The effect of word cloud on learning vocabulary at pre-reading activities in the seventh grade English course

This study aims at exploring the effectiveness of word cloud which is used as visual aid at pre-reading activities in the seventh grade English course on the students' vocabulary gains and retention. This study involves an quasi-experimental research model with pre-test and post-test compared groups; and three independent groups are compared in terms of their vocabulary gains and retention in order to prove the effect of different visual aids and just repetition and guessing method. This study involves 75 students who study at 7/A, 7/B and 7/C classes at Mehmet Yağcıoğlu Secondary School in Afyonkarahisar province during the 2014-2015 school year. The class 7/A with 25 students was determined as experimental group, the class 7/B with 27 students as control group and the class 7/C with 23 students as control group. The pre-reading activities in the study are set with two different visual aids. The content of the first activity is organized with the pictures involved inslides. The content of the second activity is presented with the word cloud. In the study, Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) is used to evaluate the vocabulary gain and retention levels of students. According the results of reliability analysis this scale, Cronbach Alpha was determined as .747 for pre test, .908 for post test and .840 for retention test. In analyzing data to measure normal distribution and homogeneity of variances, Levene test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov were applied. The quantitative data obtained from the study are analyzed by using descriptive statistics and according to the results of these normality tests, Kruskall-Wallis test is used which is applied to non paremetric data. The results show that both of word cloud and slide at pre reading activities are more effective than repetition on vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore three methods as pre reading activities increase vocabulary learning, but the methods which have been carried out by visual aids contribute to learning more. Morever as a qualitative data, ''Semi-Structured Meeting Form" are used as data collection tool in the study. As a result of this meeting, it has emerged that students find word cloud and slide applications so effective and helpful for their learning. Keywords: Word Cloud, Powerpoint Slide, Noticing, Intentional Vocabulary Learning