Investigating the Use of Lexical Semantic Relations to Promote Vocabulary Instruction at the 3rd Grade Secondary School Level in Sudan

Abstract

This study investigates the actual use of lexical semantic relations to Promote Teaching Vocabulary at the 3rd Grade, Secondary Level in Khartoum Locality Schools, Sudan. Many tools are used by the researcher to collect data to carry out this study. A questionnaire is formed to collect data from teachers. Observation check list, a pre-/post-test and a structured interview are also used to collect data from students in the classrooms, and a textbook evaluation is carried out to investigate the actual use of lexical semantic relations contained in the textbook. The researcher observed, due to a long experience of teaching English language, that many students fail to write good compositions because of the lack of the appropriate vocabulary. Therefore, the researcher thinks that using lexical semantic relations could encourage students build up a plentiful supply of words. So the researcher asked the following question: ‘What lexical semantic relations do textbooks contain to assist vocabulary learning?’ This question kept ringing in the researcher’s mind for a long time. Other sup-questions sprang up from the previous question: How new words are shown in textbooks to attract students’ attention and arouse their motivation? Do Teachers’ Books consist of intentional vocabulary teaching strategies? What are the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards vocabulary instruction? This research attempts to give answers to these questions. The researcher hypothesizes that: 1. Semantic relations are used, to some extent, to teach vocabulary. 2. Boldface words, italics, etc. are used to highlight new words in textbooks. 3. The Teacher’s Book contains intentional vocabulary teaching strategies. 4. Most teachers show a variety of attitudes towards vocabulary instruction. 5. Students show various attitudes towards techniques of introducing new words. It is found that grouping items together using semantic relations such as synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy, etc. will help give coherence to the lesson. They also help to make guessing possible about the meaning of unknown items in a text. Moreover they can provide greater precision in guiding students towards understanding the meaning of terms and in helping them to define the boundaries that separate lexical items. The interviewed students found that some semantic relations are exciting yet challenging because some are similar in pronunciation but differ in spelling and meaning. Some other relations have the same spelling and pronunciation yet the meaning is different, and others have one word with multi-meanings. It is concluded that teachers’ attitudes towards teaching the English Language vocabulary is positive, in general, and so is the students’. But teachers’ attitudes do not correlate with that of the students’. Moreover, neither the Teachers’ Book nor the Students’ Book has mentioned anything about how to use semantic relations in building a vocabulary reservoir to enable students to strengthen their language competence.