VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* VŨ THỊ HUẾ AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ON USING A SOCIAL NETWOR[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* ********************* VŨ THỊ HUẾ VŨ THỊ HUẾ AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ON USING SOCIAL NETWORKING AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ON USING A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE TO IMPROVE THE TENTH GRADE AT AVOCABULARY HIGH SCHOOL INAT NAM DINH PROVINCE STUDENTS’ A HIGH SCHOOL IN NAM DINH PROVINCE SITE TO IMPROVE THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY (Nghiên cứu cải tiến sư phạm việc sử dụng mạng xã hội để cải thiện từ (Nghiên cứu cải tiến sư phạm việc sử dụng mạng xã hội vựng học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT tỉnh Nam Định) để cải thiện từ vựng học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT tỉnh Nam Định) M.A PROGRAMME THESIS M.A PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 16045220 HANOI – 2018 HANOI – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* VŨ THỊ HUẾ AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ON USING SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE TO IMPROVE THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN NAM DINH PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu cải tiến sư phạm việc sử dụng mạng xã hội để cải thiện từ vựng học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT tỉnh Nam Định) M.A PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Supervisor: Nguyen Thu Hanh, Ph.D HANOI – 2019 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis, which I submit to University of Languages and International Studies, is my own personal effort I have faithfully and accurately cited all my sources, including books, journals, handouts as well as any other media, such as the Internet, letters or significant personal communication I declare that I understood the concept of plagiarism and I acknowledge my thesis will be rejected in case of plagiarism i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to thank many people who made this dissertation possible I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Ms Nguyen Thu Hanh for her valuable guidance, precious advice, and constructive criticism I thank her for her understanding and encouragement I wish to address my sincere thanks to the head of English division of University of Languages and International Studies, Viet Nam National University I owe my thanks also to all the teachers who have accepted to fill in the interview, and special thanks are due to the students of grade 10 students in my school for their time to fill in the questionnaires, answer the interview and the tests ii ABSTRACT In the context of Vietnam, most high school students only study English in traditional classrooms However, with the development of technology, using social networking sites, especially Facebook, may be a new trend in coming years With the deep concerns about this situation, the researcher conducted a study titled “An action research study on using social networking site to improve the tenth grade students’ vocabulary at a high school in Nam Dinh province” This study was an action research project which was carried out to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge by using a social networking site: Facebook The main purpose of this study was to find out the influence of Facebook on students’ learning vocabulary process The participants were 94 students in grade 10 To collect the data for this research, quantitative and qualitative method were used Questionnaires, interviews and tests were employed to triangulate the information from various aspects to ensure the validity and reliability of the research The results showed that students’ scores improved after they joined in the research Additionally, Facebook also motivated the students to study not only at school but also at home In short, Facebook had a positive influence on the students’ learning vocabulary process so that the students felt interested in learning English vocabulary Basing on these findings, some suggestions for using of Facebook to teach English were mentioned in the paper Therefore, the paper would be a good reference for researchers, teachers and students to have a closer look on the issue and enhance students’ vocabulary knowledge Key words: vocabulary, social networking sites, Facebook, English vocabulary iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Steps of teaching English vocabulary ( Marzano, 2004) Figure 2: Five essential steps of learning new words (Brown and Payne, 1995) Figure 3: A Facebook personal site Figure 4: Action research steps adapted by Susman (1983) Figure 5: An online lesson Figure 6: Data collection procedure Figure 7: Data from questionnaire and test analysis procedure Figure 8: Data from interview analysis procedure Figure 9: Students’ reasons for learning English vocabulary Figure 10: Students’ learning means Figure 11: The amount of vocabulary learnt in a week Figure 12: Students’ purposes for using Facebook Figure 13: Students’ attitudes towards learning on Facebook Figure 14: Students’ test score improvement Figure 15: Diagnostic test result Figure 16: Final achievement test result Figure 17: Test results Figure 18: An exercise to revise student vocabulary learning iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language FL: Foreign Language L1: First Language SNSs: Social Networking Sites LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Classification of the items in the two questionnaires Table 2: Classification of the items in the semester tests Table 3: Classification of the items in the pre- test and post- test Table 4: Classification of the items in the interview questions Table 5: Vocabulary delivered to students through Facebook Table 6: Students’ studying places Table 7: Table 8: Students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the beginning of the research Students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the end of the research Table 9: Places for students to study English vocabulary Table 10: Advantages of using Facebook for educational purposes Table 11: Disadvantages of using Facebook for educational purposes v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION…………………………………………………………… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………… ii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………… iii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………… iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………… v LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………… v TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………… vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………… 1 Rationale of study………………………………………………………… Aims and objectives of the study………………………………………… Research questions………………………………………………………… Scope of the research……………………………………………………… Significance of the study…………………………………………………… Hypotheses………………………………………………………………… Research methodology…………………………………………………… Structural organization of the study……………………………………… CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND……………………… Overall view of English vocabulary……………………………………… 1.1 Definition of English vocabulary……………………………………………… vi 1.2 Types of English vocabulary…………………………………………………… 1.3 The importance of vocabulary in learning a language…………………… Teaching and learning English vocabulary………………………………… 2.1 Teaching English vocabulary………………………………………………… 2.1.1 Principles of teaching vocabulary………………………………………… 2.1.2 Steps of teaching vocabulary……………………………………………… 10 2.2 Learning English vocabulary………………………………………………… 12 2.2.1 Principles of learning vocabulary……………………………………… 12 2.2.2 Steps of learning vocabulary…………………………………………… 12 2.3 Problems in teaching and learning English vocabulary………………… 15 Facebook as a social networking site……………………………………… 17 3.1 Definition of Facebook……………………………………….……………… 17 3.2 Advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook for educational purposes………………………………………………………………………… 18 3.2.1 Advantages of using Facebook as an educational tool…………… 19 3.2.2 Disadvantages of using Facebook as an educational tool 20 Previous studies………………………………………………………… 21 4.1 Previous studies overseas…………………………………………………… 21 4.2 Previous studies in Vietnam………………………………………………… 23 Summary……………………………………………………………………… 23 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY………………………… 25 Design of the study………………………………………………………… 25 1.1 Action research……………………………………………………………… 25 1.2 Mixed methods………………………………………………………………… 27 vii were unable to observe themselves The interview consisted of some questions related to the activities and pros and cons of the program Besides, the interview was intended to reveal the students’ point of view about using Facebook as a learning tool to improve their vocabulary knowledge Three students were randomly selected to join in the interview The type of the interview used was semi- structured interview with open- ended questions Semi- structured interviewed was chosen because the interviewer could expound the topics by modifying the questions so that interviewees could catch the meaning easier; moreover, the interviewer could ask the participants to elaborate the answers The elaboration of the answers would add to the richness, the depth of the response, comprehensiveness and honesty Additionally, the open- ended questions were selected for giving the interviewees a determination to answer the questions in their own ways The instruments were conducted based on research questions Firstly, the researcher found the indicators of each questions then made the question(S) for each indicator Each indicator may have one or more questions Research question Indicator Items number (1) To what extent does - Students’ changes of their English 1, , 3, using vocabulary learning habit 4, Facebook students’ affect English vocabulary learning? - Students’ perception of ease and difficulty of using Facebook as a learning tool - The usefulness of Facebook as an educational tool 33 (2) What are the students’ - Students’ attitude towards the use of attitudes Facebook to learn vocabulary towards the 6,7 deployment of Facebook in teaching and learning English vocabulary? Table Classification of the interview questions Data collection procedure Stage Problem identification The action research was carried out with the aim of finding the effectiveness of using Facebook as a learning tool for students to acquire vocabulary knowledge Traditionally, vocabulary was given to students by learning four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing Since vocabulary was not separately taught in class, time for learning words in class was limited For example, each skill lesson contained forty five minutes; therefore, it took only about five to ten minutes for about seven words every lesson to develop students’ vocabulary These words were not recycled or reviewed in the latter exercises or latter lessons As a result, students’ vocabulary knowledge was superficial After identifying the problems, the researcher decided to use Facebook as an additional tool for the students to acquire their vocabulary outside the classroom It could aid students to have more time for vocabulary acquisition Stage Action planning The researcher started to prepare materials for the study A pre test and the first questionnaire were carefully planned After that, the researcher thought of designing online lessons so that they could be attractive and informative The lessons could include pictures, videos, posts, live streaming or quizzes The lessons were based on the lessons in the students’ textbook Besides, the researcher created a Facebook page for the students to follow her posts 34 Stage Action All the ninety four students of classes in grade 10 of this high school were invited to participate in the study • The first week The researcher visited these students in the first week of the second semester then explained the purpose of the study, asking them to join in the study and all of them agreed to join in The first questionnaire was delivered to all the students and collected on that first meeting day The first diagnostic test was also taken by all the 94 students in the first week Then the teacher invited all the students to like the Facebook page at which the students could learn the vocabulary online so that they can closely follow the teachers’ daily posts • From the second week to the eighth week From the second week, the students were given excellent chance to study vocabulary twice: once in traditional classrooms and once on Facebook Besides, some additional words as well as their pronunciations, meanings, grammatical functions and collocations were introduced in the online lessons so that the students could enlarge their essential vocabulary knowledge The online lessons were posted four to five times a week (often on Tuesdays, on Thursdays, on Saturdays, on Sunday and sometimes on Fridays) at about p.m so that the students could easily follow the posts Exercises or games for revision purposes would be posted on Facebook every day The lessons could be conveyed to the students by many ways: using pictures, posting on the Facebook wall, live streaming or uploading video clips, which depended on the purposes of each lesson There were 40 words taught in a week, which included the words in the students’ textbook and some extra idioms and phrasal verbs The teacher depended on the school curriculum to decide which words should be taught In this 35 situation, when the researcher started to carry out the study, the students began to learn Unit in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” The online lessons were designed to be suitable with the lessons in offline classes Figure below describes an example of an online lesson on Facebook which provided students some phrasal verbs in week Figure An online lesson The lessons continuously appeared on the Facebook page in the entire weeks; therefore, researcher had enough time to identify the change in their lexical knowledge The vocabulary delivered to all students is summarized as the table follows: 36 UNIT WEEK VOCABULARY IN THE TEXTBOOK IDIOMS AND PHARSAL VERBS Undersea, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, under the weather, to count Indian Ocean, Antarctic, Antarctic Ocean, on, now and then, keep Arctic Ocean, gulf, altogether, percent, house, make sure of, come percentage, surface, century, mystery, up with, come into mysterious, beneath, depth , submarine, investigate, UNIT EXTRA seabed, sample, marine, satellite, range, include, consist of, bottom, starfish, shark, depend on, current, carry along, constant UNDERSEA WORLD Protect, pollute, polluted, pollution, few and far between, to pollutants, species, threaten, limit, look over, all of a sudden, unlimited, limited, dangerous, in good shape, put out, put endangered, fertilize, herbicides, on, put up, put off, make a pesticides, harm, harmful, release, mess, make an effort, make mammal, krill, migrate, migration, a progress, make trouble conserve, conservation, measure, bear, accidental Species, eliminate, elimination, medicine, cancer, destroy, destruction, constant, crop, power, conserve, conservation, preserve, preservation, run off, valuable, frequent, dry, threaten, pass, damage, appear, disappear, defend, international , stimuli, cover UNIT 10 CONSERVATION Imprison, reconstruct, in the pink, to be in love, in command, in time, catch a cold, catch a chill, catch a sight of, catch sb’s eyes, break a promise, break a habit, break the law, break a record, break the ice, break a neck sensitive, endangered, reconstruction, to go on, to have (time) off, policy, put up with, , make up with environment, risky, injure, injured, kill, ,make way for, make up, forest, campfire, valuable, forester, awful, look forward to, look up to, abundant, look after, look through, vehicle, maintain, scenic, encourage, discourage, impact, eliminate look at, for better or for worst, good for nothing, go ahead, god knows, go for it, 37 be mix up UNIT 11 NATIONAL PARK Locate, establish, contain, rain forest, take care of, independent cave, upon, to make sure, keep recognize, dependent, survival, feature, orphanage, zone, suitable, rare house, animal, recreation, result, result from, about, be over, get over, get devastate, preserve, preservation, capture, into, come across, come contribute , rainy, various, circulate into, break down Excursion, pagoda, poisoning, carsick, few and far between, flora, attack, ethnic minority, fauna, off, tell on, tell apart, tell enemy, sub- tropical, temperature zone, from, take advantage, take population, contamination, leave of, take notice of ,take interfere, interference, chemical, infinite, over, take after take care of, finite, exhausted, ,take off turn on, turn round, toxic, be mixed up, see tell turn up, turn off, turn down, , come across, bring about, bring up, bring in REVISION All the words taught from week to week Table Vocabulary delivered to students through Facebook • The last week The last step of stage took place at the 9th week of the second semester At the beginning of this week, the second questionnaire was administered to all the students to get the information about their changes in vocabulary knowledge, learning habits and learning attitude towards acquiring new words In addition, a final achievement test was prepared for all 94 students The thirty minute test included both subjective and objective questions The steps to the third stage are summed up as follows: 38 Week 1: The students did the first questionnaire + diagnostic test → researcher analyzed the results Week and week 3: The researcher gave the students vocabulary in UNIT - Tieng Anh 10 ( Topic: Undersea world) and some extra idioms and phrasal verbs Week and week 5:The researcher gave the students vocabulary in UNIT 10- Tieng Anh 10 ( Topic: Coservation) and some extra idioms and phrasal verbs Week and week 7: The researcher gave the students vocabulary in UNIT 11- Tieng Anh 10 ( Topic: National Parks) and some extra idioms and phrasal verbs Week 8:The researcher revised the vocabulary from week to week Week 9: The students did the second questionnaire + final achievement test→ The researcher analyzed the results Figure Data collection procedure Stage Evaluating After the execution of the planned action at the organization level, the next step of this action research was to evaluate the intervention’s outcomes and see how successful the implemented intervention had been The researcher analyzed the data collected and then gave evaluation of the research The data included the 39 results of the two questionnaires, two tests and interview The findings and discussion will be deeply understood in chapter 3: “Findings and discussion” Stage Specifying learning The last stage was done after the researcher analyzed the data In this last stage of the action research, the researcher dealt with the overall learning achieved during the research journey The knowledge accrued through such field work intervention will be helpful in providing new directions to the future researchers and the action research community at large Additionally, the researcher also pointed out the limitations of the study so that the other researchers who plan to work on this field would improve these weaknesses Data analysis method Questionnaires, tests and interview notes were used for analysis as primary source of data To analyze the results, quantitative and qualitative methods were applied 6.1 Quantitative Analysis Strategy Prepare data Report statistics Visualize data Figure Data from questionnaire and test analysis procedure Step Prepare the data Some essential elements needed checking included the completeness of the collected questionnaires and test results, the consistence of each questions as well as the given answers, and the understandability as well as the validity of the answers 40 Step Report the statistics The information obtained from the questionnaires and tests was expressed in numerical form In details, the researcher listed out, counted and grouped the number of similar responses or results The statistics were reported by frequency distribution and measures of central tendency Step Visualize collected data The data were converted into charts and graphs to be logical and easyfollowed 6.2 Qualitative Analysis Strategy Code/ Conceptualize Transcribe Analyze Conclude Figure Data from interview analysis procedure Step Transcribe The data collected from the interview recordings were transcribed Step Code/ Conceptualize After transcribing, the data supposed to be relevant and supportive were selected and coded/ conceptualized The aim of this step was to link specific quotes to analytic concepts and categories Basing on describing each defined indicator, different aspects which helped answered research questions were measured 41 Step Analyze Once the data became selective, direct and conceptually motivated after the initial code phase, the researchers chose qualitative method to analyze the data based on the research questions and the purposes of the study In this step, the analyzed data were generalized and theorized into findings and grounded theory Step Conclude Finally, the findings were reported The findings from the questionnaires, the tests and the interviews were triangualately checked then Some discussion and implication were draw Summary To sum up, the research involved a considerable amount of 94 students at a high school in Nam Dinh province in tests, questionnaire survey and interview This chapter describes the research methods considered as the guidelines for the researcher to follow to answer the research questions raised at the beginning of the study The results of the research will be synthesized, analyzed as well as reported in the next chapter 42 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This chapter is devoted to the presentation the data, which is used to confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses about the effect of using social networking sites in enhancing students’ vocabulary The results of the research obtained from three instruments - questionnaires, tests and interview- are analyzed in response to the research questions To conclude, the researcher is going to present the findings and discussion Questionnaires 1.1 Students’ overall view on learning English vocabulary 1.1.1 Students’ reasons for learning English vocabulary Learning English vocabulary is an important part in studying English as a foreign language Most of schools in Vietnam include English as a compulsory subject in their syllabus and the students start learning English from their early age There are some reasons for the selected students trying to learn by heart English vocabulary as mentioned in the following Figure 70 60 50 Number of 40 students (N) 30 Questionnaire Time Questionnaire Time 20 10 For tests and examinations For English popularity For personal interest Figure 9: Students’ reasons for learning English vocabulary It can be seen from Figure that after the action research, the number of the students who mentioned tests, examinations and English popularity as the main reasons for their studying English vocabulary slightly decreased between the times 43 of two questionnaires At the time of questionnaire 1, most of the students (62 students) showed the key reason for them to study English was for tests and examinations; however, at the questionnaire 2, this figure decreased by students Besides, the number of students stating English popularity as the main motivation for them to learn its vocabulary also declined from 15 students to 12 students In contrast, there were 27 students who considered learning English vocabulary as their personal interest in the time of questionnaire 2, compared with 17 students at the time of questionnaire 1, which means that 10 students changed their motivation to study English vocabulary from compulsoriness into willingness for their personal interest These figures indicated that learning vocabulary through Facebook might be a motivation for those students to acquire the lexical knowledge Learning English vocabulary would no longer be pressure for students just because of its obligation in schools Besides, students tended to feel more relaxed when they learnt English vocabulary as their personal interest thanks to the use of Facebook From the result above, it can be generalized that using Facebook for educational purposes gave a positive response from the students in the reasons for students to learn vocabulary In short, Facebook can be used as a tool to encourage students to master their English vocabulary 1.1.2 Students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning vocabulary Learning vocabulary may contain learning numerous smaller elements, for example spelling, pronunciation, collocations, connotations, synonyms, antonyms, phrasal verbs or idioms For many students, because the teachers in class only focus on teaching word meanings, it is hard for them to understand other aspects of words as listed above The second question aimed at highlighting the students’ strengths and weaknesses in vocabulary’ elements The researcher used the scale from to for students to judge the level of their lexical elements: was the worst and was the best Table and Table demonstrate the comparison between the results of the students’ responses in the first questionnaire and the second questionnaire 44 • The first questionnaire result Mark (Very Poor) (Poor) (Acceptable) (Good) ( Very good) Meanings 15 48 27 Spellings 26 42 18 Pronunciations 23 56 11 Usages 48 30 Parts of speech 11 58 17 Synonyms 12 47 34 Antonyms 17 68 0 Connotations 23 59 10 Collocations 19 47 19 Aspects Table Students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the beginning of the research Table illustrates the students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the time of the first questionnaire There was a big gap between the students’ level of words’ meanings, words’ spellings, words’ usage, parts of speech and the students’ level of synonyms, antonyms, connotations and collocations While the majority of students marked their understandings of words’ meanings, words’ spelling, words’ usage and parts of speech at acceptable level, a large number of students judged their understanding of words’ synonyms, antonyms, connotation and collocation at poor and very poor level It means that most of the students were unconfident about their lexical knowledge It can be clearly seen that 45 the number of students who marked their understanding at “very good” level was limited For example, none of the students who thought that their knowledge of words pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms, registers or connotation was very good From the figure in Table 6, it can be inferred that most of the students were quite unconfident about their vocabulary knowledge However, this figure has changed when the students responded to the second questionnaire • The second questionnaire result Mark Tải FULL (111 trang): https://bit.ly/3TvI9RC Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net (Very Poor) (Poor) (Acceptable) (Good) ( Very good) Meanings 11 54 26 Spellings 15 48 26 Pronunciations 32 35 17 Usages 34 32 20 Parts of speech 64 21 Synonyms 33 45 Antonyms 14 43 32 Connotations 19 45 23 Collocations 15 32 35 12 Aspects Table Students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the end of the research Table describes the strengths and weaknesses in learning English vocabulary at the time of the second questionnaire The gap between the students’ 46 levels of lexical elements has been narrowed Although the majority of the students still marked their understanding of vocabulary elements at “acceptable” level, the number of students who pointed out at “poor” and “very poor” level decreased in comparison with the result from the first questionnaire Besides, at level (very good), all of these elements were chosen by students, which meant that students were more confident about their vocabulary knowledge It can be easily realized from Table and Table that there were positive changes in students’ lexical knowledge In the questionnaire 1, most of the students only focused on the words’ meanings, spellings and parts of speech when studying English vocabulary, while considering pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms, registers, connotation and collocation as their worst aspects in vocabulary learning From the result above, it can be concluded that by using social networking sites for educational purposes, the students gained much more lexical knowledge that was not usually taught at offline classes, such as pronunciation, collocations, word family relation and connotations Besides, Facebook seemed to inspire the students’ confidence about words’ meanings, spellings, pronunciations, usages, parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms, registers, connotations and collocations 1.1.3 Places for students to study vocabulary Words are all around us; therefore, to acquire a language vocabulary, learners should study not only at school but also out of school Table below shows the changes in making choice of the places where they learn vocabulary At school At home Questionnaire 94 63 Questionnaire 94 91 Table Places for students to study English vocabulary It can be clearly seen from Table that while all of the students learnt English vocabulary at school in the time of both questionnaire and questionnaire 47 6816297 ... investigate students’ attitudes towards using social networking sites for educational purpose; • To investigate the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook as an educational tool; • To give... VOCABULARY IN THE TEXTBOOK IDIOMS AND PHARSAL VERBS Undersea, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, under the weather, to count Indian Ocean, Antarctic, Antarctic Ocean, on, now and then, keep Arctic Ocean, gulf,... problems and then prepare everything that is needed in doing the action, such as preparing lesson plans and materials that will be used as well as the evaluation materials after conducting the action