Influence of Spelling Competency on Students’ Achievement in Vocabulary Acquisition

Abstract

This study was carried out to find out the influence of spelling competency on Upper Basic II students’ achievement in English vocabulary acquisition. one research question and one null-hypothesis guided the study. The ex post facto research design involving pre-test and post-test, was adopted for the study. A total of 197 Upper Basic II students in Anyigba Education Zone of Kogi State were drawn from four schools using the disproportionate stratified sampling technique. In each of the four sampled schools, one intact class was used for the study. Two instruments were used for data collection in this study. These are English Vocabulary Spelling Competency Test (EVSCT) and English Vocabulary Acquisition Achievement Test (EVAAT). EVSCT is a fifty-item multiple choice spelling competency test. This was used for pre-test. EVAPT is also a fifty-item multiple choice vocabulary test which subjects were required to choose one correct option out of four. This was used for post-test. The instruments were subjected to face-validation after which they were adjudged good and therefore used for data collection. Reliability of the instruments were ensured through trial testing using the Kudar-Richardson’s formula 20 (K – R 20). The reliability co-efficient based on K – R 20 estimates were 0.87 and 0.75 respectively. Mean and standard deviation and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation were used to analyze the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed positive correlation between spelling competency and students' achievement in vocabulary acquisition. Based on these finding, recommended that English Studies teachers should place greater emphasis on systematic spelling instruction as a foundation for vocabulary development.