Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
THE NINTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION, İzmir, Türkiye, 4 - 06 Kasım 2021, ss.70-71
Introduction Learning a foreign language has become popular in many parts of the world and language teaching has been seen as an important task. Especially since English is widely used, it has started to be taught as a compulsory foreign language in many countries. English is taught as a foreign language in Turkey too. However, studies conducted in recent years (Anşin, 2006; Haznedar, 2010) reveal that the desired success in English teaching in Turkey has not been achieved. The main reasons for this are that there aren’t interesting, activity-based and educational environments that pay attention to individual differences in English teaching. In addition, ordinary activities based on the textbook, boring grammar teaching, students' decreasing motivation, English structures and words that cannot go beyond memorization and are forgotten in a short time are the reasons for not reaching the desired level in English teaching. Children are not interested in rules, explanations, and matters that do not concern them or are foreign to them. Games, songs, rhymes, visual and audio materials, dramas in which they are actively involved, and activities related to their imaginary worlds attract their attention (Işık & Semerci, 2016). Children in primary education are still in the play age. Tosuncuoğlu (2013) states, games can be used if they want them to create a rich vocabulary in an active and productive way. As a matter of fact, Butler (2015), Guerrero (2011), Sørensen and Meyer (2007) stated that foreign language teaching through games affects the process positively and increases the motivation of students. In this context, the general purpose of this study is to examine the process of teaching vocabulary through games in the 5th grade English lesson. Depending on this general purpose, answers to the following sub-problems will be sought. The experimental group in which the balloon popping game was used and the control group in which the current curriculum was applied; Is there a significant difference between the English vocabulary test pre-test and post-test scores? Is there a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the attitude scale towards the English lesson? Is there a significant difference between the retention test scores? Methodology In this study, in which the process of teaching vocabulary with games in the 5th grade English lesson was examined, the quasi-experimental model with the pretest-posttest control group, which is one of the experimental models, was used. This study was carried out in a public secondary school and a total of 28 students from two different branches, studying in the 5th grade English preparatory class and participating in online training, participated in the study. One of the classes was determined as the experimental group and the other as the control group by random assignment. In this study, the English 5th grade fitness unit vocabulary achievement test developed by the researcher and the attitude scale towards the English lesson developed by Orakçı (2017) were used as data collection tools. The vocabulary achievement test consists of 4 parts and 28 questions. The mean difficulty of the test is 0.53, the mean discrimination value is 0.46, and the Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient is 0.87. The attitude scale consists of 2 sub-dimensions, behavioral and affective, and 16 items. The highest score that can be obtained from the 5-point Likert scale is 80, and the lowest score is 16. As a result of the validity and reliability analyzes of the scale, the Keiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) coefficient was determined as .872 and the Barlett Sphericity test significance level was determined as 0.01. As a result of the explanatory factor analysis, it was determined that the item-total correlations in the scale were between 0.378 and 0.692. The explained variance was calculated as 58%. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be .88 for the behavioral subdimension and .91 for the affective sub-dimension (Orakçı, 2017). In the pilot application of this study, the average Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient for both dimensions of the scale was found to be 0.87.
Results / Expected Outcomes
In this research, the process of teaching vocabulary with games in the 5th grade English lesson was examined
with an experimental application and the following results were obtained.
At the beginning, while the achievement levels of the experimental and control groups regarding the English
vocabulary achievement test were similar; At the end, it was determined that the method of teaching vocabulary
with games increased the success of the students at a statistically significant level. Similarly, in similar studies
on vocabulary teaching with games (Taheri, 2014; Işık and Semerci, 2016), it was concluded that teaching with
games increased students' success in vocabulary learning.
At the end of the research, it was determined that teaching vocabulary with games did not statistically
significantly increase students' attitudes towards the English lesson. However, in this study, it was determined
that the attitudes of the students in both groups towards the lesson were quite high. The fact that the results of
students' attitudes towards the English lesson were so high before and after the application; it is thought that this
may be due to the fact that these students enjoy the English language course in the English preparatory class.
When the results of the research were evaluated in terms of permanence, it was determined that the method of
teaching with games increased the permanence of students’ English vocabulary learning success at a statistically
significant level.