Primary School Students’ Vocabulary Development

Abstract

The main purpose of this research was to analyze the effects of socioeconomic levels, gender differences and class levels on primary school students’ vocabulary development. The participants were elementary school students from first, third and fifth grades attending to public schools inside the borders of Bursa city, within the 2004-2005 education year. Totally 240 students (120 female and 120 male) were selected randomly from seven public schools. In order to measure the vocabulary development of the students, Peabody Picture-Vocabulary Test, developed by Dunn and adopted to Turkish by Katz and colleagues (Öner 1997) was used. Data analysis was carried out through “t test” and “Variance Analysis” for independent samples and “Tukey HSD Test” was applied to find out the source of meaningful differences. In statistical comparisons meaningfulness level was taken as .01. Findings were summarized in tables. As a result of this research, it was concluded that the vocabulary development of the students from upper socioeconomic level was better than the students from lower socioeconomic level. It is revealed that there was not a meaningful difference of the female and male students’ vocabulary development. At the other side, the vocabulary development depending on the class level was increasing. The results of this research point the meaningful relationship between socioeconomic levels and vocabulary development.