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Investigation of the basic vocabulary skills of A' level Chinese stream students in selected pre-university centres and junior colleges in Singapore
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Type
Thesis
Author
Tan, Siok Hoon
Supervisor
Lim, Kiat Boey
Abstract
Arising out of a desire to help non-English medium student acquire skill in the process of learning new meanings that has transfer value and can thereby promote independence in reading and comprehension, this study set out to test whether instruction in the contextual clues approach to inferring word meaning was effective. This test was conducted within the framework of an experiment.
Prior to the conduct of the experiment, data obtained from a survey by questionnaire of 75 EL2 teachers from 4 junior colleges and 8 pre-university centres had confirmed that the current classroom practice is more inclined towards the incidental teaching of isolated words, a practice which goes contrary to the contextual clues approach. At the same time, the survey had provided a general consensus on the usefulness and efficacy of the contextual clues technique in developing vocabulary while confirming the need for guidance in the teaching of this technique. While the experimental lessons and tests were intended to provide this guidance in the form of sample materials, the experiment proper of this study sought to ascertain the effect of instruction on context ability.
The subjects of the experimental study were students who had studied English as a subject for at least ten years in schools where the medium of instruction had always been Chinese until 1979 when the use of English as a medium of instruction in virtually all subjects was implemented. They belonged to two different pre-university courses : a 2-year course for those who had excelled in both academic subjects and language, and a 3-year course for those who had not fared as well. The purpose of including subjects from two different courses was to enable comparisons to be made.
In the experimental study itself, three hypotheses were set up. The first required the testing of the effect of instruction on context ability : do students who are made aware of various types of contextual clues and who are given practice in using them (that is, the experimental groups) show improvement in reasoning from context when compared with other students who have received no instruction (that is, the control group)? The presence of the control groups made possible the isolation of extraneous influences. The other two hypotheses involved the comparison of initial context abilities within and across courses in an attempt to ascertain possible relationships between the dependent variable (context ability) and the independent variables (academic achievement and language proficiency).
The results indicate that instruction in the use of contextual clues brings about significant improvement in the ability to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words from context on the part of students with low initial context ability. There is also a suggestion of a definite association between context ability and both academic achievement and language proficiency.
Prior to the conduct of the experiment, data obtained from a survey by questionnaire of 75 EL2 teachers from 4 junior colleges and 8 pre-university centres had confirmed that the current classroom practice is more inclined towards the incidental teaching of isolated words, a practice which goes contrary to the contextual clues approach. At the same time, the survey had provided a general consensus on the usefulness and efficacy of the contextual clues technique in developing vocabulary while confirming the need for guidance in the teaching of this technique. While the experimental lessons and tests were intended to provide this guidance in the form of sample materials, the experiment proper of this study sought to ascertain the effect of instruction on context ability.
The subjects of the experimental study were students who had studied English as a subject for at least ten years in schools where the medium of instruction had always been Chinese until 1979 when the use of English as a medium of instruction in virtually all subjects was implemented. They belonged to two different pre-university courses : a 2-year course for those who had excelled in both academic subjects and language, and a 3-year course for those who had not fared as well. The purpose of including subjects from two different courses was to enable comparisons to be made.
In the experimental study itself, three hypotheses were set up. The first required the testing of the effect of instruction on context ability : do students who are made aware of various types of contextual clues and who are given practice in using them (that is, the experimental groups) show improvement in reasoning from context when compared with other students who have received no instruction (that is, the control group)? The presence of the control groups made possible the isolation of extraneous influences. The other two hypotheses involved the comparison of initial context abilities within and across courses in an attempt to ascertain possible relationships between the dependent variable (context ability) and the independent variables (academic achievement and language proficiency).
The results indicate that instruction in the use of contextual clues brings about significant improvement in the ability to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words from context on the part of students with low initial context ability. There is also a suggestion of a definite association between context ability and both academic achievement and language proficiency.
Date Issued
1980
Call Number
PE1449 Tan
Date Submitted
1980