USING SEMANTIC MAPS AS A TEACHING STRATEGY FOR VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT

Semantic maps ensure a high potential to facilitate enhanced quality of understanding words. English as second language learners are often presented with new English vocabulary items that are often pre-organized in sets of semantically related words. However, there is an assumption that word grouping facilitates activities for vocabulary learning and no empirical justification supports employing this teaching technique. This study aims to examine to what extent semantic relatedness influences ESL vocabulary recall and retention for middle school students of Telangana. The current study was conducted with 30 seventh-grade students over six weeks. Learners were divided into two groups to compare the effects of presenting semantic maps (retention, recall) and wordlists (recognition, cued recall) for reading comprehension activities. The results reveal that both teaching strategies positively affect vocabulary recall and retention. Between these two strategies, semantic mapping yields better results on recall. The difference between the groups explains from the perspective of information process theory and memory model. Lastly, significant learning and the effectiveness of semantic maps were found in the experiment group.  Article visualizations: