The Effectiveness of Current Vocabulary Teaching Techniques in Facilitating Prroduction in Junior Secondary Schools: Grade Seven in Focus.
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Date
2003-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study is an attempt to investigate the extent to which the vocabulary teaching techniques
used in grade seven English classes are effective in facilitating production.
The study involved three government schools in Addis Ababa: Dill Betigil, Ethiopia Tikdem,
and Kebena Junior Secondary Schools. In each school there were one control and one
experimental group.
Many of the vocabulary items for the study were selected from the reading texts in the students’
textbook from portions that were not yet covered. Some items were taken from other sources,
principally from Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. A pre-test was a
prepared on the selected vocabulary items and administered to subjects in both experimental
and control groups to see if the items selected were already familiar to subjects, and to
determine whether or not subjects had a similar standing. In addition to the test, subjects'
classroom records were also consulted to further see if there was any significant difference in
their language background.
Then, item analysis of the pre-test was done to determine the level of difficulty of the items.
Items that were answered by less than 30 percent of the subjects were considered difficult, and
therefore were used for preparing the study material,
The regular classroom teachers in the respective schools then taught the vocabulary items thus
selected to students for a period of one month( for five days a week, for twenty minutes).The
regular classroom teachers were made to teach both control and experimental groups in order to
avoid the researcher's bias. The control group was taught through techniques of the textbook,
and the experimental group through techniques selected for the study. Immediately after the
experiment, i.e. two days later, subjects in both groups were made to sit for a post-test. The test
was then scored and the results obtained were statistically analyzed to compare the
performance of the groups. Analysis of the post-test scores showed that the experimental group
students performed better than the control group students.
In addition to the tests, a questionnaire was also administered to subjects in the experimental
groups, after the end of the experiment. The purpose of the questionnaire was to elicit data that
could not be obtained through the tests, in order to substantiate claims thereby increase the
validity of the conclusion.
The study concluded that the training has brought significant difference in the performance of
students where the experimental groups have benefited
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Keywords
Current Vocabulary Teaching Technique