Title of the proposal
An Intervention to Increase the Vocabulary Acquisition of English Language Learners at a Community College
Bio
Hamadi Henderson Doctoral Candidate
Hamadi Henderson is a Ph.D. student in educational psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received a BA in psychology from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in educational psychology at Hunter College. His research focuses on how the use of video games and other forms of multimedia technology can increase the accessibility of education and improve learning outcomes in the fields of mathematics, science, foreign language, and social & emotional learning. Additionally, his research aims to understand how media-induced flow states can mitigate deficits to learning caused by learning disabilities and stereotype threat. Email: hhenderson@gradcenter.cuny.edu Phone: 347 591 9799
General description of the initiative or project
This study will investigate the efficacy of using a mobile language learning application to increase the vocabulary learning of English-Language learning students at a community college. An experimental group will use the mobile language learning application Duolingo for 5 hours over the course of each week for 7 weeks. Students in the control condition will watch English learning modules from the Annenburg Learning Center’s program “Connect with English” during the same period. Vocabulary skill will be measured before and after the intervention using the Peobody Picture Vocabulary Test 4 in effort to chart growth in vocabulary in addition to the students midterm and final exam grades. It is hypothesized that students in the control condition will have vastly improved vocabulary when compared to the control condition. Additionally, it is expected that students who use Duolingo for longer periods of time will display higher gains in vocabulary acquisition.