Abstract
Vocabulary is an integral part of a language and language education. In view of the close relationship between vocabulary knowledge and language learning, there is a significant need for language learners, especially in the ESL context, to develop, enrich and master their vocabulary in order to be proficient users of the language. ESL teachers could help learners acquire vocabulary knowledge if they have the pedagogical knowledge on how vocabulary may be learned and taught effectively. The study aimed to determine Malaysian primary school learners' vocabulary achievement by using cloze-test based tasks. A total of five primary schools from Sabah, Malaysia were selected in this study. The total number of research participants was 135 and they were at low to intermediate level of proficiency. This study made use of four different cloze-based passages as research instruments in assessing learners' vocabulary knowledge. This research primarily concerned on the descriptive data in the form of frequency and percentage of the learners' vocabulary achievement scores and qualitative data from semi-structured interview. The findings of this study revealed that the research participants scored well in the fourth task whereby cloze-based passages were given along with general pictures and multiple-choice items. A significant correlation between these four variants of cloze-based task with the learners' vocabulary achievement was established. The main pedagogical implication of the research is that teachers should ponder what type of variants to be used in vocabulary task as this could enhance ESL learners' vocabulary achievement.
Highlights
Language is used to communicate ideas, thoughts and experiences in our daily life
Vocabulary is fundamental to language and an important aspect of second language learning (Zimmerman, 1997)
In this study, the findings refer to the scores obtained by the research participants in the four tasks given where each task came with different features and to verify the scores obtained, a semi-structured interview was conducted to get additional information
Summary
Language is used to communicate ideas, thoughts and experiences in our daily life. As we are moving towards a globalised world of education, learners need to master English language as part of their learning development. In relation to this, Richards & Rodgers (2001) claims that the building blocks of language learning and interaction are not grammar, notions, roles, or some other planning and teaching structures, but rather lexis, which is made up of combinations of terms and letters In view of this close relationship between vocabulary knowledge and language. Vocabulary knowledge may be taught through teaching techniques such as, inter alia, multiple-choice questions, words associations, matching items, items rearrangement, completion of word and formation tests. Each of these techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages. In context-dependent vocabulary tasks context can be presented in sentences or passages (Mei, 2007)
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