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Relationship Between Children's Lexical Diversity in Written Narratives and Performance on a Standardized Reading
Carla L Wood1, Kristina N Bustamante1, Christopher Schatschneider1
1Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA.
Assessment for Effective Intervention : Official Journal of the Council for Educational Diagnostic Services
|May 28, 2021
Summary
This study found that the number of different words (NDW) in children
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Lexical diversity in written narratives is a key indicator of language development.
- Understanding the relationship between written language measures and standardized assessments is crucial for educational evaluation.
- Previous research has explored various metrics for lexical diversity, but their construct validity in relation to reading vocabulary needs further examination.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the construct validity of different lexical diversity measures in children's written narratives.
- To determine the relationship between these lexical diversity measures and performance on a standardized reading vocabulary test (GMRT-4).
- To assess the predictive power of lexical diversity metrics for reading vocabulary in elementary school children.
Main Methods:
- Analyzed written narratives from 234 children across 1st-5th grade.
- Calculated lexical diversity using: number of different words (NDW), total words (TNW), NDW in a 50-word sample, and type-token ratio (TTR).
- Correlated lexical diversity measures with scores from the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GMRT-4).
Main Results:
- Significant grade-level differences were found in lexical diversity and productivity measures.
- Lexical diversity demonstrated a moderate, significant correlation with GMRT-4 scores.
- Number of different words (NDW) showed a stronger association with GMRT-4 scores than type-token ratio (TTR) for 1st and 2nd graders.
Conclusions:
- Lexical diversity metrics, particularly NDW, show promise as indicators of language maturity and predictors of reading vocabulary.
- Simple length considerations (TNW, truncated NDW, TTR) did not enhance the relationship with reading vocabulary.
- NDW in written narratives may serve as an efficient, educationally relevant marker of language development, pending further validation studies.
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