Effects of collocation vocabulary instruction on lower secondary school students' writing ability

Abstract

Although Basic Education Curriculum B.E. 2544 (A.D. 2001) has promoted the communicative language teaching that English instruction shall promote students' competence in using English for communication, Several studies found that Thai students have faced the difficulties in using English for communication especially in the writing ability. The researcher, therefore, developed collocation vocabulary instruction in order to enhance students' writing ability. The purpose of this present study was to examine the effects of collocation vocabulary instruction on lower secondary schools' writing ability. The study was designed as a single group experimental research study. The participants were 36 eighth grade students at Nonthaburipittayakom School in the second semester of academic year 2007. The treatment used in this study were ten lesson plans and the research instruments were two writing tests which was used before the treatment as the pretest once and after the treatment once as the posttest. Paired samples t-test was employed to investigate the differences between the pretest and the posttest. The findings revealed that collocation vocabulary instruction can enhance students' writing ability at the significance level of .05 expecially in the word choice aspect. The participants can express their ideas, opinion, and feeling better. They can use the word suitably and appropriately. Moreover, They can improve their grammatical English language.