A study on perceptions and frequency of use of vocabulary learning strategies among english – major students at banking academy

BANKING ACADEMY THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - - GRADUATION THESIS TOPIC: A STUDY ON PERCEPTIONS AND FREQUENCY OF USE OF VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES AMONG ENGLISH – MAJOR STUDENTS AT BANKING ACADEMY Student : LE PHUONG THAO Class : K20ATCC Course : 2017 – 2021 Student ID : 20A7510159 Instructor : MS NGUYEN THI THU TRANG (M.A) Hanoi, May 2021 Tai ngay!!! Ban co the xoa dong chu nay!!! 17014125833681000000 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby state that this thesis is entirely an intellectual product of my own, which was done with immense effort and devotion It has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree Wherever contributions of others are involved, every effort is made to indicate this clearly, with due reference to the literature, and acknowledgement of collaborative research and discussions I have read the University’s current research ethics guidelines and acknowledged my obligations and the rights of the participants Hanoi, 22th May, 2021 Signature Le Phuong Thao i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Ms Nguyen Thi Thu Trang (MA) for everything that she made to contribute to the completion of my dissertation During the process of research conduction, she has always been available to provide helpful comments and support for my thesis Had it not been for her enthusiasm in support of me, I would never have finished this thesis She has also been an excellent mentor for developing my logical thinking, critical thinking and writing skill I also wish to show my gratitude to all teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Banking Academy, especially Ms Nguyen Mai Phuong, Ms Do Thu Hang, Ms Tran Thanh Giang for helping me to collect responses of students in person Above all, I wish to express my appreciation from the bottom of my heart to my family who are always by my side to give me motivational support and encouragement There were a lot of times I did bear the thought of giving up halfway However, because of my family still being there, I was motivated to keep moving forward and reach where I am today Save the best for last, I would like to thank myself for daring to embark on this challenging journey, being persistent and resilient and always striving for excellence Due to time limitations and a restricted capacity of the author, this thesis might contain certain defects Therefore, I would be really open-minded and grateful for any constructive comments to enhance its quality ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi ABSTRACT .vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1.1.1 Statement of the problem 1.1.2 Rationale for the study 1.2 Aims and objectives 1.3 Significance of the study 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Research Structure CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Vocabulary 2.1.1 Vocabulary and lexis 2.1.2 The importance of vocabulary and lexical competence: 2.1.3 Classification of Vocabulary 10 2.2 Vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) 10 2.2.1 Definition of vocabulary learning strategy .11 2.2.2 Importance of vocabulary learning strategy 11 2.2.3 Classification of vocabulary learning strategies .12 2.3 Previous research on Vocabulary Learning Strategies 18 2.4 Research questions 23 CHAPTER III – METHODOLOGY 24 3.1 Locale of the study 24 3.2 Research design 25 3.3 Participants 26 iii 3.4 Research instrument: 26 3.5 Data collection procedure: 29 3.6 Data analysis procedure: 30 CHAPTER IV – FINDING PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION 32 4.1 Finding presentation 32 4.1.1 Reliability of the Measurement 32 4.1.2 Findings on participants’ perceptions on VLSs application 36 4.1.3 Findings on the correlation between the year of study and amount of time spent on learning English vocabulary and the vocabulary retention rate 39 4.1.4 Findings on frequency of VLSs use 41 4.2 Discussion 55 4.2.1 Discussion on students’ perception on VLSs application .55 4.2.2 Discussion on relationship between the year of studying and time spent on English vocabulary learning and the vocabulary retention rate 55 4.2.3 Discussion on frequent use of VLSs among English-major students .56 CHAPTER V – SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 62 5.1 Summary of findings 62 5.2 Implications 63 5.2.1 Implications for discovery strategies .65 5.2.2 Implications for learning/acquiring strategies 68 5.2.3 Implications for revision strategies 71 5.2.4 Implications for expansion strategies 72 5.3 Recommendations 73 CHAPTER VI – CONCLUSION 75 REFERENCES 76 APPENDIX 85 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The concept of knowing a word by Nation (2001, p 27) 10 Table 2: Sample of the study 26 Table 3: Other strategies applied by the participants 54 Table 4.1: Summary statistics of the Cronbach’s Alpha calculated……………… 33 Table 2: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.1………………… 34 Table 4.3: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.2 35 Table 4.4: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.3 35 Table 4.5: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.4 36 Table 4.6: Survey participants’ response on perceptions on VLSs 37 Table 4.7: Test of Homogeneity of Variances 39 Table 4.8: ANOVA statistics table 40 Table 4.9: Test of Homogeneity of Variances 40 Table 4.10: ANOVA statistics table 41 Table 4.11: Overall use of VLSs by step of respondents 42 Table 4.12: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in Discovery Category 42 Table 4.13: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in learning category 46 Table 4.14: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in revising category 48 Table 4.15: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in expanding category 51 Table 5.1: Suggested vocabulary note-taking…………………………………… 70 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Difference between vocabulary and lexis by Van (2013) Figure 2: Classification of VLSs devised by Schmitt (1997) 14 Figure 4.1: The applied scale of measurement…………………………………… 37 Figure 4.2: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.6 (in percentage)…… 38 Figure 4.3: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.12 (in percentage)……43 Figure 4.4: The use of dictionary by genre of the participant…………………… 44 Figure 4.5: Elements of words that are looked up in a dictionary……………… 45 Figure 4.6: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.13 (in percentage)… 47 Figure 4.7: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.14 (in percentage)……50 Figure 4.8: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.15 (in percentage)… 53 Figure 4.9: Proportion of strategy category given more emphasis……………… 54 vi ABSTRACT This study is conducted to investigate the perceptions of English-major students at Banking Academy of Vietnam on Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) and their frequency of VLSs use as well In order to achieve the research goal, the researcher decided to work on three research questions including (1) How students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages perceive vocabulary learning strategies; (2) Whether there are correlations between the year of study and the amount of time spent on learning vocabulary and the retention rate of newly-learned words among English-major students; (3) Which vocabulary learning strategies students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages apply and the corresponding frequency of use The researcher designs a questionnaire consisting of three sections and distributes online and physically to 251 students of all academic years in the Faculty of Foreign Language at Banking Academy The collected data are encoded and descriptively analyzed by the SPSS software version 20 It is shown in the study that the respondents have ever known or even been instructed to use VLSs and believe in the benefits of applying VLSs Overall, the research also reveals that surveyed English-major students apply VLSs at a medium level, of which only the discovery group was adopted in a high level of frequency Besides, no statistically significant difference is recognized between the academic year and the amount of time spent on vocabulary acquisition by the surveyed students and their vocabulary retention rate after one-week interval Key words: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs), perceptions on VLSs, vocabulary, teaching vocabulary, learning vocabulary, English as a foreign language (EFL) vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations VLSs Interpretation Vocabulary Learning Strategies SD Standard deviation M Mean EFL English as a Foreign Language TFL Turkish as a foreign language ESP English for Specific Purpose LLSs Language Learning Strategies TOEIC Test of English for International Communication IELTS International English Language Testing System TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language viii CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1.1.1 Statement of the problem In the age of globalization, intercultural communication has been increasingly focused and developed Among several major foreign languages that are widely accepted all over the world, it is a fact that English Language is regarded as the most common one In the education program of Asian countries including Vietnam, English teaching has been also attached great importance and become the mandatory foreign language in schools’ curriculum As a result, English Language becomes a primary major and is formally trained in most universities and colleges in Vietnam Accordingly, English Language major tends to appeal to a vast array of Vietnamese high school students rather than other foreign languages in Vietnam According to official statistics in 2017 of Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam, the major of English Language ranked the fourth as 24,251 candidates registered as the first major for the university admission It also accounted for the highest proportion of candidates applying for the foreign languages and culture majors (57%) (Van, 2017) When it comes to learning a language, there are four basic language skills including listening, reading, speaking and writing in foreign language education and training (Baỗeci & Yaar, 2007; Barın, 1997, as cited in Darancık, 2018) For successful and effective education and training in foreign language courses, these four basic language skills need to be developed and reinforced in accordance with the level and needs of the learners (Darancık, 2018) However, “in order to improve these four skills, vocabulary is an essential building block of language and as such it makes sense to be able to measure learners’ knowledge of it” (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001, p.55) Therefore, vocabulary has a crucial role to play in learning and teaching of a foreign language as it enables learners to get access to all forms of verbal and written communication of the word (Moeller, Ketsman & Masmaliyeva, 2009) For example, in reading and listening skills, first and foremost, students need to identify