The Impact of Parents Education on Students Vocabulary

V.Rajasekaran  

Assistant Professor & Head Department of English Faculty of Engineering Ebet Group of Institutions

Natahakadaiyr, Kangeyam 638 108

Dr.P.Selvakumar

Assistant Professor Department Of Linguistics

Bharathiyar University, Coimbatore

Introduction

Words are building blocks of communication which is being quint essential part of professional qualification. Much damage in communication is happening due to student’s poor vocabulary knowledge. Lack of vocabulary proficiency may lead to complete distortion in communication process. Ultimate aim of every engineering student is to get placed in reputed companies where they expect good communication skill as the important criteria for recruitment but they are unable to meet out this challenge owing to limited lexical knowledge. Hence this paper explores original level of student’s vocabulary and impact of parents education on it.

Size of the English vocabulary

Reports of the size of the English language in the popular press have a very wide range: from 400,000 to 600,000 words (Claiborne, 1983, p. 5), from a half million to over 2 million (Crystal, 1988, p. 32), about 1 million (Numberg & Rosenblum, 1977, p. 11), and 200,000 words in common use, although adding technical and scientific terms would stretch the total into the millions (Bryson, ··1990). This discrepancy is due largely to differing· definitions of a word, and so a study attempted to produce a more reliable estimate by using word families instead of words as the unit of counting.

Goulden, Nation, and Read (1990) counted the number of word families in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1963), which is one of the largest nonhistorical dictionaries of English. Dictionaries such as this obviously cannot contain every current word family, but they are still the best resource available, and therefore estimates of the number of words in a language have usually been based on them. After excluding entries such as proper names and alternative spellings, Goulden et al. found that the dictionary contained about 54,000 word families.

How many words do native speakers know?

Mastery of the complete lexicon of English (and probably any other language) is beyond not only second language learners but also native speakers. Still, the amount of vocabulary the average native speaker acquires is prodigious. This is shown by studies that have estimated that English native- speaking university graduates will have a vocabulary size of about 20,000 word families (Goulden et aI., 1990; D’Anna, Zechmeister, & Hall, 1991). Nation and Waring (1997,

• 7) review vocabulary size studies and conclude that the best conservative rule of thumb that we have is that up to a vocabulary size of around 20,000 word families, we should expect that [English] native speakers will add roughly 1,000 word families a year to their vocabulary size. This means that a [Ll] five year old beginning school will have a vocabulary of around 4,000 to 5,000 word families. This would be consistent with a 20-year-old university student having 20,000 word families.

John j. Pikulski et al (2004) in their article entitled “Teaching and Developing Vocabulary: Key to Long-Term Reading Success” said that, the early years of a child’s life have a profound influence on that child’s language and vocabulary development, which in turn greatly influences school success. Children who live in poverty in their early years have much less verbal interaction with their parents and consequently begin school with far less vocabulary development than their more privileged peers. While the language gap doesn’t widen once children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds enter the stimulating environment of school, that gap does not narrow. Research suggests that it may not narrow because the vocabulary instruction offered is not sufficiently intense or effective.

Statement of the Current Research Problem

The problem which has been taken by the researcher to carry out his study was “The Impact of Parents Education on the vocabulary of I year engineering students”.

Objective of the Study

The objective of the present study was to study the vocabulary level of students and Impact of parents’ education in it.

Hypotheses of the Study

The following hypotheses have been formulated.

H0 = There is no significant impact of educated parents in respect of students’ vocabulary level.

H1 = There is a significant impact of educated  parents in respect of students’ vocabulary level.

Method of the Study

In the present study, normative survey method was employed to describe and interpret what exists at present. It involved some types of comparison or contrast and attempts to discover the relationship between existing non-manipulated variables. The normative study is one of the most commonly used approaches.

Sample of the Study

In the present study, samples were selected from I BE students of EBET Group of Institutions, Nathakadaiyur, Kangeyam, Tiruppur District, Tamilnadu. The data were collected from 200 students of the college, which were selected at random.

Tool Used to collect the data for this the Study

The questionnaire used in the study was adapted from R.Goulden, P.Nation & J.Read (1990). How large can a receptive vocabulary be? Applied Linguistics 11, 358-359.

Methods of Investigation

R.Goulden, P.Nation & J.Read questionnaire was used to conduct the study. Necessary details were provided to the students before taking the test. The test was conducted for 45 minutes and the test taker comfort was maintained at ease to get unbiased results. Objective and purpose of the test was elucidated very clearly to get the utmost cooperation from students. The tool contained 50 words where the students are asked to mark their known words and asked to verify their answers before submitting the answer sheets to ensure the reliability. Adequate care was taken to make the students to give the reliable answers. The researcher was present during the test and onsite help was also rendered to ensure the quality output of the test and the same was collected. The separate data sheet was circulated to collect the parents’ education of the test takers which was designed by the researcher to cater the requirement and objective of the test.

Analysis and Interpretation

Any research is become valid only by the proper analysis and presentation of the data. The researcher has taken complete care to present his data utmost accurately. Initially student

personal profile was entered into an MS Excel format by having collected from the test takers and the same was verified with the test takers before entering the test score. After the verification the test score was entered.

To get accuracy in the statistical analysis SPSS Version 11.5 software was used. It is widely being used as reliable software for statistical analysis. To make sure the proper usage of the software, guidance from the experts were received by the researcher and after getting the data analyzed the same was checked with the expert for the accuracy. Standard deviation and all other descriptive analysis and comparative cross tables were taken using SPSS and the obtained data has been presented here as research outcome.

Table-1   Vocabulary Distribution Statistics

Table-2   Mean & S.D Statistics

Table-3 Score Grouping Table

Table-4   Vocabulary Distributions of the Total Students

The present study finds that the mean value is 4166 and the standard deviation of the test is1283.638.The Range of Vocabulary is from 2000 to 7500. The highest 7500 words is secured by an English Medium Urban female student and the Lowest score is scored by a Rural English Medium Male Student. The complete vocabulary score was grouped into three levels as low, medium and high score and the range of the scores has been presented in the Table.2. The study says that around 76.5% have secured medium score (2501 to 5000) and 6.5 % have scored high scores (5000 to 7500) and 17 % scored low score.

Hypothesis

H0 = There is no significant impact of educated parents in respect of students’ vocabulary level.

H1          =

There is a

significant impact of educated in parents in respect of students’ vocabulary level.

Table  5 Parents Education Cross Tabulation

Table.6  Parents Education of Engineering college Students

Among 200 samples, 40 (20%) students’ Parents have got only primary education and 94 (47%) students’ parents have acquired high school education and 35(17.5%) students’ parents have received higher secondary education and 31(15.5%) students’ parents have got graduate parents.

Primary school educated parents’ students vocabulary average is 4055 and high school educated parents’ students vocabulary average is 4116, higher secondary educated parents’ students vocabulary average is 3812 graduate parents’ students vocabulary average is 4785.

The study says that higher secondary educated parents’ students have low vocabulary compared to others. Degree educated parents students have got the highest vocabulary average of 4785. But there is no much difference among primary, secondary and higher secondary educated parents’ students’ vocabulary level.

Degree Parents’ education has got great impact on students English vocabulary level. We can call it as a main reason for some students’ better vocabulary acquisition.

Hence the hypothesis H1 ‘There is a significant impact of educated in parents in respect of students’ vocabulary level’ is accepted.

Limitations

Even though the investigator tried his best to make the study as successful as possible there are certain limitations. They are:

1. The Sample for the study is only 45 and it can be increased
   1. The study has been conducted on the students belonging to I Year BE the same may be done to 2nd year to final year students.
   1. Some more variables may be added for the further study.

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