for sixth and ninth graders. Russell and Saadeh’s work provides another demonstration of
how knowledge about words is not the simple present∕absent conceptualization that
traditional multiple-choice tests most often measure.
Another study by Graves (1986) compared the number of words children knew on
different dimensions of knowledge. These tasks were used to assess three different aspects
of the reading vocabulary of primary-grade children. The tasks included a multiple
meaning task, in which children were asked to produce more than one definition for a
word, a meanings-in-context task, that required children to explain what a word meant
within a sentence, and a precision-of-meanings task, which required children to give
meanings of two semantically similar words. The three different subtask scores presented
a richer picture of the extent of children’s knowledge of words than do traditional, single
measurement approaches. The results illustrate the multifaceted picture of vocabulary size
that can emerge if different dimensions are considered.
Word associations tasks
Word association tasks have also been used to assess word knowledge by examining the
children’s ability to use categorical processing versus event-based processing. Although
the free association task, “cat-dog” can be useful, the most popular association task
involves providing a category and asking the student to name as many elements in the
category as possible within a specified time period. Richard and Hanner (1985) also
suggest asking the student, “what goes with X ?” and encouraging the students to think of
any words associated with the target word.
Sentence generation tasks
A measure that assesses, in part, lexical use, is to provide the child with one to three words
and ask him or her to make up a sentence. In a variation of this task, Wiig and Secord
(1985) first provided a pictorial context (e.g. two people near a park bench) and three
words (e.g., sit, painted, because), and ask the child to make up a sentence that fits the
situation. With the context provided, the child is prompted to use past experiences to
create a sentence.
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