The present study amis to investigate the effects of methodology of teaching vocabulary using pragmatic relations for 4th grade of elementary school students whose curriculum contains much increased amount of vocabulary items compared to the previous...
The present study amis to investigate the effects of methodology of teaching vocabulary using pragmatic relations for 4th grade of elementary school students whose curriculum contains much increased amount of vocabulary items compared to the previous years, 1st to 3rd grades.
The research questions are formulated as following:
1. What are the appropriate vocabulary for the students in 4th grade.
2. How can teach the students the words using sematic relation.
3. Will be the vocabulary instruction using sematic relation effective?
As for the procedure, first of all, the target vocabulary items were selected based on Choi, U-C& Kim, K-H(2009), and then the pragmatic relations were constructed among those words. Based on the construction of words with pragmatic relations, teaching plan was designed and was implemented six-week instruction period. The effects of vocabulary teaching using pramatic relation were examined during the six-week teaching session.
The process of instruction went as follow: step 1: activating students' background knowledge(schemata), step 2: assuming the sematic relation and confirming, and step 3: internalizing. As for the specific activities for step 2. students could assume the sematic relations and confirm them through visualized material and Korean dictionary website, Nurijib(http://www.wordnet.co.kr). and Also, in step 3, students could increase the vocabulary items and internalize them through writing essay and composing stories.
The students are in two groups; experimental group and control group. The students in the experimental group were instructed for 18 hours of classes for 6 weeks in which vocabulary instruction using pragmatic relation was implemented, while no such instruction using pragmatic relation was implemented in the control group. As a result, the results showed that students in experimental group increased 5.22 in vocabulary comprehension test, and increased 8.19 in the vocabulary usage test. On the other hand, the control group showed that 0.11 decreased in test of vocabulary comprehension test and 0.13 decreased in vocabulary usage test. These results were statiscally significant. The findings imply that using pragmatic relation is effective way in vocabulary instruction.
In conclusion, the effective vocabulary instruction is not simple to discuss with several methods in the instruction. However, the present study is meaningful in terms of the fact that this study suggests one of the effective ways of vocabulary teaching for the intermediate grade(e.g.4th grade) in the elementary school.
* A thesis submitted to the Committee of the Graduate School of Gyeong-sang University in partial fulfillment of requirement for degree of Master of Education in August, 2010