Abstract

Baber, G., & Bacon, H. (1995). Effect of instructional cues on memory for new

   Words by poor readers. Education & Treatment of Children, 18, 117-128.

 

Introduction:

 

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify instructional practices that help students remember new words.

 

Question: Do students remember new words better with instruction emphasizing phonetic cues with words in isolation or instruction with emphasizing meaning cues in sentences?

 

Methodology:

 

Participants: Nine second and three third grade students participating in the Exceptional Children's program at a small rural elementary school were selected for this study.  The sample included nine males and three females with an age range of 8.2 to 9.8 years.  All students were delayed at least two years in reading.  The sample consisted of eight learning disabled students, three mildly mentally handicapped students and one health impaired student.  Most students received reading instruction in their regular second and third grade classrooms from a basal reading program with the exception of one second grade classroom which used whole language.  The resource program provided direct instruction in phonics several days a week and a whole language approach on alternate days.

            This study was not a comparison of different groups, but of responses of the same students to different methods.

 

Procedure: Pretests were administered individually to the reading disabled students to assess prior knowledge of target words and to establish baseline scores for each student.  Two lists of fifteen words were selected from a reading text one grade level above the students' current reading level to reduce the possibility of previous exposure to prior knowledge of the target words.

            Phase I, both groups learned the words in sentences and were given contextual cues to help them remember the words.

            Phase II, both groups learned the new words (this was a different list from Phase I) in isolation and were given phonic cues to help them remember the words.

            Post tests containing the target words in isolated form were administered individually the first, third, seventh and fourteenth day following initial instruction for both phase I and II.

 

Results:

 

            The number of words remembered as a result of two types of instructional cues was compared using two different measures: number of target words remembered from a word list and number of target words remembered when reading the words in sentences.  The post test measuring number of words remembered from a word list was repeated four times.  The sentence reading test was given once after the other tests were completed.  An ANOVA with repeated measures was used to compare the number of words recognized from the word lists following the two instructional cues (phonics vs. context) and to determine if memory for the target words changed over time (repeated tests).

 The difference in the two methods was significant, but there were no significant differences in the scores of the repeated tests nor in the interaction of methods and tests.  Students consistently remembered more words on the four tests after phonic cues than on the four tests after context cues.

 

 

Discussion:

 

            Although academic performance, especially reading, is affected by many factors, the results of this study suggest that the instructional approach used to teach new words to children with reading problems can significantly affect their memory for the words.  In this study, teaching new words in isolation with emphasis on phonic cues facilitated word retention more than teaching new words with emphasis on contextual cues.  The advantage of the phonic cuing approach was significant whether word retention was measured using word list or sentences.

            In this study, during the phonics instruction they were primarily being reminded of the phonetic cues they had already learned, rather than being taught new information.  They could not have mastered enough phonics skills in one lesson to make such a difference in their performance.  These results may be further evidence of the failure of students with reading disabilities to use known strategies to facilitate their learning and memory unless specifically reminded to do so.