Teaching English Vocabulary to Higher Technical Professional Education Students. Chilean Sign Language as a Multimodal Strategy

Abstract

Chilean adults report a low level of English proficiency compared to their OECD ­peersFor this reason, the teaching methodologies of this foreign language should become more relevant in tertiary education, especially in Higher Technical Professional Education (ESTP). The ­research objective was to determine the effect of a didactic strategy for teaching English vocabulary that incorporates the use of Chilean Sign Language and the manual alphabet in the production of isolated oral vocabulary in ESTP students. A quantitative methodology and a quasi-experimental design were used in the study. Two groups of 30 people between the ages of 16 and 44 participated, to whom an instrument was applied to evaluate the oral productive vocabulary in four categories of words. One of the groups underwent the designed multimodal teaching strategy and the other group received traditional vocabulary instruction by oral repetition. After the intervention, both groups were evaluated with the same instrument. Nonparametric analyses concluded that the multimodal teaching strategy implemented with the experimental group produced a short-term positive effect on the oral production of the isolated vocabulary of the students, as compared to the control group.