Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Research Scholarships - Master's program

Early exposure to vocabulary influences language development, literacy, and academic success. (Bélanger, 2022). Children in minority contexts have limited access to a rich and varied vocabulary (Mayer-Crittenden et al., 2014). This project aims to fill this gap by creating an explicit teaching program for tier 2 words (literary and high-utility academic words) in French. We will provide a structured interactive reading protocol that supports lexical learning from preschool onwards. The study consists of evaluating the effectiveness of a reading intervention using a pre-test, an intervention, an immediate and a delayed post-test. During the readings, the use of reading strategies will be manipulated. No studies have yet examined explicit vocabulary instruction in minority-language contexts, where children often have reduced exposure to the language of schooling. Existing research has primarily been conducted with children in majority-language settings and has tended to investigate each strategy separately rather than combining multiple approaches. The goal of the proposed study will be to examine how several vocabulary-teaching strategies work together for students in minority contexts and to test both their effectiveness and complementarity. This work will aim to promote linguistic equity, support children’s academic success, and better address the specific language needs of children with limited access to the school language. We believe that combining all strategies will lead to stronger vocabulary retention and more learning outcomes. Addressing this gap will have important implications for instructional materials and for the support provided by early childhood educators and speech-language pathologists.