Vocabulary Intervention

The purpose of this study is to determine if a vocabulary intervention program on conceptual understating can substantially affect a students’ vocabulary knowledge. This particular study focused on elementary school students who are deaf or hard of hearing and who have trouble with decoding vocabulary and word phrases. The study is a single-subject, multi-baseline to determine the effects of the vocabulary intervention on word recognition, production, and comprehension. The new vocabulary words each week were introduced by three intervention components: word introduction, semantic mapping and practice. This study applies to communication disorders because students who are lacking vocabulary typical have additional reading or writing complications.
During the study an additional two participants were identified as autistic, in addition to being deaf or hard of hearing. The criteria to participate in the study included a need for intervention services. The students had to have a reading level that was below average/grade level by at least one year. The participants had to be between the ages of 7 and 10. Lastly the participants need to experience a difficulty with decoding and comprehension. The author recruited the classroom teacher to help collect data from the participants. The general educator was identified in a previous study as an exceptional teacher of the deaf and was recommended to the author by four professionals in the field of deaf and hard. This particular teacher was chosen from a pool of recommended teachers. The six participants took part in 30-mintues of intervention two days a week over a 6-8 week time period. Another two days a week the students were tested briefly on the words and word
They were scored on a three-level scale. The scale ranged from mastered, has the student identified or produced the word or phrase accurately, emerging, has the student identified the word or phrase with approximation, and incorrect/not mastered, the student did not identify or produce the word or phrase accurately. The total number of vocabulary words and phrases learned varied by each participant. The given baseline for ranged from 21 to 42 words with the mean words or phrases being taught per student were 36. All the participants had substantial increases in the mean number of Dolch word recognitions from their baseline to intervention. Word recognition increased from 0.00-0.33 words to 1.87-3.00 words out of 3.00. Three of the six students immediately increased their performance from no words recognized to two words out of the three words. In addition, three students also increased their performance to mastering all three words. This demonstrated that the intervention had an immediate and positive effect on the student’s ability to recognize new vocabulary words. In regards to the mean amount of Dolch words produced by the students throughout the intervention rose from 0.00-0.33 out of 3.00 words to 1.53-2.87 words. Five students improved their production to reach mastery. After intervention the students could produce 2.5 out of the 3.0 words. Lastly