When the study looked at the students from kindergarten to 10th grade:

- students with low reading skill did not show any significant difference in vocabulary growth compared to the students with midlevel reading skill


University of California, Berkeley

When discussing the paper "The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth", the concept of a one-sided or two-sided Matthew Effect comes into play. The research study looks at this concept to see how the difference in reading skills that students have can affect later vocabulary growth.

- a two-sided Matthew Effect means that the difference in achievement or variable between two or more groups of students shows a significant difference for all groups, especially when compared to each other
- in this case, the difference in reading skills means that stronger readers show increasing rates of vocabulary growth compared to the average while weaker readers show decreasing rates of vocabulary growth when compared to the average and especially to strong readers

Two-Sided Matthew Effect in Education

Duff, D., Tomblin, J. B., & Catts, H. (2015). The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth: A Case for a Matthew Effect. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 58(3), 853–864. https://doi.org/10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-13-0310

The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth- Citation Reference

This was a longitudinal study that looked at 485 kindergarten students and looked at their current reading skills and vocabulary knowledge and measured the resulting vocabulary growth all the way until the 10th grade.

- when the 4th grade reading skills/vocabulary knowledge was assessed and then used as a variable to see any changes in vocabulary growth, the results showed that for students with high reading skills, their vocabulary growth slope was significantly higher than students with midlevel reading skills

The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth- Results (1)

The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth- Results (2)

Looking at the entire article, the following conclusion can be made: 

- the results indicate that a one-sided Matthew Effect could be seen in this study, as only the higher-skilled students showed a significant growth in vocabulary while lower-skilled students did not do worse in the long run

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