Integrating Instructed Vocabulary Lessons In The 2005 English Language Syllabus: A Design Based Action Research For Class Three Learners

ABSTRACT

The concern of this study was to design Instructed Vocabulary Lessons (IVL) that would ensure adequate coverage of vocabulary in the mainstream curriculum. Therefore, the study was guided by four specific objectives. These included to provide a situational analysis of both sociocultural context and vocabulary building practices in the current English Language Syllabus, to design the IVL for promoting vocabulary knowledge within the current English Language Syllabus, to assess the usefulness of the designed IVL in terms of supporting vocabulary building, and to assess the perceptions of teachers towards the designed IVL. The study was built on both interpretivism and positivism paradigms and thus, action research and quasi experimental designs were adopted. Consequently, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to facilitate the collection and analysis of the data. The study involved a sample of 193 learners and 4 teachers who were sampled from four primary schools. Methodological triangulation was adopted and thus, five data collection methods were used. These were observation, questionnaire, analysis of documents (documentary review), focus group discussion and vocabulary tests. The study revealed that despite its role in language learning, vocabulary learning is scrappily presented in the primary school English language syllabus, text books and general classroom practices. Consequently, this study developed IVL and assessed them both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results showed that learners‟ performances in vocabulary tests were high during intervention (whenever IVL was applied) but their scores decreased in the absence of IVL. Therefore, these results confirmed that learners require well planned explicit vocabulary instruction to understand, remember, and use the targeted words. However, a call is made to future researchers to make some follow up on the conclusions made by this study.