As the importance of vocabulary learning is bigger, many researches have been done concerning how to teach and learn vocabulary effectively. Vocabulary learning has two main issues. It is incidental and explicit vocabulary learning that many researche...
As the importance of vocabulary learning is bigger, many researches have been done concerning how to teach and learn vocabulary effectively. Vocabulary learning has two main issues. It is incidental and explicit vocabulary learning that many researches still argue. Some researchers claim that incidental vocabulary learning is more advantageous in learning. It refers to the learning of vocabulary as a by-product of activities like listening, speaking, reading, writing which does not regard vocabulary learning itself as an primary aim. Others claim that explicit learning is more effective in learning. It refers to activities exclusively aimed at learning vocabulary itself. In the 1970s and 1980s, incidental vocabulary learning was emphasized with the communicative approach. However, quite many researches currently support the effectiveness of explicit vocabulary learning. They recognize that explicit learning should be necessarily included to facilitate vocabulary. Explicit vocabulary learning activities help students build up a large vocabulary more easily and promote a deep level of processing providing more opportunities for students to encounter new words.
This study aimed to study how to present the words effectively on considering the limitations of previous studies to suggest effective vocabulary presentation. The experimental populations are organized as follows: The first year middle school students participate in the experiment. A total of 116 students were divided into four groups to learn 32 new English words for three weeks. The first group was given contexts first, English definition later. The second group was given English definition first, contexts later. The third group was given contexts first, Korean equivalent later. The four group was given Korean equivalent first, contexts later. These three groups were then divided into upper and lower level which looked to their initial language proficiency test results. A identical pre-test with all of 4 groups was taken to obtain indication of the students' prior proficiency of English and to make a list of unknown target words taught during class. 110 English words were chosen from the High School English text books which targeted the second year of middle school. After the test, 32 English words were chosen as the target words of instruction. About thirty minutes was given to each student regardless of their experimental treatment. An immediate test was provided after 20 minutes instruction in every class. Also the long term effect of the experiment was checked after 11 weeks. Vocabulary test was divided into receptive vocabulary test and productive vocabulary one. A sheet which made students spell words was given to students to check their productive vocabulary knowledge. Also, a sheet which made students link English words with Korean sentence including a target word was given.
On this study, following conclusions can be drawn.
Firstly, incidental learning alone is not enough to learn new vocabulary. Explicit vocabulary learning is needed. Secondly, treatments affected test scores at level of significance. On receptive vocabulary test, the third group(contexts first, Korean equivalent later) won the best score at level of significance in an long-term retention. That means the third method was most effective for receptive vocabulary knowledge. On productive vocabulary test, the first group(contexts first, English definition later) won the best score at level of significance. That means the first method was most effective for productive vocabulary knowledge in vocabulary learning and an long-term retention. Thirdly, the effective vocabulary method depended on students' English proficiency. Students from the higher 50 percentile group showed a marked improvement in productive vocabulary knowledge when context was given before the meaning and English definition was given. On the other hand, students from the lower 50 percentile group showed a marked improvement in receptive vocabulary knowledge when Korean equivalent was given.
In summary, this study has showed that students should be provided with opportunities of explicit vocabulary learning and the effective way to present words depends on the English proficiency of students. So teachers should consider the newest vocabulary learning and methods and care about students' level of English proficiency when they teach. In term of this, We need to link effective vocabulary learning method with the secondary education curriculum to develop students' vocabulary ability and further empirical research is required to investigate effects of vocabulary learning on the development of the students' proficiency level.
유창한 외국어 구사 능력의 신장이 중요한 과제가 되면서 우리나라에서도 의사소통 능력 신장에 중점을 둔 영어 교육의 중요성 및 필요성을 강조하고 있다. 이에 교육의 질을 높이고 국가 ...
|
