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How Should Context-Dependent Words Be Taught To Beginning Readers?, Abigail M. Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined three different instructional methods for teaching beginners to read context-dependent words. Two types of context-dependent words were taught: irregular past tense verbs and function words. The words were embedded either in scrambled contexts or in meaningful sentence contexts. Three different instructional conditions to teach the words were compared. In the Meaningful Context condition, students studied the target words embedded in meaningful sentences. In the Scrambled condition, students studied target words placed in scrambled word sequences. In the Combination condition, students studied target words in both types of contexts that were alternated across learning trials. Participants were 53 …