Vocabulary as an Essential Element in the Story Writing Abilities - Research Proposal Example

What is the effect of teaching vocabulary on the ability to write a story? University Student Id Course Date Abstract This research is seeking to explore the effect of teaching vocabulary on the ability to write a story. Teaching vocabulary helps learners in acquiring new words necessary to be used in daily life. Vocabulary development is mainly focused on helping learners to learn the meaning of new concepts and words in different academic contexts. Teaching students to understanding the meaning of different vocabulary can help them in understanding the keywords in a text. Both oral and written vocabulary can assist in writing stories through improved understanding of the keywords. The students who have learning disabilities are likely to struggle when writing stories because they lack the necessary knowledge concerning the written vocabulary. The methodology used in the research will involve six participants between the age between 25 years and 26 years. The effects of vocabulary on writing story were practically investigated practically using the size participants who were be divided into two groups. Both groups were given a picture to describe it through writing a short paragraph. Introduction The ability of the learner to understand vocabulary determines their story writing capabilities. Many people students who have learning disabilities struggle when writing the story because they lack the written vocabulary. The writing of any story is entirely determined by the vocabulary understanding of the student as there is a direct relation between vocabulary knowledge and story writing. The vocabulary knowledge improves the chances of students to understand how to write stories. The learners struggling with the writing disabilities are said to read less hence failing to improve their vocabulary knowledge (Webb, 2007). The students who can comprehend academic texts or write a story are those who have developed their understanding of vocabularies necessary to use when communicating through writing. Vocabularies help learners in transforming their thoughts into a story through writing. Therefore, it is the knowledge of vocabularies that students can be in a position to compose a story that can make meaning and communicate the intended message. Justification There have been some challenges that are being experienced by many learners when writing stories. For the learners to be in a position to ensure excellent story writing skills need to have the necessary knowledge concerning vocabulary. Failure to have good vocabulary knowledge can result in poor story writing as the primary aim of writing a story is to pass certain information (Hudson, 2007). Vocabularies are vital in communicating through writing as they help in converting ideas into texts. Therefore, through this research, the effects of teaching vocabulary on the learners’ ability to write the story were known. Research objective 1. To investigate the effects of teaching vocabulary on the ability to write a story. Research question 1. What are the effects of teaching vocabulary on the ability to write a story? Literature review Vocabulary and Writing The quality and ability of a story to communicate the ideas of the writer entirely depend on the vocabulary knowledge. In various ways, the ability of writing efficiently mostly relies on the adequate vocabulary an individual has, even more as compared to the vocabulary which is required in reading (Beck, McKeown and Kucan, 2013). Moreover, after the students learning how to decode various words, they now become able to read as well as pronounce a variety of words which are not even familiar with them. The decoding process when writing a story is entirely determined by the understanding of different vocabularies that help in communicating through writing. Also, the students can be able to accurately determine the meaning of some words which are not familiar through analysing the context of those unfamiliar words. The meaning of the unfamiliar words is normally determined by the ability of the writer to understand various vocabularies that are essential when writing a story. Moreover, during the process of writing, students do not examine the context of the words, but they usually create a context for the words through writing. Creating the context for the words is determined by the vocabulary knowledge that is necessary for writing a story as a communication of the writers’ ideas. As a result, the writers are always required to remember words which they can understand them well and also use them appropriately in the writing process. Therefore, depth of the vocabulary which a student possesses greatly influences various aspects of writing such as the quality, accuracy and also descriptiveness (Schmitt, 2008). The selection of words which have got accurate meanings is always of great significance in both speaking and also writing. It is the knowledge of vocabularies that determines the ability of the students to ensure accurate meaning of the word used in writing. Vocabulary Development Vocabularies are considered as the most important in ensuring good writing skills among students as they help in ensuring accurate meaning of words. Developing the vocabulary knowledge can be important in helping the student to be good writers of stories that can communicate their ideas properly (Spencer, et al., 2012). Since words are usually the most significant tools which are used by the writers during the writing process, the development of vocabulary is an essential part of learning in the classroom. Some of the major principles which should be established to guide the creation as well as the implementation of the development programs of the vocabulary include the following; 1. Teachers should provide the students with direct instruction concerning the techniques as well as the procedures which they can use them in developing adequate vocabulary. The instruction can be provided in a formal way and also in an informal way such as the classroom interactions (Pearson, Hiebert and Kamil, 2007). 2. The vocabulary terms which are new are supposed to be connected to the previous knowledge of the students and also to their experiences. However, in case the students are not able to contextualize various new words, then there is the possibility of those words to have little meaning (Goldenberg, 2008). 3. The students are supposed to contextualize a variety of the vocabulary terms which they have already learned them and apply them appropriately. However, for the students to succeed in contextualizing new vocabulary terms, they should first be comfortable in using those new words in a classroom situation. Moreover, the students are supposed to incorporate the vocabulary terms in both oral reports and also in written reports. 4. Some of the significant methods which can be used by the students in familiarizing the new vocabulary include practice and also the repetition (Graham and Perin, 2007). The students are supposed to be exposed to the similar words frequently in practice exercises. 5. Teachers are supposed to improvise a model for enthusiasm whereby students can be curious in learning new words through their attitudes. Moreover, the enthusiastic teachers will always look for time to teach students about the development of vocabulary. The principles of vocabulary development among the students are important in the process of providing the necessary guide for students to improve their writing capabilities. Also, teachers can make use of the principles in the process of developing the necessary techniques that they can use to help learners develop their vocabulary knowledge hence improving their abilities to write stories. Methodology The experiment was used in this study to help in answering the research question concerning the effect of vocabulary on writing a story. The experiment involved giving the participants complicated pictures to describe what they understood about the picture in writing. Participants The participants in the research were six who were between the age of 25 years and 26 years. They were divided into two groups with each group comprised of three participants. Each group was then expected to provide a description of the set of pictures that they were provided with in the process of assessing the effect of vocabulary on writing a story. Study The study involved the use of pictures that the two groups had no enough vocabulary to describe what they could see in the pictures. The first step for each group was to look at the pictures provided and briefly write a short paragraph describing their understanding concerning their understanding of the pictures. The second step was involving teaching the first group the basic vocabularies concerning the pictures and ensure they understand the pronunciation, meaning and how to make use of the vocabulary in writing. The third step was asking the two groups to re-write their paragraph describing the pictures. Therefore, one group was taught the new vocabularies to use in re-writing, but the other did not. Results After re-writing both groups had some improvements but the first group had more improvement than the second group. This can be attributed to the fact that the first group was given the new vocabularies with the necessary meaning and ways of using them in describing the pictures. As a result, the first group was able to show more improvement as they used the new vocabularies to improve their descriptions of the pictures. Discussion Vocabulary affects the story writing abilities as the ideas and opinions of the writer can best be communicated in text. It was through the understanding of the vocabularies that the first group was able to describe the picture better. The fact that the second group was not provided with the new vocabulary and their meaning to describe the pictures made the group fail to show high improvements after they were told to re-write the paragraph. Therefore, this is an indication that vocabulary knowledge is crucial in the process of improving the writing skills. The improved vocabulary can assist students in developing their writing skills whereby through the improved vocabulary the writing skills of student can be improved automatically (Duke and Pearson, 2008). However, improved technology always develops the writing skills of students provided that a teacher can establish a serious classroom in term of writing. Teachers have some techniques that they can employ in the process of improving the story writing capabilities of the students. These techniques can include sharing literature that is rich in vocabulary to help students develop the necessary knowledge concerning vocabulary. For the teachers to assist their students in developing their writing skills, they should engage themselves directly in teaching them about good writing skills. Moreover, by students reading poems, stories and also books that have an adequate vocabulary, the teachers can introduce new vocabulary to the students (Ellis, et al., 2008). Second, teachers can assist the learners to be aware of the words that are interesting and how they can be used in writing stories. There are always various ways in which a teacher can make the students learn the interesting words such as requesting students look for the words which catch their attention. Besides, teachers can offer various writing opportunities to the students with the aim of improving their vocabulary use in writing stories. A classroom which is writer-centered usually emphasizes more about the usage of the written expression in communicating various ideas (Beck and McKeown, 2007). Moreover, students always have greater opportunities for the investment in writing when they are provided with an opportunity to do assignments. Limitation The fact that learners have different understanding capabilities can be a limiting factor of the research. The researcher assumed that the participants in the two group had same learning capabilities, but that cannot be the case as the learning capabilities are diverse. Conclusion The extensive research has shown that rich vocabulary is usually an essential element in the story writing abilities. According to this research, vocabulary knowledge was shown to have significant effects on writing a story. However, both reading and also the writing are always complementary processes in which both of them are usually involved in the generation of ideas which are well organized in a logical manner when writing. Also, these complementary processes of writing and reading are recommended by the researchers to be used together in teaching, instead of using of each of them separately. The writing process is usually connected to the vocabulary knowledge; hence, the writing process is always dependent on the vocabulary. Therefore, teaching vocabulary improves the story writing abilities among the learners as they can be in a better position to ensure accurate use of words in writing. References Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (2007). Increasing young low-income children’s oral vocabulary repertoires through rich and focused instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 107(3), 251-271. Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. Guilford Press. Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2008). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. The Journal of Education, 189(1/2), 107-122. Ellis, R., Sheen, Y., Murakami, M., & Takashima, H. (2008). The effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback in an English as a foreign language context. System, 36(3), 353-371. Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing Next-Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools. Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does-and does not-say. Hudson, T. (2007). Teaching second language reading (p. 107). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pearson, P. D., Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (2007). Vocabulary assessment: What we know and what we need to learn. Reading research quarterly, 42(2), 282-296. Schmitt, N. (2008). Review article: Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language teaching research, 12(3), 329-363. Spencer, E. J., Goldstein, H., Sherman, A., Noe, S., Tabbah, R., Ziolkowski, R., & Schneider, N. (2012). Effects of an automated vocabulary and comprehension intervention: An early efficacy study. Journal of Early Intervention, 34(4), 195-221. Webb, S. (2007). The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge. Applied linguistics, 28(1), 46-65. Read More