A Study of the Effect of Direct Instruction on Fifth and Sixth Graders' Abilities to Use Five Contextual Clues

Date of Graduation

Spring 1975

Degree

Master of Science in Education in Literacy

Department

Reading, Foundations, and Technology

Committee Chair

James Layton

Abstract

The intent of this study was to answer the following question: after ten thirty-minute class periods of daily instruction in the identification and application of specific context clues, will a combined group of fifth and sixth graders improve in their ability to apply context clues to identify the definition of an unknown word. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of a group of thirty students on a contextual clues test after receiving five hours of direct teaching. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there would be a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores on a contextual clues test of fifth and sixth graders after five hours of direct instruction. The Contextual Clues Vocabulary Test constructed by the investigator was administered to a combination fifth and sixth grade class. This was the pre-test. These thirty students were then given daily instruction in the identification and application of five context clues for ten thirty-minute periods covering a span of two weeks. After the two-week unit, the Contextual Clues Vocabulary Test was given as the post-test. The results of the scores obtained from the pre-test and post-test were used to collect the empirical data. Prior to using the Contextual Clues Vocabulary Test, steps were taken to determine its reliability and validity. The investigator found in this study that if direct instruction was given on contextual clues to the group of students used in this study that there would be a significant difference between the students' pre-test and post-test scores on the Contextual Clues Vocabulary Test. The mean of the raw scores on the pre-test and post-test indicated that a specific and significant gain was made in the use of contextual clues to determine the meanings of unknown words (t = 3.54; p < .01). The mean raw score gain was found to be 8.8.

Subject Categories

Other Education

Copyright

© Bevely Rossetter

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Dissertation/Thesis

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