THE IMPACT OF TEACHING CORE WORDS ON VACABULARY ACQUISITION

Vocabulary is extremely important in learning a foreign language. This study investigated theeffectiveness of teaching core words vs. teaching noncore words on vocabulary acquisition inEFL setting. The study is quasi-experimental and it involved one control group and oneexperimental group. The classes were held triple a week and the study was conducted over aperiod of seven weeks (overall 31.5 hours per group). Data was collected with the help of a preand a post-test and an interview with learners on teaching core words program. Both the pre andthe post-test were administered in the two groups. The quantitative data analysis was conductedwith the SPSS software, namely Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney U tests. These tests were appliedfor analyzing the data obtained from four sets of tests. As the interview data was qualitative, theinterview was analyzed subjectively by the researcher. The analysis of the pre- and post-testsshowed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups. The findings of thequantitative data indicated that teaching vocabulary via core words might be an appropriatemethod for improving EFL learners’ domain of vocabulary. The results of the qualitative datashowed that learners were more motivated to learn vocabulary through the core words in theexperimental group than the students in the control group.

Keywords:

Nuclear vocabulary , Noncore words , Associationism