| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 98 === Vocabulary acquisition is seen as an important aspect in elementary schools’ EFL classes and much of the new English vocabulary in authorized English textbooks (e.g. Hess, Rainbow, Hello Darbie, Longman, Joyce) for the public elementary schools here in Taiwan is presented in a semantically and syntactically organized manner, as when the words like father, mother, brother and sister, all nouns, are clustered under a common superordinate “Family”.
Based on the linguistic theory of semantic fields (Channell, 1981) and the natural organization of the mental lexicon in L1 (Aitchison, 1994, 1996) , the overwhelmingly popular practice of presenting new words together in semantic grouping has been seen as a facilitator of vocabulary teaching and learning—but without sufficient empirical evidence from research.
In addition, there are concerns in the research on the interference (Higa,1963; Postman, 1963; Gairns & Redman, 1986; Nation, 2000) and the ‘distinctiveness hypothesis’ (Hunt & Elliott,1980; Hunt & Mitchell, 1982) resulting from presenting vocabulary in semantic groups. What’s more, a growing research interest on the effective ways of grouping words to facilitate vocabulary acquisition has found negative effects of learning words in semantic grouping (e.g. Tinkham, 1993; Waring, 1997). Hence, in order to avoid the possible interference of presenting vocabulary at the same time in semantic grouping, there is a suggestion that vocabulary should be taught and learned thematically (Tinkham, 1997; Nation, 2000), that is, groups of words that are related to situations or sequences of events. It also means not only to present indirectly associated words with a common thematic concept but also to have different parts of speech in the grouping of words, such as the words evil, vampire, suck, blood.
In previous studies, the research concern was mainly on the comparison between semantically related words and unrelated words and only a few experimental studies made the comparison between semantic clusters and thematic clusters. Tinkham (1997) and Al-Jabri (2005) found positive effects for thematic clusters, but in Hippner-Page (2000) and Liu’s (2003) research, they found no significant differences between the presentation of L2 vocabulary in the semantic and thematic clusters. As we can see there are really not many experimental investigations that deal with the comparison between semantic cluster and thematic cluster, but it is an important issue in the EFL elementary context because much of the authorized English textbooks we use may have hindered rather than facilitated English vocabulary learning. Hence, the main purpose of the present study is to explore the effect on vocabulary acquisition as well as vocabulary retention of presenting new words through both semantic clustering and thematic clustering.
A one-group research design was employed. The subjects were 16 grade four elementary students who enrolled in an EFL club program in fall 2009. All the subjects participated in an eighty-minute club seven times but the actual instruction concerning word learning was forty minutes each time and received the same instruction, which consisted of storytelling, word learning and word games through Interactive Whiteboard for both semantic clustering and thematic clustering of words. A relatively new technology in the educational field, Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) is a valuable teaching tool for teachers in the classroom. Combined with Notebook Software 10, IWB provides useful resources and instructional functions.
The 24 words used in the study were selected as the targets words from an initial list of 36 words in the pretest to make sure none of the target words are known by the subjects. 16 students were presented with 24 words divided into two six-word semantic clusters and two six-word thematic clusters. The reason of choosing six words for each cluster is because in the authorized elementary English textbooks for grade 3 and 4, there are usually 4 to 6 new words in each unit.
A self-designed vocabulary test was used in the pretest, requiring the subjects to
check the words they had known and creating four clusters of words from the unknown words. Moreover, a self-designed vocabulary test was used in the posttest right after each cluster instruction, requiring the subjects to read and match the pictures with the target words. A delayed test was also used two week after each instruction. The format of the delayed test was the same as the posttest except for item order. Non-parametric test, The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test was used to compare the overall effects of learning words in semantic and thematic clusters on the posttests and delayed tests. In addition, a questionnaire before the instruction was used to obtain subjects’ English learning background and two questionnaires after the presentation of each vocabulary set on the target words were provided. One was about vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) and the other was about the attitude of subjects towards instruction. Non-parametric correlations, Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation was used to find out the relationship between words learned and the use of vocabulary learning strategies as well as relationship between words learned and English learning background of the subjects for extra information about the words learning in semantic clusters and thematic clusters.
The overall results of new words acquisition revealed that semantic clusters were slightly better than thematic clusters and the overall results of new words retention revealed that semantic clusters were exactly the same as thematic clusters. There was no statistically significant difference between presenting English words in semantic clusters or in thematic clusters in the acquisition or retention of new words.
Although the results for the use of vocabulary learning strategies in semantic clusters and in thematic clusters were different, they still indicated that the vocabulary teaching methods used most frequently by English teachers in the classroom were also the strategies most consistently used in words learning by the subjects of this study and suggested that explicit teaching of vocabulary learning strategies could be helpful in semantic clusters.
Furthermore, there was a strong tendency in the results for the number of words learned to be related to the English learning background of the subjects in terms of when they started learning, whether they had supplementary English classes, and how many years of supplementary English classes they had. Having more experience of English learning does seem to facilitate words learning.
Finally, students’ attitudes towards presentations of semantic and thematic clusters were generally positive. The instructional materials and procedures could be accepted as ways of vocabulary teaching.
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