VOCABULARY ACQUISITION FROM LISTENING TO STORIES AND EXPLANATIONS OF TARGET WORDS

In this study we examined the effects of 3 conditions on students' voc abulary acquisition: listening to stories with a brief explanation of the unfamiliar target words, listening to stories with no explanation of the words, and having no exposure to the stories or vocabulary (the control condition). Each story was read over a period of 5 school day s. All 3 groups were given a pretest and posttest for each story. 6 we eks later a delayed posttest was administered on the words from both s tories. A total of 175 fourth graders from 6 classrooms in 2 urban ele mentary schools participated in the study. Students who listened to 2 stories along with a brief explanation of target words learned signifi cantly more new words and remembered them better 6 weeks later than st udents who heard stories with no explanation of the words and students in the control group. Offering simple explanations of words in the co ntext of an interesting story is discussed as a practical and effectiv e method of vocabulary instruction.