applyingcolorsinvocabularyacquisition.ppt

17 14 12 10 Controlled Group 24 18 14 9 Experimental Group No. 16 Experiment No. 12 Experiment No. 8 Experiment No. 3 Experiment ? 3.3.2 Applying Colored Pencils The students in the experimental group are advised to buy colored pencils and to use them in the following ways: 1) marking phonetic difficulties. For example, coloring difficult letter or sound clusters, marking stressed syllables in longer words and decorating the initial or final sounds/ letters that cause difficulty; 2) differentiating semantic categories. For example, underlining all words in a text connected with a given topic and coloring synonyms or antonyms of certain words; 3) marking the word’s grammar. For instance, differentiating concrete/ abstract nouns, marking countable/ uncountable nouns and underlining transitive/ intransitive verbs, etc.; 4) practicing word-building. E.g. underlining all prefixes and suffixes in a passage, marking the stem of the words and using different colors to mark prefixes, stems, and suffixes of words on a list of derivatives; 5) coloring the topic/ thesis sentences among other things. The sentences that express the main idea of one paragraph or the whole passage and those that have special usages should be colored especially. By the results of the questionnaire and interview after the study, the favorable findings are the following. First, 85.3% students of the experimental group think highly of applying colored cards and pencils, because the vocabulary and related knowledge become prominent in this way and coloring word knowledge helps the English-learners concentrate on the task and extend their attention. Secondly, it stimulates the students’ interests greatly because it is more familiar or personal for the students to read the words, phrases and sentences that are colored by themselves and the feeling of success and creativity is very encouraging. Thirdly, also more importantly, the level of reading a