Teaching young learners English vocabulary with reading-based exercises in a real classroom situation

This classroom study investigated how English (L2) vocabulary was taught to primary school pupils in a series of reading lessons under two conditions: (a) reading plus receptive learning exercises or (b) reading plus both receptive and productive learning exercises. The results showed that the condition involving both receptive and productive exercises led to more vocabulary retention than the condition with receptive exercises only. Furthermore, it is tentatively proposed that young learners' productive knowledge of vocabulary items can be assessed based on acceptable collocations instead of sentence writing which relies on a fully developed grammar system that young learners may lack. Copyright © 2014 Departamento de Didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura, Facultad de.