An Investigation Into High School Students’ Vocabulary Uptake as a Result of the Interventionist Versus the Non-Interventionist Approach

This research study investigated the effectiveness of two vocabulary instructional methods at a Perth high school to prepare 29 year nine English as an additional language (EAL) students for a high-stakes national literacy assessment called NAPLAN. With the aim of finding the most useful pedagogical practice to spur students’ vocabulary growth, the author investigated the participants’ vocabulary uptake as a result of the interventionist approach versus the non-interventionist approach, both of which were applied in conjunction with Explicit Direct Instruction (Hollingsworth & Ybarra, 2009). Students’ narratives were coded to determine the frequency of use of the target words, their grammatical accuracy and contextual appropriacy. Follow-up interviews were conducted to investigate the lack of uptake in some students. Both methods of instruction were found to lead to a high frequency of uptake and contextually appropriate application of the target words. The non-interventionist approach was observed to result in more grammatically accurate usage of the taught lexical items. In the context that language teachers tend to use the implicit, incidental approach more than explicit vocabulary instruction (Wong & Lee, 2024), the findings of the study will help educators make informed choices to select the most suitable instructional approach in the classroom to boost their students’ vocabulary development.