effects of story reading alone. The third purpose of her second experiment was to clarify
further the contribution of the word-related and subject-related variables. The last purpose
of her study was to investigate the permanence of any learning that occurred.
The experimental design was devised to compare the effects of reading the stories aloud
with and without explanation of unfamiliar words. In group A (reading with explanation)
the teachers read the stories and explained the meanings of the target words as they
occurred. In group B (reading without explanation) the teachers read the stories without
explaining the meanings of the target words. These two treatments were crossed with two
stories for the two experimental groups. Again, each story was read three times, and the
post-test occurred seven days after the last reading. Group C (the control group) took all
tests at the same times as Group A and B but heard neither story. Three months later, the
delayed post tests were given to one class in group A and one class in group B.
Elley (1989) found that having a teacher explaining words as they are encountered gave
more than double vocabulary gains, and that this learning was relatively permanent.
However, that kind of learning was not incidental, since the teacher was explaining the
meanings of the words. She also found that the lowest in baseline vocabulary ability group
improved more than the highest in baseline vocabulary ability group. However, she only
used one measure of word learning which was a multiple choice test. No production
measures were administered, and no control over the unknown words was taken.
Robbins and Ehri (1994) carried out a study in order to extend the line of research
regarding the effects of listening to stories on children’s vocabulary growth.
Kindergartners listened to a story- The boy who cried wolf- twice and then completed a
multiple choice vocabulary test assessing their knowledge of eleven unfamiliar target
words occurring in the story. Comparable words not appearing in the story were included
as controls in the test. Some target words appeared twice in the story and some only once.
Children’s existing vocabulary was assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary test.
The children recognized the meanings of significantly more words from the story than
words not in the story, thus indicating that storybook reading was effective for building
vocabulary. It was also found, that children with larger vocabularies learned more words
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