Word games in the development of young learners' lexical skills

Abstract

The present study entitled "Word Games in the Development of young learners’ lexical skills" had as its main objective to propose word games as a propeller of lexical competence on learners. The research methodology of the study considered the quantitative approach at a descriptive and explanatory level. A quasi-experimental design was used for data collection with surveys to identify which strategies teachers apply to develop lexical competence in learners, and two tests to evaluate the different types of word games used in the experiment in the development of lexical skill through the result analysis, which were applied to a total of forty students divided into two groups: experimental and control. Communicative Language Teaching was conducted as a teaching method in the two groups for ten weeks, but only one class received the word games strategy to measure the effectiveness of the games on vocabulary teaching. The population of this project research was students of eighth grade from Luis Freire Robalino High School. The survey was addressed to eight teachers from the selected school, seven teachers from primary school and one English language teacher from secondary school where among them there were three male teachers and five female teachers. The main results determined that teachers used a series of strategies to develop lexical competence on learners especially, memory games xiii followed by matching games and guessing words games, among others. In addition, the games that mostly contribute to develop lexical competence on learners are Bingo and Simon Says. Finally, the experimental group that worked with word games significantly improved their lexical skill, compared to the control group that did not apply any active methodology related to the games. Thus, it is concluded that among the group of students addressed, there is motivation to learn English when active teaching methodologies are used, where the word games contribute to the teaching-learning process of the English language. Finally, it is important to identify which type of word games are more in line with the educational needs of the students and academic objectives.