Abigail Turner presenting her results during her virtual defense

Congrats to Abigail Turner who successfully defended her dissertation titled “How Should Context-Dependent Words be Taught to Beginning Readers?” 

Committee Members:
Linnea Ehri (chairperson), Distinguished Professor Emerita, Ed Psych, Graduate Center
Alpana Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Queens College
Katharine Pace-Miles, Assistant Professor, Brooklyn College

Readers:
Bruce Homer, Associate Professor, Educational Psychology, Graduate Center
Jessica DeLucia, Founder/Lead Literacy Specialist, Keys to Literacy and Learning

Abigail Turner (top left) presents to her dissertation committee, readers, and additional attendees.

Abstract
This study examined three different instructional methods for teaching context-dependent words. Two types of context-dependent words were taught: irregular past tense verbs and function words. The words were embedded either in scrambled contexts or in meaningful sentence contexts. Three different instructional conditions to teach the words were compared. In the Meaningful Context condition, students studied the target words embedded in meaningful sentences. In the Scrambled condition, students studied target words placed in scrambled word sequences. In the Combination condition, students studied target words in both types of contexts that were alternated across learning trials. Participants were 53 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, ages 5 to 6 years, who qualified as beginning readers based on pretests. The two word types were studied on separate training days, with two sets of posttests administered a day after each training session. Posttests included measures of sight word reading, spelling, sentence production, irregular past tense verb transformations, and syntactic awareness. It was hypothesized that instructional condition would affect the word identities that were learned. Results showed that instructional condition did not affect word reading measures during training or on any of the posttests. It was also hypothesized that function words would be easier to learn across measures. Results showed that function words were easier to read and spell, while past tense verbs were easier to embed in sentence contexts. Findings carry instructional implications for how to teach context dependent words to beginning readers.

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