After the 12-week experiment, there has been a considerable increase in the use of target words in terms of the correct usages, related words, and mistakes. In the pre-test, the students could hardly actively produce these words in their writing. Out of the 53 target words, only 12 were used by 24 students, with 9 correct usages and 3 related words. In addition, many students made mistakes with the spelling of “surf”. Such limited usages and mistakes showed that the students only had very little knowledge of the target words before the experiment.
However, after the experiment, the students’ word use improved significantly in their writing products. Overall, up to 31 words were used by 34 different students.
The students not only learned to use more target words, but also use them correctly for many times. The numbers of the correct usages and the use of related words increased. Moreover, 23 different words that had not been used before appeared in the post-test, indicating the progress in the students’ vocabulary knowledge.
Besides examining how the target words were used, the teacher-researcher particularly analyzed the changes of the old and new words after the experiment.
Among the 12 words used in the pre-test, 8 of them were old words, while the other 4 words were new. After the experiment, there were 31 words used, with 23 old words and 8 new words. The number of target word use doubled in the post-test, no matter old or new words. This indicated that the teaching experiment could indeed increase
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the students’ productive vocabulary, and that the teaching approach was effective for both the old and new words.
Pedagogical Implications
Based on the findings, the following section proposes the pedagogical
implications gained from the current study. First, productive words need to be taught intentionally. In the study, all the target words were instructed directly during the 12-week experiment. The results have proved the effectiveness of such deliberate
teaching in increasing students’ word knowledge. It is thus advised that teachers raise students’ awareness first through tasks of recognizing words, and then direct students’
attention to different aspects of a word, especially areas that students struggle with, such as spellings and collocations. For EFL students, since they may not get the enough exposure to the language to form a native-like intuition, deliberate teaching of words is needed. Particularly, for lower-achievers, intentional instruction plays an even more critical role in leading them to learn words more effectively.
Besides intentional teaching, another critical point is repetition. In the study, all the target words went through the three stages and had been repeated for up to six times. After seeing and practicing with the target words repeatedly, the students obtained higher scores on the VKS and used significantly more words in the writing task when doing the post-test. In view of its crucial role, numerous repetition is highly recommended for teaching vocabulary, especially for productive purposes. Repetition is particularly essential for EFL students, which creates more opportunities to see and use the words in context. For lower-achievers who know few words and forget words easily, it is also necessary to repeat words numerous times in different contexts.
The third implication for teaching productive words is involving students in the process. In the study, the students were constantly involved through tasks like question-answer sessions, dictation, peer teaching, translation, and sentence making.
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As the much-quoted statement by Benjamin Franklin goes, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. Increasing students’
involvement not only pushes them to practice using the words, but also creates
chances for them to use the words to convey their ideas. Therefore, involving students in the process is an important contributing factor of successful vocabulary teaching.
This is particularly essential for EFL students who often have few opportunities of using the language outside of the classroom.
Last but not least, productive vocabulary needs to be learned in contexts. In the study, all the target words appeared in a sentence or a passage, giving the students an idea about the usages of the words. The results indicated that after the experiment, most of the students could use the target words correctly in creating sentences. Based on the findings, it is evident that learning words in contexts helps productive word learning in that the students are exposed to the usages, collocations, and even connotations of a word. All of these aspects are critical to using words correctly and appropriately. For EFL students, it is difficult to distinguish similar words with subtle differences. Therefore, contextualized teaching is suggested to cultivate the students’
senses of word use and increase the appropriate usages of words.
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
Due to the limited scope, the teacher-researcher have faced several limitations when doing the research. The major limitation of the current study results from the nature of the research design. A case study is adopted for the current research because of its advantages of analyzing complicated phenomena, providing rich information for the case, and experimenting with theories in a particular context. However, such research design has its disadvantages. Since a case study usually reports a specific group of participants, the findings and results of the study cannot be generalized to subjects from other contexts.
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In addition to that, another limitation of the study is that the current study has only one rater for the grading of the VKS. With only one rater, the grading of the VKS may not be convincing in terms of reliability and validity, and the results of the
current study might be somewhat compromised. To improve the issue of reliability, future researchers who need another rater in the study can recruit raters earlier or from other research institutes. Previous training and discussion are advised to yield more reliable results. If finding a second rater is still difficult, another resolution of this issue may be using intra-rater reliability or statistics.
The next limitation of the current study results from its focus on limited aspects of word knowledge. Due to its limited time and scope, the current study mainly focused on word meaning and collocations without much attention to grammar and spelling. In the teaching experiment, aspects like spoken forms, written forms, word parts, form-meaning connection, grammatical functions, and collocations have been taken care of. However, based on the students’ performance during the experiment, the aspect of spoken forms and spellings seemed unfamiliar to them. When doing the partial dictation and peer teaching, many of the students failed to establish the sound-meaning link. They had problems either connecting the sound-meaning of the words, or pronouncing the words correctly. It is suggested that future research adopt teaching activities dedicated to forming the sound-meaning link. In addition, the students made numerous mistakes with the spellings of the target words, which showed that specific activities for practicing spelling are needed to increase students’ productive
knowledge.
Lastly, the current study incorporated the teaching activities with the ongoing teaching schedule, with ten minutes dedicated to the teaching experiment every lesson period during the 12-week teaching experiment. Added together, the total time for the teaching experiment was 720 minutes. Though the amount seemed enough, the time
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was in fact insufficient for the students to fully acquire all of the target words, in particular for the challenging tasks of learning words productively. Although the students’ performance on the VKS and writing products in the post-test improved, the results were not satisfactory.
With these limitations in mind, suggestions for future research are also proposed.
Firstly, for future research on teaching productive words, researchers may consider the possibility of conducting case study research on different groups of participants.
This can inform us of the characteristics and needs of different learners. In addition, teaching productive words can be approached through other ways of research design, such as narrative studies, experiments, or action research. Different research methods have their own strengths and can complement each other, adding to the understanding of the acquisition of productive vocabulary.
The other suggestion for future research is to explore an effective method of treating collocations. In the current study, the teaching of collocations was merely an addition to the teaching activities. However, research has pointed that collocations of words differ from language to language, and that learners tend to apply knowledge of their native language to the target language, thus making errors in collocations (Pan &
Wang, 2005). Explicit teaching on collocations is suggested for future research (Falahi
& Moinzadeh, 2012; Lin & Cortina, 2014).
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APPENDIX A: Previous Notice of the Pre-Test
各位同學大家好，我們這學期有一門英文閱讀與寫作的課，老師想教大家 寫作文，所以我們明天會有一堂課拿來寫作文，這個作文測試主要是為了看看 大家現在的英文寫作程度，請大家盡力做答，這個成績會列入這門課的平時成 績的一部分，但不用擔心，老師之後會教大家一些好用的單字，也會再給大家
各位同學大家好，我們這學期有一門英文閱讀與寫作的課，老師想教大家 寫作文，所以我們明天會有一堂課拿來寫作文，這個作文測試主要是為了看看 大家現在的英文寫作程度，請大家盡力做答，這個成績會列入這門課的平時成 績的一部分，但不用擔心，老師之後會教大家一些好用的單字，也會再給大家