THE IMPACT OF ORAL READING TASKS ON ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

This paper examines the efficacy in improving college students’ English vocabulary acquisition through a course design which employs the readers theater and choral reading tasks of performing self-introduction, storytelling, volunteer service talk, news casting and game skit demonstration. The subjects were 45 non English major students at a technology college in east Taiwan. Task performance assessments were used to illustrate students’ speaking competency and vocabulary production. Among the task designs, news casting and game skit demonstration incorporated readers theater and choral reading to ease vocabulary reception in comparison with the reciting performances of self-introduction, storytelling and role-playing. The results of the study show students’ improvements in word recognition tests from news casting and game skit. The cloze test scores contextualized from game skit outperformed news casting. The study suggests the news casting enhanced students’ oral production skills and word recognition skills whereas the game skit led to better vocabulary acquisition due to social interaction.