The Enhancement of Efl Learners' Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Knowledge Through Concordance-Based Methods

Concordancing instruction has been suggested as an effective method for teaching second language vocabulary.

This teaching method, however, has not yet been shown effective in enhancing learners' vocabulary knowledge beyond restricted production.

Also, previous studies have not investigated the effects of concordancing instruction on vocabulary learning with learners at different proficiency levels.

The present study experiments with a new vocabulary instructional method, called innovative concordancing instruction (ICI).

ICI was the integration of concordancing instruction with current vocabulary pedagogical approaches.

The effects of ICI on vocabulary knowledge were compared with effects from traditional concordancing instruction (TCI), conventional non-concordancing instruction (CNI), and a control group.

The participants were 160 Thai undergraduate EFL students.

Prior to the instruction phase, the participants were given a pretest and a proficiency test to divide them into two levels: high and low.

After an eight-week instruction phase, participants were given an immediate posttest and a questionnaire, followed by a delayed posttest in the following week.

Four measures were used to examine learners' improvement; definitional knowledge, sentence writing, and semantic appropriateness and accurate use of the target words in extended writing.

The results of the study revealed that all instructional methods yielded similar results regarding improvement and the retention of new vocabulary knowledge.

The TCI, ICI, and CNI groups outperformed the control group.

The effect sizes for ICI, however, were greater than the effect sizes for the other two groups regarding semantic appropriateness and accurate use of the target words in extended writing.

Also, ICI was significantly better than TCI on the two measures of extended writing (i.e., semantic appropriateness and accuracy) in the delayed posttest.

In regards to the effects of instruction on learners with different language abilities, the results showed that all instructional types were equally effective in helping low-level learners increase and retain their vocabulary knowledge.

High-group learners received more benefits from ICI and CNI by improving their use of semantic appropriateness and accurate use of the target words in extended writing.

However, the effect sizes of ICI were far stronger than CNI.

The opinion survey revealed learners' positive opinion toward concordancing instruction.