Abstract
This study draws on data collected as a part of the research project "Improving language comprehension in preschool children with language difficulties: a cluster randomised trial" at the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo. The project assessed the effects of a language comprehension intervention for preschool children with weaker language skills. In the intervention, 90 age-appropriate focus words were selected. 30 of these words were measured by using a task that required the children to define the words. This study focuses on the 30 measured intervention words. The aim of the study is to develop a better understanding of how different characteristics of these words are associated with word knowledge among children with poor vocabulary skills. The purpose of this is to gain insight on what words are more challenging for these children to learn, and to help teachers and practitioners with taking well-informed choices of what words to instruct. The analysis of the data was conducted in different sections. First, descriptive statistics were used to describe what characterised the words that were measured. Second, correlations between the variables were examined. Third, logistic regression analyses were used to examine how different word characteristics predict word knowledge. Six different word characteristics were examined: word class, ambiguity, morphological complexity, phonological complexity, word length and frequency. The main focus was on the characteristics word class and ambiguity. All the word characteristics except frequency predicted word knowledge to some extent. With respect to word class, the results indicated that adjectives were harder to learn than both nouns and verbs. Moving on to ambiguity, the findings indicated that it was harder for children to learn a word the more meanings it had. Considering the other characteristics, words with an initial fricative appeared to be easier to learn, while words with an initial consonant cluster, morphologically complex words and longer words appeared to be harder to learn.