Developing adult English language learners' vocabulary skills through children's rhymes and songs

Abstract

This paper reports the effects of using children's rhymes and songs on developing adult English language learners' comprehension and production vocabulary skills. The focus of this study was to investigate the effects of children's rhymes and songs on vocabulary comprehension and production skills. Forty-five adult English language learners were instructed and trained in some vocabulary skills through a suggested vocabulary program based on children's rhymes and songs developed by the writer. A vocabulary test was developed and used as a pre-post test. The effectiveness of the training program was measured by comparing the participants' scores on the pre-post test and applying the modified gain ratio. The results of the pre- and post-tests indicated statistically significant differences favoring the post-test. The suggested program proved to be effective in developing the participants' comprehension and production vocabulary skills as shown by the vocabulary gain scores, which were consistently higher on the post test.