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Relation between exposure to sophisticated and complex language and learners’ vocabulary

Read this study to understand how teachers' use of rich vocabulary shapes students' word knowledge. Complex sentences may widen the gap between language minority and English-only learners.

Last updated 8 September 2026

Gámez, P. B., & Lesaux, N. K. (2012). The relation between exposure to sophisticated and complex language and early-adolescent English-only and language minority learners’ vocabulary. Child Development, 83(4), 1316-1331.

Background

It was not known whether early adolescents’ linguistic input had an impact on their vocabulary skills.

Aims

The aim of the study was to examine whether teachers’ use of sophisticated and complex language would have an impact on their sixth-grade students’ vocabulary skills. Sample The participants were 22 teachers and 782 students from 24 classrooms. There were 568 students from language minority homes and 247 students from English-only homes. Students from language minority homes had families who spoke English and another language at home.

Method

The authors analysed the teachers’ amount of talk and use of sophisticated vocabulary and syntactic complexity from transcripts of video-recorded classroom observations. They also collected the performance of the students’ academic vocabulary at the beginning and end of the school year. The rare and low-frequency words used by the teachers were coded as sophisticated. The total amount of teacher talk was coded at the word and utterance levels. Teachers’ utterances were coded as complex when they contained subordinate or dependent clauses and when verbs took sentential complements.

Findings

The results indicated that the teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary had a significant impact on students’ vocabulary knowledge, while the total amount of talk did not. However, the teachers’ use of complex sentences did not have a significant impact on language minority students’ end-of-year vocabulary scores. Teachers’ use of complex sentences served to widen the difference in vocabulary scores between language minority and English-only students.

Implications

The authors recommended that efforts should be made to enrich the linguistic input for older students’ in terms of sophisticated vocabulary. Students with higher English language proficiency may benefit from teachers’ use of complex language.

Original article retrieved from ERIC.