The Effect of Classroom Discourse-based Language Games on Children's Vocabulary Size

Games have a variety of benefits for the all-inclusive development of children, such that some educators emphasize the use of educational games as the primary means of teaching children to learn. Many of the instructors suggest educational games as one of the most desirable educational tools. From the linguistic point of view, it should be noted that the enrichment and expansion of the vocabulary of the students depends on a variety of factors. In particular, language games have a special place because their main goal is to indirectly strengthen the infrastructural and superstructural structures of the language and facilitate the process of learning through its enjoyment. From the discursive point of view, researchers shifted their orientation from focusing solely on the psychological considerations of the language towards studies on context-foundation learning, meaning that the child’s discourse was perceived in natural environments, activities, and everyday situations. Classroom discourse is one of the most prominent examples in this regard. Given the above issues, the main problem of the research is to answer the question of whether language games based on classroom discourse interactions have a significant effect on the vocabulary size of elementary students.
The sample consisted of 44 elementary students in grade 2 who were studying in Qarchak city of Varamin in the educational year of 2016-2017. They were selected through available sampling method. The sample was divided into an experimental group (including 22 students) and a control group (including 22 students) by simple random method. To test the progress of the vocabulary size of students by classroom discourse-based games, a researcher-made test containing 35 questions was used as the pre- and post-test. The vocabulary used in this test was selected after a class discourse analysis over 10 sessions, so that the text of all class conversations was recorded and then written on paper. Then, the words that have a nominal, adverbial or adjectival role were classified and 40 words were randomly selected from these words. After this step, four options for each item were developed. After consulting with a linguist specialist and two primary school teachers, and through the item-objective congruence index, the validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. After deleting 5 items, 35 items were selected as the final test. In order to determine the reliability of this test, 20 primary school students were used. Using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, the internal consistency of the items was calculated to be 0.84, indicating a high reliability. In order to collect data, the pre-test was taken from both groups at first. Then, the experimental group was trained with language games for 6 months and 3 hours a week. The control group was trained regularly in the same period. At the end of the training period, the post-test of linguistic progression was performed for both groups and the results were compared by independent t-test. Given the fact that the language of the teacher is the main source of input in the classroom and that teachers control the classroom through linguistic methods, in the present study, the concept of classroom discourse was limited to the input presented or set by the teacher and the interaction and communication between the students through games.
The results showed that the difference between the two groups was significant in the post-test, and according to the mean difference, the vocabulary size of the experimental group, which used language games based on classroom discourse, had much more progress. As a result, it can be admitted that language games based on classroom discourse interactions have a significant and positive effect on vocabulary size of students.
Various reasons can be found for the effect of classroom discourse-based games on vocabulary size of elementary students. First, classroom discourse may have raised the level of learners’ attention to input. In other words, class discourse can increase the durability of words in long-term memory by highlighting the target vocabulary and creating a semantic network with classroom elements. Secondly, the interactive feature of language games, as well as the environment without anxious that these games create for learners, reduce stimulus filters and increase learning efficiency. It is very important for the teacher to organize the game for students. That is, the teacher should provide a model for children to play. It is better to design and apply this modeling to familiarize them with skills and methods. The findings and suggestions of this research can help teachers, planners and authors of textbooks in the educational system in order to increase the interest and willingness of students to learn by attention to daily discourse approaches and inclusion of related concepts of language games.