The effects of gestures on vocabulary and text comprehension in young children

• Main Authors: Feng-Er Fu, 傅鳳娥
• Other Authors: Hsin-Ying Chien
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/yuwk3t

碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 進修部暑期幼兒教育碩士班 === 105 === The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of instructions with gestures have on young children’s understanding of the vocabulary and the text when listening to stories. In addition, the study also looked into the difference in children’s understanding of concrete words, verbs, and extended-meaning phrases with or without the help of gestures. Quasi-experiment design was adopted to the present study. The participants were 42 children selected from two classes in two public preschools in Miaoli County. They were divided into the experimental group and the control group. Before the experiment, both groups of children took listening comprehension test and vocabulary comprehension. Children in the experimental group underwent 6 storytelling lessons with gestures while those in the control group did not receive any experimental treatment. The experimental courses lasted for three weeks. Two stories were told for each course. The text comprehension test was taken after storytelling. The vocabulary comprehension test was taken after the teaching experiment. The results were presented as follows. With regard to the ability of understanding the vocabulary: telling stories with gestures significantly improved children’s understanding of vocabulary, especial for the concrete-meaning words. Application of the results are discussed and given some suggestions for future researches are provided as well.