The Impact of Using Wordlists in the Language Classroom on Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition (DATA COLLECTION, RESULTS AND FINDINGS, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION)
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How is life, everybody? I hope all is good with you. Thank you for coming back and reading my posts, I do really appreciate what you have done, guys.
In today’s post, I am going to continue reviewing journal from the last post, a.k.a. Journal of English Teaching by Gülçin Coşgun entitled The Impact of Using Wordlists in the Language Classroom on Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition. Since on the previous post I have reviewed some parts of the journal, including the components of the journal, introduction, review of literature, and methodology followed by the differences and similarities of this journal and the previous journal by Takwa Sultana Jahan entitled Using Music: An Effective Medium of Teaching Vocabulary in ESL Classroom. Therefore, in this post, I would like to post the rest parts of this journal, including data collection, findings and results, discussion, and the last, conclusion.
Before you begin to read this article, I would like to inform you that this is going to be a long post. So, I recommend you to take some snacks or coffee while you are reading it. Well, now let’s just check this out!
DATA COLLECTION
An 8-week schedule for the implementation of word lists in the classroom was drawn up. Each week target words were chosen from the chapters of the course books that would be covered. There were two lists on the walls. Each day a revision activity was conducted and when students knew the word, the word appeared in the use list but when they could not, it was put in the lose list. Knowing the word included aspects of word knowledge such as part of speech, synonyms, antonyms, collocations and example sentences. In addition to use it/lose it activity, the implementation schedule also included different production activities such as:
- Story writing,
- Hot seat.
- Posters,
- Quizzes,
- Vocabulary Conversations, and;
- Adopt the word.
In order to get the best result of this research, the author used some instruments such as Vocabulary Tests, Interviews, and Field Notes/Reflective Writing. Furthermore, in this research, data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. With the data from the pre and post-tests of receptive vocabulary tests, descriptive statistics were calculated to investigate the differences between two groups. The same groups were also compared at the start and end of the process. The answers were scored as correct or incorrect. Each correct answer was given one point. There are fifty items in the tests, the maximum score is therefore 50.
Secondly, the interview transcriptions were analysed for key words and recurring themes to learn about students’ views. Finally, reflective notes which the author kept regularly during the research process were analysed to check whether there was any mismatch between the data gathered from the test results and the interviews. The notes were in the form of observational notes which are "statements bearing upon events experienced principally through watching and listening”. (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973:100). Therefore, she interpreted and categorized them.
RESULTS & FINDINGS
Receptive vocabulary acquisition
Table 1 shows the receptive vocabulary acquisition scores of the two groups before and after the treatments were implemented. Means for part 1 in both pre-test and post-test were calculated separately for the control and experimental group, and presented in Table 1.
According to the results given in Table 1, it can be observed that the control group demonstrated a slightly better performance than the experimental group in the pre-test before the treatment. As for the results of the post-test, both groups made improvement. However, the mean for the experimental group increased by %52.85 while it increased by %18.30 for the control group. Therefore, it appears that the experimental group has shown significantly greater improvement in receptive knowledge of the target words than the control group.
Controlled productive vocabulary acquisition
Means for part 2, which was a controlled productive test, in both pre- and posttest were calculated separately for the control and experimental group, and presented in Table 3. From Table 3, it can be seen clearly that initial productive knowledge of the target words was low in both classes. Table 2 also reveals that both groups appear to show at some slight degree of improvement in terms in controlled productive acquisition; however, the improvement in the experimental group appears greater. Thus, it can be concluded that, as it was seen with the receptive vocabulary test results, the experimental group made a greater gain in controlled productive knowledge of the target words compared to the control group.
Significance of the difference
Since the number of students were below 30 and they were not randomly chosen, a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, which is a non-parametric test, was conducted on the groups’ mean gain scores to investigate whether the observed differences were indeed significant.
Ranks Test
The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test showed that an 8 week, vocabulary treatment elicited a statistically significant change in the performance of experimental group in the vocabulary test (Z = -3.315, P = 0.001). The sum of negative ranks is zero rather than being intermixed randomly. This obviously indicates a strong treatment effect on the difference between the scores of the control and experimental group.
Students’ views towards using vocabulary lists in the classroom
The first question asks how students’ previous teachers used to deal with unknown vocabulary in the classroom in order to enable them to think of their previous experiences so that they could compare using wordlists and those activities. 9 of the students stated that they did not have word lists. Their teachers wrote the words on the board, the Turkish or English definition of the word and an example sentence on the board. Some of them added that they forgot the words easily because they did not take notes. 3 of the students who studied at the university for a year said they were not provided with lists but their teachers used to teach vocabulary in a context and they did productive activities during the classes. 2 of the students said they did not remember how they learnt vocabulary in the class.
The second question asks whether students find using a wordlist in the classroom useful compared to the previous experiences. When the students were asked to compare the use of vocabulary lists to their previous experiences, they mostly agreed that using a wordlist in the classroom was better. 13 students out of 14 found using a wordlist in the classroom more useful than the ways they learnt vocabulary in the past. According to students’ responses, the reasons why using a wordlist is more effective are various.
Reflective notes
Coşgun’s reflective notes supported the test results in the sense that students showed an improvement in vocabulary knowledge thanks to using a vocabulary list through a word wall in the language classroom. Some of her comments are given below:
Monday, January 12, 2011
Today I asked 5 words to Burak, who is one of the weakest students in my class, while revising the vocabulary items from the word wall. He was able to come up with the definition, collocations and different forms of the 4 of them. It was a great achievement for him. I think the list works
Thursday, January 22, 2011
Melis who got a good grade in the vocabulary part of the exam thanked me during the break. She told me that vocabulary had always been a problem for her and got low grades in the exams. However, she said the wordlist on the wall helped her a lot in this course. She added that she could remember the words and even the examples his friends used in class.
DISCUSSION
The major goal of this study was to test the impact of an English vocabulary enrichment intervention which is using a wordlist on word wall in the classroom on outcomes for a group of English language learners. In addition, the study aimed to find about the attitudes of students towards this particular intervention.
In the light of the results of the statistical analysis, a significant and strong correlation was found between using a wordlist on a word wall in the classroom and improvement in vocabulary acquisition. In other words, the quantitative results of the study demonstrate that using wordlists in the language classroom has a positive impact on students’ acquisition of target vocabulary items. According to the test results, the experimental group outperformed the control group in both the receptive part and controlled production part of the test.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of using a word wall including a wordlist on vocabulary acquisition of Turkish EFL learners. To achieve this goal, the study consisting of 28 participants from classes was conducted. A pre-test was given before the treatment and a post-test was given after the treatment. The analysis and correlations of the obtained data clearly confirmed that using a wordlist on a word wall can be regarded as a working factor in fostering learners’ vocabulary acquisition.
However, although students in the experimental group made a greater gain than the students in the control group, there were still many words that were not learned after the treatment. This reveals that using a wordlist in the classroom as implemented in this study, may not be the ultimate solution to improve the vocabulary acquisition.
So, that’s all from my post today. I know. I know, it was a long post but this is it. I do really hope you’re not busy while reading this. Even though, I myself doubt it, lol, just kidding. However, if you are the one who always excited to know more about Vocabulary Acquisition Strategy, I am pretty sure you enjoyed the article above.
The last I can say is thank you so much for reading my post today, I hope you find it useful for you guys. And, if you do find it useful for you, please share this article to your social media. I would really appreciate it. Once again, thank you so much and see you soon. Much Love.
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