Recognition learning of non-noun words by kindergarten children
Date
1980
Authors
Gougeon, Robert William
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Abstract
The major purpose of this study was to determine the facility of kindergarten students in learning (a) verbs which are high meaningful and concrete, (b) verbs which are low- meaningful and abstract and (c) prepositions, in order to assist teachers in teaching beginning readers non-noun words.
Ratings of meaningfulness (m) and concreteness (c) of non-noun word s by grade three students were used to determine three word lists: (a) high meaningful/concrete verbs, (b) low meaningful/abstract verbs and (c) prepositions. A sample of 173 kindergarten students was drawn from the Sooke schools in April. Training groups of boys and girls were assigned a word recognition task using four words from one of the lists. Each student was pretested to ensure that none of the four words was already known as a sight word, pretrained by being told the name of the word and then repeating it, and trained to criterion by identifying the graphic word as it was presented. Students who could not identify a word were told its name and repeated it before being presented with the next graphic word. Criterion was defined as two successive trials with no errors. A maximum of 20 trials were given to a student. A 24 hour posttest of recognition was given to all students who reached criterion.
Analyses of variance showed no differences attributable to type of word learned or the sex of the learner in either the number of trials to criterion or the errors made by the students in reaching criterion. However, analysis of variance and a Newman-Keuls test for posttest recognition of words showed that boys who learned low meaningful/abstract verbs recognized significantly fewer words than did any other training group.
Ad hoc analysis by chi-square of the number of students who failed to reach criterion showed no difference among the two verb lists and the preposition list. Chi-square analysis of the number of students who knew two or more of the words on t he pretest showed that significantly more students knew prepositions that either high meaningful/concrete verb s or low meaningful/abstract verbs.
Conclusions from this study were (a) grade three students were able to reliable rate non-nouns form and c, (b) boys and girls were able to recognize verbs and prepositions at the same rate and with the same number of errors, and (c) boys recognized low/meaningful/abstract verbs after 24 hours less well than either boys of girls recognized any other word type.
The fact that both types of verbs and prepositions were learned with equal facility by kindergarten students was attributed to an equal linguistic awareness of verbs and prepositions despite differences in m and c values for the words. This linguistic awareness appeared to be insufficient to enable boys to recognize low meaningful/ abstract verbs after 24 hours.
Further investigation into the generation of m and c indices for non-noun words by young students and or word recognition learning or non-noun words appears to be warranted.