Effectiveness of Vocabulary Instruction on Student,s Performance in Reading Comprehension in Junior Secondary Schools in Kaduna State, Nigeria: Implication for Basic Education Curriculum

The study was aimed at determining the effect of vocabulary instruction on students’ performance in reading comprehension in junior secondary schools in Kaduna State, Nigeria. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design was used for the study. The target population of the study consisted of 39,227 JS II students in public junior secondary schools in Kaduna State. A sample size of 117 JS II students were used in the study. The sample size was arrived at using purposive sampling technique. Sixty seven (67) JS II students were sampled for experimental group while fifty (50) students were used as control group. Both groups were taught for six weeks. A pre-test was administered to both groups prior to the six weeks of teaching to establish the homogeneity of the two groups. A cloze reading comprehension test was used to assess students’ performance in the reading comprehension task. Data collected in the study was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. At descriptive level, mean and standard deviation were used to respond to the research question while t-test was used at inferential level to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that the experimental group performed better than the control group. The study concluded that it takes fairly intensive vocabulary instruction to guarantee measurable gains in reading comprehension. It was therefore recommended that teachers should include vocabulary instruction in teaching reading comprehension to facilitate more understanding. Curriculum planners should equally include vocabulary instruction as one of the teaching techniques in the basic education curriculum.