Teacher Vocabulary Use and Student Language and Literacy Achievement

Oct 1, 2026

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Purpose: examine second grade teachers’ word use throughout the school day to quantify the amount and type of teacher vocabulary across content areas and to test how this teacher talk relates to student language and literacy achievement. Method: 64 teachers and a random sample of 619 students; teachers recorded instruction during the year and students were assessed in fall and spring on vocabulary, grammar, and reading. Results: students heard thousands of words hourly; common words dominated and academic word proportion predicted end-of-year vocabulary. Conclusions: correlational evidence supports the importance of academic language for early school outcomes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Article History

Abstract

Purpose

Method

Results

Conclusions

Background and Rationale

| Research Article
Teacher Vocabulary Use and Student Language and Literacy Achievement
Jeanne Wanzek,a Carla Wood,b and Christopher Schatschneiderc
a Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN b School of Communication Science and Disorders, Florida State University, Tallahassee c Department of Psychology and Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee | | | --- | --- | | A R T I C L E I N F O
Article History:
Received October 21, 2022
Revision received January 6, 2023
Accepted May 23, 2023
Editor: Mary Alt
[https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00605](https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00605) | A B S T R A C T | | | Purpose: We sought to examine second grade teachers’ word use throughout the school day to identify the amount and type of teacher vocabulary use across content areas as well as to examine relationships between this teacher talk and student language and literacy achievement.
Method: Second grade teachers (n = 64) and a random sample of half of their students (n = 619) participated. Teachers recorded instruction during the school day throughout the year, and students were assessed on vocabulary, grammar, and reading measures in the fall and spring.
Results: Findings reveal second grade students hear thousands of words spoken by the teacher each hour of the school day, including more than a thousand different words per hour on average. The large majority of words were the most common words in the English language. On average, there were few academic or curriculum vocabulary words used, but this varied widely between teachers. The proportion of academic words used by teachers during the school day significantly predicted students’ end-of-year vocabulary. Teachers who used more academic words had students with higher vocabulary achievement at the end of the school year. There were no other significant relationships between teachers’ language and student achievement.
Conclusions: This correlational evidence adds to the existing knowledge of the importance of academic language to student school outcomes and provides implications for further research in the area of academic language at the early elementary level. | Vocabulary knowledge has an important role in improving academic achievement, particularly in supporting reading development (e.g., August et al., 2005; August & Shanahan, 2006; Baker et al., 2014; Scarborough, 2002) . It is well recognized that vocabulary is fundamental to recognizing and comprehending words in print (Rickettset al., 2007; Scarborough, 2002) . Knowledge of the language of text and school, or academic language, which refers to the formal and complex oral and written language used in school lessons, textbooks, tests, and assignments (Scarcella, 2003; Schleppegrell, 2012; Uccelli et al., 2015), has an essential role in comprehension of academic texts (Stahl & Nagy, 2006) . Correspondence to Jeanne Wanzek: [jeanne.wanzek@vanderbilt.edu](jeanne.wanzek@vanderbilt.edu). Disclosure: The authors have declared that no competing financial or nonfinancial interests existed at the time of publication. For academic language learning, classroom contexts may be critically influential environments because academic language is less likely to occur in informal home contexts. Consistent with the vast majority of theories of oral language development (e.g., social interactionist theory, competition model, connectionist theories, modularity theory, universal grammar, usage-based theory, and semantic bootstrapping), environmental linguistic exposure plays an essential role in acquisition of new language forms. The more students experience language with those that have more language knowledge, the more their own vocabulary and grammatical skills can develop. Increased vocabulary and grammatical skills also contribute to students’ ability to recognize and comprehend the academic vocabulary and language of the

FAQs

What was the study’s main purpose?

To examine second grade teachers’ vocabulary use across the school day, identify the amount and type of teacher vocabulary, and determine how teacher talk relates to students’ language and literacy achievement.

How were data on teacher word use and student outcomes collected?

Teachers recorded instruction during the school day across the school year, and students were assessed in fall and spring on vocabulary, grammar, and reading measures.

What did the results show about vocabulary used by teachers?

Students heard thousands of words each hour, with the vast majority being common English words. Academic or curriculum vocabulary words were used less often, varying widely by teacher, and the proportion of academic words significantly predicted students’ end-of-year vocabulary.

Oct 1, 2026

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