Abstract

*Olaka H. Charles, Emmanuel F. Roddrck and H. R. Amaechi

This study was designed to compare the effectiveness of the language development and the vocabulary methods in teaching reading comprehension in Primary Schools. The population for the study comprised all the Primary Schools in Kaduna State. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two schools out of the three hundred and eighty-four (384) schools in Kaduna metropolis and thirty (30) pupils from each of the schools selected. The data for the study were analyzed using the mean scores and T-test. The findings showed that all the null hypothesis were accepted, indicating that there were no significant differences in the gain scores of pupils taught reading comprehension using the language development method and those taught the vocabulary method. The result, however, further revealed that the gain scores of pupils taught, using language development method were higher than those of the pupils taught using the vocabulary method in all the three different tests (i.e cloze, word recognition and retelling test).Based on these findings, teachers are encouraged to adopt a thematic integrated approach (i.e combining the salient features of the language development method and the vocabulary method.