The Effect of Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction on
Fifth Graders’ Vocabulary Learning and Retention
Tsae-Tzy Wang(王彩姿) & Jia-Wen Yu(游佳文)
National Pingtung University of Education
Abstract
The purpose of the present study aims to investigate the effect of different techniques of vocabulary instruction on EFL elementary school students’ vocabulary learning and retention so as to improve their learning and retention of English vocabulary.
Ninety-two fifth graders from an elementary school in Pingtung City participated in this study and all of them received the three techniques of vocabulary instruction, which were visual aids, contextual inference, and semantic mapping. The researchers of the present study designed a pretest to divide the subjects into high-, mid-, and low-level students. They also gave the subjects a new word test to determine the thirty target words for later instruction. To evaluate the subjects’ performance, they employed self-made tests for both the immediate and the retained recall tests to find out how well the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction facilitated the students’ vocabulary learning and retention. Besides, they gave the students a questionnaire to understand the students’ beliefs about the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction. The students’ scores on the recall tests were analyzed using the descriptive statistics, repeated measures, and pairwise comparisons of SPSS and the students’ responses to the questionnaire were interpreted in terms of percentage.
The results of recall tests showed that visual aids facilitated the students’ vocabulary learning most, followed by semantic mapping and contextual inference, irrespective of proficiency levels of the students. However, semantic mapping assisted the high- and low-level students in retaining the new words best, whereas visual aids helped the mid-level students most. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire indicated that most students considered both visual aids and semantic mapping helpful for their vocabulary learning.
INTRODUCTION
Second language learners realize that their limited repertoire of vocabulary knowledge greatly affect their ability to convey their intended meaning in
communications using the target language (Read, 2004). Moreover, Gass and Selinker (2008) found that lexical errors were the most common errors committed by second language learners based on the large corpora of errors. It seemed that vocabulary learning was vital to success in second language learning.
Yet, in Taiwan where the first language is not English, children begin to be exposed to English vocabulary at a later age. They are also less likely to be exposed to extensive oral English at home and in their neighborhood, and therefore their English vocabulary development may be affected by their lack of opportunity. As Oxford and Crookall (1990) pointed out, “ courses on reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar, and culture are common in L2 programs, but very few
vocabulary courses exist” (cited in Sanaoui, 1995, p.25). Moreover, Moody (1982) found that very few textbooks bother to teach vocabulary systematically. In other words, most authors of textbooks deemphasize the role of vocabulary in English language learning, which poses more obstacles for students learning English vocabulary.
With the intention of improving Taiwanese learners’ vocabulary learning, the researchers would like to find out which technique of vocabulary instruction is the most effective, especially for EFL children. Moreover, the researchers would like to investigate the effectiveness of the three different techniques of vocabulary
instruction for different English proficiency levels. Furthermore, the researchers are eager to find out the retention effects of the different techniques of vocabulary instruction on these students.
Accordingly, the researchers propose four research questions and list them as follows:
1. Of the three techniques of vocabulary instruction used in this study, which one would help students most in vocabulary learning?
2. Is students’ performance on recall tests consistent with their evaluations of the usefulness of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction?
3. Which technique is the most effective for high-, mid- and low-level students respectively?
4. Do these three different techniques of vocabulary instruction have the same retention effect on students of different proficiencies?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Factors Affecting Vocabulary Learning and Retention
Many researchers proposed various factors affecting vocabulary learning which can be organized and classified into three main categories─ teachers’ teaching methods, students’ responsibility for their own learning, and the nature of foreign words.
First, Schmitt (2000) maintained that teaching the pairs of antonyms (e.g.,
deep/shallow, long/short, and rich/poor) posed great learning difficulties for learners,
meanings, such a teaching method could not help students distinguish one word (long) from the other (short) and make correct connections between form and meanings.
Second, Sanaoui (1995) claimed that learners who had a structured learning approach were more successful in L2 vocabulary learning than those who had an unstructured learning approach. This means that good learners planned for their vocabulary learning, used a variety of vocabulary learning strategies, found the semantic relationships between newly learned and previously learned L2 words, self-created opportunities for learning L2 words outside classrooms, and often reviewed and practiced learned L2 words; however, poor learners generally lacked active management of their L2 vocabulary learning.
Third, the foreign language vocabulary itself affects the success in foreign words learning. Ellis and Beaton (1993) proposed that the less the overlap between the native and foreign language, the harder it would be for the FL learners to learn the foreign language vocabulary. For example, English is an intonation language, whereas Mandarin Chinese is a tone language. Hence, when English speakers learn Mandarin Chinese, they would encounter great difficulties in perceiving and distinguishing the five distinctive tones with the same segmental value but contrasting pitches or tones (Nation, 1990). That is to say, if the form ma was pronounced with a falling pitch, it means ‘scold’, but when the same form is pronounced with a rising pitch, the meaning is ‘hemp’ (O’Grady, Dobrovolsky & Katamba, 1997).
As for the retention effect of foreign language words, some researchers suggested the following influential factors. First, Schouten-van Parreren (1989) proposed that learners who were engaged in activities which involved a deep processing of words retained the words well. Similarly, Cameron (2001) contended that “the immediate translation of a new word takes away from learners any need or motivation to think about the meaning of the foreign language word or to hold the new word in mind” (p.85). Second, Gairns and Redman (1986) claimed that items which occurred most frequently were easily retained and retrieved, as these items were stored at the top of the memory system.
The Visual Aids on Vocabulary Learning
Gairns and Redman (1986) claimed that the most general visual aids that were displayed in the language classrooms included flashcards, photographs, blackboard drawings, wall charts, and realia and that other forms of visual aids such as mimes and gestures were often used to supplement other ways of conveying meanings. Goodman (1987) proposed that for the most part, visuals were more easily
understood by learners of all ages in that a picture seemed worth a thousand words and avoided lengthy and difficult word definitions. Mayer and Sims (1994) also claimed that when learners made connections between verbal and visual
representations of words by the use of visual aids, such learning was enhanced on the basis of dual coding theory, proposed by Paivio.
The Contextual Inference on Vocabulary Learning
that context clues were signals to help readers to infer the appropriate meaning of an unknown word contained in the text and these clues included definitions, examples, restatements, punctuations like dashes which were followed by a more detailed clarification for a preceding word or phrase, and demonstrative articles such as this and that which provided additional information for the antecedent.
Carter (1987) proposed that “the more advanced learners are, the more likely they are to benefit from learning words in context” (p. 169). Moreover, Decarrico (2001) maintained that the context itself must be rich enough to allow readers to make correct guesses of the word meaning. In this sense, a single context was often not enough for readers to think up the right meaning of an unknown word contained in the context; therefore, repeated encounters with the new word in diverse contexts
were needed.
The Semantic Mapping on Vocabulary Learning
Aitchison (1987) proposed that the human mental lexicon was believed to be a network where semantically related words were associated with each other. One particular form of semantically related instruction is semantic mapping. According to Blachowicz and Fisher (2000), “semantic mapping is a technique that graphically represents the relationships between words and requires students to identify and understand the relations between words” (p.505). Nichols and Rupley (2004) also proposed that even in a whole class setting, the teacher could allow students to brainstorm words that came to mind when they heard the new vocabulary word. For high-level students, the brainstorming activity provides the opportunity to activate their background knowledge around the new term and to make associations between the new word and already known words. For low-level students, it provides them with an opportunity to begin to reconstruct their own conceptual system in which the new term will be an additional component.
Toms-Bronowski (1983) conducted an experimental study with fourth to sixth graders to investigate the results of vocabulary learning through semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and contextual analysis and found that students in the semantic groups outperformed those in the contextual group on the immediate and retention tests of words (cited in Heimlich and Pittelman, 1986).
METHODOLOGY
Experimental Design
Having Considered the fact that there were three intact groups as subjects and three different techniques of vocabulary instruction in this experimental study, a 3х3 Latin Squares (LS-3) design was used to allow the three intact groups to receive the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction at different time periods.
More specifically, when teaching vocabulary from 1 to 10, the researchers of this study used Visual Aids in Class 1, Contextual Inference in Class 2, and
Semantic Mapping in Class 3; when teaching vocabulary from 11 to 20, the
researchers employed Contextual Inference in Class 1, Semantic Mapping in Class 2, and Visual Aids in Class 3; and when teaching vocabulary from 21 to 30, the
Subjects
The subjects of this study were students from three classes of fifth grade of an elementary school in Ping-Tung City. The total number of the students is 92 in this study: 29 students from Class 1, 32 students from Class 2, and 31 students from Class 3. Students in this elementary school started learning English when they were at grade three, and thus they had learned English for more than two years. After reviewing the school’s textbooks used for fourth and fifth graders, the researchers of this study found that students only knew a small amount of vocabulary and some simple sentence patterns using the present tense; however, students did not have the same English proficiency level.
Instruments and Materials
Before the pilot study, the researchers of this study gave students a pretest to divide them into three different proficiency groups and a new word test to pick out thirty target words for later instruction.
The pretest was composed of twenty lexical items. It is worth mentioning that eighty percent of the lexical items were extracted from those words learned at this elementary school and twenty percent of the lexical items were from other versions of textbooks such as Kang-Hsuan, Nan-I, and Joy so as to improve the
discriminability of the pretest.
The new word test was designed to pick out thirty target words for vocabulary instruction. To select thirty target words which are neither too easy nor too difficult for fifth graders, two times the number of the target words, that is, sixty words were temporarily selected. Excluding those words that had been taught during the
previous semesters, the researchers selected sixty words from the two thousand basic English words to be the testing items of the new word test. All items were expected to be unfamiliar to most subjects. Boote (2006) proposed that if less than forty percent of children knew what a given word meant, then we might not want to spend time teaching it. Similarly, if more than eighty percent of children knew what a word meant, we might not want to spend time teaching it, either. In other words, the words worth teaching to the whole class then were the words that scored between forty and eighty percent. Accordingly, the researchers computed the percentage of each of the sixty words. After deleting those which were either too easy or too difficult, thirty words were selected for the 92 fifth graders as to-be-learned words.
Regarding the immediate recall and retained recall tests which were used in the formal study, each immediate recall test containing ten lexical items was conducted to understand the extent to which the three different techniques of
vocabulary instruction facilitate vocabulary learning for Taiwanese fifth graders. As for the delayed test, it was conducted to know which technique would lead to a better retention effect of new words and contained the same testing items as in the immediate recall test.
Procedures
Through the new word test, the researchers came up with the thirty
interfering variable.
In the pilot study, the participants were also fifth graders from three other classes (Classes 4, 5, and 6) of the same elementary school. Through the pilot study, the researchers found that the level of difficulty of the three sets of to-be-learned words was not significantly different in that F (2,89)=1.545, p=.219>.05 (see Table 1).
Table 1
The Results of One-Way ANOVA for the Immediate Recall Test in the Pilot Study
Source SS df MS F Sig.
Between Groups 627.373 2 313.686 1.545 .219
Within Groups 18068.280 89 203.014
Total 18695.652 91
According to the experimental design, three conditions of vocabulary instruction in the formal study are as follows.
Procedure of condition 1 (visual aids)
One of the researchers in this study asked students to repeat twice the new English words after her while looking at the researcher-made flashcards. Then, after shuffling the flashcards, she requested them to read out each new word by
themselves. To have a solid form-image association of each word to be taught, she engaged students in the activity where one student acted out the meaning of a new word in front of the whole class and other students guessed which word was being performed. After this activity, students reviewed all the new words by looking at the flashcards. At last, she gave students an immediate recall test to find out students’ performance using the technique of visual aids. Two weeks later, the same set of words was tested again in the delayed test.
Procedure of condition 2 (contextual inference)
The researcher first distributed to all students a learning sheet listing three related example sentences for each target word. Chinese definitions of other non-target words expected to be unfamiliar to students were also given in the learning sheet. The researcher first read out the unfamiliar non-target words and asked students to repeat after her. And then, students listened to the three related example sentences read out slowly by the researcher while looking at their own learning sheet. After introducing the example sentences, the researcher encouraged students to make guesses at the target word by looking at the meanings of its
surrounding words. She gave feedback to their intelligent guesses and then provided them with the most appropriate meaning of the target word. To review the newly learned word, students along with the researcher read out the related example sentences again. Finally, an immediate recall test was given to evaluate students’ learning of the new words using the technique of contextual inference. Two weeks later, they would take a delayed test with the same testing items.
The researcher told students the Chinese definitions of the new words after writing them on the blackboard. Then, using each new word as a stimulus, the researcher asked students to brainstorm three related words by virtue of their common sense to build a semantic mapping of the new word. After constructing the semantic maps of the words to be learned, students reviewed the semantic
relationships of the new word to other related words in each semantic web. To give students more practice with the newly learned words, she asked them to participate in the drill where they memorized and read out the entire semantic map of each new word after she gradually erased one word after another. Finally, she gave them an immediate recall test to probe the effectiveness of the technique of semantic
mapping. Besides, they would have a delayed test after two weeks.
Data Analysis
There were two types of data (i.e., the quantitative and qualitative data) collected in this study. The quantitative data were dealt with using the statistical software SPSS to show the effects of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction. To find out which technique of vocabulary instruction would help students most in vocabulary learning, the statistical analysis of one-way ANOVA repeated measures was employed to compare the main effects of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction. Moreover, to investigate which technique would be most effective for low-, mid-, and high-level students, the two-way (3Х3) ANOVA mixed design was used to analyze the data. Besides, to discover the retention effects of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction on students of different proficiencies, the two-way (3Х3) ANOVA mixed design was run again. Regarding the qualitative data, the results of the questionnaire were analyzed in terms of percentage.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The Effect of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction With regard to the first research question ‘Of the three techniques of
vocabulary instruction used in this study, which one would help students most in vocabulary learning?’ the researchers would like to know the main effects of the
three different techniques of vocabulary instruction. Table 2 showed that the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction were significantly different, as
F(2,182)=12.297, p=.000<.05.
Table 2
The Summary of One-Way ANOVA Repeated-Measures Design
Source SS df MS F Sig.
Technique 6182.609 2 3091.304 12.297 .000
Subject 110702.536 91 1216.511
Error 45750.725 182 251.378
When the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction were
significantly different, it was necessary to further understand which technique was the most effective for EFL elementary school students. The results showed that visual aids had the highest mean score of 90.5435, semantic mapping resulted in the second high mean score of 87.9348, and contextual inference received the lowest mean score of 79.4565, as illustrated in Table 3. As a result, visual aids facilitated fifth graders’ vocabulary learning most; on the contrary, the contextual inference was regarded as the least effective for the fifth graders. It is conceivable that with limited linguistic knowledge, it would be difficult for the fifth graders to benefit from the technique of contextual inference in learning new words. Carter (1987) also maintained that learning words from contexts was subject to the relatively high proficiency level of learners.
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
Technique N Mean Std. Deviation
Visual Aids 92 90.5435 19.96503
Contextual Inference 92 79.4565 29.32816
Semantic Mapping 92 87.9348 21.45980
Furthermore, after doing the pairwise comparison of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction, the researchers discovered that the technique of contextual inference was significantly different from the other two techniques of vocabulary instruction in terms of effectiveness, since the mean difference between visual aids and contextual inference was 11.087, which was statistically significant (p=.000<.05) and the mean difference between the semantic mapping and contextual inference was 8.478, which achieved the statistical significance as well (p=.001<.05), as demonstrated in Table 4. The results of this study also showed that there was no significant difference between visual aids and semantic mapping for EFL elementary school students, for the mean difference=2.609, p=.234.
Table 4
Pairwise Comparisons of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
95% Confidence Interval for Difference (I) Technique (J) Technique Mean Difference (I-J) Std.
Error Sig. Upper
Bound Lower Bound 2 11.087* 2.470 .000 6.180 15.994 1 3 2.609 2.180 .234 -1.721 6.938 1 -11.087* 2.470 .000 -15.994 -6.180 2 3 -8.478* 2.354 .001 -13.154 -3.803 1 -2.609 2.180 .234 -6.938 1.721 3 2 8.478* 2.354 .001 3.803 13.154
Note. (1) technique 1=Visual Aids; technique 2=Contextual Inference; technique 3=Semantic
Mapping
The Analysis of the Students’ Evaluation of the Usefulness of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
To answer the second research question ‘Is students’ performance on recall
tests consistent with their evaluations of the usefulness of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction?’ the researchers analyzed the students’
responses to the question ‘Do you think the technique of vocabulary instruction used
in this class helped you learn the new word more effortlessly?’ For each technique,
the same question was asked repeatedly in the three classes (Classes 1, 2, and 3) receiving the same technique of vocabulary instruction at different points of time.
Regarding visual aids, the results of analysis showed that 17.4 percent of the students rated visual aids as very helpful, 64.1 percent of the students considered visual aids helpful, 14.1 percent of the students saw visual aids as little helpful, and 4.3 percent of the students evaluated visual aids as helpless (see Figure 1). In sum, 81.5 percent of the students believed that visual aids facilitated their learning of new English words. helpful 59 64.1% helpless 4 4.3% little helpful 13 14.1% very helpful 16 17.4% helpless little helpful helpful very helpful
Figure 1. Students’ Evaluation of the Usefulness of Visual Aids
As for contextual inference, the researchers discovered that 7.6 percent of the
helpless 42 45.7% little helpful 30 32.6% very helpful 7 7.6% helpful 13 14.1% helpless little helpful helpful very helpful
Figure 2. Students’ Evaluation of the Usefulness of Contextual Inference
With regard to the usefulness of semantic mapping, the researchers found that 15.2 percent of the students regarded semantic mapping as very helpful, 46.7 percent of the students felt semantic mapping helpful, 23.9 percent of the students thought of semantic mapping as little helpful, and 14.1 percent of the students assessed
semantic mapping as helpless (see Figure 3). In a word, 61.9 percent of the students thought that semantic mapping improved their learning of English words.
helpful 43 46.7% helpless 13 14.1% little helpful 22 23.9% very helpful 14 15.2% helpless little helpful helpful very helpful
Figure 3. Students’ Evaluation of the Usefulness of Semantic Mapping
The Effect of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction on Students of Different Proficiencies
To answer the third research question ‘Which technique is the most effective
for high-, mid- and low-level students respectively?’ the researchers employed the
two-way (3x3) ANOVA mixed design to find out the conditions under which high-, mid-, low- students would have a better vocabulary learning. Table 5 demonstrated that the vocabulary learning of high-, mid-, and low-level students were significantly different under the three conditions of vocabulary instruction (F (2,89)=38.028,
p=.000<.05) and that the main effects of the three different techniques of vocabulary
instruction on fifth graders’ vocabulary learning were also significantly different (F (2, 178)=12.711, p=.000<.05). However, there was no interaction effect between proficiency levels and the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction on fifth graders’ vocabulary learning in that F (4,178)=.523, p=.719>.05.
Table 5
The Summary of Two-Way ANOVA Mixed Design
Source SS df MS F Sig. (Between-Subjects Effects) Level 17003.536 2 8501.768 38.028 .000 Error 19897.309 89 223.565 (Within-Subjects Effects) Technique 6458.318 2 3229.159 12.711 .000 Technique * Level 531.541 4 132.885 .523 .719 Error 45219.183 178 254.040 Total 89109.887 275
Among the three techniques of vocabulary instruction, the technique of visual aids had the highest means (the unweighted mean=89.326), followed by semantic mapping (the unweighted mean=86.591) and contextual inference (the unweighted mean=77.797), as shown in Table 6.
Table 6
Descriptive Statistics of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction Using the Unequal Sample Sizes of the Three Groups
Technique N (LL:26+ML:39+HL:27) Mean SD Visual Aids 92 89.326 19.96503 Contextual Inference 92 77.797 29.32816 Semantic Mapping 92 86.591 21.45980
Moreover, when compared with each other, the results showed that contextual inference was significantly different from visual aids (the mean difference=11.529,
p=.000<.05) and from semantic mapping (the mean difference=8.794, p=.000<.05);
Table 7
Pairwise Comparisons of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
95% Confidence Interval for Difference (I) Technique (J) Technique Mean Difference (I-J) Std.
Error Sig.(a) Upper Bound Lower Bound 2 11.529* 2.521 .000 6.520 16.538 1 3 2.735 2.226 .222 -1.688 7.159 1 -11.529* 2.521 .000 -16.538 -6.520 2 3 -8.794* 2.412 .000 -13.586 -4.002 1 -2.735 2.226 .222 -7.159 1.688 3 2 8.794* 2.412 .000 4.002 13.586
Note. (1) technique 1=Visual Aids; technique 2=Contextual Inference; technique 3=Semantic
Mapping
(2) * The mean difference is significant at the .05 level.
In the following Table, it was found that the high-level students obtained the same highest mean score of 99.2593 under both visual aids and semantic mapping and the second high mean score of 88.5185 under contextual inference. For the mid-level students, they got the highest mean score of 97.1795 under visual aids, the second high mean score of 95.1282 under semantic mapping, and the lowest mean score of 88.7179 under contextual inference. With regard to the low-level students, they received the highest mean score of 71.5385 under visual aids, the second high mean score of 65.3846 under semantic mapping, and the lowest mean score of 56.1538 under contextual inference. In conclusion, low-, mid-, and high-level subjects all benefited from visual aids most, followed by semantic mapping and contextual inference.
Table 8
Descriptive Statistics of Low-, Mid-, High-Level Subjects’ Learning Performance Using the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
Technique Group N Mean SD
Visual Aids LL subjects 26 71.5385 29.07814
ML subjects 39 97.1795 6.46803
HL subjects 27 99.2593 3.84900
Contextual Inference LL subjects 26 56.1538 34.41824
ML subjects 39 88.7179 19.49082
HL subjects 27 88.5185 23.64866
Semantic Mapping LL subjects 26 65.3846 27.45626
ML subjects 39 95.1282 10.48101
HL subjects 27 99.2593 2.66880
The Retention Effect of the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction on the Students of Different Proficiencies
Regarding the fourth research question ‘Do these three different techniques of
proficiencies?’ the researchers employed the two-way ANOVA mixed design to
investigate the degree to which the three different techniques of vocabulary
instruction helped high-, mid-, and low-level students in retaining the newly learned foreign words. The findings were that the main effects of the three different
techniques of vocabulary instruction on fifth graders’ vocabulary retention were not significantly different (F (2, 178)=1.986, p=.140>.05). Additionally, the interaction effect between proficiency levels and the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction on fifth graders’ vocabulary retention was also insignificant, since F (4,178)=.833, p=.506>.05 (see Table 9).
Table 9
The Summary of Two-Way ANOVA Mixed Design
Source SS df MS F Sig. (Between-Subjects Effects) Level 33193.667 2 16596.833 31.748 .000 Error 46525.657 89 522.760 (Within-Subjects Effects) Technique 1514.652 2 757.326 1.986 .140 Technique* Level 1270.288 4 317.572 .833 .506 Error 67880.437 178 381.351 Total 150384.701 275
As for the average retention scores of high-, mid-, and low-level students using the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction, Table 10
demonstrated that twenty seven high-level students had the mean retention score of 85.432, thirty nine mid-level students obtained the mean retention score of 77.863, and twenty six low-level students got the mean retention score of 39.359. If we further compared the mean score obtained in the immediate recall test with that in the retained recall test in the three groups, we observed that for the low-level group, their mean score dropped abruptly from 64.359 in the immediate recall test to 39.359 in the retained recall test (losing 25 points) ; for the mid-level group, their mean score dropped from 93.675 to 77.863 ( losing 15.812 points) ; and for the high-level group, their mean score dropped from 95.679 to 85.432 (losing 10.247 points). This signified that the lower the proficiency level of students, the quicker they tended to forget the words learned two weeks ago.
Table 10
The Average Performance of Low-, Mid-, High-Level Subjects on the Immediate Recall Tests and Retained Recall Tests
Immediate Recall Tests Retained Recall Tests Test
Group N Mean SD Mean SD
retention score of 41.9231 under semantic mapping, the second high mean retention score of 41.5385 under visual aids, and the lowest mean retention score of 34.6154 under contextual inference; for mid-level students, they had the highest mean
retention score of 82.5641 under visual aids, the second high mean retention score of 75.8974 under contextual inference, and the lowest mean retention score of 75.1282 under semantic mapping; for high-level students, they got the highest mean retention score of 88.8889 under semantic mapping, the second high mean retention score of 85.1852 under visual aids, and the lowest mean retention score of 82.2222 under contextual inference. It was clear that for both low- and high-level students, semantic mapping was the best technique in retaining new foreign words for a period of two weeks, followed by visual aids and contextual inference. However, for mid-level students, the technique of visual aids was more useful for vocabulary retention than contextual inference and semantic mapping.
Table 11
Descriptive Statistics of Low-, Mid-, High-Level Subjects’ Retention Scores using the Three Different Techniques of Vocabulary Instruction
Technique Group N Mean SD
Visual Aids LL subjects 26 41.5385 34.48969
ML subjects 39 82.5641 23.58835
HL subjects 27 85.1852 18.88637
Contextual Inference LL subjects 26 34.6154 37.01143
ML subjects 39 75.8974 25.41425
HL subjects 27 82.2222 25.31848
Semantic Mapping LL subjects 26 41.9231 38.47277
ML subjects 39 75.1282 26.83986
HL subjects 27 88.8889 16.94637
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Conclusions
Concerning the first research question ‘Of the three techniques of vocabulary
instruction used in this study, which one would help students most in vocabulary learning? the researchers would like to conclude that based on the students’
performance on the immediate recall tests, visual aids helped students most in vocabulary learning, followed by semantic mapping and contextual inference. Moreover, contextual inference was significantly ineffective compared with visual aids and semantic mapping for fifth graders’ vocabulary learning.
With regard to the second research question ‘Is students’ performance on
recall tests consistent with their evaluations of the usefulness of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction?’ the researchers would like to conclude that
most students had positive evaluations on visual aids and semantic mapping and somewhat negative evaluations on contextual inference based on their responses to the question ‘Do you think the technique of vocabulary instruction used in this class
helped you learn the new word more effortlessly?’
Regarding the third research question ‘Which technique is the most effective
conclude that the effectiveness of the three different techniques of vocabulary instruction seemed unrelated to the proficiency levels of the students, since all of the high-, mid-, and low-level students, in learning foreign words, benefited from visual aids most, from semantic mapping secondly, and from contextual inference least.
As for the fourth research question ‘Do these three different techniques of
vocabulary instruction have the same retention effect on students of different proficiencies?’ the researchers would like to conclude that the three different
techniques of vocabulary instruction had different retention effects on students of different proficiencies. More specifically, high- and low-level students, on the retained recall tests, got the highest scores using semantic mapping, followed by visual aids and contextual inference. However, this is not the case for mid-level students. Visual aids not only helped them learn the foreign English words most but also helped them to retain those words for a longer period of time. Moreover,
contextual inference also enhanced mid-level students’ memory of the new words in that they got better scores on the retained recall tests under contextual inference than they did under semantic mapping.
Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study
There are some limitations in this study. First, the subjects are fifth graders from an elementary school in Pingtung City. The proficiency levels of the subjects in this study do not represent the proficiencies of students living in other urban or rural areas. Consequently, the results of this study could not be generalized to all
elementary school students in Taiwan. For further study, the researchers suggest that future researchers recruit students from different regions in Taiwan to minimize the sampling errors. Second, the nature of the thirty target words should be examined more carefully in the future study to avoid the fact that some words might be easier to learn using a certain technique while others might be easier to learn using another, which has nothing to do with the technique itself. Third, the researchers suggest that future researchers use a larger sample size to make the results more convincing, that is, to increase statistical testing power (1-β).
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