Item Pool and Parameters for Definitions Project

The current project titled, “The Effect of Definitions, Contextual Support, and Cognate Status on 4th Grade Spanish-speaking English Learners' (ELs) Understanding of Unfamiliar Words in Text”, was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Our research team conducted two experiments to help Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) understand academic words in English. ELs often come across unfamiliar words when they read, which can make it challenging to comprehend what they're studying. Knowing these words is crucial for better reading and understanding. In our experiments, we tried different methods to assist ELs in learning new academic words and comprehending them when they read. We looked at how providing various types of definitions, using similar words from their native language (cognates), and offering context-related support could improve their ability to learn these words and read texts that contained them. Our findings suggest that fourth-grade Spanish-speaking ELs benefit equally from Spanish and English definitions for learning English words, but this might depend on their Spanish vocabulary skills. Students with higher Spanish vocabulary benefit more from Spanish definitions than students who are low in their overall Spanish vocabulary knowledge. The findings from these studies will guide the development of future programs designed to support Spanish-speaking ELs in building their academic vocabulary. Additionally, our research results will also influence the types of accommodations provided to ELs during assessments. Contents of the dataset include:

Table 1. Item Stems and Response Options for 141 Items from the Word Definition Learning Assessment (WDLA) Item Pool
Table 2. Linguistic Parameters for 141 Items from the Word Definition Learning Assessment (WDLA) Item Pool
Table 3. Item Stems and Response Options for 108 Items from the Word-Meaning-in-Context (WMC) Assessment Item Pool
Table 4. Linguistic Parameters for 108 Items from the Word-Meaning-in-Context (WMC) Assessment Item Pool

本项研究项目名为《定义、语境支持与同源状态对四年级西班牙语母语英语学习者（ELs）理解文本中陌生词汇的影响》，由美国教育科学研究院资助。研究团队通过两项实验旨在辅助西班牙语母语英语学习者（ELs）理解英语学术词汇。在学习过程中，ELs常遇到陌生词汇，这可能会阻碍他们对学习内容的理解。掌握这些词汇对于提高阅读理解和学习效果至关重要。在我们的实验中，我们尝试了多种方法以协助ELs学习新学术词汇并在阅读时理解它们。我们探讨了提供不同类型的定义、使用源自其母语的相似词汇（同源词）以及提供语境相关支持如何有助于他们学习这些词汇并阅读包含这些词汇的文本。研究发现，四年级西班牙语母语英语学习者从西班牙语和英语定义中同等受益于英语词汇的学习，但这可能取决于他们的西班牙语词汇技能水平。词汇量较高的学生从西班牙语定义中获益更多，而词汇量较低的学生则从整体西班牙语词汇知识中获益较少。这些研究结果将为未来旨在支持西班牙语母语英语学习者构建学术词汇的项目的开发提供指导。此外，我们的研究成果还将影响评估过程中为ELs提供的支持类型。数据集内容包含：

表格1：来自词汇定义学习评估（WDLA）项目库的141个项目的题目和选项

表格2：来自词汇定义学习评估（WDLA）项目库的141个项目的语言参数

表格3：来自词汇-语境中意义评估（WMC）项目库的108个项目的题目和选项

表格4：来自词汇-语境中意义评估（WMC）项目库的108个项目的语言参数