The present section is divided into three parts. The first part presents information about the
general testing procedure. In the second part the pre-test and intervention procedures for the
Control and Experimental groups are described. In the third section, the procedures for the
post-test measures are presented.
7.3.4.1 General testing procedure
All the children were tested by the author. The experimenter was introduced to each class by
the class teacher. At the start of each testing session, a few minutes were spent in general
conversation with the child, to put him or her at ease. All the tasks were introduced to the
child as “games”. Each child was assured that this was not a test, and there were no right or
wrong answers.
Children were tested in four separate sessions. Sessions were conducted one week apart.
Each session lasted from 15 to 20 minutes. Children were taken individually to the quietest
available place away from the classroom. As soon as the screening test was completed, the
chosen children were assigned randomly to five groups (26 children per group) where each
group was exposed to a different combination of linguistic contexts throughout three
consecutive sessions. The order of exposure to the different linguistic contexts for Ostensive
definition, the Lexical contrast and Definition group was structured in such a way that
children were given additional information about the meaning of the word. That was not the
case for the Control and the Phonological control groups.
7.3.4.2 Pre-test procedure
Prior lexical knowledge (Naming and Comprehension) test
The pre-test was identical for all the children. A screening test was carried out in order to
select the children that would take part in the experiment. The pre-test included the two pre-
test measurements. The order of the measures was kept the same for all the children. The
baseline (naming) vocabulary knowledge test was conducted first, while the baseline
(comprehension) vocabulary knowledge test was conducted second. The order of presentation
of the items within the tests had been randomised both for the comprehension and naming
task in order to avoid order effects.