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Comparing the Effectiveness of Direct Vocabulary Instruction and Incidental Vocabulary Learning in Improving the Academic Vocabulary of Malaysian Tertiary Students

Angelina Wan Lin Tan and Lay Huah Goh

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 28, Issue S2, December 2020

Keywords: Academic vocabulary, direct vocabulary instruction, gamification, Kahoot!, Malaysian tertiary students

Published on: 18 March 2020

This study compared the effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition and using direct vocabulary instruction to improve tertiary students’ academic vocabulary. Research has shown that Malaysian tertiary students lack exposure to academic vocabulary prior to their tertiary education and that they have an insufficient vocabulary size for tertiary education. Hence, this study explored the feasibility of providing direct vocabulary instruction with gamification through an intervention programme which the researcher named the Accelerated Vocabulary Acquisition (AVA) programme as a method to improve tertiary students’ academic vocabulary. Marzano’s three-phase framework for vocabulary instruction was adapted and gamification was incorporated through the use of the gaming platform Kahoot!. This study used a quantitative approach and adopted the non-randomized control group, pretest-posttest design. The participants were 180 tertiary students studying for their diploma in various fields. The academic section of the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) by Schmitt et al. was used to measure the students’ academic vocabulary. The results showed that the AVA programme is a feasible framework to improve tertiary students’ academic vocabulary as tertiary students who underwent the AVA programme outperformed the students in the control group who learnt academic vocabulary incidentally.

ISSN 0128-7702

e-ISSN 2231-8534

Article ID

JSSH(S)-1266-20

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