文章閱讀和單字表背誦對於提昇高中生閱讀及字彙能力的成效研究

The Effects of Reading Articles and Memorizing Word Lists on EFL High School Students’ Reading and Vocabulary Abilities

呂季芳(Chifang Lu)

指導教授 ： 陳秋蘭博士

國立臺灣師範大學/文學院/英語學系在職進修碩士班/碩士(2004年)

摘要

無資料

關鍵字

字彙學習 ； 閱讀文章 ； 單字表背誦

並列摘要

The study aims to investigate the effects of the two vocabulary-learning methods, i.e., learning words in context and learning words in isolation through translation, on EFL high school students’ reading and vocabulary abilities. The whole experiment lasted for seven weeks, including the two weeks for training session. The participants recruited were 64 twelfth-grade students in a high school in Taipei County, who were divided into two groups, with 33 participants in the Reading Group and 31 participants in the Word Group. Within each group, participants were subdivided into High Proficiency and Low Proficiency subgroups based on the scores of their reading pretest. They met four times a week, 50 minute per session, for English instruction. In the first 15 minutes of each class, the Reading Group was assigned one article to read, while the Word Group was given ten bilingual word lists with words chosen from articles read by the reading group to memorize. In the following 5 minutes, a quiz made up of four short-answer questions was held for the Reading Group, while the Word Group had to spell five words correctly with the Chinese prompts in the quiz. All the participants took reading and vocabulary pre-tests and reading and vocabulary post-tests so that their progress in reading and vocabulary proficiency could be measured. They were required to fill out the questionnaires to give their feedbacks after the experiment.
The major findings are summarized as follows:
(1) All the participants made significant progress in their overall reading abilities after they received one of the two vocabulary trainings. However, there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of their gain scores in the reading tests.
(2) There was significant difference between all participants’ vocabulary performances before and after they received one of the two vocabulary trainings. In addition, learning words in isolation through translation was proven to be more effective to raise participants’ vocabulary learning than learning words in context.
(3) Learning words in isolation through translation was more effective in raising High Proficiency and Low Proficiency students’ vocabulary learning than learning words in context.
On the other hand, form students’ response in the questionnaires, they gave positive comments to the two methods and they also pointed out the pros and cons of the methods. According to the Reading Group, the advantage of learning words from context was training reading speed and learning correct usage of words, while the disadvantage was time-consuming and new words couldn’t be memorized. As for the Word Group, the advantage of learning words in isolation through translation was high efficiency in memorizing words, and the disadvantage was short retention of memorized words. The study highlighted the importance of vocabulary instruction in an EFL classroom. Pedagogical suggestions are made based on the results of this study.

並列關鍵字

vocabulary learning methods ； learn words via word lists ； reading articles

參考文獻

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