Effects Of Story-Based Approach On Vocabulary Acquisition In Vocational School

The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of story-based approach on vocational school students’vocabulary acquisition. The theories on which this study was based on were Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis, Context Theory, Depth of Processing Model and Constructivist Theory. The significance of the study was that it could provide some new insights into story-based approach, help enrich existing theories on vocabulary acquisition, especially for vocational schools, and offer valuable pedagogical suggestions to English teachers. The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1. Which method is more effective in the immediate vocabulary acquisition, the teacher’s storytelling or learner’s story-writing?2. Which method is more effective in delayed vocabulary acquisition, the teacher’s storytelling or learner’s story-writing?3. To what extent can immediate vocabulary acquisition be retained in the delayed test in terms of two methods?Participants in this study consisted of 97 students from two parallel classes of Grade One at Yangzhou Jiangsu Business Higher Vocational School. The reasons why they were selected were that they were taught by the researcher, that they had similar English background and English level, and that they were cooperative. Class One was treated with the teacher’s storytelling method, and Class Two with the learner’s story-writing method. The target words were chosen from the book they would use the next term. The story for Class One was adapted from a story skeleton edited by Morgan and Rinvolucri. with some details added and some expressions modified. The target words were woven into the story and distributed evenly in the paragraphs of the story’s main part. The two classes were taught the target words with the same pictures and explanations which illustrate every word vividly. The instruments employed in this study were immediate vocabulary test and delayed vocabulary test adapted and translated from Paribakht& Wesche’s Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS). The data were collected by the researcher from immediate test and delayed test. Because one student in the teacher’s storytelling class was absent in the immediate test, and two students in the learner’s story-writing class were absent in the delayed test, the total valid number was 94. Data analysis involved scoring, Independent-samples Mest, and calculation of retention rate. They were employed to compare the effect of story-based approach on vocabulary acquisition.This study generated the following three major findings:Firstly, both the teacher’s storytelling method and the learner’s story-writing method could generate vocabulary acquisition. It might be attributed to Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. The story employed in the teacher’s storytelling class catered to students’interests and the language was not difficult for them to comprehend; and the sentences displayed in the learner’s story-writing class were related to students’daily lives and were expressed in a plain and clear way. These conditions were in line with enough exposure to comprehensible input and enabled students’acquisition to occur naturally.Secondly, there was a significant difference between the two classes in the immediate test and the delayed test. The learner’s story-writing class performed better than the teacher’s storytelling class in both tests, which suggested that the learner’s story-writing method was more effective than teacher’s storytelling in vocabulary acquisition. This might be due to the following three reasons:(1) the learner’s story-writing class produced more comprehensible output than students in the teacher’s storytelling class; (2) the learner’s story-writing class underwent a deeper processing of target words than the teacher’s storytelling class since they were forced to understand the meaning and usage of each target word and digest them thoroughly so that they could write stories with them; (3) the learner’s story-writing class put more attention and energy in the task and they were more engaged in class.Thirdly, there was no significant difference in retention rate of target words acquisition between the two classes. Both classes gained less vocabulary acquisition in the delayed test than in the immediate test because of memory loss. That is to say, memory retention declines in course of time. The retention rates of both classes were above 90 percent, which indicated that both methods were effective in retention of vocabulary acquisition. The two methods were story-based, stressing natural discourse and encouraged students to either comprehend or compose meaningful discourse, which contributed to longer retention.This study has some pedagogical implications. Firstly, story-based approach can be applied to vocational school vocabulary teaching. Because students are apt to be attracted by stories, their learning interests can be aroused if proper materials are prepared. Secondly, teachers should explore the textbooks thoroughly and organize the teaching content properly according to different needs of the class. More information can be included in vocabulary instruction to provide appropriate contexts for lexical learning. Thirdly, the original story-based approach should be altered with more emphasis on students’initiative in weaving the story.The study had three limitations and called for improvement in future studies. Firstly, the participants who took part in this study were not sampled at random, and they were from the same school. Besides, the participants were all in grade one. Thus, the conclusion could not be generalized to all grades and educational circumstances. Further researches could study other grades and larger samples. Secondly, long-time effects of story-based approach on participants’ acquisition of new words were not assessed. So the conclusions could not be applied to long-term vocabulary acquisition. More longitudinal studies were needed to further explore the effects of story-based approach on vocational school students’vocabulary acquisition. Lastly, due to limited conditions, digital storytelling method was unable to be put into practice. Future studies could implement digital storytelling to discover its effects on vocabulary acquisition.