By Obiezu, Maureen Nnenna
The study was designed to investigate the effect of games on Junior Secondary School Students’ achievement and motivation in English language vocabulary. Five research questions and five null hypotheses guided the study. The study employed a pre-test posttest quasi-experimental design. A sample of 203 JSSII students, drawn by both purposive and simple random sampling techniques from two co-educational schools in Enugu Education Zone was used for the study. The two schools were assigned to treatment and control groups respectively. Two intact classes in each school – (one as experimental and the other as control group) were randomly selected. The experimental group was taught the topics- antonyms, synonyms, words associated with banking and words associated with animals using games which include fly swatter, Go fishing, Animal Riddle and Hot Seat while the control group was taught the same topics using the direct/explicit method of vocabulary instruction. Three instruments- Pre-VAT, Post-VAT and the Motivation for English Vocabulary learning Questionnaire(MELVQ) were developed, dully validated and the reliability established as 0.87 and 0.84 for the pre-VAT and the Post-VAT respectively and 0.87 for the MELVQ. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested at (P< 0.05) using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The result of the analysis showed that the students taught with games performed better than those taught with the conventional method, the students taught with games were also found to be more motivated than those taught without games. On gender, no significant difference was found in the achievement of male and female students taught with games but the male students taught with games were found to be more motivated than their female counterparts. Also, no interaction effect was found between method and gender. Consequently, it was recommended that the use of games as an instructional technique should be included in the special method curriculum of English language in teacher training institutions, workshops and seminars should be organized to train teachers in the use of games in teaching English. Also, curriculum planners and textbook writers are encouraged to give games a strategic place in the planning and design of the curriculum and textbooks.