A Study On The Effectiveness Of Teaching-learning Vocabulary In Three Second Cycle Elementary Schools In Addis Ababa Grade Eight In Focus

The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching and learning vocabularyrnin three second cycle elementary schools of Addis Ababa (grade eight in focus). .This is because thernpresent day high school students’ poor language proficiency is assumed to result particularly fromrnthe absence of effective vocabulary teaching techniques and learning strategies at second cyclernelementary school level. Hence, the writer decided to examine how effectively vocabulary wasrntaught and learned just before learners started their high school English course.rnBefore the actual process of data collection began, preliminary survey was conducted on some ofrnthe common vocabulary teaching techniques prescribed by linguists and language experts. A briefrnreview was also made on the complex nature of vocabulary knowledge. Because teaching alonerndoesn’t guarantee successful learning, there aroused a need to explore the type of learningrnstrategies learners employ to acquire sufficient English vocabulary.rnThen data were collected from 90 systematically chosen students and 6 teachers throughrnquestionnaire, interview and observation. The textbook was also analyzed to see the extent itrnencourages to implement a range of vocabulary teaching techniques and learning strategies.rnConsequently, the results seemed to indicate that teachers, unlike students, believe vocabulary is notrnsuch a prominent component of language learning to be given more considerable emphasis duringrnteaching English compared to other aspects. It was also obtained that among a wide rage ofrntechniques of vocabulary instruction, teaching vocabulary through reading texts, synonymy,rntranslation and definition were the most commonly used techniques. However, a close inspection ofrnthe actual application of these techniques did not imply effective vocabulary instruction in thernsubject schools.rnAlthough students appeared to be relatively interested in learning vocabulary, practically they werernless effective in their effort as they were not able to use a variety of vocabulary learning strategies.rnAmong the major strategies of learning vocabulary, determination strategies (guessing from contextrnand using dictionary) seemed to be used better than social strategies (asking people). However,rnstrategies that promote memory of the previously learned words (memory, cognitive andrnmetacognitive strategies) were not used efficiently. Hence, it was unlikely that students hadrnsuccessfully acquired most of the 512 vocabulary items designed in their textbook

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