이야기 읽기가 초등영어 학습자의 부수적 어휘학습에 미치는 영향

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of incidental vocabulary learning through reading. To develop the communicative competence of elementary school students, they have to know a lot of vocabulary. Incidental vocabulary learning through reading can help these students acquire much of this vocabulary. Young native learners also acquire most of their vocabulary through reading. One hundred and fourteen fifth grade students in the Busan area participated in this study. They were divided into two levels based on their English competence. The students were read an English story book once a week by their English teacher. The teacher also helped them understand the content of the story in English, for example, by paraphrasing the difficult sentences to simple ones. The teacher would ideally explain a vocabulary word only once, and if absolutely necessary, twice. A pre-test was taken before reading a book with their teacher, and a post-test was taken immediately after reading. Both tests were Vocabulary Knowledge Scale tests. The student then took the same post-test one more time after one week. The students were exposed to the words only through reading. There was no explicit vocabulary learning and no reinforcement activity to learn the new words. The data was analyzed using the SPSS program to arrive at the dependent samples t-test. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: 1. Reading a book significantly affects the elementary school learners' incidental vocabulary learning. The scores on the post tests were significantly better than those on the pre-test. 2. Reading a book significantly affects incidental vocabulary learning in both high-level students and low-level students. The vocabulary acquisition scores on post-tests were significantly better than those on the pre-tests. The results of the study show that reading books can improve elementary school learners' vocabulary abilities. Even though there was only a single exposure to the book, students were able to acquire many of the new words. This suggests that reading books should be encouraged for elementary school learners to incidentally improve their vocabulary abilities.