Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS problems faced by the first year students at thanhhoa college of culture and arts in developing vocabulary for speaking in different subject areas

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - NGUYEN THI HA MY M.A MINOR THESIS Problems faced by the first-year students at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts in developing vocabulary for speaking in different subject areas (Những vấn đề sinh viên năm thứ Trường Cao đẳng Văn hóa Nghệ thuật Thanh Hóa gặp phải việc phát triển từ vựng để nói chủ điểm khác nhau) Field: Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - NGUYEN THI HA MY M.A MINOR THESIS Problems faced by the first-year students at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts in developing vocabulary for speaking in different subject areas (Những vấn đề sinh viên năm thứ Trường Cao đẳng Văn hóa Nghệ thuật Thanh Hóa gặp phải việc phát triển từ vựng để nói chủ điểm khác nhau) Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Nguyen Bang, M.A Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii Abstract The importance of vocabulary is undeniable in language learning Therefore, understanding the difficulties faced by students in learning vocabulary is apparently necessary to gain effective learning This minor thesis was carried out with an attempt to investigate the difficulties and obstacles that the first year students at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts (THCCA) have faced when learning English vocabulary It first described the issues which prompted the study It then reviewed the literature relevant to the topic of research which served as a theoretical framework for the study The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews From that the findings emphasized the problems influencing on the learners’ vocabulary development In addition, based on the findings, some solutions were suggested to improve the quality of learning English vocabulary in speaking sections at THCCA LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv List of abbreviations Clt: Communicative Language Teaching THCCA: Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts ESP: English for Specific Purposes LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v List of tables Table 1: Criteria for selection Table 2: Students’ purposes of learning English Table 3: Students’ opinions about learning vocabulary for developing speaking skills Table 4: Teachers’ effectiveness method of teaching vocabulary Table 5: Students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary in speaking skills Table 6: Students’ opinions about the effectiveness of teaching vocabulary in speaking lessons List of Charts Chart 1: Students' habit in speaking English Chart 2: Ss' attitudes towards the importance of speaking skills Chart 3: Ss' opinions about the vocabulary introduced in speaking topics in the course book LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi Table of contents Page Declaration i Acknowledgement ii Abstract iii List of abbreviations iv Table of contents v Part A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Method of the study Design of the study Part B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Speaking skills 1.1.1 Concept of speaking 1.1.2 Characteristics of speaking 1.1.3 The role of speaking in language teaching and learning 1.2 Vocabulary and its role in language teaching and learning 1.2.1 Definition of vocabulary 1.2.2 Classification of vocabulary 1.2.3 The role of vocabulary in language teaching and learning 11 1.2.4 Criteria for selection to teach vocabulary 12 1.3 Methodology in vocabulary teaching 13 1.3.1 The Grammar-translation Method 13 1.3.2 The Direct Method 13 1.3.3 The Audio-lingual Method 14 1.3.4 The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 15 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii 1.4 The role of vocabulary in speaking skills 15 1.5 Summary 16 CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 17 2.1 Research setting 17 2.1.1 An overview of the research site 17 2.1.2 The current situation of English teaching and learning at THCCA 17 2.1.2.1 Description of the teachers of English in THCCA 2.1.2.2 Description of the students at THCCA 2.1.2.3 The learning materials 18 2.1.3 Objectives of Basic English at the THCCA 18 2.1.4 The learning of English vocabulary at THCCA 19 2.2 Methodology 19 2.2.1 Participants 19 2.2.2 Research instruments 19 2.3 Summary 20 CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21 3.1 Data analysis and discussion from the finding 21 3.1.1 The reality of learning vocabulary and speaking skills at THCCA 21 3.1.2 Difficulties that the first year students have faced with in learning vocabulary in speaking skills 28 3.1.3 The solutions to the improvement of learning vocabulary in speaking skills at THCCA 29 3.2 Summary 30 CHAPTER IV: FINDING AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS FOR BETTER LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY 32 4.1 Findings 32 4.2 Suggested solutions 33 4.3 Summary 35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com viii III Conclusion 36 Conclusion 36 Limitation of the study 36 Suggestions for further studies 37 REFERENCE 38 Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire i Appendix 2: Interview iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale In Vietnam, the teaching and learning of English have recently gained significance firstly because it is an international language; secondly it is also seen as a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Vietnam and other countries, especially since Vietnam has became an official member of WTO It has an increasing number of people desiring to know English with the hope of keeping up with the latest modern technology in the world English has now been taught at all universities and colleges, and it is considered as a compulsory subject at secondary school Being a teacher of THCCA, the researcher found that one of the main reasons why students are not positive in English is that they not have adequate vocabulary Therefore, the author to carry out a research on “Problems faced by the first-year students at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts in developing vocabulary for speaking in different subject areas” Aims of the study This study aims at finding out the difficulties that the first year students at THCCA have faced with in learning vocabulary for speaking skills Research questions To achieve the objectives of the study, the following questions were raised: What is the reality of learning vocabulary in speaking skills at THCCA? What difficulties have the first year students at THCCA faced with in developing vocabulary for speaking skills? What techniques should be applied to improve vocabulary learning for speaking skills? Scope of the study LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The study is limited to the area of learning vocabulary in the current learning materials for the first year students at THCCA This minor thesis deals with the common problems which students have met, and basing on these problems, some effective and feasible solutions will be provided Methodology In order to find out the answers to the research questions, this study is to be conducted as a descriptive study that utilizes both quantitative and qualitative approaches Design of the study This study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Speaking skills 1.1.1 Concept of speaking Of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking plays a vital role since it is the step to identify who knows or does not know a language Pattison (1992) confirms that when people know or learn a language, they mean being able to speak the language The nature of speaking has been discussed by many scholars According to Brown, G and Yule, G (1983), spoken language consists of short, fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation They also point out that in speaking the loosely- organized syntax, and non- specific words and phrases are used 1.1.2 Characteristics of speaking In Bygate’s opinion, there are two kinds of routines Information routines may be described to involve two sub-routines: expository and evaluation Interaction routines are routines based not so much on sequences of kinds of terms occurring in typical kinds of interactions 1.1.3 The role of speaking in language teaching and learning In language teaching and learning, speaking has an important part to play It is a medium through which much language is learnt, and which is particularly useful for learning LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com About the role of speaking, Bygate (1987: vii) points out that “It is the vehicle of social solidarity, of social ranking, of professional advancement and of business” 1.2 Vocabulary and its role in language teaching and learning 1.2.1 Definition of vocabulary Ur, P (1996:75) defines vocabulary as the words we teach in the foreign language The author also emphasizes that a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word; for example, post office and sister-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea There are also multi-word idioms such as call it a day, where the meaning of the phrase cannot be deduced from an analysis of the component words Therefore, a useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words” 1.2.2 Classification of vocabulary There have been different ways to classify vocabulary according to different criteria (i) In terms of the concept of morpheme (ii) In terms of the meaning (iii) In terms of the function of vocabulary items in a sentence (iv) In terms of the use of word 1.2.3 The role of vocabulary in language teaching and learning “Vocabulary is one of the three dimensions of a language (phonetics, grammar, vocabulary) Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” (Wilkins,1972:111) The statement indicates the great importance of vocabulary Since vocabulary is so important, teaching and learning vocabulary should be paid much attention to 1.2.4 Criteria for selection to teach vocabulary Criteria Frequency Order of importance Definition Average number of occurrences of a word in a language Range A measure of the different types of texts in which a word occurs Language needs The words that are regarded as 'require' by the learner in order to communicate LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Availability and familiarity Coverage The word the learner is mostly in contact with and somehow ' know' the capacity of a word to take the place of other words Regularity How is the use of a word 'spread' over the language Learnability Are some words easier to learn than other Table 1: Criteria for selection (from the website: http://www.uclm.es/ab/educacion/ensayos/pdf/revista10/10_6.pdf) 1.3 Methodology in vocabulary teaching 1.3.1 The Grammar- translation Method In this method, the teachers' role is to explain grammatical rules, and the list of vocabulary and its meaning in Vietnamese to help students to the written exercise in grammatical analysis, not the exercises in the context of text This method can be classified as mental discipline and is easy to apply and simple to test and to control 1.3.2 The Direct Method This method requires no translation between first and second language, little or no analysis of grammatical rules Besides, it lays an emphasis on correct pronunciation and grammar 1.3.3 The Audio-lingual Method There are two of the main activities of the Audio-lingual Method that are dialogue repetition and memorization, and substitution drilling The dialogues are often little more than vehicles for pronunciation practice with a few contextualized models of the new structure 1.3.4 The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) In this approach, vocabulary will be learnt through communication, through interaction in the target language and through enhancement of the learner's own experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning and through an attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom 1.4 The role of vocabulary in speaking skills English is used as a communicative tool between two or more people who come from the different countries so the use of English will require much vocabulary Needless to say, a person who has much vocabulary will find it easier to master English than any other person LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com who does not With much vocabulary people can also be more proficient in communication, because they not need to be worried when selecting the words that will be used in conversation From this, we can say vocabulary and communicative ability are highly correlated 1.5 Summary In this chapter, a brief description of the theoretical knowledge relating to the study was provided Chapter II: THE STUDY This chapter starts by describing the situation where the study is conducted It includes an overview of THCCA, the teachers of English, the students, the textbooks, the current teaching and learning situation The subjects and the method of data collection are also discussed in details At the end of the chapter there will be the analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaires and interviews that will be expressed as a percentage in the form of tables Chapter III: Data analysis and Discussion 3.1 Data analysis and discussion from the findings 3.1.1 The reality of learning vocabulary and speaking skills at THCCA  Students’ attitudes towards learning English Question 1: What are your purposes of learning English? From the results, it could be seen that most students were not willing to acquire English They learnt it for academic purpose Therefore, the teachers should promote students’ awareness of learning English not only for study, but also for their future  Students’ attitudes towards speaking skills Question 2: What language(s) you often use in English lessons? From the results, the habit of using the mother-tongue during English lessons has been a big obstacle for students in using vocabulary for speaking skills development It prevented them from using it to communicate outside the classroom  Students’ attitudes towards the importance of vocabulary in speaking skills LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Question 3: What you think of the importance of vocabulary in speaking skills? From the results, the students have highly evaluated the necessity of vocabulary for developing speaking skills Therefore, the teachers should create more teaching vocabulary activities and provide opportunities for students to practice speaking appropriately  Students’ opinions about learning vocabulary for developing speaking skills From the results, one could see some reasons which leading to the poor English communicative competence of the students Therefore, teachers needed to provide the students with opportunities to use vocabulary in the relevant topics and give students as much extra materials to read as possible, for example magazines, short stories and poetry with interesting topics that were appropriate to the level of the students  Students’ opinions about vocabulary in speaking topics in the course book Question 8: What you think of the vocabulary introduced in speaking topics in the course book “Lifeline-Elementary”? According to the results, students had different ideas on the topics provided in this course book In summary, this course book met the students’ demand and it was suitable to their level  Teachers’ current techniques in the students’ opinion Question 9: Please evaluate the effectiveness of teachers’ vocabulary presentation through the activities in class Students had some different attitudes towards the effectiveness of teachers’ vocabulary presentation through some specific teaching activities Most of the students thought that the speaking skills were difficult, so their teachers, sometimes, could make class atmosphere more relaxed by language games, activities, songs, role- plays after speaking It could be seen that most students really needed the encouragement from their teachers for their confidence, especially in speaking English 3.1.2 Difficulties students have faced with in learning vocabulary in speaking skills  Students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary in speaking skills The results proved that most students were confused about the uses of words and words order when learning vocabulary, one of the big problems with vocabulary learning was the retention It also implied that they had faced with pronunciation when using new words in LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com speaking skills Students found that it is difficult to distinguish between meanings of words from dictionary and those from context and thay alsocommented that they were often confused about the use of words A high percentage of the students commented that they did not have a habit of speaking English so that it was more difficult to use vocabulary appropriately 3.1.3.The solutions to the improvement of learning vocabulary in speaking skills at THCCA  The students’ opinions about the effectiveness and the solutions to improve learning vocabulary in speaking lessons The result of this question reflected that most students expected their teachers to set up speaking habits in the classroom, and encourage them to be confident when they speak English, teachers regularly gave vocabulary related to speaking topics and created a relaxed atmosphere in classroom 3.2 Summary This chapter has presented the data analysis to find out the answers to the research questions Chapter IV: Findings and suggested solutions FOR better learning English vocabulary 4.1 Findings The students’ low English proficiency was one of the major factors that prevented them from using English for communication Some difficulties the first year students had faced with in vocabulary learning were found: being confused the meaning of words, students often misunderstood between meaning of words from dictionary and those from context Secondly, students had faced with the problems of words order in sentences and utterances Thirdly, one of the biggest problems with vocabulary learning is that what has ‘learned’ today is often forgotten tomorrow The main reason was due to the lack of concentration on their teachers’ presentation of vocabulary 4.2 Suggested solutions LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Here are some suggestions to the first year students of THCCA in learning vocabulary The students should set up speaking habits It means that they should use English during the English lessons Students should pay more attention to the content of the topics and the teachers’ presentation In order to have a rich vocabulary, students should learn how to use a dictionary to look up the meaning and pronunciation of words and use a thesaurus to find synonyms for common words students should spend more time reading and building up sentences with words In order to avoid the influence of Vietnamese thinking students should take part in the extra activities in English In order to help the first year students to develop vocabulary for speaking skills students should enrich their vocabulary by learning collocation How can a teacher help students enlarge their vocabulary? Teachers can first help by raising students’ awareness of the importance of vocabulary learning and expansion Second, teachers can help students enrich their vocabulary by teaching words in context Moreover, teachers can promote students’ vocabulary learning and expansion by teaching words in relation to other words One more thing that teachers can to help their students to widen their vocabulary is to train them in dictionary using skills Teachers can spend some of their class time showing students how to use the dictionary they have recommended In order to develop vocabulary for the first year students in speaking skills some teaching techniques should be applied, of which the most important were using pictures or visual aids, creating a relaxed atmosphere, giving vocabulary related to speaking topics, encouraging students to be confident when they speak English and encouraging them to employ words, etc Furthermore, teachers should give students some extra materials, encourage students to read short stories or watch proper TV channels in English to enrich their vocabulary so that they can practice more than what provided in the textbook 4.3 Summary In this chapter, some major findings based on the data analysis of the study at THCCA context have been presented It has led to a conclusion that there were many difficulties LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 10 that the students have faced when learning English vocabulary for speaking skills In order to develop learning English vocabulary for speaking skills more completely, some solutions were suggested Part C Conclusion This study has achieved its second objective of measuring improvements in students’ vocabularies and matching them to suitable targets Students finishing the program have acquired sufficient knowledge of lexical items to comprehend different types of texts However, there was a limited degree of success in the first objective which was to look for evidence of improvements in the students’ usage of vocabulary learning strategies that occurs as the course progresses But the research clearly helped to define key areas for further actions Summary of the study With the hope of finding the way to develop learning vocabulary for speaking skills to the first year students at THCCA, this study has been carried out This study aimed at finding some common problems faced by students at THCCA in learning vocabulary for speaking skills and then offers some suggestions to overcome those problems Limitations of the study Despite of the unavoidable limitations, the researcher believes that this study will be beneficial in developing vocabulary for speaking skills of the first year students at THCCA Suggestions for further studies There are some suggestions for further researches: - A study on the problems in teaching vocabulary to the second year students in Faculty of Tourism at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts - A study on techniques and activities in teaching vocabulary to the second year students which help them improve their Reading and Writing skills The author hopes that the further studies will overcome all the existing limitations of this study and help to improve the quality of the teaching and learning English at THCCA particular and at other colleges or universities in Thanh Hoa in general LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ... vocabulary for speaking in different subject areas? ?? Aims of the study This study aims at finding out the difficulties that the first year students at THCCA have faced with in learning vocabulary for speaking. .. is that they not have adequate vocabulary Therefore, the author to carry out a research on ? ?Problems faced by the first- year students at Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Arts in developing vocabulary. .. have the first year students at THCCA faced with in developing vocabulary for speaking skills? What techniques should be applied to improve vocabulary learning for speaking skills? Scope of the