USING INTERACTIVE METHOD IN TEACHING VOCABULARY TO PRIMARY SCHOOL LEARNERS

Abstract

Vocabulary is a powerful predictor and correlate of reading comprehension, and consequently of academic success. By the end of the grade two, children in the highest quartile know twice as many words as children in the lowest quartile. Schools have done little to change this outcome during the primary grades, where there is little attention to vocabulary. Unless primary grade children with low vocabularies have a chance to build vocabulary in school, they will continue to lag seriously behind more advantaged children. It is possible to identify high priority word meanings that are known by those with large vocabularies, but not known by those with small vocabularies. There is also good evidence that low-vocabulary children can learn needed words from classroom instruction. Teachers can assess how well taught vocabulary is learned by a class of primary grade children. In short, needed vocabulary can be taught and assessed in primary grades. It is time that this be done. Pedagogies of teaching vocabularies are important, under the trend of globalization in the recent two decades. If the current English teachers are not able to face the challenge of globalization trend, their pupils will encounter obscurity when they need to communicate with the right words. Also, the education of high school might be proved to be unsuccessful. This study argues that in order to accommodate with the trend of globalization in the petit earth, school teachers should figure out a dynamic way of teaching vocabularies for their students to really apply and make compensations for traditional vocabulary pedagogies.