Early-grades’ vocabulary instruction and Nation’s (2013) word learning framework: the theory’s realities and instructional contents in the Grade One Amharic textbooks

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the vocabulary knowledge components delivered in grade one Amharic textbooks in light of Nation‘s (2013) word knowledge framework. It targeted to address two main objectives: firstly, to reveal the Nation’s (2013) word knowledge components existing in the grade one Amharic vocabulary instruction with reference to the student book and the teacher’s guide. Secondly, it aims to examine the framework’s theoretical suggestions in terms of the vocabulary contents appeared in the selected instructional materials. The study employed a qualitative document analysis method. Data was collected using a checklist adapted from Nation’s (2013) word awareness components’ framework. The results reveal that (a) the textbook consists of more vocabulary knowledge components’ activities than the teacher’s guide; (b) meaning is given more coverage, followed by form, where the component of use is found to be the least attention. The most impressive finding is that some sub-components of Nation’s framework, such as word part (under the component of form), and grammatical function (under the component of use) do not appear as parts of the contents of the selected instructional materials. On the other hand, word formation is found to bean aspect delivered in the materials, which is not a part of Nation’s word knowledge framework. Therefore, this study substantiates that vocabulary instruction contents in early grades might go beyond the theoretical suggestions of the Nation’s (2013) word learning framework, and the framework might not be fully addressing issues related to the early grades’ vocabulary instruction, so it might need to include more elements to be a word learning framework for all grade levels.