Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS improving english vocabulary retention by using memory strategies an action research

Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

―I’m sure that I have seen this word before but…I do not remember its meaning Sorry teacher.‖

―Teacher, could you tell me the best way to learn vocabulary? I have tried a lot but it is always easy for me to forget the meanings of words that I have learned.”

“At first, I can remember all the words that you have taught us but… after a few days, it seems to be very difficult for me to recall their meanings although they look really familiar to me.”

“I can’t remember all things about a word, like how to pronounce it, whether it is a verb or a noun, when I can use it…”

“Teacher, how can I remember the words that I have learnt?”

… Those are questions and comments that my students often share with me They all know the importance of learning vocabulary; however, they seem to be frustrated with trying to learn new words This can be shown by the way they express themselves in English confusingly; their gesture of slightly scratching their head when they have to deal with words that they do not know; and their low marks in vocabulary test From this reality, a challenging question is set for teachers of English in general and me - one teacher of English in particular: “How to help students retain vocabulary effectively?‖

From my own experience as a student, I used to ask myself a question like my students now: “How can I remember this word?” It was very easy for me to understand the meaning and get the right pronunciation of a word at first, but it was also easy for me to forget those things a short time later It therefore resulted in bad marks in my reading comprehension tests and the way I tried to use suitable words when I had to present in class One day, there appeared an idea in my mind – that I think is a turning point in the way I have dealt with learning vocabulary: that was the time when my teacher gave us an example to explain the meaning of the word: ―embarrassed‖ She said, ―Just imagine, you are in a restaurant with a very important person and you carelessly pour your entire café cup on his clothes….yup and that will be the time you feel so “embarrassed” So we all understood that ―embarrassed‖ showed the feeling when we did something wrong and we did not know what to do then I myself think that this associating way is very simple but really impressive and effective As a result, I remember that word for my life Thus, after graduating from university and being an English teacher, I started to study the very first readings about Vocabulary and Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary plays an important part in language learning as Schmitt (2010) stated,

―Learning vocabulary is an essential part of mastering a second language‖ (p 4) This view has been strongly approved by all partners involving in learning process For example, McCarthy (1990, p.viii) added ―no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way‖ The learners will certainly face difficulties when communicating in English without equipping themselves with necessary vocabulary items Furthermore, vocabulary deficiency can be reason for weakness in many language skills, namely reading and listening comprehension, speaking competence, writing performance and grammatical accuracy Learning vocabulary is no doubt an indispensable step of L2 acquisition

However, learning but not remembering is not successful learning Students should be taught how to remember vocabulary or recall necessary vocabulary when needed In general, they must be provided the way to process information deeply

Studying VLS has been an interest for a great deal of psychologists, linguists and language teachers for a long time There are numerous studies conducted about VLS, their effectiveness in learning vocabulary Almost these researchers have attempted to develop a framework of category of VLS They are: O‘Malley and Chamot (1990), Oxford (1990);

Stoffer (1995); Gu and Johnson (1996), Schmitt (1997), Nation (2001), to name but a few

At the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, vocabulary learning and teaching ―have yet to receive adequate attention‖ and that ―vocabulary is often integrated into other communicative skills and the task of vocabulary acquisition is totally left to students Also, the research interest among the university staff and students has seemingly moved away from this field‖ (Ngo, 2009, p

2) He also critically pointed out that at post-graduate library where research papers in English were deposited, lecturers‘ research on vocabulary could hardly be found Besides, he also described a dramatic fall in the number of graduation papers concerning about this issue by giving out some alarming figures: ―while up to 9 graduation papers in 1998 dealt with vocabulary, the figure dropped to 4 in 1999 and only 1 in 2002, and 2003‖ In May,

2009, he himself conducted a research on ―Vocabulary Level and Vocabulary Strategies of ULIS First Year Mainstream English Majors‖ In this research, he aimed at finding out the vocabulary level of the first year students, what strategies they used in their vocabulary learning and what problems they encountered with vocabulary learning strategies

This research took no attempt to fill the gap in changing and correcting the previous scholars‘ VLS systems, identifying the vocabulary level or the numbers of vocabulary strategies used among students, but practically focused on applying some specific strategies in vocabulary learning and examining their effectiveness

In conclusion, with all the reasons from my own experience, my teaching and learning situation and the large gap in studying VLS in my university, I would like to devote my time and effort researching to my thesis: ―Improving English Vocabulary Retention by using Memory Strategies- An Action Research” as an answer to the very beginning question - ―How to help my students retain vocabulary effectively?”.

Aims of the study and research questions

Initially, the study aimed at identifying the problems with vocabulary that students were facing with Secondly, it was intended to improve the students‘ vocabulary retention by teaching them some helpful memory strategies, namely grouping, associating, using imagery and placing new words into a context The study also aimed at finding out how much students obtained the memory strategies learnt; by the way, the strategy used the most by students could also be revealed Finally, it attempted to collect not only students‘ attitudes towards the strategy training scheme in general and four sub-memory strategies in particular but their own suggestions for a better future teaching and learning program as well

In short, the study was conducted to answer the four following research questions:

1 What are the problems that the students encounter in their independent vocabulary learning?

2 How does learning the 4 sub-memory strategies help to improve students' vocabulary retention?

3 How much do the students obtain the memory strategies learned in their independent learning?

4 What are the students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning the 4 sub- memory strategies and their suggestions for future teaching and learning program?

Significance of the study

In spite of not being the trailblazing study on the application of learning memory strategies on vocabulary retention, this one would be of great benefit for the students who are learning English in general and the ones who are dealing with TOEIC vocabulary in particular, their teachers, and other researchers who are interested in the topic

To begin with, the treatment in the research hoped to hand over students a new way of approaching vocabulary learning, escaping from the traditional way of listing and learning by heart new words Especially, the recommendations of the research would not only help students to deal with vocabulary problems of impending TOEIC Test, but also improve their life-long vocabulary studying since ―vocabulary learning never stops, even long after grammar system is firmly in place‖ (Thornbury, 2002, p 160)

As for TOEIC instructors in particular and teachers dealing with English vocabulary in general, the findings of the study could be a source of references for them to make a decision on how best to facilitate their students‘ lexicon extension

Last but not least, regarding to the researchers sharing the same interest in vocabulary, this study would be a reliable resource of related literature review and a good reference for them to continue their future work.

Scope of the study

This study was conducted on 9 students ageing from twenty to twenty two in one TOEIC class These students came from different universities in Hanoi They started the course with rather limited knowledge about TOEIC test and their TOEIC scores at the beginning of the course test ranged from 220- 395

Taken from Oxford‘s (1990) classification of learning strategies, grouping, associating, using imagery and placing new words into a context were four specific memory strategies introduced in this thesis With the application of these four memory strategies, the teacher - researcher hoped to bring something new and effective in her teaching vocabulary to her students to improve their vocabulary learning

In this thesis, the number of vocabulary employed in the treatment was taken from the book 600 Essential Words for the TOEIC (Lougheed, 2008) Vocabulary was then categorized into different topics to deliver to students (see Appendix 1).

Methods of the study

The current action research combined both qualitative and quantitative approaches

The action actually taken was a vocabulary learning strategy training scheme designed for the duration of nine weeks

Data was collected by means of a Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) test, interviews, learners‘ diaries, tests and questionnaires Firstly, a VKS test and a group interview took place before the treatment to identify students‘ problems when dealing with vocabulary Furthermore, a system of tests, namely pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 was employed to measure the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention in terms of short- term and long-term after being introduced four sub-memory strategies In addition, during the treatment, a number of diary entries which were weekly written by students helped to point out the most popular strategies used by students Finally, a questionnaire was distributed via emails to students in order to collect the students‘ attitudes towards teaching and learning the 4 sub-memory strategies and their suggestions for future teaching and learning program

The collected data was categorized under the four research questions To be specific, the data from the VKS test and a group-interview served to answer the first question, the learners‘ diaries addressed the second one, the test scores for the third and questionnaire data referred to the last question

Regarding to the first question, in the VKS test, the students represented how much they had known the word by marking it from 1 to 5 with reference to the 5 scales The teacher then counted the number of each mark for each student, expressed the figure as a percentage and illustrated them in a bar chart In the interview, after the students tried to express their problems in vocabulary learning (both in Vietnamese and in English), the data was translated, generalized, calculated, and described in a table

Next, for the tests, mean scores of the pre-test, and two post-tests were computed and compared with each other in pairs By this way, the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention in short term and long term could be revealed

With reference to the third question, all the 144 learners‘ diary entries were collected The teacher then calculated the number of each strategy used in each entry

These figures were then converted to percentages and given under the format of a pie-chart to see the most popular strategies

Finally, the data from questionnaire was independently analyzed according to three different parts The first part included three smaller questions addressing three aspects of attitudes towards the strategy training scheme, namely the importance, the effectiveness and the pleasure For each question, the researcher then used calculating percentages to illustrate the data and presented them in three different pie-charts In the second part, after counting all the marks given for each strategy, a mean score was identified The strategy having the highest mean score would be the most favorite one In the last part, data was counted, illustrated by percentages and displayed in a table so that the researcher could make a conclusion of ideas and suggestions for the course, perceived by the students.

An overview of the rest of the paper

The rest of the paper is categorized into these following parts:

Part B: Development: is divided into three chapters:

• Chapter 1: (Literature review): introduces the theoretical foundations for the whole study

• Chapter 2: (Methodology): elaborates on the participants, the method used, the instruments, the data collecting and the data analysis procedure

• Chapter 3: (Results and discussion): presents and analyses all the correct data to help find out the answers to the three research questions

• Chapter 4: (Recommendations): presents the author‘s suggestions on the learning and teaching vocabulary strategies based on the research findings and the related literature

Part C: Conclusion: summarizes all the major points in the study, reveals the limitations of the study and proposes some suggestions for further research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Language Learning Strategies

―Give a man a fish and he eats for a day Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime”

Wenden (1985, cited in Griffiths, 2004) The target of education is not for only today, but for a person‘s whole life Thus, if teachers just give students the answers, their immediate problems may be solved

However, if they are taught the way to work out the problems by themselves, they can manage their own learning during their life Therefore, in language teaching and learning, utilizing language learning strategies (LLS) is of great significance

In order to understand what Language Learning Strategies (LLS) are, it is advisable for the writer to provide a definition of ―strategy‖ first and explain why this term was chosen for the current study

As the basic meaning in military settings, ―strategy‖ was known as ―the generalship/ the art of the war‖ or specifically as ―the optimal management of troops, ships or aircraft in a planned campaign‖ (Oxford, 1990, p 7) When moving to educational field, the strategy concept has been transformed into ―learning strategies‖, which commonly means ―operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information‖ (Rigney, 1978, cited in Oxford, 1990, p 8)

Together with ―strategy‖, in his study, Griffiths (2004) also gave out a list of some other alternative terms which are ―more or less synonymous‖ such as ―learning behaviours‖ by Wesche (1977) and Politzer & Mc Groarty (1985); ―tactics‖ by Seliger (1984) and

―techniques‖ by Stern (1992) (p 1) As the fact that Rubin (1975) used ―strategy‖ ―in perhaps the earliest study in this area and it enjoys the widest currency today‖, ―strategy‖ is used as the official term for this study

Defining LLS is still a controversial issue There has been no general accepted definition of LLS so far The researchers tend to define LLS in their own way of teaching context; as a result, different expressions have been given Singleton (2008) has managed to collect and illustrate some prominent definitions of LLS in the following table:

Table 1: Definitions of Language Learning Strategies (Singleton, 2008, p 51)

Whereas the early definitions took more concerns about the outcome of LLS like linguistic and sociolinguistic competence, regulating learners‘ learning, facilitating learning; the recent ones tend to focus on the process and characteristics of LLS Some definitions are very broad, while the others seem to be rather specific For instance, Rubin

(1987) mentioned about all things learners do to help regulate their studying; whereas, Ellis

(1995) just acknowledged LLS in terms of mental and behavior activity

In general, from the table, LLS can be interpreted as ―specific actions, behaviors, steps or techniques that learners used (often deliberately) to improve their progress in developing their competence in the target language” (Singleton, 2008, p 52)

1.1.2 The importance of Language Learning Strategies

Training students how to use LLS has been proved to give them a big help in language learning In Oxford‘s definition mentioned above, the significance of LLS has been highlighted as one kind of ―weapons‖ which can ―make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and transferrable to new situations‖ Once the learners are equipped with learning strategies, they will be more confident, more motivated and more active in their own learning In other words, learning strategies can help to compensate the weakness in their learning style However, it is not true that all the learners who use learning strategies will be successful in studying language Oxford (1990) emphasized although ―strategies are especially important for language learning‖, only

―appropriate language learning strategies resulted in improved proficiency and greater self- confidence” (p 1) There have been many researchers studying the differences between

―good learners‖ and ―bad learners‖ in their ways of using strategies Chamot (2004) stated,

―Differences between more effective learners and less effective learners were found in the number and range of strategies used, in how the strategies were applied to the task, and in whether they were appropriate for the task‖ (p 18) The students with strategic way of thinking and working will know what and how they should do to achieve success when dealing with language skills In academic field, this can be easily seen when comparing them with the ones who do not use any kind of learning strategies or use strategies inappropriately

Moreover, language learning strategies are demonstrated to ―encourage greater overall self- direction for learners‖ (Oxford, 1990, p 10) Self-direction can be acknowledged as the ability to be self-responsible and active in grasping new language

Owing to the traditional education system, many learners are passive and ―spoon-fed‖ learners (Oxford, 1990, p 10) who sit and wait until they are told what to do and how to solve the problems This makes their study more and more difficult and they themselves certainly cannot catch up with the updated knowledge LLS are expected to alter this kind of attitude and behavior towards learning, change passive learners into self-directed ones who can gradually gain more confidence, proficiency and involvement in learning process

Obviously, LLS have played a very important part in language teaching and learning For more understanding about LLS, the nature and key features will be discussed in the next part

1.1.3 The features of Language Learning Strategies

Once teachers and learners get a good hold of LLS‘ characteristics, it is possible for them to have a deeper and more precise understanding of LLS‘ concepts and a more appropriate way of applying LLS in their own work

This part briefly concerned about two approaches of Oxford (1990) and Singleton

(2008) when these two researchers presented the main features of LLS in their books

In her book titled Language Learning Strategies – What Every Teacher Should Know (1990), Oxford summarized some key features of LLS as follows:

Table 2: Features of Language Learning Strategies (Oxford, 1990, p 9)

To begin with, LLS were discovered to help learners gain knowledge better, thus have a function to orient learners to the target of learning language, communicative competence Learning strategies help learners to participate in authentic communication in an active and effective way The proof is that while ―social strategies provide increased interaction and more empathetic understanding, two qualities necessary to reach communicative competence‖, memory strategies help to ―understand and recalling new information‖, and compensation strategies ―aid learners in overcoming knowledge gaps and continuing to communicate authentically‖ etc (Oxford, 1990, p 9)

Vocabulary and Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Vocabulary is considered a very important aspect of language, yet one of the major challenges that L2 learners have to face during the process of learning a language Before discussing the significance of vocabulary, it is first necessary to clarify the working definition of vocabulary Originally, vocabulary dated from the Medieval Latin word vocābulārium as perceived from the freedictionary.com According to Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary (7 th edition, p 1707), vocabulary can be defined as (1) ―all the words that a person knows or uses‖ and (2) ―all the words in a particular language‖ In these above senses, there appears the term ―words‖ for twice Regarding the connection between vocabulary and word, McCarthy (1990) stated, ―When we speak of the vocabulary of a language, we are speaking primarily, but not exclusively, of the words of that language‖

(p.3) Also in the Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary (7 th , p 1758), word ―is a single unit of language which means something and can be spoken or written‖ In short, as the researcher‘s perception, word is somewhat the representation of vocabulary in spoken or written form

In addition, in terms of vocabulary teaching and learning, vocabulary should not be recognized as individual or separated words with fixed meanings More than that, it can be a combination of words such as collocations (make a complaint, have breakfast…), multi- word units (it‘s amazing how, well and truly…), polywords (at the weekend/ in his opinion…), institutionalized expressions (I‘ll take it, I got it…) or even sentence frames (there is/ there are…) (Lewis, 1993, pp 92-94)

―…without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed‖

David Wilkins (1972, cited in Thornburry, 2002, p 13) Above was the way that David Wilkins, a British linguist acknowledged vocabulary and the significance of vocabulary Thornburry (2002) once more emphasized this by restating an advice given to the students in the course book titled Innovations, ―If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much You will see most improvement if you learn more words or expressions You can say very little with grammar, but you can say almost everything with words‖

In terms of second language teaching and learning; however, vocabulary had been ignored for such a long time In the past, when the Direct Method and Audiolingualism prevailed, teaching of grammatical structures attracted special concern The advent of the Communicative Approach since 1970s has raised awareness of the key role of teaching and learning vocabulary Much more attention has been given to the vocabulary research, in which researchers have attempted to find the relationship between learning strategies and language competence, the factors enhancing vocabulary acquisition, and so on

1.2.1.3 Vocabulary retention and memory systems’ process of working

In the Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary (2005), retention is defined as ―an ability to remember things‖ (p 1297) There is also another definition in the website http://en.wikipedia.org, in which retention in learning can be defined as ―the ability to retain facts and figures in memory‖ Although no definition of vocabulary retention in the literature has been found by the researcher, for the purpose of this study, vocabulary retention can be clarified as the storage of vocabulary in the memory, which becomes available for usage when needed

As mentioned above, learning vocabulary is an essential part of mastering a language To achieve vocabulary, learners not only have to learn but to remember a lot of words Indeed, ―learning is remembering‖ (Thornburry, 2002, p 2) He also added the fact that remembering words is not something like remembering grammar as ―it is essentially a rule-based system, vocabulary knowledge is largely a question of accumulating individual items‖ (p 2) Talking about the relationship between learning and remembering, people mention about the connection between language exposure and memory While the term memory more often refers to later storage and retrieval of information, language exposure refers more to processes in the initial acquisition or encoding of information These two factors have reciprocal relationship with each other Information is learned only when it can be retrieved later, and retrieval cannot occur unless information is learned

Not only the relationship between language exposure and memory, but also the way how information can be stored in the memory should be taken into consideration Thanks for this, it is entirely possible for us to explain why some chunks of information seem to stay still, whereas some slip away quickly This is no doubt a matter of concern for both teachers and learners so as to promote effective learning and retention of new language items

The role of memory is crucial in any kind of learning and vocabulary learning is no exception What we usually think of as ―memory‖ in day-to-day usage is actually long-term memory, but there are also important short-term store and working memory, which must be worked through before a long-term memory can be established (http://www.human- memory.net)

Short-term store is defined as ―the brain‘s capacity to hold a limited number of items of information for periods of time up to a few second It is the kind of memory involved in holding in your head a telephone number for as long as it takes to be able to dial it; or to repeat a word that you‘ve heard the teacher modeling‖ (Thurnburry, 2002, p

Working memory can be thought of as the ability to remember and process information at the same time This is one kind of process when words are focused long enough to perform operations on them This is said to be the place where some cognitive tasks such as reasoning, learning and understanding happen (Thornburry, 2002, p 23) It holds a small amount of information (typically around 7 items or even less) in mind in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15 seconds, or sometimes up to a minute) (http://www.human-memory.net)

Unlike working memory where the capacity to retain words is limited, long-term memory has an enormous capacity and intends for storage of information over a long period of time However, Thornburry (2002) stated, ―the fact that learners can retain new vocabulary items the length of the lesson (i.e beyond the few seconds‘ duration of the short-term store) but have forgotten them by the next lessons suggests that long-term memory is not always as long-term as we wish Rather, it occupies a continuum from the

―quickly forgotten‖ to the never forgotten‖ (p 24) Thus, it is necessary for the language learners to learn how to move information from the quickly forgotten to the never forgotten To do this, the support of some typical techniques plays such a very important part In his book How to Teach Vocabulary, Thornburry listed a number of principles generalized from many research findings in the table follows:

Repetition The time-honored way of memorizing new material is through repeated rehearsal of the material while it is still in working memory However, simply repeating an item (rote learning) seems to have little long-term effect unless some attempt is made to organize the material at the same time

Retrieval The act of retrieving a word from memory makes it more likely that the learner will be able to recall it later

Spacing It is better to distribute the memory work across a period of time rather than to mass it together in a single block For example, when teaching students a new set of words, it is best to present two or three items first, then go back and check them, and then some more, and backtrack again…

Pacing As having different learning styles, learners should be given opportunities to pace their own rehearsal activities

Use Put words to use is the best way of ensuring they are added to long-term memory

The more decisions the learners make about the word, and the more cognitive demanding these decisions, the better the word is remembered

The judgments that learners make about a word are most effective if they are personalized

Imaging Easily visualized words are more memorable than words that don‘t immediately evoke a picture

Mnemonics These are tricks to help retrieve items or rules that are stored in memory and that are not yet automatically retrievable

Memory strategies

As one group of direct learning strategies set in Oxford (1990), memory strategies (traditionally known as mnemonics) have been found to enhance remembering through the connection of new knowledge with familiar words and images These strategies involve relating the word to be retained with some previously learned knowledge, using some form of imagery, or grouping, and so on

Thompson (1987) defined memory strategies as the following:

…mnemonics work by utilizing some well-known principles of psychology: a retrieval plan is developed during encoding, and mental imagery, both visual and verbal, is used They help individuals learn faster and recall better because they aid the integration of new material into existing cognitive units and because they provide retrieval cues (cited in Schmitt, 1997)

In a more simple way, memory strategies can be defined as ―…systematic strategies for strengthening long-term retention and retrieval of information‖ (adopted from the website http://education.calumet.purdue.edu )

Memory strategies were taken as the answer to the problem of the present thesis for the two following reasons:

To begin with, learning vocabulary is not an easy task To achieve fluency in communicating, language learners have to remember a large amount of vocabulary As Lord (cited in Oxford, 1990, p 39) stated, ―Vocabulary is by far the most sizeable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether a foreign or one‘s mother tongue because of ten of thousands of different meanings‖ Oxford confirmed that with the help of memory strategies, language learners can entirely overcome this problem as ―they enable learners to store verbal material, and then retrieve it when needed for communication‖ Besides, as stated in the above part, to retain information, it is necessary for the learners to transform what they learn from the working memory to the permanent long-term memory Choosing memory strategies is one of good choices in this case since

―the memory strategy of structure reviewing helps move information from the ―fact level‖ to the ―skill level‖ (Oxford, 1990) This completely satisfies the learners‘ need since ―when information has reached the skill level, it is more easily retrieved and less easily lost after a period of disuse‖ (Oxford, 1990, p 40) The effectiveness of memory strategies (mnemonics) was also admitted in Thornburry (2002) when he said, ―Mnemonics are tricks to help retrieve items or rules that are stored in memory and that are not yet automatically retrievable‖ (p 25)

Secondly, the vocabulary textbook 600 Essential Words for the TOEIC comprises of many word lists which are said to be presented in the TOEIC test These word lists are

―de-contextualized‖ vocabulary items As Oxford and Scarcella (1994, cited in Nemati,

2009) observed ―while de-contextualized learning (word list) may help students memorize vocabulary for tests, students are likely to rapidly forget words memorized from lists‖ In this case, rote repetition cannot be a good choice for the students to retain the words a long time after the lesson They should be taught on how to process the words deeply Of ―de- contextualized‖ vocabulary memorization strategies, ―memory strategies” are strategies which ―involve deep semantic processing of target word and have been shown to be more effective than memorization techniques which just involve shallow processing such as oral rote repetition‖ (Oxford, 1990) Given the above reasons, the appliance of memory strategies in this thesis is no doubt a reasonable one

1.3.3 Classification of Oxford’s Memory strategies

Oxford (1990)‘s system of memory strategies consists of ten items as follows:

Grouping Classifying or reclassifying language material into meaningful units, either mentally or in writing, to make the material easier to remember by reducing the number of discrete elements

Relating new language information to concepts already in memory, or relating one piece of information to another, to create associations in memory

Placing new words into a context

Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful sentence, conversation, or story in order to remember it

Using imagery Relating new language information to concepts in memory by means of meaningful visual imagery

Semantic mapping Making an arrangement of words into a picture, which has a key concept at the center or at the top, and related words and concepts linked with the key concept by means of lines or arrows

Using keywords Remembering a new word by using auditory and visual links

Remembering new language information according to its sound

Structured reviewing Reviewing in carefully spaced intervals, at first close together and then more widely spaced apart

Using physical response or sensation

Physically acting out a new expression (e.g., going to the door), or meaningfully relating a new expression to a physically feeling or sensation (e.g., warmth)

Using creative but tangible techniques, especially involving moving or changing something which is concrete, in order to remember new target language information

Table 6: Oxford’s Memory strategies (Adapted from Oxford, 1990, pp 40- 43)

In this study, among ten memory strategy items classified by Oxford (1990) mentioned above, the four sub- memory strategies, grouping, associating, using imagery and placing new words into a context, were selected for some following reasons To begin with, these strategies all enable learners to store material and then retrieve it when needed for communication, which was fit for the aims of the study Secondly, these four sub- memory strategies are also four ones which were suggested in the introduction of the book

600 Essential Words for TOEIC – a book used as the course book for the treatment in this study Last but not least, the selection of these four memory strategies also resulted from the teacher- researcher‘s previous pilot teaching in one class at her university The following sections would serve as a help for the readers to have closer view to these kinds of strategies

Grouping or thematic grouping is one of basic strategies in vocabulary learning

This strategy involves the selection and grouping of vocabulary in topics or themes In Oxford (1990)‘s words, it involves ―classifying or reclassifying language material into meaningful units, either mentally or in writing, to make the material easier to remember by reducing the number of discrete elements‖ (p 40) The topics or themes may be situations, places, feelings, subjects, jobs, among many other possibilities The primary purpose of this strategy is to provide students with basic contextualization and memorization techniques Thematic grouping has been widely used in course- books, dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual) and picture/photo dictionaries, explicitly or implicitly, in a range of teaching methods and approaches This strategy may be put into practice in a number of techniques, which include monolingual or bilingual lists and theme-based syllabuses

Grouping applies any time that a number of items share the same attributes and can be put into meaningful groups It can serve to organize students' thoughts as they begin a writing or speaking task For example, a student has a hard time remembering the names of furniture in English, so she groups them according to where each item belongs in a house; or a business major student will try to remember words by dividing them into smaller sub- groups such as marketing vocabulary, accounting vocabulary, and human resources vocabulary, and so on

Associating strategy is used when you ―relate new language information to concept already in memory, or relate one piece of information to another to create associations in memory‖ (Oxford, 1990, p 41) These associations can be simple or complex, mundane or strange, but they must be meaningful to the learner Associations can be between two things, such as ―bread‖ and ―butter‖, or they can be in the form of multipart

―development‖ such as ―school- book- paper- tree- country- earth‖ They can be also a part of a network, such as a semantic map (Oxford, 1990, p 41)

There are some kinds of associations such as associating words by their structure

(habitué' with habitual), usage (aglet which is the tip of a shoelace with anklet which is an ornament worn on the ankle), meaning (agrarian which means related to agriculture with agro which means the same) and pronunciation (agro which is related to agriculture with aggro which leads to aggressive)

This following example is one way to deal with associations that an English teacher can use in his/her class:

Word Associations: Things you can search for:

Word Associations: Places where you see warnings:

Electric wires Subways Cigarette packages

Oxford (1990) defined using imagery as ―relating new language information to concepts in memory by means of meaningful visual imagery, either in the mind or in an actual drawing‖ (p 41) In the book titled Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy, Norbert Schmitt and Mc Carthy (1997) just wrote down, ―new words can be learned by studying them with pictures of their meaning instead of definitions.‖ The image can be a picture of an object, a set of locations for remembering a sequence of words or expressions, or a mental representation of the letters of a word This strategy can be used to remember abstract words by associating such words with a visual symbol or a picture of a concrete object Learners can create their own mental images of a word's meaning

Imagery has been shown to be more effective than mere repetition for reading passages and sentences, suggesting it could well be more effective for vocabulary too New words can also be associated with a particularly vivid personal experience of the underlying concept, for example, a learner mentally connecting the word snow to a memory of playing in the snow while a child

METHODOLOGY

The background of the study

The study was conducted at one English centre situated in Hanoi capital, Vietnam

This centre specializes in teaching English for the beginners who want to take a TOEIC test in the future There are three main courses for learners, namely (1) Foundation course

(to equip students with general knowledge of four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, a system of basic vocabulary and grammar at elementary and pre-intermediate level; (2) TOEIC A course (to provide students with the beginning knowledge of TOEIC test by practicing reading and listening comprehension; furthermore, to supply students with a system of frequently used TOEIC vocabulary and a more detailed and advanced system of grammar points); and (3) TOEIC B course (to train students with necessary strategies for the test) In this research, the class was at TOEIC A level, at which all the students had passed the first course – Foundation one They all met each other twice a week (on Tuesday and Friday evenings from 6p.m to 8p.m) for the lessons

In terms of the course schedule, it took learners 22 sessions (11 weeks) to finish the course Each session was about two hours

Regarding the objectives of the course, as its name (TOEIC A), this course aimed at helping students to get acquainted with the TOEIC Test‘s format (Listening and Reading) and also providing them with a system of 12 grammar points and basic vocabulary for TOEIC The main textbook of the course was Starter TOEIC For each session, the teacher managed to help students to cover one grammar part, one reading or listening part and one vocabulary part which had been clarified in the schedule (see Appendix 1)

The study room was a small room (about 15 square meters), suitable for 12 - 15 students with such modern facilities as tables, desks, a white board, an air conditioner and a projector All the students were arranged into two rows of desks facing the teacher A small aisle was left so that the teacher could move backwards and forwards and give lectures as well as participating students‘ group activities

The subjects of this study were 9 students from twenty to twenty two years old

They were three boys and six girls In spite of coming from different universities in HN, they all shared the common goal: taking TOEIC test and getting a suitable certificate required for their future job With a little knowledge about TOEIC test, their performance for the entrance test only ranged from 220- 395 The following table illustrates brief information of 9 participants, including their coded name (X1 to X9) and their TOEIC input marks

The researcher in this study was also the teacher of the class, who has been working as a lecturer at the University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi National University, Vietnam for three years so far This class was the one in which she did her part-time job In this action research, she was both the practitioner and the researcher Not only was she responsible for the design and implementation of the vocabulary-learning strategy training, but she collected and analyzed the data as well

All the vocabulary being taught in this course was taken from the book entitled 600

Essential Words for the TOEIC by Dr Lougheed - 3 rd edition (2008) It should be noted that in the course‘s schedule, vocabulary teaching and learning was treated as a separated part with others as it was added as a supplementary material to provide learners with necessary TOEIC words There were four big topics of TOEIC vocabulary included in the course: General Business, Personnel, Purchasing, and Financing & Budgeting Each topic was then divided into three or four small sub- topics

Personnel: Job advertising and Recruiting

W 6 11 Personnel: Promotions, Pensions and Awards

22 Revision and Tests Table 8: Schedule of Vocabulary Teaching for TOEIC A class

Each sub-topic included about 8-10 words regardless of their word-family

According to the schedule of the course, the teacher was in charge of designing in-class and at-home handouts for students to study In the former ones, teachers gave out the activities, through which students were helped to approach new vocabulary items using four sub-memory strategies in turn At-home handouts were delivered to students after each lesson as a way to revise vocabulary items and let students self-practise with VLS

Specially, this process would be all reported in learners‘ diaries later (see Appendix 7 for the sample of handouts)

TOEIC test stands for the Test of English for International Communication by ETS (Educational Testing Service) TOEIC test questions are based on real-life work settings in an international environment; for example: meetings, travel, telephone conversations, and so on

In terms of TOEIC test‘s purpose, for organizations, the TOEIC test is appropriately used to test the English levels of the staffs, to recruit, promote or deploy employees Sometimes, they can use TOEIC test scores to select staffs for English technical training or working abroad, sometimes for assessment of the effectiveness of the English training programs to staffs For individuals, TOEIC scores are used to demonstrate learners‘ ability to use English, to apply for new jobs or to set up English learning goals and to monitor their progress (adapted from www.toeic.com.vn)

There are three types of TOEIC tests such as TOEIC Listening and Reading test;

TOEIC Bridge test; and TOEIC Speaking and Writing test At the present, the TOEIC Listening and Reading test is widely applied in Vietnam When the TOEIC Listening and Reading test is taken together with the TOEIC Speaking and Writing test, TOEIC test scores provide an accurate measure of proficiency in all four English language skills

The TOEIC Listening and Reading test is a two-hour multiple-choice test consisting of 200 questions divided into two parts: 100 questions in listening comprehension and 100 questions in reading comprehension Each candidate receives independent marks for written and oral comprehension on a scale from 5 to 495 points The total score then adds up to a scale from 10 and 990 points The TOEIC certificate exists in five colours, corresponding to achieved results: orange (10-215), brown (220-465), green (470-725), blue (730-855) and gold (860-990) (adapted from www.toeic.com.vn)

Like other international exams, to be ready for the TOEIC test, test-takers are expected to equip themselves with a strong system of English vocabulary Since every single question on the test will measure our understanding of English vocabulary words, by improving vocabulary, one can earn a much higher score on his/ her exam Thus, it is obvious that a strong English source of vocabulary items is critical in a TOEIC test

However, at the beginning of the course, many people wonder: ―What is TOEIC vocabulary?‖; ―Is there any difference between TOEIC vocabulary and vocabulary in general?‖; ―Are TOEIC words all specialized ones?‖ To take an easier way of approaching

TOEIC words, Dr Lin Lougheed (2008) explained in his introduction of the book 600 Essential Words for the TOEIC:

―The exam does not specifically test specialized vocabulary…the contexts are specialized, but the words are not The words are general vocabulary

They can be used in many contexts and when you learn TOEIC words; it means that you learn words in contexts that are used on the TOEIC‖ (p v) Vocabulary taken for the study was therefore both general vocabulary and business terms

In short, vocabulary in the training scheme was general or specific is not a matter, but the ways to retain them are of great importance.

Implementation of the Action Research

Whenever teachers identify arising problems in their class, it is their duty to find out a solution to deal with them In these educational situations, action research is inevitably a very common practice that teachers in general and teachers of English in particular often choose According to Mills (2003):

Action research is any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates; how they teach, and how well their students learn The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in generals, and improving student outcomes (p.4)

A typical action research needs to go from one step to another As suggested by Eileen Ferrance (2000), one action research cycle will be as follows:

As can be seen from the above cycle, five main steps should be conducted for action research The first is to identify the problem Data must be then collected through means of interviews, questionnaires, etc Next, in order to find out the problems, the data will be carefully analyzed The fourth step is to design a plan of action so that the research can make a change and study that change After the intervention has been carried out, it is time for researchers to evaluate its effects and justify whether the action worked or not

Then, if it was not as effective as expected, another method should be pointed out to improve the situation

When dealing with the question that what kind of method would be the appropriate one for this study, after numerous considerations, action research was chosen for some reasons:

First and foremost, one of the most significant features of action research is it is very ―situational”, which means specific solutions can be given to specific problems in each context In particular, this research would be carried out within the context of the teacher‘s teaching environment- her students and her working place As a result, she could have the advantages of time, students‘ natural performance, and the improvement in her own teaching methods

Secondly, as observations taken from many former TOEIC classes in the center, students come up against a lot of learning troubles In this case, any teacher expected to find out an appropriate solution to improve her own class situation Action research would be a good idea because of its ―problem-focused nature‖ As Wallace (2001) stated:

Action research is different from this in that it nearly always arises from some specific problem or issue arising out of our professional practice It is therefore very problem-focused in its approach and very practical in its intended outcomes‖ (p 15)

Furthermore, action research also gave the researcher a good chance to evaluate the intervention and find out the rising problems so that timely decision for changing could be given

Despite the advantages, action research still has some shortcomings compared to other types of research, such as an experimental one As a matter of fact, although the characteristic ―situational‖ is a benefit, it is also blamed for the fact of limited application

The research program may work well in one class but in different contexts, it might make no sense Thus, there is no generalization in an action research.

Data collection instruments

In order to ensure the validity of the research, five data collection instruments were employed, namely: a Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), an interview, learners‘ diaries, pre-test / post-tests and a questionnaire

2.3.1 Vocabulary Knowledge Scale What is Vocabulary Knowledge Scale test?

The Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) is a 5-point self-report scale developed by Wesche & Paribakht (1996) that allows students to indicate how well they know items of vocabulary; in other words, students could self-report the knowledge of a word by using one of these following scales:

1 I don’t remember having seen this word before

2 I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means

3 I have seen this word before and I think it means…………

4 I know this word; it means …

5 I can use this word in a sentence, e.g………

What was the purpose of VKS test in the study?

In this thesis, the first VKS aimed at testing students‘ already learned vocabulary items, or to check whether students could remember the basic words that they had been given in the Foundation course or not (Foundation course is the compulsory one for students who want to join TOEIC A & B)

In order to find out the answer to the first research question (What are the problems that the students often encounter in their independent vocabulary learning?) it is argued that only an interview would not be persuasive enough since subjectivity is one problematic aspect of using interviews To support for that, Wallace (1998, p 127) admitted ―when we ask someone a question, we have very often no way of asserting the truth of the reply‖; hence, VKS test was reasonably added as a combining tool to ensure the results‘ reliability Thanks for the results got from the VKS test and the later interview, problems that students encounter with vocabulary learning would “rise to the surface‖ It was also the time for the researcher to check the consistency between the answers of students in the interview and what they did in the test

There existed two more VKS tests: a pre-test and two post-tests These tests followed the format of a VKS test, but different contents so as to measure the effectiveness of applying the four sub-memory strategies in learning vocabulary Details of these three tests would be discussed in the next part

How was the first VKS test designed in the study?

On the test paper, the student‘s name was first required Then the title of the test and a detailed instruction on how to answer the test properly were added To further motivate the respondents, the source of the test was acknowledged right after the requirement (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996)

In the main section of the test, a table of three columns was displayed For the first column, the list of fifty words taken from the book New Vocabulary in use by Stuart

Redman & Ellen Shaw (1999) was inserted This book was used as a supplementary vocabulary book for the Foundation course at the center Hence, students were ensured to have experienced all these vocabulary items Varied as it may be, the vocabulary was randomly taken from ten vocabulary topics: weather, people‘s appearance, human feelings and actions, illnesses and diseases, homes and building, character, cooking and restaurants, family, sales and marketing, pollution and environment The test was requested to complete in twenty five minutes As for marking the test, details will be discussed in the data analysis section below (see Appendix 4 for the first VKS test)

2.3.2 Interview Why was a semi-structured interview?

Together with the first VKS, a semi- structured interview was also chosen as it was considered a feasible way to find out the problems that students often come up against when learning vocabulary With a semi- structured interview, flexibility is given to the interviewer far greater than a structured interview and a questionnaire In the words of Dowsett (1986), the semi- structured interview is: quite extraordinary – the interactions are incredibly rich and the data indicate that you can produce extraordinary evidence about life that you don‘t get in structured interviews or questionnaire methodology - no matter how open- ended and qualitative you think your questionnaires are attempting to be It‘s not the only qualitative research technique that will produce rich information about social relationships but it does give you access to social relationships in a quite profound way (p.53, cited in Nunan, 1992, p 149)

How was this semi-structured interview conducted?

The semi- structured interview was carried out within the group, the group interview

As Michael J Wallace stated in his book Action Research for Language Teacher (1998),

―most interviews are one-to-one, but it is also possible to have an ―interview‖ with a group, which could take the form of a kind of structured discussion‖ (p 149) Admittedly, group interview can run the risk of copying answers, which means some students can agree with others‘ ideas without expressing their own views However, this way was still chosen since it was a saving- time idea and the fact that when an interview happened as a free- talk, it could attract the insiders and make them feel comfortable and friendly Thanks for this, the researcher found it easier to obtain the real problems from her students

The interview included two sets of questions: both open ended and half open ended ones The completely open ended one was ―How do you often learn vocabulary at home?‖ and the later was ―When learning vocabulary, what are the difficulties you often encounter?‖ The former served as one way to help the teacher start her discussion and know more about the respondents To avoid students‘ digression, for the second question, the researcher added some follow-up questions and prompts about vocabulary problems

All the other contributions of the insiders were extremely welcomed Finally, note-taking of the teacher was of great importance for later use in the data analysis procedure

2.3.3 Pre-test and post-tests

Why were pre-test and two post tests?

As Mertens (2005, p 349) stated, ―test-retest is one of methods to determine reliability‖ In this study, one pre-test and two post-tests used for checking vocabulary retention before and after the treatment Analyzing and comparing the results from these tests aimed at measuring the students‘ improvement in learning vocabulary applying memory strategies, or answering the second research question ―How does learning the 4 sub-memory strategies help to improve students' vocabulary retention?”

How were the tests operated?

All three tests were in the format of VKS tests (which was described in detail in the above part) However, unlike the first VKS to identify the problems of vocabulary learning, these three tests aimed at examining what students have gained during the course; hence, the content must be different (see Appendix 5)

A pre-test was administered at the beginning of the third session before commencing the treatment to the group of students Fifty words were taken randomly from four big topics which would be then introduced by using memory strategies during the course

Post-test 1 (also called the immediate post-test) was used to measure the short-term improvement of the students Immediately after finishing the teaching phase, post-test 1 was administered The test was intended to keep the same format and content as the pre- test However, as noted by Mertens (2005, p 349), ―one of the drawbacks of the approach (test-retest) is the potential for practice effects or remembering items across administration of the test.‖ Therefore, the researcher decided to reorder all the fifty vocabulary items so that students would not feel familiar with the test; thus, reliability could be ensured On the other hands, it is also suspected that how the researcher can make sure about the validity of the test As a matter of fact, students could learn words not only by 4 memory strategies provided, but any other techniques as well In this case, to compensate the weakness of the test, one more column next to the last one was added so that students can clarify which strategies they had used to learn the given words

Post-test 2 was the same as post test 1 and had another name as the "delayed" test

It was delivered two weeks after the course The teacher had to arrange the time and place with students to meet each other and complete the test

2.3.4 Learners’ diaries Why were learners’ diaries?

Data collection procedure

The data collection procedure followed the steps of one circle in an action research and could be illustrated into this following chart:

Phase 1: The very first task in this phase was to investigate the problems that students often encounter when they deal with vocabulary To fulfill this task, both a VKS test and a semi- structured group interview were carried out

The VKS was delivered in the first session of week 1 to check out students‘ ability to retain given words in the previous course

The group interview was then carried out at the beginning of the second session It was expected to create comfortable and friendly atmosphere, in which students would find it easy to discuss and share ideas Together with the two main questions to keep students on the right track, follow- up questions and some prompts were provided in order to orientate the interviewees and prevent them from presenting irrelevant information

Students had a chance to discuss and share their own problems, and the teacher took time to ask detailed questions and take notes It took about 20 minutes for the group interview to be completed

The pre-test was delivered right after the interview The result of this test would then be used to compare with the one taken from the immediate post-test and the delayed post- test to check the students‘ ability to retain vocabulary and evaluate the intervention‘s progress

From week 2 to week 11, the researcher conducted the treatment to provide students with detailed instruction and explanation of four memory strategies During the treatment, the teacher delivered the in-class handouts to students These handouts included activities and exercises which were designed to help students understand and be able to use the four sub- memory strategies to finish the tasks (see Appendix 7 for some samples) No individual strategy was treated as a priority; their appearance density was the same

Specially, after each lesson in class, there would be a handout for students called at home-handouts The two first parts included some basic types of exercises such as multiple-choice, gap-filling and word-formation so that learners could revise what vocabulary items they had learned in class Interestingly, one more part (a part of self- learning) was also added In this part, students were required to report all the ways they had used to remember the words by using one of the introduced strategies These were then written down in a notebook and submitted to the teacher at the end of the course

Moreover, there existed some diary discussion weekly, in which the teacher would call some students to stand up and describe how they had learnt the required word By sharing, students could learn from each other the better way to approach the new words, and the teacher could also confirm whether her students had used what she had taught them in class or not This kind of checking was regarded as a good way to ensure the validity and reliability of the research

The two post-tests (the immediate post-test - post test 1 and the delayed post-test - post test 2) were employed to measure the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention in terms of short-term and long-term after being introduced four sub-memory strategies

While the immediate post-test was conducted right after the treatment in week 11, the delayed post- test was employed 2 weeks later (week 13)

The questionnaire on students‘ attitudes and suggestions for future learning and teaching was distributed in week14, 3 weeks after the treatment The students were asked to send back their response within 3 days

2.5 Data analysis methods and procedures

To begin with, the data collected were categorized under the four research questions To be specific, the data from the semi-interviewed and VKS test served to answer the first research question, the test scores addressed the second one, the learners‘ diaries the third and the questionnaire data the last question

Regarding the first question, in the VKS test, the students would mark the given word from mark 1 to mark 5 (see Appendix 4) The teacher then counted the number of each mark for each student, expressed the figure as a percentage and illustrated in a bar chart In the interview, the data was collected, translated and generalized into different groups of difficulties The teacher then calculated and illustrated data in a table By this way, the researcher and readers could easily see the outstanding problem that students encountered when learning vocabulary

Next, for data from tests, all the test scores were first recorded Mean scores in each test were then calculated Both the performances of the total group and each student were indicated by comparing mean scores between the pre-test and the two other post-tests By this way, the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention in short term and long term could be revealed

With reference to the third research question, all the learners‘ diaries were collected There were totally 16 entries for each students, so 144 for all 9 students The teacher then checked each entry and calculated the number of each strategy used in each entry These figures were then converted to percentage and illustrated under the format of a pie-chart Moreover, the data collected from the extra column in the post-test 1 was also analyzed here to answer the second question The researcher would count the number of each four sub-memory strategies used in the test, describe and compare with the results from the diaries

Finally, the data from questionnaire was independently analyzed according to three different parts The first part included three smaller questions addressing three aspects of attitudes towards the strategy training scheme, namely: the importance, the effectiveness and the pleasure For each question, calculating percentage was used to illustrate the data which were then presented them in three different pie-charts In the second part, after counting all the marks given for each strategy, a Mean score (M) was identified, which strategy had the highest M would be the most favorite one In the last part, data was counted, illustrated by percentages and displayed in a table so that the researcher could make a conclusion of ideas and opinions suggested for the course, perceived by the students

Throughout the chapter, the methodology of the paper, which is a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods, was fully rationalized Firstly, the research context, the participants and materials were clearly described, and then the reason for choosing an action research was stated Following with those sections was the thorough description of data collection instruments Succeeding part was the detailed procedure of data collection And the chapter was finally concluded by a full account of the methods and procedure of data analysis.

Methods and data analysis procedures

In this chapter, all collected data from the interview, VKS tests, learner diaries and questionnaire will be analyzed to provide the answers to the four research questions

Furthermore, the findings of this study will be thoroughly discussed and together with relevant literature, the problems, the performances and improvement or not after treatment will be brought to light

3.1 Research question 1 (Identifying the problems): What are the problems that the students encounter in their independent vocabulary learning?

As stated in the previous chapter, the VKS test (see Appendix 4) was the first instrument to answer the first research question The test was designed to check whether students could remember the words that they had learned before or not, and identify the obstacles that students encountered in their independent learning vocabulary

How well students know the words was described in 5 levels ranging from mark 1 to mark 5 The teacher then counted the number of each mark for each student The figure was expressed as a percentage and illustrated in the chart below:

Figure 5: Results from VKS test

As can be seen from the chart, the number of mark 2 and mark 3 ranked the highest, while the number of mark 5 stayed at the lowest level The highest figure for mark

2 was about 44%, which meant 44% of the students confirmed to have experienced the

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Research question 1

As stated in the previous chapter, the VKS test (see Appendix 4) was the first instrument to answer the first research question The test was designed to check whether students could remember the words that they had learned before or not, and identify the obstacles that students encountered in their independent learning vocabulary

How well students know the words was described in 5 levels ranging from mark 1 to mark 5 The teacher then counted the number of each mark for each student The figure was expressed as a percentage and illustrated in the chart below:

Figure 5: Results from VKS test

As can be seen from the chart, the number of mark 2 and mark 3 ranked the highest, while the number of mark 5 stayed at the lowest level The highest figure for mark

2 was about 44%, which meant 44% of the students confirmed to have experienced the words but admitted that they had no idea what the words meant – ―I have seen the word before but I do not know what it means‖; 36% of the students got mark 3 - ―I have seen the word before and I think it means…‖; the subjects had seen the words before but they were not sure about the meanings of the words Only 13% of the students got mark 5, they not only knew the word but they could use it in the context as well About 18% of the students got mark 4, these students were only confident of the word meaning, not its use in the context

In conclusion, it can be derived from the results of the chart that the students seemed to be weak at retaining the words that they have learned They could see the words familiar, that they had met them somewhere before, but they could not give out the meanings or just interpret the meanings indecisively The later semi-interview was used would help to check whether what students did in the test was the same as what they said in the interview Furthermore, an interview also helped the teacher to go insight the problems that her students were having when learning vocabulary

A semi-structured interview was a second instrument that the researcher used to find out the answer to the first research question During the interview, students gave out a lot of difficulties in learning vocabulary, of course using Vietnamese The teachers then helped to translate and generalize them so that the same ideas could be moved to the same points In this part, all students‘ sayings in Vietnamese were translated into English

The time for self-study was much important After joining classes, it is time for all students to stay at home and revise what they have learned Like other subjects, the more time students spend on learning English, the better results they can get Especially for learning vocabulary, due to the limited time in class, it is necessary for learners to self- study at home However, as the result of the interview, it turned out to be the fact that

―I have many subjects to cover, especially major subjects They took me a long time to study Despite knowing that English is very important for my future job, I do not have time for it.‖, said X3 and X5 Another student (X7) admitted, ―Maybe because Iam lazy, I like spending time chatting with friends or surfing the net rather than sitting and learn by heart English vocabulary I’m not patient and interested enough…‖

Although these students appreciate the importance of learning English in general and English vocabulary in particular, they have low degree of endeavor The reason might come from their ineffective time management, their inherent laziness or indifference

Meanwhile, more than half of the students (66.7%) confirmed that they had spent time studying, trying to learn words; however, they often failed in recalling the words when needed Thus, the ineffective way of learning was also the problem with students

After all, it can be seen that lack of time was just a quibble of someone who did not know how to arrange time for all subject or who had no passion on studying English

Moreover, it should also be note that how much time you learn is not a matter, but the way you learn is of more importance

The second problem might come from the teacher who is directly in a duty of teaching vocabulary for students As complained by more than half of the students (55%), it would be better for their teachers to show more concern about students‘ vocabulary studying It could be done by teachers‘ checking them every day or stimulating them to study vocabulary During the time in class, it was often the grammar to be focused, not the vocabulary Normally, the vocabulary learning was passed to the homework tasks

However, students‘ thought of waiting for telling what to do and how to do here was not approved at all That was a passive way of learning because in large classrooms, it was very difficult for teachers to take care of all the students Nowadays, the roles of the learners and teachers should be reconsidered In order to master the knowledge, students had to find out the way to study by themselves, and teachers were just there to give a help

Many students showed their confusion when using dictionary to check vocabulary

X9 shared ―I often use my dictionary to look up a new word; however, sometimes I still couldn’t understand the meaning of the sentence I do not know what is wrong here‖ This problem was once discovered in Rahimi and Sahragard‘s (2008) study before ―when using dictionary, many learners only checked the first meaning that can be found for the word, which may be of little use to students and sometimes misleads them.‖ (p 4) When talking about the meaning of word as one factor to make students confused, Thornburry (2002) said, ―Words with different meanings can also be troublesome for learners Having learned one meaning of the word, they may be reluctant to accept a second, totally different, meaning‖ (p 28) In a language dictionary, one word can be interpreted in different meanings, the matter is the context clues should be taken into account so that the appropriate meaning can be selected

Besides, X8 asked for a more reliable dictionary when he said, ―My dictionary seems to be unreliable, sometimes I got the different meaning compared with the one teacher gave in class.‖ The reasons here could be the quality of his dictionary itself or just the way he checked the meaning of the word - it should be the second one while he chose the first one (the same problem as X9)

Research question 2

In this part, to assess the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention, the researcher would compare the results between the immediate post-test (post-test 1) and the pre-test first, then the delayed post-test (post-test 2) and the pre-test and finally all the three tests with each other In each group of comparison, the total group‘s results were analyzed first and then each individual‘s performance would be described

3.2.1 Results from the immediate post-test (post-test 1)

The immediate post-test (see Appendix 5) was conducted right at the last session of the course After collecting the data, calculating the number scores ranging from 1 to 5 in each pre-test and immediate post-test, the researcher used the below table to present the data:

Score Pre-test Immediate post-test

Table 10: Mean scores gained by the group in the pre-test and immediate post-test

It can be derived from the findings above, the number of score 1(I don’t remember having seen this word before) and score 2 (I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means) between the two tests has a sharp decrease (from 217 to 14, and from 81 to

34); whereas, the number of score 3, 4, and 5 for knowing the words but at different levels has increased dramatically The following line chart will help to make it clear about the improvement of the total group after the immediate post-test:

Figure 6: The whole group’s performance in the pre-test and the immediate post test

The students‘ vocabulary retention has gone up, raising the mean score for the same test from 2.17 to 3.75 The number 1.58 illustrated the difference between the mean score in the pre-test and the immediate post-test, which helped to improve the fact that the students‘ short term vocabulary retention has already been improved During the course, as being introduced the four sub-memory strategies by the teacher and given the chances to self-practice, the students could somehow approach four sub-memory strategies effectively and their improvement has been revealed clearly when comparing the results between the two tests

If the above part mainly discussed the general trend of improvement for the whole group, in this part, the researcher would like to deal with the question whether the improvement has appeared equally among individuals or not The data collected from each member was presented in the following table would help to demonstrate this

Table 11: Individuals’ performance in the pre-test and the immediate post-test

Table 12: Mean scores gained by individuals in the pre-test and the immediate post-test

Figure 7: Individuals’ performance in the pre-test and the immediate post-test

ScorePre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1Pre-test Post-test 1

Pre-test Post-test 1 Dif

The results displayed in the above table and the line chart revealed that (1) all 9 students in the group had their improvement and this improvement were comparatively at the equal level; (2) among 9 students, X9 had achieved the first position in the table ranking from the highest to the lowest mean score; whereas, the student at the lowest position was X1 (only 1.4 gained when comparing the immediate post-test and the pre- test); (3) the student who had the significant improvement was X5 with the mean difference between the pre-test and the immediate post test was 1.76

To sum up, after collecting and analyzing the data from the two tests : the pre-test and the immediate post-test, it was obvious that the application of four sub- memory strategies in learning vocabulary has brought the certain improvement to students‘ vocabulary short-term retention Although the achievement varied among 9 students, the difference was unremarkable (1.5 on average) In general, the strategy training scheme got its initial success as expected

3.2.2 Results from the delayed post-test

As stated in the previous chapter, the delayed test (post-test 2) (see Appendix 5) was conducted 2 weeks after the end of the course and aimed at measuring students‘ vocabulary retention in a long term The delayed post-test maintained the same format and content as the immediate post-test (post-test 1) After doing some careful calculation, the data could be illustrated in the table below:

Score Pre-test Post-test 2 (Delayed-test)

Table 13: Mean scores gained by the group in the pre-test and the delayed post-test

The results from the above table illustrated the maintenance of improvement of students‘ retention between the delayed post-test and the pre-test The number of score 1 and score 2 continued to decrease sharply and approached the minimum point This described the fact that almost all the students had known the meanings of the words but at different levels The difference between the mean score of the pre-test and the immediate test and between the pre-test and the delayed test rose from 1.58 to 1.75, which can demonstrate the fact that in the delayed test, almost students (88.9%) did much better than in the immediate test This also proved the improvement of students in both short-term and long-term retention

Figure 8: The whole group’ performance in the pre-test the delayed post test

After the two post-tests, the data about the whole group‘s performance can be combined and illustrated in the following line chart:

Figure 9: The whole group’ performance in the pre-test, post-test 1 and post test 2

Score Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2 Pre Post 1 Post 2

The above line chart indicates that the whole group still stayed stably at the results gained from the post-test 1 and post test 2 (slight deviation between two points: post-test 1 and post-test 2) The improvement was not blown away but kept moving (in spite of slight rate: about 0.17)

Table 14: Individuals’ performance in the Pre-test, Post-test 1and Post-test 2

After two weeks, the question was whether the improvement of each student in post-test was changed in some ways or not All the data of each subject in three tests were presented in the following table:

Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2 Dif (PT2-PT1)

Table 15: Mean scores gained by individuals in Pre-test, Post-test 1, and Post-test 2

Figure 10: Individuals’ performance in pre-test, the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test

As can be seen from the chart, the results gained from the post-test 1(the immediate post-test) seemed to be maintained in almost individuals‘ performance The change between the post-test 1 and post-test 2 had a tendency to rise up although there was just a small difference (the lowest was 0.02 and the highest was 0.64) There was only one student (X8) who had a slight fall when comparing his result in post-test 1 with the one in post-test 2

In conclusion, the comparison between the pre-test and the two post-tests has proved the improvement of students‘ vocabulary retention This improvement was not only for a short term (during the course and right after the course) but it could stay stably for a long term (two weeks after the treatment) for almost all the students (88.9%) This proved the effectiveness of introducing and implementing memory strategies in teaching and learning vocabulary

3.3 Research question 3: How much do the students obtain the strategies learned in their independent learning?

Research question 4

3.4.1 Students’ attitudes towards the strategy training scheme

In terms of the students‘ attitudes towards the strategy training scheme, the researcher focused on three main aspects: the training scheme‘s importance, its effectiveness and the pleasure that it could give to students while learning, as perceived by students themselves

Firstly, the students‘ evaluation of the importance of the strategy training scheme was illustrated by figure 12 as follows:

Figure 12: Importance of the strategy training scheme

As can be seen from the above figure, the majority of the students accessed the training scheme as important and extremely important (56% and 33% of the students gave mark 4 and 5 respectively to the rate of the importance of the scheme) Only 11% gave mark 3 (they are not sure whether the scheme is important for them or not) None among 9 students gave mark 1 or 2, which means no one in the class evaluated the treatment of using memory strategies while learning vocabulary as being unimportant or not very important

Secondly, the students‘ ideas about the effectiveness of the strategy training scheme are presented in the following pie-chart:

Figure 13: Effectiveness of the strategy training scheme

The above pie-chart indicates how effectively students assessed the strategy training scheme conducted by the teacher There was a majority of the students (66%) thought that the training scheme was effective, among them 22% showed highly appreciation to the treatment However, there existed a number of students (22%) who did not give any clear opinion about the effectiveness of the scheme Happily, only 12% of the students gave mark 2 when evaluating the scheme, which means only 1 among nine members regarded the scheme as having comparatively limited effectiveness to him/ her

When mentioning about the pleasure that students could gain while using memory strategies to learn vocabulary, the results revealed that almost of the students found it interesting and enthusiastic when applying the four taught-memory strategies This could be illustrated by the following chart:

Figure 14: Pleasure during the strategy training scheme

The number of students who felt comfortable and being motivated when learning vocabulary using the given strategies was 78% (33% highly appreciated and 45% liked them)

In short, through the first part of the questionnaire with three small questions about how students evaluated the strategy scheme, in general, the students highly appreciated and gave positive opinions to the whole treatment This can be further clarified by some ideas that students shared with the teacher through emails after the course In terms of the importance of the treatment, X8 shared ―I really liked the activities and exercises that the teacher gave us in class in order to introduce new words, I learnt much from her ways to approach the new words by using one of four given strategies, or sometimes the combination Learning vocabulary learning strategies is important for me to retain and expand my vocabulary‖ Some others shared the view that the training scheme helped them to learn words quicker and better X9 said, ―The strategy of using images was useful and interesting, it can help me to make the list of words that I have to study become easier and help me to remember them better” X5 wrote, ―From now on, whenever having to deal with any new words, I will consider whether I can use one of the given strategies or not, I often felt interested when I sit silently at my desk and link the words I have to learn with things that happened in my life before They can be sad or happy or even ridiculous things but at least they could help me to remember words.‖ X9 added, “Learning new words is not boring activity anymore, it is something relating to imagination, and I like it.”

These above were only some opinions that students shared with their teacher after the course They were added here to clarify the students‘ attitudes towards the strategy training scheme

3.4.2 The students’ attitudes towards four sub-memory strategies

After students‘ being introduced the four sub-memory strategies, the second section of the questionnaire was designed to find out which strategies were the most interesting and motivating to students The data was then summarized in the following table:

Associating Placing the words into the context

Table 18: Students’ preference of four sub-memory strategies

During the treatment, especially in the diary discussions, among four strategies,

―placing new words into a context‖ and ―using imagery‖ seemed to make students more interested and they used these strategies more often than the other two However, there appeared a slight difference between the data collected in the learners‘ diaries with what they responded in this part of the questionnaire ―Using imagery‖ (M= 3.33) were still chosen by the majority of the students There was an exchange in the position of two strategies ―placing new words into a context‖ and ―associating‖: ―associating‖ ranked at the second position with M= 3.0 while ―placing new words into a context‖ only ranked the third with M= 2.0 This change was regarded as not so important since the difference between the two mean scores is not much ―Grouping‖ stood still at the fourth position on the scale of preference

In conclusion, among four sub-memory strategies were introduced to students,

―using imagery‖ was still the most interesting and motivating strategy perceived by students This was presented in the students‘ regular diaries, diary discussions and was confirmed again through their answers in the questionnaire This fact is completely understandable since the effectiveness of visual learning has been discovered by many researchers before Oxford (1990) stated the fact ―linking the verbal with visual is very useful to language learning‖ (p 40) She also stated four reasons explaining why ―using imagery‖ always predominated more than other strategies as follows:

First, the mind‘ storage capacity for visual information exceeds its capacity for verbal material Second, the most efficiently packed chunks of information are transferred to long-term memory through visual images Third, visual images may be the most potent device to aid recall of verbal material Fourth, a large proportion of learners have a preference for visual learning (p.40)

3.4.3 Students’ suggestions for future scheme

The last section of the questionnaire aimed at exploiting suggestions and recommendations for applying memory strategies in general and four sub-memory strategies in particular in the future These ideas and recommendations were perceived by the students who had had some first- hand experiences of such a scheme

No Statements Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree

1 Students should be encouraged to use memory strategies more frequently

2 The teacher should give more activities to help students practice these memory strategies (both in class and at home)

3 Introductions to memory strategies should be explained more clearly and understandably

4 Students should be introduced more sub-memory strategies

5 Memory strategies should be combined with other vocabulary

(0%) learning strategies to bring more effectiveness

6 Memory strategies should be applied to teaching and learning the other language skills

Table 19: Students’ suggestions for future schedule

As can be seen from the table, these above six statements are almost positive when discussing the usage of memory strategies in learning vocabulary Through the results obtained and analyzed from section 1 and 2 of the questionnaire, the readers would find it not surprising when seeing here very few ideas of ―strongly disagree‖ Nearly all the students who had experienced the treatment showed their positive attitudes towards these strategies in particular and memory strategies in general The majority of the students (66.7%) in class supposed that memory strategies should be encouraged to use more frequently The rest (22%) agreed and no one disagreed with this statement Therefore, it came no surprise to the researcher when looking at all the responses for the second question Many of the students seemed to find more motivated due to the encouragement they had received; hence, they certainly hoped to get more activities for training strategies from the teacher Meanwhile, there were only two students with negative ideas These students thought that the number of activities in class and at home as being given before was comparatively enough for them

The relatively high percentage of students (67%) suggested the idea of being given clearer and more understandable introductions for the memory strategies They might have difficulties in understanding some terminologies about vocabulary strategies when being introduced for the first time Sometimes, they showed their confusions in class with a question like ―I wonder whether the way I have approached this word belongs to any of the four memory strategies that you have taught me or not?‖ Clear explanations and introductions to raise students‘ appropriate awareness of what memory strategies are, how and when they can be applied in learning are very necessary for teachers who intend to bring learning strategies in their classes

Almost all the students in the class (78%) agreed that more memory strategies should be introduced by the teacher They showed their interest when knowing and applying the given strategies and also hoped to be introduced more so that they could choose and use the best for them

When being asked whether memory strategies should be combined with other vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) to bring more effectiveness or not, only 3 students agreed while the rest expressed their hesitation about this, which was a bit surprising to the teacher To make it clear, the teacher- researcher conducted some small interviews for some students and the answer was: ―I’m not sure about this because I do not know what

“other Vocabulary Learning Strategies” mean, we have only introduced a very small part of VLS, I’m afraid the risk of making misunderstanding because of so many VLS‖, said

X5 Others who agreed with this statement said that: ―If there is any combination, it will be the suitable one from the teacher to us, because she knows which one is suitable for us”

RECOMMENDATIONS

Strategy training

The need for strategy training

As Oxford (1990, p 201) stated, ―Although learning is certainly part of the human condition, conscious skill in self-directed learning and strategy use must be sharpened through training‖ Strategy training is necessary in teaching and learning a foreign language Learners need to know how to learn and teachers need to learn how to conduct a process However, strategy training will never be successful if knowledge is introduced in an abstract and theoretical way; it should be presented practically and effectively to students

According to Oxford (1990, p 201), before any strategy training, there are two important issues that must be taken into consideration: researcher‘s knowledge of learning strategies and his/ her attitudes about the role changes

Knowledge of LLS must be enriched before a researcher decides to conduct strategy training Useful information can be found out from a variety of resources such as books and articles in libraries, documents from the internet, useful talks about LLS at professional conference, research and studies about LLS/VLS of scholars, advice from colleagues In general, knowledge about LLS is available; the matter is how you find it and how much you can find However, it is not necessary to wait until becoming an expert on strategies, you start to provide them for students; it would be better if you gradually use what you know about learning strategies and experience yourself to make a difference in your students‘ ability to learn languages

Once LLS are employed in teaching and learning, traditional roles of teachers and students are indispensable to be changed When students can take more and more responsibility in their learning, teachers and students‘ roles will naturally be changed The students will learn in more active way instead of passive way, and the teacher may work as a facilitator instead of a controller

Identifying what kind of strategy training beforehand is a must for any researcher

For different purposes, there will be different types of training, namely awareness training, one time strategy training, and long-term strategy training

Awareness training One time strategy training Long-term strategy training

- is known as conscious- raising or familiarization training Participants become aware of and familiar with general idea of LLS but do not have to use the strategies in practice

- should not be used in the lecture format as it only helps to introduce the

- involves learning and practicing one or more strategies with actual language tasks

- helps to give learners information on the value of the strategy: when to use, how to use, how to evaluate the success of the strategy

- involves learning and practicing strategies with actual language tasks

- helps students learn the significance of particular strategies: when to use, how to use, how to monitor, how to evaluate their performance concept of LLS - is not connected to a long- term sequence of strategy training It is only appropriate for learners who need a particular, identifiable and targeted strategy that can be taught in one or few sessions

- should be tied to the tasks and objectives of the language program It is more prolonged and covers a great number of strategies It is likely more effective than one-time strategy training

Table 20: Types of strategy training (adapted from Oxford, 1990, pp 202-203)

This model focuses on teaching of LLS for long-term strategy training; however, it

―can be adapted for one-time training by selecting specific units‖ (Oxford, 1990, p 204) It is not compulsory for the steps to be done exactly in this order; some can be performed at the same time, or in a slightly different order

Figure 15: A model for strategy training (adopted from Oxford, 1990, p 204)

Look at the following summary from Oxford (1990, pp 204-209) for more details:

Step 1: Determine the Learners’ Needs and the Time Available

The needs of the learners must be treated as a top priority Different learners would have different learning needs They can be: children, adults, college students, graduated students, workers, and so on They can be at different second language levels: advanced, intermediate or even beginners Whoever they are, it is advisable for teachers to identify their strengths and weakness; what kinds of learning strategies they have been using, what strategies they are interested in and what strategies they may need It is also necessary for the researcher to give students chances to express their own opinions and difficulties they have encountered when dealing with vocabulary

Secondly, the amount of time that the teacher and his/ her students can spend on strategy training should also be considered; otherwise, she/he can run the risk of time pressure or the students‘ non-cooperation due to unavailable time

According Oxford (1990, pp 204-205), there are some reminders that a researcher cannot neglect when choosing suitable strategies for teaching

First, ―select strategies which are related to the needs and characteristics of your learners‖ (p 204) There would be nothing to say if the strategy chosen to teach students is also what strategy they like However, sometimes, the researcher can choose strategies that are counter to what learners prefer In this case, it would be better for the teacher to gradually introduce the new strategies while continuing what they prefer

Second, ―choose more than one kind of strategy to teach (by deciding the kinds of compatible, mutually supporting strategies that are important for your students)‖ (p 205)

Third, ―choose strategies that are generally useful for most learners and transferable to a variety of language situations and tasks‖ (p 205)

Fourth, ―choose some strategies that are very easy to learn, and some strategies that are very valuable but might require a bit more effort In other words, do not include all easy strategies or all difficult strategies‖ (p.205)

Step 3: Consider Integration of Strategy Training

―It is most helpful to integrate strategy training with the tasks, objectives, and materials used in the regular language training program.‖ In other words, ―when strategy training is closely integrated with language learning, learners better understand how the strategies can be used in a significant, meaningful context‖ (p 206)

It is very important to make a decision about what kind of motivation to build into a training scheme To be specific, a researcher should consider whether to give awards for achievement of new strategies, or to assume that learners will be motivated to learn strategies in order to become more effective learners, or possibly a combination of both motivations (integrative and instrumental motivations) Once learners are explained how using good strategies can make language learning easier, students will be even more interested in participating in strategy training For example, in the present thesis, the learners are taught VLS to TOEIC vocabulary easily, and get higher marks in TOEIC test

Being aware of this benefit, the students seemed to be more eager in all the lessons

Step 5: Prepare Materials and Activities

Teacher can also add more activities in which strategies can be introduced and practiced However, it would be better for him/her to identify clearly when and how to use the strategies he/she wants to focus In addition, a handbook for learners to use at home and in class is also a good idea

Step 6: Conduct “Completely Informed Training”

When conducting strategy training, it would be better to ―make a special point to inform the learners as completely as possible about why the strategies are important and how they can be used in new situations‖ (p 207) To be specific, students should be given a chance to practice one strategy in several tasks, and provided the way to transfer strategies from this task to another Besides, it is advisable to ―give learners the explicit opportunity to evaluate the success of their new strategies, exploring the reasons why these strategies might have helped‖ (p 207)

Step 7: Evaluate the Strategy Training

“Learners‘ own comments about their strategy use are part of the training itself‖ (p

Suggested activities for introducing and practicing memory strategies

The activities suggested in this part are expected to be effective for teachers who would like to introduce the four memory strategies (using imagery, associating, grouping or placing words into a context) to their students or only simply help students to review vocabulary after learning They can be a speaking activity, a writing task, a vocabulary game…but all are designed so that learners can be made familiar with learning strategies

All the activities are selected from two books: Vocabulary of two authors John

Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri (1991) and Handbook of Vocabulary Teaching Strategies of Steven J Molinsky and Bill Bliss (n.d.) The activities in these two books are designed simply and easily to understand To be specific, all the necessary points as: students‘ levels, time allowance, teacher‘s preparation, actions in class and examples are all made clear In the present thesis, some among these activities were already used and brought a good sense for both the teacher and learners (see appendix 9 for these activities in details).

Other recommendations for teachers

―Success in learning very much depends on learners having a responsible attitude‖

(Scharle and Szabo, 2000, p 4) The saying was one more time appreciated when the researcher carried on this study

She had first experienced the ineffectiveness of strategy training scheme in former classes when just focusing on teaching and introducing strategies without motivating and forcing students to study on their own She realized that learning cannot occur even if the teacher has provided all the necessary circumstances but the learner is unwilling to participate in the process Teachers should provide students with not only words, learning strategies to deal with these words but the most important is ―helping them to be autonomous‖ In other words, students should be more responsible for their own learning Firstly, teachers can make students interested in learning by a friendly and cozy atmosphere in class They will be more active in learning by feeling free to ask questions, to contribute their ideas if the lesson is enjoyable and the teacher welcomes their active role At home, necessary activities and exercises should be given to students with strict requirements from teachers

Of course, this should be done seriously at the beginning period when students have just started making familiar with strategies, at a later time, the quantity of homework can be reduced when they can controlled their own learning

Secondly, one more important note is the way teachers introduce and implement strategy training to students If students were just introduced the strategies without knowing why, where and when to use it, they would not utilize them as effectively as expected The matter here is students should not only be provided with new methods but a chance to master and reflect them in some way as well Wenden (1986) made a distinction between informed training and blind training:

Blind training is when learners are taught strategies but do not know why these are useful Informed training involves explicitly telling learners when they are being taught strategies, as well as why and when these strategies are used (as cited in Logan and Moore, 2004, p 2)

Thirdly, in class, teachers should pay more attention to the students‘ levels Learners who fail to adopt effective VLS, or who have a poor memory for language items, will probably be unable to absorb as many items as ―good- learners‖ Or in other words, the fact that some good students in the class can learn strategies quickly does not mean that all students are also capable of learning such strategies in a short time Therefore, it is advisable for teachers to go each more step with a bit lower level students

From the learners’ writing diaries

As far as the researcher is concerned, encouraging student to make use of cooperative learning is also a good way that teachers can empower their learning; moreover, it is also a powerful approach for learner autonomy Being aware of the importance of this, the researcher took a chance for all students to share what they wrote in their diaries with each other Its aim is to establish a community of learners in which students are able to raise questions and discuss ideas freely with the teacher and each other

In this thesis, four diary discussions were samples of cooperative learning, which really gave a big hand for students in learning from each other and revise themselves before continuing with other new things

Last but not least, in Oxford‘s book Language Learning Strategies - What Every Teacher Should Know (1990), there was a very interesting suggestion: a ―successful strategies‖ handbook When introducing and implementing strategies to students, teachers should ask them to start contributing to a ―successful strategies‖ handbook which contains tips on strategies the students find most useful, examples of strategies applied to specific kinds of tasks or materials, comments made during strategy training, selections from learners‘ diaries about strategies, or any other strategy-related information It is advisable to develop the handbook throughout the language course, in which students can add to it and use it as a way to share strategy ideas Moreover, according to her, a loose-leaf notebook will allow easiest access and expansion

In short, basing on all ideas perceived from students and her own experiences during the implementation of the study, in this part, the researcher would like to share with other teachers some useful recommendations when she practically applied VLS in her teaching environment It is believed that the experiences and lessons from the present study would be a great help for the future researchers to save time and conduct their research more effectively

As the conclusion of the whole research, this chapter will first review significant research findings that have been elaborated on in Chapter 4 Afterwards, it will pinpoint some limitations of the study, based on which suggestions for further studies will be offered

Firstly, by using both a VKS test and a semi-structured group interview, the researcher could go deeply into the problems that students had encountered in their independent learning vocabulary, namely lack of time devotion for learning words, teacher‘s indifference on teaching vocabulary, inappropriate dictionary utilization, insufficient output, lack of techniques for remembering, deficient knowledge of a word

Among these, the problem with techniques for remembering seemed to take the highest consideration and worry from students

Secondly, based on the results from the initial step (identifying the problems), the teacher- researcher conducted a teaching plan, in which she provided her students with four sub-memory strategies (grouping, associating, using imagery and placing a word into a context) These strategies were introduced and implemented through the activities designed both in the in-class handouts and at-home requirements At home, students were required to write down the diaries about their own ways they dealt with learning the given words by using four taught strategies After being collected and analyzed, the data got from these diaries revealed the interesting and happy results: All four strategies were given a comparatively equal concern from the students, among them ―using imagery‖ was the most popular used by students with the percentage of 29.4%, ―placing the word into a context‖ ranked the second, ―associating‖ stood at the third position and ―grouping‖ numbered the fourth The percentage difference was not so much among all four strategies

Thirdly, the research proved that applying the four memory strategies in teaching and learning vocabulary has improved students‘ vocabulary retention Although there was no control group to make a comparison; however, the consistent training during the scheme helped to prove the results from the tests The improvement that students displayed in the immediate post-test (post-test1) showed better storing of material in the short-term and delayed post-test which was the sign of better retrieval in the long-term retention The better performance has not only occurred with the whole group but with almost all members of the group as well (100% for short term retention and 89% for long term retention)

Finally, the findings from the questionnaire indicated students‘ positive attitudes towards the strategy training scheme in general and four memory strategies in particular

While all nine students could see the importance of the provision of learning strategies, eight students regarded the treatment as successful and effective, and seven students found it comfortable and being motivated when learning vocabulary using the given strategies

Besides, through the ideas perceived from the students, a list of suggested points about the future learning and teaching applying memory strategies was provided

From the findings in the research and the experience that the researcher has gained during the process of conducting the treatment, she has made some recommendations with other teachers and researchers who share the same interest in VLS like her The recommendations have included in it: knowledge needed for strategy training; many suggested activities for introducing and practicing four given strategies and other reminders for the colleagues

There must be a number of limitations discerned in the study due to the time constraints and the researcher‘s limited ability and experience

Limitations of the study

There must be a number of limitations discerned in the study due to the time constraints and the researcher‘s limited ability and experience

Initially, only nine students were involved throughout the time the research was conducted The number of nine was a so small figure to help the teacher generalize the results However, this limited sample size was compensated for the good attitudes and positive contribution of all students during the treatment

What is more, in order to identify the problems from students in their independent learning vocabulary, the researcher had conducted a group interview By this way, she could save time and create a friendly and free atmosphere for students to talk, discuss and share their own ideas However, as the certain limitation of a group-interview, there appeared the state of copying ideas from each other and sometimes lack of control from the teacher

In addition, the biggest limitation from this study can be the deficiency of a control group In case of a control group, the results got from the tests would be more persuasive and the way to deal with data would be easier for the teacher

Despite the shortcomings mentioned above, the effort of the researcher and the participants as well as serious work in data collection phases could assure the reliability and validity of the research.

Suggestions for further study

Other researchers who develop interest in the same topic may find the following recommendations useful for their future works

Firstly, further research should spread its range of participants The number of students in the sample can be increased or teacher can study on the participants who are at different levels at the same time to see how different they respond the strategies provided

Secondly, arranging another control group in the research will be a good idea for researchers if they do not want to add so many methods to ensure the validity and reliability of the study Having a control group will help the researcher feel more relaxing when dealing with data and the results gained from the tests will be more reliable

Thirdly, in the first phase of this study, identifying the problems, the researcher discovered many obstacles that students encountered when learning vocabulary However, due to the limitation of time for the study, the researcher just selected the biggest problem (lack of techniques to remember words) and made a plan to deal with it Thus, other researchers can entirely start their studies with other problems such as lack of time, teacher‘s indifference on teaching vocabulary, inappropriate dictionary utilization, insufficient output, lack of techniques for remembering, deficient knowledge of a word

Finally, a collaborative action research is a good idea for next studies dealing with this kind of issue The cooperation of other teachers as co-researchers may result in deeper investigation and more useful suggestions for the future application of teaching and learning

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APPENDIX 1: VOCABULARY TEACHING SCHEDULE APPENDIX 2: SCHMITT’S TAXONOMY OF VLS

APPENDIX 3: OXFORD’S TAXONOMY OF LLS APPENDIX 4: VKS TEST

APPENDIX 5: PRE-TEST/ POST-TEST 1/ POST-TEST 2 APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE

APPENDIX 7: SAMPLES IN-CLASS AND AT-HOME HANDOUTS APPENDIX 8: SAMPLE LEARNERS’ DIARIES

APPENDIX 9: SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES FOR EMPLOYING MEMORY

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 1

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 2

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 3

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 4

Diary discussion 1 Personnel: Job advertising and Recruiting

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 5

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 6

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 7

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 8

W e e k 6 11 Personnel: Promotions, Pensions and Awards

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 9

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 10

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 11

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 12

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 13

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 14

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 15

At home: Supplementary exercises Diary: Entry 16

Post-test 1 Week 13 added Post-test 2

APPENDIX 2: SCHMITT’S TAXONOMY OF VLS

Strategy Group Strategies for discovering the meaning of a new word DET Analyze part of speech

DET Analyze affixes and roots DET Check for L1 cognate DET Analyze any available pictures or gestures DET Guess from textual context

DET Bilingual dictionary DET Monolingual dictionaries DET Word lists

DET Flash cards SOC Ask teacher for L1 translation SOC Ask teacher for paraphrase or synonym of new word SOC Ask teacher for a sentence including the new word SOC Ask classmates for meaning

SOC Discover new meaning through group work activity Strategies for consolidating a word once it has been encountered SOC Study and practice meaning in a group

SOC Teacher checks students‘ flash cards word lists for accuracy SOC Interact with native-speakers

MEM Study word with a pictorial representation of its meaning MEM Image word‘s meaning

MEM Connect word to a personal experience MEM Associate the word with its coordinates MEM Connect the word to its synonyms and antonyms MEM Use semantic maps

MEM Use ‗scales‘ for gradable adjectives MEM Peg Method

MEM Loci Method MEM Group words together to study them

MEM Group words together spatially on a page MEM Use new word in sentences

MEM Group words together within a storyline MEM Study the spelling of a word

MEM Study the sound of a word MEM Say new word aloud when studying MEM Image word form

MEM Underline initial letter of the word MEM Configuration

MEM Use Key word Method MEM Affixes and roots MEM Part of speech MEM Paraphrase the word‘s meaning MEM Use cognates in study

MEM Learn the words of idiom together MEM Use physical action when learning a word MEM Use semantic feature grids

COG Verbal repetition COG Written repetition COG Word lists

COG Flash cards COG Take notes in class COG Use the vocabulary section in your textbook COG Listen to tape of word lists

COG Put English labels on physical objects COG Keep a vocabulary note book

MET Use English-language media (songs, movies, newscast, etc.) MET Testing oneself with word tests

MET Use spaced word practice MET Skip or pass new word MET Continue to study over time

APPENDIX 3: OXFORD’S TAXONOMY OF LLS

GROUP SUB- STRATEGIES GROUP SPECIFIC STRATEGIES

M E M O R Y S T R A T E G IE S 1 Creating mental linkage a Grouping b Associating/ Elaborating c Placing new words into a context

2 Applying images and sounds a Using imagery b Semantic mapping c Using keywords d Representing sounds in memory

4 Employing actions a Using physical response or sensation b Using mechanical techniques

1 Practicing a Repeating b Formally practicing with sounds and writing systems c Recognizing and using formulas and patterns d Recombining e Practicing naturalistically

2 Receiving and sending messages a Getting the idea quickly b Using resources for receiving and sending messages

3 Analyzing and reasoning a Reasoning deductively b Analyzing expressions c Analyzing contrastive across languages d Translating e Transferring

4 Creating structure for input and output a Notes-taking b Summarizing c Highlighting

1 Guessing intelligently a Using linguistic clues b Using other clues

2 Overcoming limitations in speaking and writing a Switching to the mother tongue b Getting help c Using mine and gesture d Avoiding communication partially or totally e Selecting the topic f Adjusting or approximating the message g Coining words h Using a circumlocution or synonym

1 Centering your learning a Overviewing and linking with already known material b Paying attention c Delaying speech

2 Arranging and planning your learning a Finding out about language learning b Organizing c Setting goals and objectives d Identifying the purpose of a language task e Planning for your task f Seeking practice opportunities

3 Evaluating your learning a Self- monitoring b Self- evaluating

1 Lowering your anxiety a Using progressive relaxation deep breathing or meditation b Using music c Using laughter

2 Encouraging yourself a Making positive statements b Taking risks wisely c Rewarding yourself

3 Taking your emotional temperature a Listening to your body b Using checklist c Writing a language learning diary d Discussing your feelings with someone else

1 Asking questions a Asking for clarification or verification b Asking for correction

2 Cooperating with others a Cooperating with peers b Cooperating with proficient users of the new language

3 Empathizing with others a Developing cultural understanding b Becoming aware of the others‘ thoughts and feelings

Look at the following list of words and give each word a number rating from 1 to 5 basing in how well you know the word

1 I don’t remember having seen this word before

2 I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means

3 I have seen this word before and I think it means…………

4 I know this word; it means …

5 I can use this word in a sentence, e.g………

(Adapted from Wesche M & Paribakht T.S (1996) ―Assessing Second Language Vocabulary Knowledge)

Fog (n) Freezing (adj) Humidity (n) Thunder (n) Breeze (n) Fear (n) Jealous (adj) Embarrassed (adj) Satisfaction (n) Whisper (v) Unconscious (adj) Diarrhea (n) Allergic (adj) Pharmacy (n) Prescription (n) Shutter (n) Elevator (n) Balcony (n) Landlord (n)

Fence (n) Fry (n) Appetizer(n) Reservation (n) Spicy (adj) Raw (adj) Promotion (n) Consumer (n) Competitively (adv) Mass production (n) Advertisement (n) Damage (v) Waste (n) Recycle (v) Conserve (v) Energy (n) Muscular (adj) Slim (adj) Scar (n) Overweight (adj) Curly hair (n phrase) Pessimistic (adj) Reliable (adj) Ambition (n) Flexible (adj) Sensible (adj) Extrovert (adj) Nuclear family Relatives (n) Great- grandfather (n) Widower (n)

APPENDIX 5: PRE-TEST/POST-TEST 1/POST-TEST 2

Look at the following list of words and give each word a number rating from 1 to 5 basing in how well you know the word

1 I don’t remember having seen this word before

2 I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means

3 I have seen this word before and I think it means…………

4 I know this word; it means …

5 I can use this word in a sentence, e.g………

W ord 1-5 English Synonym/ Vietnamese equivalence/

Assurance(n) Compare (v) Arrangement (n) Attend (v) Accommodate (v) Agreement (n) Substitute (v) Entrepreneur (n) Demonstrate (v) Consumer (n) Session (n) Eliminate (v) Recruit (v) Candidate (n) Qualifications (n) Abundant (adj) Generate (v) Look up to (v phrase) Mentor (n)

Compensate (v) Negotiate (v) Eligible (adj) Flexible (adj) Promotion (n) Dedication (n) Submit (v) Contribution (n) Bargain (v) Checkout (n) Mandatory (adj) Merchandise (v) Stationery (n) Diversify (v) Maintain (v) Charge (v) Discount (n) Estimate (v) Rectified (adj) Adjustment (n) Automatic (adj) Mortgage (n) Deduct (v) Invest (v) Fund (n) Return(v) Debt (n) Accumulate (v) Budget (n) Client (n) Reconcile (v)

Look at the following list of words and give each word a number rating from 1 to 5 basing in how well you know the word

1 I don’t remember having seen this word before

2 I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means

3 I have seen this word before and I think it means…………

4 I know this word; it means …

5 I can use this word in a sentence, e.g………

Complete the last column in the table by making clear which stragies did you use to learn that word:

Gr for ―grouping‖/ As for ―associating‖/ Im for ―using imagery‖/ Pl for ―Placing the word into a context‖ and No for ―other strategies‖ or ―no strategies given‖

Demonstrate (v) Compare (v) Recruit (v) Attend (v) Accommodate (v) Assurance(n) Substitute (v) Entrepreneur (n) Agreement (n) Consumer (n) Session (n) Arrangement (n) Eliminate (v) Candidate (n) Dedication (n) Abundant (adj)

Generate (v) Look up to (v phrase) Qualifications (n) Mentor (n) Negotiate (v) Eligible (adj) Flexible (adj) Promotion (n) Compensate (v) Submit (v) Merchandise (v) Bargain (v) Checkout (n) Contribution (n) Mandatory (adj) Stationery (n) Diversify (v) Rectified (adj) Charge (v) Discount (n) Estimate (v) Maintain (v) Adjustment (n) Automatic (adj) Mortgage (n) Deduct (v) Invest (v) Fund (n) Reconcile (v) Debt (n) Return(v) Budget (n) Client (n) Accumulate (v)

Look at the following list of words and give each word a number rating from 1 to 5 basing in how well you know the word

1 I don’t remember having seen this word before

2 I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means

3 I have seen this word before and I think it means…………

4 I know this word; it means …

5 I can use this word in a sentence, e.g………

English word 1-5 English Synonym/ Vietnamese equivalence/

Demonstrate (v) Compare (v) Recruit (v) Attend (v) Accommodate (v) Assurance(n) Substitute (v) Entrepreneur (n) Agreement (n) Consumer (n) Session (n) Arrangement (n) Eliminate (v) Candidate (n) Dedication (n) Abundant (adj) Generate (v) Look up to (v phrase) Qualifications (n) Mentor (n)

Negotiate (v) Eligible (adj) Flexible (adj) Promotion (n) Compensate (v) Submit (v) Merchandise (v) Bargain (v) Checkout (n) Contribution (n) Mandatory (adj) Stationery (n) Diversify (v) Rectified (adj) Charge (v) Discount (n) Estimate (v) Maintain (v) Adjustment (n) Automatic (adj) Mortgage (n) Deduct (v) Invest (v) Fund (n) Reconcile (v) Debt (n) Return(v) Budget (n) Client (n) Accumulate (v)

This survey questionnaire is designed for my thesis “Improving English Vocabulary Retention by using Memory Strategies- An Action Research”

It is highly appreciated if you could spend your little time completing truthfully the questionnaire All the information provided by you is solely for the study purpose, and you can be confident that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

Please tick (), circle or write the answer where necessary

I Attitudes towards the strategy training scheme

1 How would you rate the training scheme for its importance? (Circle the number from

2 How would you rate the training scheme for its effectiveness? (Circle the number from

3 How would you rate the training scheme for its pleasure? (Circle the number from 1 to

II Attitudes towards the four sub-memory strategies

4 Rank these four sub- memory strategies according to your interest (1= least interested and 4=most interested) Write the appropriate number in the box provided

 Placing the words into the context

III Students’ expectations of vocabulary learning strategy training

5 Tick the column with the heading that best summarizes your reaction to each statement:

No Statements Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree

1 Students should be encouraged to use memory strategies more frequently

2 The teacher should give more activities to help students practice these memory strategies (both in class and at home)

3 Introductions to memory strategies should be explained more clearly and understandably

4 Students should be introduced more sub- memory strategies

5 Memory strategies should be combined with other vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) to bring more effectiveness

6 Memory strategies should be applied to teaching and learning the other language skills

Are you willing to take part in an interview later if some given information needs clarifying? Yes No

Thank you for your time and cooperation!

APPENDIX 7: SAMPLES OF IN-CLASS & AT-HOME

HANDOUTS Unit 1: GENERAL BUSINESS PART 2: MARKETING Ex.1.The story behind the pictures

First, complete the following paragraph with suitable words from the box You can use your dictionary (if necessary)

Now, without referring to the above story, look at these following pictures and words given under them to retell the story

Ex.1 Complete the following sentences with the correct forms of the words given

- She the price before she made a decision

- There was no in the quality of two brands

- To get an average for home costs, the agent sought prices on _homes

- The store’s poor location did not help it _customers

- Having a clown in the toy store was a foolproof _for getting kids to enter

- Lou ran his store on an old- fashioned premise, quality merchandised at _prices

- Try to think of yourself as someone who leads the

- We _against three or four other agencies to get this contract

- His _character made him quite successful in his department

- The analysist was able to new information quickly

- The government tracks _spending closely

- He ran a study of the use of goods

- Our highest priority is customer _

- Henry was perfectly _with his new fishing rod

- The rods were not in _condition

Ex.2 Choose the word that best completes the sentence

Find out your own way to learn these words using one of four memory strategies: grouping, using imagery, associating, or placing a word into a context

UNIT 2: PERSONNEL PART 5: PROMOTIONS, PENSIONS & AWARDS

A Read these two following letters, and discuss with your partners:

1 Who sent the two letters?

2 Who received the two letters?

3 What was the purpose of each letter?

We are pleased to inform you of your promotion within our company Starting the first of next month, you will begin in your new position as manager of the Fulfillment Department

During your years as a member of the Fulfillment Department staff, you have made many contributions to the productivity and smooth operation of the department We have always valued your dedication to your job, and now we are pleased to be able to recognize your hard work and fine skills with this promotion We know you will do a wonderful job The personnel Department will contact you soon regarding the changes in your salary and benefits We are looking forward to welcoming you to your new position next month

B Look at the underlined words in the above letters Listen to your teacher’s explanation about the link between each word and the picture next to it and note down in your paper

Promotion A ladder helps you to get higher position

Promotion means you get higher in your job

Promotion = a ladder in your job