Using literary text to foster vocabulary acquisition: a case study on the relationship between reading and writing (IR)

Many language teachers do not realise the immense benefit of using literature particularly short stories as means to teach vocabulary and writing. Since the introduction of literature component for all secondary schools in the year 2000, the usage of these literary texts is focused mainly as a compo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Yeo, Chong Ee
Format: thesis
Language:eng
Published: 2006
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ir.upsi.edu.my/detailsg.php?det=740
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Summary:Many language teachers do not realise the immense benefit of using literature particularly short stories as means to teach vocabulary and writing. Since the introduction of literature component for all secondary schools in the year 2000, the usage of these literary texts is focused mainly as a component for examination purposes. The study examined the effects of using critical reading strategy as a technique to read literary texts not only for text comprehension but function as a basis to foster vocabulary acquisition which in turn help students in their writing. The objectives of this study were: (i) to examine the effectiveness of reading modern short stories critically for vocabulary acquisition; (ii) to examine the level of effectiveness in using critical reading strategy for knowledge transfer; (iii) to identify factors that hamper learners ability to reproduce the acquired knowledge; and (iv) to examine the significance of reading modern short stories critically towards correct word usage in ones writing. Qualitative data were analysed thematically while quantitative data were analysed with descriptive statistics. A major finding in this study was that the participating samples being ESL students from a rural school did manage to acquire an impressive amount of vocabulary from this reading strategy although they did not manage to use a majority of the acquired lexicon in their writing. Results of this study provide both theoretical and practical implications in the benefit of using selected literary texts as an alternative tool prior to the teaching of writing.