Investigation into the effects of using games drama and music as edutainment activities on teaching vocabulary to young learners

The present study investigated the effectiveness of games, music and drama asedutainment activities in vocabulary teaching. The study further aimed at collectinginformation about the activities and techniques used in early language instruction inÇanakkale.The study was carried out in two parts, namely the quasi-experimental studyand the questionnaire. The quasi-experimental part of the study was carried out in astate primary school in Çanakkale. 93 students were involved in this part of the study:46 students in the experimental group and 47 students in the control group. The datawere collected via qualitative and quantitative research methodologies: pre-tests,post-tests and memory tests which were given before and after each application werequantitative in nature; and the questionnaire which was administered to 750 studentsand 16 teachers in 16 state primary schools in the city centre and the vicinity ofÇanakkale was qualitative. The data were analysed and interpreted with the help ofcomputer programs Mini-Tab and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.)A comparison of post and memory test results of the experimental group andthe control group revealed that the students in the experimental group who wereexposed to new words by means of musical activities, games and drama activities gothigher test results than the ones in the control group who were introduced with thesame words by means of classical activities. This shows that using musical activities,games and drama activities in teaching vocabulary to a group of young learners yieldsbetter results than using classical teaching techniques like repetition drills or givingthe Turkish equivalents of target words.The findings obtained from the questionnaire revealed that students andteachers? answers about how frequently certain edutainment activities are used in thelanguage classroom did not overlap. Although the teachers of English whoparticipated in the study found most of the edutainment activities useful, theyreported that did not use or very rarely used them in their lessons.iiIt was also discovered that most of the edutainment activities which wereaccepted useful by the majority of the students and the teachers were not involved inthe course books. Furthermore, the results of the questionnaire given to 16 teachersrevealed that they use most of the techniques mentioned in the questionnaire atvarious degrees.In the light of the findings, it can be claimed that students learn better whenthey are exposed to new vocabulary items by means of edutainment activities.Therefore, it can be suggested that since most of the edutainment activities are founduseful by young students; these activities should be integrated more into Englishlessons at primary schools.