The effects of sight word instruction on word recognition, word reading and spelling in elementary 4th graders: Analogy approach vs. look-and-say approach

• Main Authors: Pay-Shih Sune, 孫佩詩
• Other Authors: 張鑑如
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04783222054062684392

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 兒童英語教育學系碩士班 === 95 === The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of sight word instruction of analogy approach and look-and-say approach on Taiwanese EFL children’s word recognition, word reading and spelling skills. The subjects of this study were 37 fourth graders who studied at an elementary school in Taichung city and they did not attend private English language institutes after regular class. Eighteen of the students were in the “analogy group” while the other nineteen students were in the “look-and-say group”. During the two months (8 weeks) experimental period, all subjects received sight word instruction for 40 minutes per week. The sight words they learned were selected from Dolch Basic Sight Word Vocabulary List and American Heritage Word Frequency Book List. These wrods were also listed in the 1000 words for the Nine-year Integrated Curriculum Guidelines developed by Ministry of Education. The analogy group received sight word instruction in an analogic way, i.e., the researcher analyzed and categorized the sight words before instruction, and used analogy activities and guided reading during instruction. On the other hand, the look-and-say group received sight word instruction in a direct way, i.e., they looked at the words, read them out immediately, participated in look-and-say activities and received guided reading instruction. All subjects were given a pretest and a posttest on word recognition, word reading and spelling to evaluate the effects of the two sight word approaches.Results of the study indicated that there was no significant difference in word recogniton, word reading, and spelling skills between the analogy group and the look-and-say group in the post-test. However, comparison of the performance within-group between pretest and posttest revealed that both analogy and look-and-say groups improved significantly in overall performance, word recognition, word reading and spelling skill. The findings of this study suggest that both analogy and look-and-say approaches are helpful in promoting Taiwanese EFL children’s word recognition, word reading and spelling ability. This study implies that beginners can learn sight words with different but appropriate instruction. Implications for application of sight word instruction in EFL class and suggestions for the future research were provided.