Action Research Project

This is a project I compiled in the Fall of '06 for an Education Research class. The full report is downloadable in .doc at the bottom of the page - the first button is the paper itself, the second button is the accompanying data set. I designed this project to determine how learning Latin vocabulary impacted the expansion of English vocabulary, since English vocabulary is largely Latinate even though its grammar is not. The hypothesis and obvious result was that learning Latin vocabulary did in fact expand students' English vocabulary on the whole - the real question was how great the impact was. The experiment was simple but a bit difficult to describe. Before my students began a new chapter with a new vocabulary list in the Latin textbook, I first had them attempt to define advanced English vocabulary derived from that list of new Latin words. I then quizzed them as normal on the new Latin vocabulary after having studied that new list of words, and afterwards I provided a new list of English derivatives based on the same Latin words for the students to define. I repeated this for several chapters. This allowed me to examine who knew what English words beforehand, who actually learned the Latin, and who could think of an appropriate meaning for English words afterwards based on the Latin if the Latin was in fact learned without prior knowledge of the English words. The results were as expected. Those students who did not know the first English vocabulary but learned the Latin roots generally were able to guess at the meanings of the second English vocabulary. The implication is clear: students who learn Latin learn English. This is, of course, a quite simplified description and begs many other questions; I delve into a great deal of subtler analyses and conclusions in the full report.

David Jones's Professional Portfolio

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