Incidental learning of vocabulary via readers' theater / Ch'ng Looi Chin... [et al.]

Although explicit teaching of vocabulary is often practiced in English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, it has been proven to be rather ineffective since words are not taught in context. This leads to the increasing use of incidental vocabulary learning approach, which emphasizes on repeated readings as a source for vocabulary learning. By adopting this approach, this study aims to investigate students' ability in learning vocabulary incidentally via verbal dramatization of written texts. In this case, Readers' Theatre (RT) is used as a way to allow learners to engage in active reading so as to promote vocabulary learning. Since the key step to language mastery would simply start from vocabulary learning, there is a need to investigate the potential of using RT as a form of incidental vocabulary learning activity in ESL setting. This study assessed how RT can lubricate the process of vocabulary learning incidentally as compared to vocabulary learning via conventional reading lesson in classrooms. The objectives of this study were as follows: 1.To measure the effect of classroom reading in ESL incidental vocabulary learning. 2.To measure the effects of Readers' Theater in ESL incidental vocabulary learning. A total of 160 Diploma students participated in this case study and they were divided into two groups, namely, Classroom Reading (CR) and RT groups. A proficiency test was first conducted to determine their vocabulary levels. Based on the results, a story was selected as the reading material in the two groups. The CR group read the story through a normal reading lesson while the RT group was required to verbally dramatize the text through RT activity. Then a post-test based on vocabulary levels was carried out and the resultswere compared. The findings revealed that incidental learning was more apparent in the RT group and their ability to learn words from the higher levels was noticeable through higher accuracy scores.