score of 96%. Interobserver agreement was recorded by having theobserver also rate words as correct or not. The number of words in which both the researcherand second observer consistently rated as correct or incorrect was divided by the total numberof words. The result was 100% agreement between the two observers across the sessions.

Results

Effect of Imagery Level on Word Reading

The exploratory analysis examined the effect the imagery level of the word would have onthe oral reading of the word. On average, students correctly read 9.77 (SD = 6.0) of the20 high imagery words and 9.42 (SD = 6.57) of the 20 low imagery words. The resultswere analyzed with a within-group analysis of variance with the number of high imageryand low imagery words read correctly for each student serving as the within-group dataand the language proficiency group being the between-group variable. The resultingPillai’s Trace equaled .02 and suggested a nonsignificant effect F (2, 39) = .41, p = .67.Thus, imagery did not have a differentiating effect between or within the groups and thetwo sets of words were grouped for subsequent analyses.

Before conducting analyses to address the research questions, the descriptive statisticswere computed for the two continuous variables. Table 1 presents the descriptive statisticsfor the three groups and the total sample. In order to conduct the analyses, the distributionof the data was first examined by assessing the skewness and kurtosis. A data set is con-sidered normally distributed if the skewness and kurtosis have an absolute value less thantwice the standard error for the statistic. A positive skew was noted for the group with aLAS–O score of 4 or 5 (fluent in English), but the skew and kurtosis statistics for all otherdata for the LAS–O and AR scores for three groups were within two standard errors andwere normally distributed. This was likely an acceptable distribution to allow for paramet-ric analyses, but a non-parametric analysis was used given the relatively small sample sizein each group. However, a parametric estimate of effect was also provided.

Relationship Between Language Acquisition and Acquisition Rate for Sight Words

The first research question inquired about the relationship between LAS–O and AR scores. Theresulting correlation between the two continuous scores was significant r (42) = .63, p < .001,moderate, and accounted for 40% of the variance. Therefore, a significant relationship wasfound between level of English proficiency and the rate of acquisition of English sight-words.

Effect of Language Proficiency on Acquisition Rates for Sight Words

The second research question inquired about differences in ARs among the three groupsof differing English proficiency. Three groups were created with the LAS–O score and a

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Tab

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Language Skills and Acquisition Rate for ELL 227

Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted for the AR of the three groups. The AR means andstandard deviations are listed in Table 1. A significant effect was noted for these threegroups X2 (df = 2, n = 43) = 12.72, p < .01, with the order of mean AR directly followingthe order of English proficiency.

Cohen’s d was also computed to further examine the difference in AR scores amongthe three groups. The difference in ARs between the highest and lowest LAS–O groups(4 or 5 and 1 or 2, respectively) led to a large effect of 1.84, with the former outscoring thelatter. The highest group also outperformed the middle English proficiency group (LAS–Oof 3) with a d of .65. Finally, the difference between the middle (LAS–O of 3) and lowest(LAS–O of 1 or 2) proficiency group led to a large effect of .96 with the former outper-forming the latter.

Discussion

Results of the current study provide potentially useful data for better understanding thereading development of young students learning English as a new language, and in turnmay guide educators to more effective instructional practices. First, we describe theresults and provide an analysis in relation to the population studied. Next, we describewhat the data suggest about second language reading development. Finally, we hypothe-size about why these results were attained with English learners. Following our discus-sion, we outline implications of the study results for reading instruction with Englishlearners.

It was somewhat surprising that the imagery level of the word did not affect how wellthe word was orally read, which contradicts previous research (Gickling et al., 1981; Jorm,1977; O’Neil, 2005). However, the current study examined the fluency of orally readingthe individual words and required only an accurate pronunciation within 2 seconds and didnot require demonstration of semantic understanding. Previous research with children whodid not speak English as their native language involved learning the English translation forthe given word, which was affected by the imagery level of the word (Kuwabara, 2001).Thus, future researchers may wish to continue this line of inquiry with meaning-basedtasks and contextual reading assignments.

Results of the current study show a significant correlation between English languageproficiency and acquisition of sight words. Thus, as language proficiency increases, ARincreases as well. Students with very limited proficiency in English averaged an AR of3.24, students with limited proficiency averaged an AR of 5.50 words, and fluent Englishlearners averaged 7 words learned in their AR. These results suggest a relationship, but donot imply causality. It may be that language proficiency facilitates the acquisition of sightword learning in English, but our tests do not assure that assumption. Correlational studiessuggest that an equally plausible possibility is that a more advanced AR influenced greaterlanguage proficiency, or that a third variable may be responsible for having a positiveeffect on both language proficiency and AR. These data can only confirm a supportiverelationship between oral proficiency and AR for students learning to read sight words inEnglish as a new language.

When data were compared for the three groups of students with varying levels of oralEnglish proficiency, a significant effect was noted. The order of the mean for ARincreased as the level of language proficiency increased. In other words, the students withthe least proficiency on the LAS–O had the lowest AR scores, and the most proficient stu-dents had the highest. Both the middle and high group on the LAS–O demonstrated higherARs than students with the lowest LAS–O scores, but the difference between the group

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that scored 4–5 on the LAS–O (high) and the group that scored 3 on the LAS–O (middle)was only moderate. This suggests that a minimal level of English proficiency may be apowerful contributor to learning new words. While knowing more English also correlatedto increased AR, the relationship above a level 3 on the LAS–O did not have as profoundof an effect.

The current study examined a population of English learners from Hmong-speakinghouseholds. The Hmong population as a group has been less-frequently studied than Spanish-speaking students who represent the majority of English learners in U.S. schools (August &Shanahan, 2006). Hmong has been primarily used as an oral language; many of the Hmongfamilies from which study participants were drawn came from settings where little or noopportunities for instruction in reading and writing existed. Hmong languages vary greatlyfrom English in their phonology, syntax, and use of tones to differentiate meaning. Assuch, students may face interference and other problems as they learn to speak and under-stand oral and written English (Swan & Smith, 2001). Thus, Hmong-speaking studentswho are learning to read in English are grappling with new vocabulary, sounds, and letter–sound relationships. These differences in oral and written language systems may make itdifficult for students who do not have strong oral language skills in English to find a cog-nitive anchor from which to learn the new sight words presented in the current study.

Previous research found individual differences in memory capacity due to a number offactors (Brainerd & Reyna, 1995). Although a developmental effect has been consistentlydemonstrated (Burns, 2004b; Fry & Hale, 1996; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993; Henry &Millar, 1991; Miller & Vernon, 1996), these children were all in the same grade and all wereapproximately the same age. Two other potential explanations for the differences in AR ofthe sight words could be the content of the information (Schweickert & Boruff, 1986;Semb & Ellis, 1994) and the experience with the information prior to the study (Rabinowitzet al., 1994). The words were generally similar in readability and length, and the variablethat was differentiated for the study (imagery level) did not have an effect. Thus, it is diffi-cult to assume that these results could be linked to the content of the information beinglearned. It would also be difficult to estimate experience with the information prior to thestudy except children with limited English proficiency tend to have less experience withwords written in English (Calderón et al., 2005). Thus, a more plausible causal mechanismcould be that children with limited English profiency had less experience with the wordsthey were learning and had more difficulty learning them as a result. However, this is onlyone potential explanation and would need to be further studied.

Experience and familiarity with oral and written English may also be a factor in thedifferences in AR acquisition rate for participants. Learning to read in English is a com-plex process that involves cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and educational components(Helman, 2005). Many of the students in the current study lived in households whereEnglish was not spoken as the primary language, and few print materials would likely beavailable for them to experience. Moreover, there is a limited range of printed materialsavailable in Hmong that might support the oral language to print connection. Students inthe primary grades of schooling are learning the vocabulary, phonology, and grammar ofEnglish, and connecting this oral learning to words in print. Knowing the meaning of aword, and having more experiences with English speech and writing would likely aid astudent in learning a new sight word. For students with limited oral proficiency, learningmore than a few unfamiliar words may just be too overwhelming, and was reflected intheir lower ARs.

Teaching lists of written and orally presented words is a common intervention forchildren who are ELL and may effectively increase contextual reading skills among all

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children with reading or English language deficits (Bliss, Skinner, & Adams, 2006; Burns,2002, 2007). The current data do not evaluate the effectiveness of teaching whole words tochildren who are ELL, but could have implications for that practice. Previous researchfound that exceeding a child’s acquisition rate results in reduced learning and increasedclassroom behavioral problems (Burns & Dean, 2005b; Cesaro, 1967; Swiatlowski &Burns, 2004). Thus, these data suggest that the when teaching sight-words or generallyusing whole-word instruction with children identified as ELL, smaller sets of informationused more frequently might be beneficial for children with the lowest English proficiency.

The idea of teaching fewer items to the students who need to learn the most is coun-terintuitive and needs further explanation. These data do not suggest that students shouldbe taught less, they merely suggest that they should be taught in smaller sets, which occurmore frequently for the students needing more intensive intervention. For example, thecurrent data suggest that groups of three might be a good starting point for second-gradechildren with low proficiency and larger sets of five or seven might be appropriate for stu-dents with more developed English skills. Thus, if the objective was to teach 30 words in1 week, a student with poorer developed English language might need 10 sets of 3 each,but a more proficient English speaker could perhaps receive six sets of five or four to fivesets of seven in each. However, the AR could be assessed for each child and instructioncould be individualized based on the resulting data. There also seemed to be little benefit,at least when teaching students who are ELLs, to identifying high or low imagery wordsfor modifying instruction (e.g., start with high imagery words).

Although these data suggest some cautious implications for practice, the primaryobjective is to suggest direction for future research. Thus, several limitations should firstbe considered. First, the study utilized a relatively small sample of students in thebetween-group analysis. Although the data were normally distributed within the threegroups and total sample, the size of the sample prevented general linear modeling. Futureresearchers could consider replicating this study with a larger number of participants.Moreover, the participants in the current study all spoke Hmong as their native languageand were all second graders. It may be interesting to examine these research questionswith children from a combination of language groups to examine the effects of students’native languages on the results, and to investigate potential developmental effects withinthe data. Finally, the task for the study consisted of accurately reading high frequencywords without consideration of semantic issues. Thus, future researchers may wish to usewords selected for reasons beyond their frequency, and could extend the learning taskbeyond just accurately reading the word within 2 seconds by presenting the word contex-tually or requiring some demonstration of understanding the meaning of the words.

In addition to addressing limitations of the current study, it would be useful for futureresearchers to test interventions based on assessing the AR among children who are ELL.It may also be interesting to see if these results are found for less language-loaded taskssuch as memorizing multiplication facts, and to examine if AR corresponds to level ofEnglish orthographic knowledge. Given the increasing number of children who are ELL inschools in the United States, and the aforementioned underperformance of these students,additional research as to how to best instruct them is warranted.

References

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of theNational Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.

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