Literature Review

The Use of Children’s Literature in Supporting Spanish-Language and High-Frequency Word Acquisition in Middle School Settings: A Review of the Literature

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) indicates there are approximately 100,000 words in the Spanish language, with a speaking vocabulary of about 10,000 deemed necessary as a fluent speaker in a target language. High-frequency vocabulary refers to the most-commonly used words in everyday language. Ensuring students have a solid foundation of commonly-used vocabulary is essential to their language learning in Spanish. Anecdotal data and engagement data suggested that my students demonstrated disengaged behavior while learning through rote tasks or more traditional language-learning approaches. Similarly, video evidence supported that my students demonstrated high levels of engagement when using children’s literature to reinforce high-frequency vocabulary terms. The purpose of my study was to determine if the use of children’s literature would increase student retention of high-frequency vocabulary words in sixth grade Spanish.