How Many Words Can They Remember?

Vocabulary Retention Of ELL Students

How Many Words Can They Remember? Vocabulary Retention of English Language Learners
Sandy Trinidad
Manhattan College Education 360

How Many Words Can They Remember?

Abstract
English Language Learners have a limited level of vocabulary retention. This hinders their
communication skills with classmates and teachers, as well as their reading and writing skills
that are necessary to exceed in standardize examinations. The limited vocabulary retention was
evident in a group of seventh grade students in the Childrens Aid Society after school program
at I.S. 218. The students participated in the development of a plan to improve their vocabulary
retention, which included images matching new vocabulary, vocabulary build up from previous
to new words, annotation, and incentives. Incentives increased students interest in new
vocabulary and emphasized the use of their new words, participation in vocabulary activities also
increased, and the annotation aided in understanding. Students, however, did not benefit from
having multiple words written together as part of vocabulary build up, and also did not benefit
from the limited space in which the new vocabulary was being taught. After implementing
effective vocabulary retention practices, educators need to find different ways of assessing the
students retention level that aids the different ELL students needs.

How Many Words Can They Remember?

How Many Words Can They Remember? Vocabulary Retention of English Language Learners
How can educators improve vocabulary retention? One of the main challenges that
English Language Learners face is being able to retain new words that are taught to them through
direct bilingual instruction or other language learning aids. ELL students are given words and
their definitions but often they are not able to apply them any further than how they learned to
use them in the classroom. They often forget what they have learned and rather rely on
continuing to speak in their native language. ELL students are held to the same standards as
students who speak the native language, and therefore it is important to incorporate the best ELL
teaching practices that help students not just learn new English words, but also retain and apply
them. By retaining the new words that they learn, ELL would not just be able to communicate
better, but it would also help them become better readers. By becoming better readers, they will
be able achieve better grades in their state standardize examinations once they are required to
take them. As future teachers of classrooms that can potentially have bilingual students, we need
to find teaching practices that would allow us to understand how to heighten vocabulary
retention for ELL students.
Vocabulary retention, however, is a challenge that has been identified not only for ELL
students but also native speakers of low-income community schools. After research and data
gathered through yearly pre and post reading assessments, The Childrens Aid Society has
reported that children in the six-grade level are currently reading at the third grade level. The
agency introduced a new mandate called Word Bee, aims to enhance and increase the
vocabulary level of its participants. The mandate requires 2-3 new words to be introduced
weekly including the words definition, part of speech, and use in a sentence. The students are
given incentives at the end of the week for answering questions about the words correctly.

How Many Words Can They Remember?

However, as an after school instructor at The Childrens Aid Society at I.S. 218, I realized that
the students, especially the ELL students, were not retaining the words they learned. They were
not retaining even simple words that should not be hard to remember. I personally work with a
group of about 25 seventh grade students who are part of a bilingual class during the morning
time in school. They are not proficient in the English language and thus are not able to read,
write, or communicate in the English proficiently. As a result, are functioning at a lower grade
level than they are supposed to. They are only able to use simple everyday words such as hello,
yes, no, and what. However, they are not able to comprehend other more complex words. I try to
speak to them in English at times to get them accustomed to doing so as well, but there are times
when these children are not able to comprehend simple sentences. I have asked students, Do
you have homework? in English, and they do not comprehend what I am asking. Simple words
such as homework, have, and you, are words that these students, even if identified as an English
Language Learner, should be able to comprehend after being in an NYC school for a certain
period of time. I have been puzzled by the way that my students did not know the meaning to
some of the words we introduced them to, given that the words for bilingual students have been
lowered to third grade standards. One day my partner and I introduced our students to the word
backpack, and it was surprising to see how many of them did not know its translation or
definition. Before designing a plan that would aim to improve the vocabulary retention of these
students, I looked at what different researchers found on the best practices for teaching ELL
students.
What The Research Shows
Jeffrey D. Wilhelm identifies the need for educators need to identify what words to teach,
and how to teach them. In order to build reading comprehension skills, students need to know the

How Many Words Can They Remember?

meaning of words. Students with strong vocabulary knowledge have strong reading
comprehension skills and vice versa, but students with limited vocabulary perform poorly in
reading comprehension. The author places emphasis on vocabulary building among all content
areas and grades. Jeffrey Wilhelm connects with Boise State Writing Project Fellow Greg
Wilson and his mentor George Hillocks to examine their practices in vocabulary instruction.
They find that the words that should be taught are words that repeat throughout readings,
questions, and other disciplinary work that students focus on, as well as words that build
meaning for other unfamiliar words. New words should also be introduced before students come
across them, and vocabulary instruction should intertwine incidental/environmental teaching and
direct instruction. The author does not give much insight how teaching instruction for vocabulary
building for ELL students or students with learning disabilities. More support should be provided
for ELL teachers in order for ELL students to be able to perform at the common core standards,
and therefore break the cycle of underachievement that results from lack of vocabulary.
S.F. Chung identifies the evident achievement gap English Language Learners (ELLs)
and English-only students which needs to be demolished. The research identifies vocabulary
errors as the most reoccurring vocabulary error for ELLs, which interferes with their oral and
reading comprehension. The research focuses on ELL students of all grades, including primary
school, secondary school, and college. The author summarizes a plethora of different teaching
strategies for instructors of ELL students that have been gathered through observations and
descriptive data. Some of the strategies include story construction, direct teaching basic or tier1 words and more complex tier-2 words, teaching words in context, teaching words through
different encounters, creating vocabulary journals, repeated practice, the SLAP strategy, and
morphological instruction. The number of students in an ELL classroom, however, limits these

How Many Words Can They Remember?

strategies. There is a lot of differentiation among students that needs to be done making it
difficult to apply just of one of the strategies. There is a need for further research that studies
how to put the suggested strategies to practice while accounting for the cultural, linguistic,
literacy, and socio-economic factors on vocabulary learning among ELLs.
Yu Ren Dong explains how native English speakers graduate high school with an average
of at least 12,000 words; meanwhile, high school ELL students are just beginning to acquire
some English vocabulary words. Students vocabulary is key passing standardized examination,
and therefore it is important for teachers to find the best practices that would allow for the ELL
students to achieve understanding. Yu Ren Dong suggests three best strategies that he has used
with his science students in secondary science teaching in New York City. From prior
experience, he suggests using ELLs prior knowledge to teach new vocabulary, designing
culturally familiar examples, and using concept mapping to teach science vocabulary. His
strategies are limited to secondary, and perhaps middle school students, and cannot be applied to
ELL students in elementary school. The research also does not focus on a variety of subject
areas. It is also not very clear whether these strategies will also be enough to help students pass
their standardized examinations. Teachers of other content areas could generalize the suggested
practices and make it appropriate to other content areas.
Whats the Plan?
After researching teaching practices for ELL students and vocabulary retention, the
following plan was designed to help students achieve a higher level of vocabulary retention
during their Word Bee sessions. First, students rather than just simply writing the words and its
components on chart paper, I established with my partner that we would print out pictures that
accompanied the words and would help students remember them. Students cannot retain

How Many Words Can They Remember?

information that they do not understand; therefore it is important that we first facilitate the
learning process before moving forward into the retention one. As mentioned in different
research material, images are one of the best aids to helping students remember what they learn
as it helps them form connections between the images and the words, and helps them return to
the images when defining or using the words.
The second part of the plan was to write more than one word together on one sheet so that
the students could constantly see them. Our after school program uses the rooms of the schools
that we provide services to in the building. Since we do not have our own rooms, we cannot
leave materials up on the wall for students to see everyday. Previously for Word Bee, my
partner and I would write just the word of the week on a chart paper, and only have that one
word up for the week. I realized that not having students see the previous words up throughout
the week would allow them to easily recall and use them. Since we cannot carry too much
material around, rather than just having to put up previous charts, we decided to write more
words together.
A third part of the plan, was to have students annotate the information that they wrote on
the cards with translations of other words they did not understand into their native language, for
example, and any other annotations that would help them better understand and remember what
we instruct them. The last part of the plan was to find a way that would encourage students to use
the new words they learned. Every Friday we are given incentives to give to students who can
answer questions about the weekly words correctly or at least give a good attempt. However, I
decided that instead of just using the incentives for questions, I would also give the incentives for
students who best showed me that they used the words that they learned in times other than when
we met.

How Many Words Can They Remember?

Results
One of the most quantitative results of executing the plan was the increase in student
enthusiasm throughout the process. The last part was one of the most effective parts. The
incentives and the recognition motivated and encouraged students to use the new words
throughout their day. This allowed them to remember the words better, which was also evident
throughout the increased participation of students throughout the Word Bee activity. Many
who were shy to participate of fear of mispronunciation were encouraged by the new incentives
and encouraged by their partners to begin sharing with the class. Those who were still shy to
share their use of the words in class would communicate privately with me to give me examples
of how they were at least trying to use the word. Before applying some of the parts of the plan, I
had about the same five students wanting to participate at our weekly Word Bee competition.
However, after more students began to remember more words and remember more information
about them, I had about 10-15 students, sometimes even the whole class, wanting to participate
and share what they remembered. There were students who also expressed how they related their
new words not just in school but even back at home. One student, for example, described to me
how she saw our weekly word mayor in the news and how she was able to remember that she
remembered how I taught her that our major was De Blasio.
The pictures were also very effective when helping the students understand the words.
Many times they did not understand the words definition, but with the pictures they were able to
understand the meaning of the words even before my partner and I translated them. I had many
of them infer what the definition of the words were using the pictures before I told them so,
which also helped better remember the information of their words when I asked them questions
about it. The annotation piece of the plan was very successful as well. I allowed some of the

How Many Words Can They Remember?

students who have more trouble or are more hesitant to communicate in English to answer
questions about the words in Spanish. Whereas before they definitions they gave in Spanish were
more vague, with the annotations they were able to give more precise definitions even if they
were in Spanish. Seeing previous words and not just new ones on the board, helped students
better retain the information. In our end of the week Word Bee activity, I always asked
students questions about the old words; they often did not remember the information of the older
words because they did not review them every time we met. After having new words written
together with old words, my partner and I were able to review the old words more often and
quicker. They were also able to individually review the words more often, even if it was just by
taking a glance at them. The students were able to answer more questions about them, especially
the definitions.
Limitations
Even though having the more words together helped students remember information
better, this was a part of the plan that also had some drawbacks. When students saw a lot of
information together on chart paper, it often overwhelmed them. It made it harder for students to
synthesize the new information, as the old information sometimes distracted them. If new words
were harder than the old words, they often wanted to answer questions about the easier old words
that they remembered which hindered the new information that they needed to acquire and
retain. If we had our own classroom, the ideal solution would be to have the old information
written separately but still displayed throughout the room with its pictures and other images. I
would also have items throughout the room labeled in English and Spanish to help them
remember simple but necessary words that we might not have covered. With more time, part of
my plan would also be to give even better incentives to students who can creatively use the

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words we have learned in different forms such as using them in music, poems, stories, and/ or
others.
Conclusion
English vocabulary retention is difficult to achieve for students that are English Language
Learners. Their inability to remember new words that they learn through daily instruction hinders
their ability to communicate, read, and write in the English language, which also hinders their
ability to achieve the standards up to which they are held. Their lack of new words retention is
possibly due to their lack of everyday usage. Lack of vocabulary retention was evident in the
seventh grade ELL students that attend The Childrens Aid Society after school program at I.S.
218. A lot of ELL students are hesitant to use the English language, as theyre still more
comfortable with using their native one. They are yet not able to apply it to different situations
that the ones in which they are taught to use the words. English words also have multiple
meanings, which makes it even more difficult for students to remember how to use them
correctly.
Identifying the correct words to teach through instruction through research and allowing
students to apply their native language throughout the learning process is one of the main ways
to heighten vocabulary retention. Words should be applied to the diverse cultures of the students.
Previously learned words should also be a building block for new words, and instruction of
vocabulary should not just be direct. Some information that is still missing, however, is the way
in which educators should assess vocabulary retention. If testing is a possible solution, then they
should be tests that evaluates oral and written vocabulary retention as students can potentially be
better at one than the other. Other forms of assessments such art or musical projects that
accommodate students different learning styles should also be implemented. Such assessments

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will allow us to determine if the different teaching practices are actually allowing our students to
just learn and regurgitate the information that they are learning, but are also able to apply it.