dc.description.abstract | This study is a continuation of previous research done on a group of Norwegian pupils.
When this group started first grade they partook in a project by Dahl and Vulchanova
(2014) which studied how input based teaching, and some use of English outside of
English lessons, affected the early acquisition of English as a second language. They
found that the pupils exposed to naturalistic input outperformed the control group after
just eight months in both receptive vocabulary size and listening comprehension skills.
However, Sivertzen (2013) found that two years after the discontinuation of the input
based teaching programme the pupils no longer outperformed their peers in receptive
vocabulary size.
The same participants were the focus of this study; at the time of testing they were
halfway through fifth grade. Two tests were used, one listening comprehension test and
one reading comprehension test. Subsequently, the results of these tests were analysed in
SPSS, showing significant difference in performance between the extra input group and
the control group. Results from existing research indicate that receptive vocabulary can
be used as a good predictor of language comprehension skills, which the findings of this
study are in conflict with. It is hypothesized that the significant difference in
performance has to do with the quality of input they received during first and second
grade, and that this has facilitated language comprehension skills that cannot necessarily
be detected by vocabulary size testing. | nb_NO |