The efficacy of a whole school vocabulary intervention programme in secondary schools in areas of social disadvantage

Purpose: Vocabulary difficulties are common in adolescents, particularly in adolescents in areas of social disadvantage (Spencer et al 2012). However, research on interventions for improving vocabulary skills in secondary school students is limited (Cirrin & Gillam 2008). This study evaluated the efficacy of a collaborative, whole school vocabulary intervention programme for improving vocabulary skills on selected measures of vocabulary, in secondary school students, not identified with language impairment, from schools in socially disadvantaged areas. Method: Four Irish secondary schools in areas of social disadvantage were chosen to participate in the current study. Two schools were randomly assigned to a treatment group, and two schools to a control group. First year students’ vocabulary skills were evaluated on selected measures of vocabulary at pre-treatment (n=245) and post-treatment (n=231), using three subtests from the CELF-4, and the BPVS-3. Results: The treatment group improved significantly more than the control group on raw score versions of three out of five measures, suggesting that treatment had a significant effect in improving the treatment group’s participants’ raw scores on those three measures. There were no significant differences in raw scores between the treatment and control groups on the other two measures, or on any standard score versions of the measures. The treatment group alone improved on both raw score and standard score versions of all measures from pre-treatment to post-treatment. The control group alone improved on both raw score and standard score versions of three out of five measures. Conclusion: Results of the current study suggest that a collaborative whole school vocabulary intervention approach using instructional strategies for vocabulary learning is a promising approach for improving vocabulary skills (on certain vocabulary measures) in secondary school students, not identified with language impairment, from schools in socially disadvantaged areas. Further studies using more sensitive measures for testing participants’ abilities to employ strategies for vocabulary learning are warranted.