THE IMPACT OF EDUCATIONAL GAMES AND GENDER ON FIVE YEAR OLD IRAQI EFL LEARNERS

Yıl 2018, Cilt: 4 Sayı: 2, 51 - 64, 22.12.2018

Akram Al-zangana

Öz

The present study aimed to investigate the impact of educational
games as a significant learning technique in teaching English Vocabulary among
five-year old Iraqi EFL learners. The sample of the study was 32 preschool
children at Wano private kindergarten. They were divided into two different
groups; experimental group which were taught by using educational games and
control group which were exposed to the traditional methods of vocabulary teaching,
16 students for each group (8 male and 8 female). Checklist was used as Data
collection instrument which consisted of 36 items vocabulary. At the beginning
of the study they were given a pretest to measure their vocabulary performance.
Then, after six weeks of treatment, they were post tested. The outcomes showed
a significant difference between experimental group and the control group in
terms of posttest achievement in English vocabulary scores. Therefore, the
educational games proved to be useful in teaching English vocabulary.
Furthermore, the influence of gender on five-years-old Iraqi preschool kids in
learning new English vocabulary with educational games in the experimental
group and without educational games in the control group was conducted by means
of independent sample t-tests. The analyzed data showed no significant gender
effect for both groups in learning new English vocabulary.

Keywords: English
as a foreign language, vocabulary teaching, educational games, very young
learners, early childhood education, Total Physical response, five-year-old children.

Anahtar Kelimeler

English as a foreign language, vocabulary teaching, educational games, very young learners, early childhood education, Total Physical response

Kaynakça

• Alemi, M. (2010). Educational games as a vehicle to teaching vocabulary. The Modern Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2(6), 425-438. Aslanabadi, H., & Rasouli, G. (2013). The effect of games on improvement of Iranian EFL vocabulary knowledge in kindergartens. International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities, 6(1), 186-195. Blachowicz, C. L. Z., & Fisher, P. (2004). Vocabulary Lessons. Educational Leadership, 3, 66-69. Bromley, K. (2007). Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction. Journal of adolescent & adult literacy. 50(7). 528-529,531-537.