The Effect of Teaching key Vocabularies at Pre-Reading Stage of Teaching Reading on Students’ Reading Comprehension Skills: The Case of Grade 9 Students at Newland High School, Ethiopia
Keywords:
Teaching key vocabularies, pre-reading stage, teaching reading, students’ comprehension skills.Abstract
This study examined the effect of teaching key vocabularies at pre-reading stage of teaching reading on grade nine Newland high school students’ comprehension skills. To this end, the study employed quasi-experimental research design. The populations of the study were grade nine students (four sections, A, B, C&D) of Newland high school in 2017 academic year. Two sections among the four (section A & B) were randomly selected using lottery method. Using the same method, the sections A & B were assigned as control group and experimental group respectively. Then, a reading comprehension pre-test was given to both control and experimental groups at the beginning of the study to make sure that the groups were homogenous pertaining to their reading comprehension skills. Next, all the students in the experimental group (N=69) were taught key vocabularies at pre-reading stage of teaching reading using communicative language teaching method through Marzano’s and Yopp and Yopp’ vocabulary teaching strategies, whereas all the students in the control group (N=69) were taught in the traditional vocabulary teaching method. The same vocabulary and reading comprehension test was given as a post-test at the end of the treatment to both experimental and control groups. The test scores of the control and experimental groups were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 software. The findings of the study showed that students in the experimental group outperformed those in the control group in their reading comprehension skills.
Thus, the study concluded that teaching key vocabularies at pre-reading of teaching reading brought a significant difference between experimental and control groups. Finally, it was recommended that English language teachers should teach key vocabularies at pre-reading stage of teaching reading to their students in the school in order to develop their students’ reading comprehension skills.
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