Vocabulary acquisition: A comparison of three methods of teaching vocabulary

This study examined the effectiveness of three methods of teaching vocabulary to 71 fourth grade students. Three fourth grade classroom teachers at the same school site taught their students vocabulary words targeted by the basal reading series. Each teacher used a different method of introducing the words for 2 weeks. The students took a pretest before treatment began, a posttest at the end of the treatment, and a delayed posttest 6 weeks after treatment. All three treatments showed significant gains from the pretest to the posttest and from the pretest to the delayed posttest. The students learned and remembered what they had learned 6 weeks after treatment ended. Further studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of each of these teaching methods over a longer treatment period.