Discrepancies between acquisition and performance in vocabulary as reflected in the writings of sixth graders

النوع : Mémoire

Researchers view second language vocabulary acquisition as a complex process essential for second language acquisition and needed for developing students’ language proficiency. A lack in the vocabulary repertoire could lead to a problem in oral as well as written communication. The purpose of this study is to find out whether students would make better use of target vocabulary words in their writing if they were encouraged to do so. Moreover, it tries to find out whether students who use the target vocabulary words in their writing will have better retention of these words than those who do not. The methodology consists of a statistical analysis of two tests: a pre-test where the students were asked to write five compositions without being encouraged to use target vocabulary words in their writing assignments; and a post-test where they were encouraged to do so. A vocabulary test was administered at the end of the year to find out whether students who used the target vocabulary words had better retention than those who didn’t. The results of this study indicate that the mean scores of the post-tests are higher than the mean scores of the pre-tests. This means that the teachers’ encouragement to students to use the target vocabulary words has a great impact on students’ performance. Furthermore, the students who used target vocabulary words in their writing assignments got better grades on the vocabulary test than those who did not which implies that multiple uses of target vocabulary words could lead to their retention.