Masaya Integrated National High School has started implementing the SELFIE (Study English Language for Individual Excellence) Program for school year 2018 - 2019. The program is one of the school’s intervention aimed to help leaners improve their English competencies. Based on the pre – test results of 2018 – 2019 MINHS Philippine Reading Inventory. Reading Inventory (Phil IRI) which was conducted in June 2018, a large portion of the students have scored low. The results also revealed that many Grade 8 learners have poor vocabulary skills.
On this context, the SELFIE program is directed to address this concern. The SELFIE Program is comprised of different strategies which include “One Word for Today Habit” strategy. This strategy aims to improve learners’ English vocabulary.
The study aimed to assess and enhance the level of vocabulary skills (spelling, making meaning, pronunciation, correct usage) of grade 8 learners using one word for today habit in class.
The study was conducted on the 1st grading period to 4th grading period of school year 2018 – 2019. In addition to the learners’ regular subjects/class, the researcher implemented the one word for today habit devoting 3 minutes every morning from Monday to Friday.
The Word for Today Habit activity uses small white board contains a word with meaning including antonyms, synonyms and sample sentence on how to use the word. Every day one word is given by the teacher. The teacher will instruct the students to read the word. Then each learner should come up with a new sentence where it properly uses the same word. The following day, a short quiz is given to check if the students still remember and understand the word from yesterday’s topic.
The findings of this study revealed that there is a positive relationship between introduction of learning strategy and learners’ performance. The research shows that as learning strategy, one word for today habit is effective to help improve learners’ performance on vocabulary. After using one word for today Habit, students became advanced in spelling, advanced in making meaning, advanced in pronunciation, and acceptable in correct usage. Given these results, the study recommends continuing the implementation of one word for today habit and other complementary vocabulary training or activities to enhance and sustain students learning.