단어 식별 활동이 초등학생의 영어 읽기 쓰기 능력에 미치는 영향

Effects of word identification activities on word reading and writing of elementary school students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of word identification activities on the word reading and writing skills of elementary English learners. The subjects in this study were 107 students in four different sixth-grade classes in an elementary school located in Seoul. An experiment was implemented over a period of twelve weeks. The experimental group was engaged in a variety of word classification activities according to the common sound of words, their spelling patterns or meanings, and the control group was taught by traditional methods: oral reading, copying, matching words and pictures, etc. After the experiment was conducted, t-test was utilized to make a statistical analysis of the pre-test and post-test. The analyzed data showed the following: First, the word identification activities had a significant impact on the word reading skills of the students. Specifically, they made progress in spelling-based sound identification, sounding out words and understanding the meaning of words. Second, the word learning by the word identification activities led to significant progress on word writing skills. In particular, the word identification activities produced significant gains in all the components of word writing: writing the common spelling patterns of the words to which they listened and writing the entire words. Given the findings of the study, ideas for better literacy instruction in the primary English classroom were suggested.