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ABSTRACT: This study is about boosting vocabulary for second language learners through listening short
story. Though there are lots of techniques involved in enriching vocabulary, students learn significant
amount of words and related meanings when they are exposed to oral presentation. Listening to short stories
will induce the eagerness to learn new words. The other benefit in listening technique is that they get
stronger in pronunciation part as well as in grammatical part. Various classroom activities are conducted
among children that help them to retain the vocabulary for long time. Children’s interest, concentration and
eagerness is necessary for their successful progression. When children listen to short stories they acquire
many new words and they become familiar with partially known words. Activities like conducting multiple
choice questions, interactive sections will enable them to participate actively. In this article an experiment is
undertaken which involves a pre-test and post-test that marks the improvement of vocabulary acquisition.
INDEX TERMS- Boosting vocabulary; listening short story; MCQs; pronunciation; experiment.
I.INTRODUCTION
Nowadays children are made to learn a foreign language from their primary schools. So the foreign
language teaching has become established in all primary schools. The foreign language teaching helps in
improving communicative skill and language skill. They tend to learn English words from different media
like radio, television or internet. Vocabulary growth is closely linked to school progress.Other benefit is that
they develop the capability to communicate in English without learning many words and structures. As a
result, children’s motivation to learn the foreign language retains (CF.Christiani&Cwik 2008,P.7f). To
children, listening stories is an interesting activity. It improves vocabulary skill along with children’s
eagerness and interest to learn a language. Studies of (Chomsky,1979;Clark;1976; Durkin,1966, Teale,
1978; Wells, 1986) early readers have consistently shown that children who have been read regularly in
their preschool years make rapid strides in their reading and language development at school. Few studies
shown that reading aloud regularlyto the students at elementary school level, in a context of shared reading,
produces measurable gain in reading and listening skills (Cohen 1968; Elley 1980; Elley and Mangubhai,
1983; Feitelson, Kita; and Goldstein,1986; Ricketts, 1982).
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III. WHY LISTENING IS IMPORTANT?
“Listening comprehension is a very complex process in which different types of both linguistic and non-
linguistic knowledge are involved” (Muller-Hartmann &S von Ditfurth 2004, p.73).Listening is the
fastest way to acquire much number of words. Even the less able students learn certain new words through
listening. ‘Listening is a fundamental language skill, but it is often ignored by foreign and second language
teachers’. (Rebeccal, 1993).Teachers have a main role in this process of acquisition.Teachers’ major duty is
to provide as many listening task to the children in the class using materials like CD’s, tapes or podcasts.
Teacher should know the fact that children will acquire new language in a defined order. This is nothing but
LSRW technique. The first and foremost way they encounter a new language is through listening to
someone’s speech. Then they try to repeat those learnt words, this will enhance their reading habit.
Eventually they end up with writing new words of their own(cf. Clausen 2009, p.8). Therefore, listening is
a basic skill which is a foundation for any other skill such as speaking, reading and writing(cf.
Chistiani&Cwik 2008, p.43). The most important factor to be considered is that listening gives some direct
attention to pronunciation from the beginning stage of language acquisition.
VI.EXPERIMENT
AIM:
This study aims to provide a more complete picture of vocabulary knowledge gain from listening to short
story. The following research gives the difference in acquisition of vocabulary before and after the
explanation of target words.
PARTICIPANTS:
A total of 100 participants took part in this experiment. All were second language learners from state
board medium. Out of 100 there were 54 girls and 46 boys. Children were not chosen according to their
rank instead they were just taken randomly to find whether this method is effective or not.
PASSAGE TAKEN:
We chosea short story named ‘The Necklace’ written by Guy de Maupassant.
PROCEDURE:
Our research on vocabulary enhancement contains both pre-test and post-test. The results were obtained
randomly by assigning the participants. In the beginning we read ‘The Necklace’ short story allowed in front
of the class of about hundred children. During this dictation, children were not given any sort of explanation
of hard words, instead they were given only the gist of the story. Only few children in the class were able to
relate the meaning of the hard words whereas others were not able to follow.
To find this difference we conducted a test. In this test we gave ten multiple choice questions to children
after reading out the story without explaining the difficult words. The questions were like finding the
synonyms, antonyms, homophones, homonyms, etc of the targeted words from the given choices.
By following the above format, only two to four questions were answered correctly by the children. This
is because it was hard for them to understand those arduous words. Again this short story was narrated to
same set of children but this time the tough words were given clear explanation and related words for better
understanding.
After taking the proficiency test, all participants had applied the same pre-test including other ten
vocabulary testing questions which was also of the above mentioned format. After the implementation of
this method, the participants took the post-test in order to find whether this trial is faithful to develop the
vocabulary acquisition or not.
3
5
children
4
2
children
1
0
very good fair bored
intresting
4
Table.2: this shows the result of post-test
Table.3: this shows the percentage of each test and the overall rise in percentage level after both the test:
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VII.COMMON PROBLEMS FACED BY CHILDREN DURING VOCABULARY ACQUSITION:
LACK OF CONCENTRATION AND ATTENTION:
Children in general are super active and its hard for them to sit down and concentrate on a
single task. Whenever a task seems hard, there is a high possibility that he/she will avoid it, even before
making an attempt at solving it. Common distractions are television, a gadget, social media, etc. Children
also lose concentrated when they have poor bond with their parents. Sleeping is an important part of every
child’s routine. A child needs sleep between 8-12 hours of sleep a day. Lack of sleep also affects their
concentration.
MEMORISING:
Memorising something depends upon every child’s IQ level, it differs from one another. In
general some children face problem in storing or consolidating information in long-term memory, or in
retrieving or accessing information from long-term memory. Some children may find it difficult in
following through on directions even they understood them. Also some may have problem even in solving a
lengthy problem with multiple steps, because in order to solve them they need to access their long-term
memory to remember their next step. Children with this trouble also face problems in higher thinking tasks
like problem solving and comparing and contrasting ideas. So this could be reduced by repeated practise.
CONTROL OF SPEED:
As children are in budding stage, they cannot cope up with faster dictation or a speed lecture.
They should be taken classes patiently with regular intervals between words by the teacher. It is better to
have well experienced staff for children so that they can understand their mentality well and can teach
according to it for better understanding. Every single word should be taught with proper pronunciation
which is not possible when it is rushed. Only then the children can follow it.
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7
6
5
4 post-test
3 pre-test
2
1
0
1 2 3 4
Figure.2: this line graph shows the rise in performance of children after the method implementation.
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VIII. CONCLUSION:
This pre-test and post-test shows increase in performance of children. They acquire more vocabulary when
given obvious explanations than simply reading out the story. This method gave opportunity for children to
frame their own sentence with the targeted words. This gives a greater degree of success for Second
Language learners who believes that English is tough to learn. It also increases the positive attitude towards
learning. This experiment became easier due to the incorporation of short story which provoked interest to
them. Its the hope, following this method of acquiring vocabulary through listening short story provides
sound knowledge for second language learners.
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