Senior High School Students' Vocabulary Competence Using Authentic Assessment

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Vocabulary competence is a requisite not just in Language Arts classroom but also in learning all other subjects. Usual vocabulary assessments, which merely tap into students' short-term memorization prompted the researchers to use strategy to enhance vocabulary mastery of Senior High School students which was through authentic assessment. Authentic vocabulary assessment promotes long-term retention as it requires critical thinking skills necessary for the 21st century learners.

METHODS

A descriptive method of research was utilized through a scoring rubric. A total ofeighteen (18) Grade 11-ABM students were chosen purposively by the researcher since they need more critical and thinking skills as well as vocabulary competence relevant to the problem solving competencies in their strand. There were two authentic assessment tools administered to the students.

RESULTS

Most of the students can construct five (5) clear and understandable sentences in relation to the vocabulary words in Authentic Assessments 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3; and can construct four (4) clear and understandable sentences in relation to the vocabulary words in Authentic Assessment 1.4. Also, most of the students can construct four (4) connected and relevant sentences to the main vocabulary words in Authentic Assessments 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. Lastly, most of the ABM students can use seven to eight (7-8) vocabulary words in sentences clearly and understandably and can use three to four (3-4) vocabulary words in sentences logically and relevantly.

DISCUSSIONS

The results reveals that through authentic assessment, most of the students can improve their vocabulary competence since they were able to construct sentences clearly and coherently to the main vocabulary words as well as use vocabulary words in sentences logically and relevantly. This assessment for vocabulary enrichment would certainly be beneficial for the development of students' critical and analytical thinking skills. In this way, retention of vocabulary words would be long-term unlike the traditional multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank tasks which are shallow metrics of possible word knowledge. Thus, the researcher developed a localized authentic assessment tools for the improvement of students' vocabulary competence.