The effects of teaching English vocabulary to third graders through educational games on academic achievement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of teaching English vocabulary with educational games on third grade students' academic achievement. The study was carried out with pre-test post-test experimental design with control group. The field of the research consists of the third grade students of the Karşıyaka Primary School, which is in Devrek, Zonguldak, in the spring term of 2014- 2015 academic year. The research groups were formed by using k- means Cluster Analysis method. Two groups consisting of 35 students were formed at the beginning of the study. Groups were named as control group and experimental group. While English vocabulary was taught through the use of educational games in the experimental group, third grade English textbook activities without educational games were used in the control group. During the five weeks of experimental study, the experimental group was involved in three different games such as warm-up, full-of-activity and relaxing each week. In the study, the data were obtained through a multiple choice vocabulary achievement test developed by the researcher. The results were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) for Windows. During the analysis, in order to test the hypothesis, t-test for dependent and independent variables were used. The results show that there is a significant difference between the academic success of the experimental and control group in favor of the experimental group (p< 0.05). Based on the results, it could be said that educational games could be used in the teaching of English vocabulary to young learners.