Strategies to Improve English Vocabulary and Spelling in the Classroom for ELL, ESL, EO and LD Students

Vocabulary and spelling are two of the most important skills to achieve success in an academic setting. This review of 15 articles highlights classroom interventions that successfully enhanced vocabulary and spelling skills among ESL, English Only, English language learners (ELL), and learning disabled (LD) students. The strategies that enhanced vocabulary skills were reading strategies, story book reading strategies, and memorization strategies. The strategies that enhanced spelling skills were Cover, Copy, Compare (CCC) and writing strategies. Results showed that the strategy of storybook reading enhanced the vocabulary skills among both English Only and ESL students. Writing strategies resulted in spelling skill improvement for students with LD. Future research should focus on the CCC strategy application to improve their vocabulary skills for ESL students who also have LD. they were asked to support their preschool‐aged child at home. Joe’s (1998) work revealed that vocabulary was being gained incidentally and learned by its participants through the process of reading and retelling a text. This then led to greater vocabulary gains for unknown words and strategies that would allow the learners and participants to develop those oral and written skills. In both studies, the interventions led to enhanced vocabulary learning through generative processing of the words and their usage.


INTRODUCTION
meaning is able to be conveyed and understood. English can be tricky because there are many words that sound the same when pronounced but are spelled differently and, therefore, have a completely different meaning. For example, the words rain, rein, and reign all have very different meanings but all sound the same and may be a point of confusion for a user of English vocabulary.
Because the English language is complex to master, the best way for a person to achieve true understanding, according to Plester, Wood, & Joshi (2009), is to establish a connection between reading comprehension and spelling. The path to reading and writing fluently in English "is through mastering the connections between letter combinations and the sounds they represent" (Joshi & Roth, 2009, p.1).
Children who have LD are more likely to struggle with learning English, even in their native language, compared to their peers (Schwarz et al., 2000). Additionally, students with LD can be weaker in their understanding of syntax, grammar, and vocabulary, which makes learning spelling and vocabulary challenging (Cortiella & Horowitz, 2014). Similarly, ESL children with LD tend to be weaker in their native language as well (across the areas of writing, reading, comprehension, and spelling abilities), which makes learning a foreign language like English even more challenging (Ipek, 2009). Typically, to learn a foreign language such as English, a student relies on his/her knowledge of their native syntax, grammar, and sentence structure to help make sense of the foreign language he/she is trying to learn (Sparks et al., 2008). However, ESL students with LD are at a disadvantage and would benefit from language-building strategies, especially in the areas of spelling accuracy and vocabulary acquisition (Carter et al., 2013& Schwarz, 2000. Because LD students learn best through multi-sensory, direct, intensive tactile/kinesthetic, visual, and auditory instruction (Cortiella & Horowitz, 2014), one would hope to find vocabulary and spelling strategies in the literature that utilize these learning pathways.

Purpose
The purpose of this review is to distinguish classroom interventions that successfully increase the English vocabulary and spelling skills of students who are speakers of ESL, native English speakers, and/or have a learning disability. Within the ESL speakers, there are three types of learners who have been studied in this review of the literature: students in the U.S. who were raised bilingual (also called "U.S. resident learners of English"), international students with visas to study in a country where English is the dominant language, and international students who were learning ESL in their native country (Shuck, 2013). The literature on English vocabulary-acquisition and spelling-accuracy interventions encompasses all three types of ESL students, in addition to students with LD.

Research question
Therefore, the question guiding this review is; 1. Which language-building strategies are most effective for enhancing the English vocabulary acquisition and spelling accuracy of students who are ESL, English-only (EO) speakers, and/or have learning disabilities.

METHOD
The following search engines were enlisted to locate studies for this review of research: ERIC, RefWorks, and Google Scholar. Combinations of the following keywords were used to find studies related to vocabulary and spelling interventions: vocabulary strategies, spelling strategies, English as a second language, English only, English Language Learners, foreign language, vocabulary, method, instruction, intervention, learning challenges, language learning strategies, and strategy. The search yielded over 100 studies. These results were narrowed according to the following inclusion criteria: (1) the researchers had examined the effectiveness of either a vocabulary strategy or a spelling strategy in a school or home setting, (2) the participants' ages or grades ranged from prekindergarten to university-level, (3) the participants were either EO speakers, ELL, had LD, or some combination thereof, and (4) the articles were either published between 1990 and 2016 in a peer-reviewed journal or were a dissertation. Using the criteria described above, 15 articles met the standard for this review.

RESULTS
In this review, the author found 15 studies of vocabulary and spelling strategies that were effective for enhancing the English vocabulary and spelling of ESL, EO, and/or LD students. This review identified traditional vocabulary strategies such as direct teaching of vocabulary through application in reading, and route memorization of spelling new vocabulary words. See Table 1 for characteristics of the vocabulary strategy studies. This review also identified innovative spelling strategies such as Copy, Cover, Compare (CCC) and writing. See Table 2 for characteristics of the spelling strategy studies.

Vocabulary Strategies
In order to help students build their vocabulary skills, researchers have used a variety of strategies including direct reading instruction strategies, storybook reading strategies, and memorization strategies. The direct instruction strategies included direct word instruction (Carlo et al., 2004), and Cover, Copy, Compare (CCC) (Carter et al., 2013).

Direct instruction strategies
Generally speaking, direct instruction in vocabulary appears to help students increase their vocabulary and fluency (Yildirim et al., 2014). In the CCC study by Carlo et al. (2004), fifth-grade ELL students learned 10 to 12 target words each week over 15 weeks.
This CCC study teaches spelling by having students look at each spelling word, cover the word, copy the word down based on how they remembered the spelling, and then compare what they wrote to the actual spelling of the word. The practice is repeated until the student masters the spelling of each word. Carlo et al. (2004) used "word mastery" as the measure for intervention. In Carlo et al.'s (2004) study, reading comprehension skills increased to 80% when students were provided with the CCC approach to learning spelling, which led to learning new vocabulary. Improved vocabulary increases reaching comprehension.
In a second study by Carter et al. (2013), participants were three 15-year-old ESL and LD reading students who learned 15 new words over the course of one week, in three 25-minute periods. The students were taken into a resource setting and given the set of words to learn at the first intervention. The teacher taught the spelling as direct instruction, and the students practiced alongside the teacher. Then, as independent practice, the students used the CCC strategy to track their own progress. The three students did increase their vocabulary skills as a result of the intervention. Carter et al.
(2013) used the measurements (word mastery) when reviewing target words. Direct word instruction was found to be effective at increasing vocabulary skills with ELL learners. In addition, the intervention was found to improve student fluency by 50%. In fact, vocabulary acquisition with these strategies (i.e. direct word instruction and CCC) was found to be related to other skills, such as reading fluency and comprehension (Carlo et al., 2004, Carter et al., 2013.

Storybook reading strategy
In these studies, the interventions included listening to stories, video stories (short story), home storybook reading, and reading and retelling stories. In the identified studies, the storybook reading approach was used with a wide age and language demographic from preschool though adults. As far as the participants in listening to stories, Brett et al. (1996) designed the interventions for EO fourth graders, and in the video stories (short story) Chun & Plass (1996) selected students who were German ESL university students.
As far as reading and retelling stories, Joe (1998) selected students who were ESL adults, and Roberts (2008) selected ESL preschool children for home storybook reading Two studies used strategies that required listening as a skill, as one is audio (Brett et al.,1996) and the other video (Chun & Plass, 1996). In the study by Brett et al. (1996), participants were EO fourth graders and they listened to stories and received explanations of unfamiliar words. The students read the stories over five days in six weeks and took the pretest and posttest for all storybooks. In the second study by Chun & Plass (1996), students were German ESL university students who listened to a story, then read the story, and searched for the meaning of identified words. The video story strategies required students to watch a video review of a German short story. After that, students read the story and looked up the meaning of each word. Finally, they engaged in recall by writing summaries of the story. The ESL students read German texts with a number of annotations for words via text, pictures, and video. They screened a video preview offering up an overview of a German short story. They then read the story, looking up the meaning of individual words when necessary by choosing any number of available annotations (Chun & Plass, 1996). The students spent between 40-50 minutes per day for two weeks and used the pretest and posttest reading the story.
In both studies, it was found that students remembered the words and meaning, and ELL students gained vocabulary featuring previously unknown words. However, the video story strategy was only in German for German-to-English translations and the acquisition of lexicon was not deliberate and targeted, which the authors suggest would have produced an even better result of vocabulary learning (Chunn & Plass, 1996).
Providing simple word explanations through an interesting story resulted in higher chances of full student engagement (Brett et al., 1996).
Two additional related storybook reading interventions took place when ESL students engaged in either book reading at home or reading and retelling a text outside of school (Roberts, 2008& Joe, 1998. In the study by Roberts (2008), it referred to home reading after which the teacher followed with classroom storybook reading and vocabulary instruction. The students read the story in their home language as well as in English and were exposed to the same stories designed for preschool-aged children.
During home book reading, the parent-caregivers read the story to their children, which was complemented in the classroom by weekly pretests and posttests. In a second study by Joe (1998), the reading and retelling strategy was a text description around the idea of "pain," which worked since students had prior understanding of the topic, regardless of their primary language background (Joe, 1998). In Joe's study, students were ESL adults and read 40-50 minutes weekly in school and completed a pretest-posttest.
As a result of Robert's (2008) study of book reading at home, children's vocabulary test scores improved after reading at home with their parents. In addition, parental involvement increased from 50% to 80% over the two 6-week sessions because they were asked to support their preschool-aged child at home. Joe's (1998) work revealed that vocabulary was being gained incidentally and learned by its participants through the process of reading and retelling a text. This then led to greater vocabulary gains for unknown words and strategies that would allow the learners and participants to develop those oral and written skills. In both studies, the interventions led to enhanced vocabulary learning through generative processing of the words and their usage.

Memorization strategies
Two studies used memorization strategies to improve vocabulary development; Kramsch's procedure (Faraj, 2015) and keywords (Brown & Perry, 1991). For the Kramsch procedure in the study by Faraj (2015), ESL students wrote down words on only one-sided color cards in their general English class. To increase student buy-in, students used their favorite colors if possible (Faraj, 2015). During Kramsch's intervention, students read Oxford Word Skills, which practices grammar by implementing correct use of words and phrases, two hours each week after they finished a unit. They measured the effectiveness of the strategy by comparison of pre-and post-tests. It is not apparent that the intervention utilized had a true impact on the effectiveness of the student's vocabulary knowledge.
The article also was written incorrectly with poor grammar and sentence structure, reducing the reliability and validity.
A second study by Brown and Perry (1991), used a keyword strategy with ESL students. The keyword was, in their example, a way "to remember that carlin means old  (Brown & Perry, 1991). Ultimately, however, the keyword approach did prove hard for students to learn large numbers of words via this strategy.

Spelling Strategies
Seven of the studies in this review addressed improving students' spelling skills.

Cover, Copy, Compare Strategy (CCC)
Four of the studies appear in the context of CCC strategies (Jaspers et al., 2012;Skarr et al., 2012;Murphy et al., 1990;Manfred, 2015). The procedure used for CCC in these studies was similar to method described earlier in this paper for the Carlo (2004) study; specific differences in each study will be described.
In the study by Jaspers et al. (2012), teachers asked ELL students to compare and copy the spelled words and for students to consider words, cover them, (re)write them, and compare responses. Students participated in daily pretest/posttest interventions over six weeks. In a second study by Skarr (2012), students with LD had to remember how to spell a word when they copied the words from one column to the next, then covered the first two columns. Following that, the students lastly checked their spelling. They put a sticker next to the word if they spelled it correctly. If not, they did not put a sticker. After that they rewrote again the correct spelling of this word three times. During the intervention, the student spelled a number of correct words through 5-10 minutes of daily one-on-one interaction with a teacher and utilized the number of correct words spelled in the writing. In the third study by Murphy (1990), students who were LD were given 14 to 18 words per unit using the CCC strategy. Three times a week they took spelling tests over 14 school weeks. In the last study by Manfred (2015), students who were LD completed spelling test questions where they were asked to spell extra words correctly. During the intervention, students worked in the classroom 60 to 90 minutes weekly over 12 weeks.
In some of these studies, writing fluency was improved due to refined spelling skills for students including ELL and LD (Jaspers et al., 2012;& Manfred, 2015); that is to say that learning good spelling together with writing skills, improves student writing overall. In addition, Skarr et al. (2012) and Murphy et al. (1990) found that the CCC strategy helped to improve skills of spelling words with the complementation of writing skills to not just improve the writing, but also to allow the learner to gain mastery writing fluency.

Writing strategies
In spelling, there is a relationship between sound in any pronounced word to the written symbol, the phonogram, which is the primary logic in language (Farnham, 1992).
With this in mind, three studies showed how spelling related to writing skills (Viel-Ruma et al., 2007;Darch et al., 2000;Hanna et al., 2000). In the study by Viel-Ruma (2007), students who were LD related a correct word to a misspelled word, comparing and copying, but only if necessary via error self-correction strategies. The researchers used eight of weekly pretest/posttest interventions over six weeks. In a second study by Darch et al. (2000), students who were LD tried spelling during writing activities with a rulebased strategy. It specialized in students developing phonemic and morpheme strategies.
During the intervention, students wrote sentences using selected spelling words during sessions that lasted 20 minutes over six weeks with two rounds of interviews, one for group-specific spelling activities. In the third study by Hanna et al. (2000), students who were ELL spelled words and revised spelling errors on the text through computerassisted instruction. This computer assisted instruction focused on ELL students' spelling, where they listened, then segmented, then coded, and after that, reviewed the corrected response. During computer-assisted instruction, the students listened to words individual one student who was the third grade in 18 weeks and another student who was the fourth grade in 21-weeks sessions of 90 minutes outside of regular school hours, then completed spelling assessments via a test (Hanna et al., 2000). In these studies, it was found that strategies such as computer assisted instruction, rule-based strategy, and error self-correction strategies improved spelling performances and writing skills increased 70% in Viel-Ruma et al. (2007) and92% in Hanna et al. (2000). Darch et al. (2000), Hanna et al. (2000), and Viel-Ruma et al. (2007) have focused on more helpful writing strategies with writing difficulties based on the data collected.

General Findings
The purpose of this paper was to study the effects of different approaches to teaching and improving vocabulary and spelling in students. After analyzing 15 studies, this reviewer found many strategies, such as direct instruction, storybook reading, and memorization, are effective for enhancing the English vocabulary and spelling of students who are ESL, EO-speakers, and/or LD (Nemati, 2009;Faraj, 2015& Brown & Perry, 1991.
Storybook reading strategies and CCC strategies were used most often. Also, CCC strategies (Jaspers et al., 2012;Skarr et al., 2012;Murphy et al., 1990& Manfred, 2015 and writing strategies (Viel-Ruma et al., 2007;Darch et al., 2000& Hanna et al., 2000 had positive impacts on student spelling skills in the classroom. The authors found that storybook reading strategies increased vocabulary growth (Brett et al., 1996;Chun & Plass, 1996;Joe, 1998;& Roberts, 2008). Roberts (2008) found the parental support at home vocabulary usage also reportedly increased from 50% to 80% between the two 6-week sessions. Students got to read the story in their native language as well as in English, leading to multiple exposures to the same material.

Practicality
Because storybook reading is designed for preschoolers, it skillfully targets early intervention of English language learning so that the young child is even more likely to be successful. CCC is well-studied and easy-to-use in the classroom to enhance spelling skills (Jaspers et al., 2012;Skarr et al., 2012;Murphy et al., 1990& Manfred, 2015. Teachers who have used CCC before would not require much of a learning curve when executing this method. Students must practice the words until they reach 100% accuracy, which ensures that students are learning the information. The CCC strategy has already been found to be easy for teachers to implement in the classroom. In these studies (Carter et al., 2013), CCC was carried out in both special education and mainstream classrooms, and student participants were able to correctly identify more than 80% of words on all three sets.

Additional Benefits
Several of the studies improved reading and writing skills outside of the targeting skills of improved spelling and vocabulary. Some studies increased reading fluency in the subjects. In particular, the use of storybook strategies with younger children (Brett et al., 1996;Chun & Plass, 1996;Joe, 1998;& Roberts, 2008) targeting ELL students at a young age when they were still building language, and could apply their spelling skills to the basic language that they were being taught to read. Other studies increased writing fluency as well. Students who were ELL and LD increased their writing in studies by Jaspers et al. in 2012, andManfred in 2015. Writing improved with spelling was taught alongside writing instruction. Studies by Skarr et al. in 2012 andMurphy et al. in 1990 both found that writing fluency reached almost mastery at grade level when spelling was taught with writing. What really proved to be effective with the increase in spelling skills was to enforce teaching vocabulary in the home. The 2008 study by Roberts saw a percentage increase in vocabulary mastery from 50% to 80% between two 6-week sessions of spelling instruction.

Limitations of Studies
In this review, two studies had limitations. The first one was home storybook reading strategies (Roberts, 2008), because the teacher did not have control over the entire execution of the intervention. The teacher could not control whether the student did the reading "at home" nor could the teacher control the extent to which parental support was offered when the child was performing the intervention at home. During the study, researchers reported that parental participation actually increased throughout the intervention, but without replication studies it is not clear that that trend would happen every time this intervention is implemented. It may be difficult for teachers to acquire sets of stories that are in the child's native language (ex. Hmong) and in English. The strategy assumes that the parents will be literate or otherwise capable of providing support to their child with regards to literacy. However, in future studies researchers might include some type of accountability form so that the teacher can keep track of whether the parents and children are completing the at-home portion of the strategy together.
A second limitation was found in listening to stories (Brett et al., 1996) because if teachers do not include images, then the strategy is making a huge assumption about students' background knowledge and ability to understand target-words' spoken definition, and that the child can already visualize the word. The intervention requires students to have strong oral-language abilities and working memories as well as the ability to process so much information orally. However, Brett et al. (1996) suggested vocabulary words were not learned incidentally; rather, they were targeted and an explanation was provided. Despite this limitation in listening to stories, the approach may still have worthwhile uses in the classroom. For example, each story was read over a period of 5 school days, making it easy for the teacher to include this strategy in daily lessons.

CONCLUSION
In summary, the reading strategies, storybook reading strategies, memorizing strategies, CCC strategies, and writing strategies are effective for enhancing English vocabulary skills and spelling skills of students who are ESL, EO-speakers, and/or have learning disabilities, but future research must be done with CCC strategies among ESL students who also have LD and are working to improve their vocabulary skills. CCC strategies are self-instructional, so students work at their own pace and teachers may be freed up to support other students or do their own course planning. CCC is an important way for LD students to achieve vocabulary and spelling success. Such a study should take at least one year with students from first to fourth grades and rely on quantitative research. The researchers can use data collection techniques such as dependent measures, interobserver agreements (IOA), and treatment integrity. Most studies examined were reliable sources, however, some studies required a lengthier time of application (such as repeating a study a few times for validity, or, increasing the number of subjects).
Regardless, such promising future research will look at using CCC strategies to improve vocabulary skills for students who are ESL and have learning disabilities. At that future point, CCC strategies may be found to be useful in the special education classroom, especially with LD students.