Improving Vocabulary Skills: What Strategies to Be Applied in Primary School?

Evidence-based research indicates that intentional vocabulary enhancement programmes are more effective than extemporaneous vocabulary teaching practices, with effect size values exceeding 0.60. However, it remains to determine which programme is most suitable for use, considering its efficacy, sustainability and adaptability to various contexts. In this study, we developed and tested a lexical enhancement programme that integrates students’ weekly activity of independently collecting new terms with reflection activities on terms extracted from short texts during class lessons. The experiment conducted with a large sample of fourth and fifth primary school classes shows that the experimental group (EG) achieves a significantly greater improvement than the control group (CG), not only on the target words addressed in the texts but also in general lexical knowledge and, to some extent, in synthesis skills. The significance of such programmes is emphasised, as they can now be easily implemented and adapted to different contexts, aided by AI.