Context-oriented workbook for the development of the rural environment vocabulary in students of fifth grade.

Abstract

This master's report was based on the implementation of a contextualization book focused on vocabulary from the rural mountainous area of Valle del Cauca. This material was designed directly for fifth grade students at the San Francisco school in the town of Santa Lucia Valle. The school in question is located far from the main headquarters of San Juan de Barragan. This research was generated through the need of elementary school teachers in rural schools, since most of them do not have the resources and methodologies for the teaching of English as a foreign language. Following Ramos and Aguirre (2015), the community was an important aspect in the implementation of the didactic material since it was necessary to take into account cultural, social and economic dynamics students were used to. The workbook used six units and each one of these contains, consecutively, six sections in which the contextualized vocabulary was worked on. In this project, vocabulary was considered as the central basis of learning English as a foreign language since how it is mentioned by Ab Dollah and Shah (2016) “language learners with abundant vocabulary are inclined to improve other skills including thinking capabilities.” To carry out this implementation, instruments such as a journal were used for the observation and analysis of perception of both the students and the homeroom teacher, pre-test and post-test, which served to give a diagnosis and a result of the intervention, for this case, the participation of a control group was necessary in order to attest to the aspects to be highlighted after the workbook implementation. In addition, a survey was carried out on the homeroom teacher to recognize their perception about the workbook. Finally, positive results were obtained after the implementation of the workbook and the execution of the instruments. It was concluded that the students easily found use for the vocabulary seen in the workbook and it was shown that in this elementary rural school, teachers find a lot of support in materials designed for their population.