KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC cấu TẠO từ CỦA SINH VIÊN năm NHẤT KHOA sư PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG đại HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ đại HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ nội

The study is an investigation of perceived difficulties through word formation learning process of firstyear students at English division 1, faculty of English language teacher education (FELTE), university of languages and international studies, Vietnam national university. To address the research problem, the paper used questionnaires as the main research instrument to collect data. In the thesis, role of word formation perceived by students was provided. Besides, it is revealed that from the study that first year students at ULIS have difficulties related to morphological awareness, materials and strategies of teaching and learning when they study vocabulary as well as practice English skills. Based on the findings and the students’ suggestions, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachers and students to solve the problems. In detail, students are advised to build up a systematical learning strategy and pay attention to deliberate vocabulary acquisition and use of context. To teachers, the thesis recommends teachers to use flexible techniques to avoid tiresomeness of students. The paper also comes up with some useful teaching techniques for teachers.

ABSTRACT The study is an investigation of perceived difficulties through word formation learning process of first-year students at English division 1, faculty of English language teacher education (FELTE), university of languages and international studies, Vietnam national university To address the research problem, the paper used questionnaires as the main research instrument to collect data In the thesis, role of word formation perceived by students was provided Besides, it is revealed that from the study that first- year students at ULIS have difficulties related to morphological awareness, materials and strategies of teaching and learning when they study vocabulary as well as practice English skills Based on the findings and the students’ suggestions, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachers and students to solve the problems In detail, students are advised to build up a systematical learning strategy and pay attention to deliberate vocabulary acquisition and use of context To teachers, the thesis recommends teachers to use flexible techniques to avoid tiresomeness of students The paper also comes up with some useful teaching techniques for teachers i ii TABLE OF CONTENT Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF FIGURES viii LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF ABBRREVIATIONS x CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1.2 Aims and Research questions 1.3 Significance of the study 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Organization CHAPTER 2- LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Basic concepts 2.1.1 Definition of word 2.1.2 Definition and types of morphemes 2.1.2.1 Definition of morphemes 2.1.2.2 Types of morphemes 2.2 Morphological processes 2.2.1 Affixation iii 2.2.1.1 Definition of affixation 2.2.1.2 Types of affixation 2.2.2 Conversion 10 2.2.2.1 Definition of conversion 10 2.2.2.2 Types of conversion 11 2.2.3 Compounding 13 2.2.3.1 Definition of compounding 13 2.2.3.2 Types of compounding 14 2.2.4 Reduplication 14 2.2.5 Clipping 15 2.2.6 Blends 16 2.2.7 Acronyms 16 2.2.8 Back- formation 17 2.3 Role of word- formation in teaching and learning English 17 2.4 Common EFL learners’ perceived difficulties in morphological awareness 19 CHAPTER 3- METHODOLOGY 23 3.1 Selection of subjects 23 3.1.1 Setting of study 23 3.1.2 Participants 23 3.2 Data collection instrument 26 iv 3.2.1 Reasons for choosing questionnaires 26 3.2.2 Questionnaire format and content 27 3.3 Procedures of data collection 29 3.4 Procedures of data analysis 30 3.5 Summary 30 CHAPTER 4- FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 31 4.1 Findings 31 4.1.1 The role of word- formation to first- year students’ learning process 31 4.1.2 Students’ perceived difficulties in studying word- formation 37 4.2 Implications 45 4.2.1 Implications to first- year students 45 4.2.2 Implications to teachers 48 CHAPTER 5- CONCLUSION 52 5.1 Summary 52 5.2 Limitations 53 5.3 Suggestions for further studies 54 REFERENCES 55 APPENDIX 59 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1.1: Frequency of practicing word formation in class……………………… 32 Figure 1.2: Frequency of practicing word formation in class (in each skill)…………32 Figure 2: Average time spent on learning vocabulary……………………………… 33 Figure 3: Percentage of time spent on learning word-formation process…………….34 Figure 4: Lexical size……………………………………………………………… 35 Figure 5: Estimated derived words………………………………………………… 35 Figure 6.1: Result of question (Recognition ability to eight word formation processes)…………………………………………………………………………… 37 Figure 6.2: Result of question (Frequency of choosing right answers)…………….38 Figure 7.1: Result of proficiency test……………………………………………… 39 Figure 7.2: Result of proficiency test……………………………………………… 40 Figure 7.2.1: Affixation………………………………………………………………41 Figure 7.2.2: Compounding………………………………………………………… 41 Figure 7.2.3: Conversion…………………………………………………………… 42 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 1: ELT program and Double- major program for first-year students at English Division 1, FELTE, ULIS-VNU…………………………………………………… 25 Table 2: Students’ perceived importance of word formation……………………… 36 Table 3: Material difficulties perceived by first- year students at ULIS………….…43 Table 4: Learning and teaching strategies……………………………………………44 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as Foreign Language ELLs: English Language Learners ESL: English as a Second Language FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education L2: Second Language ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies VNU: Vietnam National University viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Due to the increasingly important role of English in almost every field of our social life, from communicative uses to business uses, the demand of learning English has been rising rapidly In the situation of Vietnam, being aware of English’s role, most schools and academic institutions have taken English as a compulsory subject Consequently, now teaching and learning English are paid much more attention by both learners and teachers However, this seems to be far from satisfactory because foreign learners in general and the Vietnamese learners in particular must face up to many difficulties in specific fields of English like grammar, pronunciations, vocabulary, etc International linguists state that it is impossible and unaffordable to have a thoughtful look into human brain to examine how it processes language Instead, linguists build hypotheses to verify their appropriate working One of ways which they use is grammar Grammar is considered as a science and often called “science of language” or “science of how to use words” According to Domínguez (1991), one of the biggest goals of linguistic science is “the determination of the rank of morphology in the grammar of a particular language and in universal grammar” Then linguists in the world focus on smaller unit in English and create theories of word-formation Word formation is firmly confirmed as the most important divisions in the linguistic field However, many EFL learners under-estimate the importance of morphological awareness as well as word- formation processes The result of this negative attitude is slow vocabulary development According to August et al (2005) ELLs who experience slow vocabulary development are less able to comprehend text at grade level The situation can become worse when learners may be at risk of being diagnosed as learning disabled Learners can fall into the consensus that the reason comes from their poor ability In fact, it is from their limitation to English vocabulary and comprehension In Vietnam, current grammar and vocabulary teaching is paid more and more attention, but only about quantity, not quality It means that students are encouraged to build up the large numbers of English words, but mostly unsystematically, say, by learning by heart ,word by word rather than getting to know the derivation of each word When learning a new word, for example “nervous”, students only know that word as a single unit, yet many of them not know “nervous” is derived from “nerve” Thus, this learning style as commented by International linguistic researchers is unsustainable All matters above are strong motivations for the author to choose the topic “Difficulties of word-formation encountered by first-year students at ULIS” for the Bachelor’s thesis The study attempts to investigate problems that first-year students at ULIS often face up to From the findings, pedagogical recommendation will be provided The author completes this research with the hope that it can become a useful document for English learners in general and first-year students at ULIS in particular to partly deal with problems of word-formation 1.2 Aims and Research questions First of all, the study attempts to examine the importance of word-formation in English learning process as perceived by first-year students at ULIS The biggest aim of thesis is to figure out the difficulties in word-formation which these students are often challenged Personally, this thesis is expectation for teachers and learners at ULIS to improve the quality of word-formation learning and teaching then raise students’ morphological awareness Lastly, with positive results, the author hopes that the study can give helpful implications to students, teachers and educators as well To clarify these initial targets, the paper answers the following questions: frequently, important for academic language and what words have limited usages and relate to only special fields This is a popular method usually applied to teach mother tongue for English children It is presented in Doing it Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary by Alber (2010) Summary In the fourth chapter, the findings and discussions of collected data are reported with the purpose of giving answers to research questions The above findings will be generalized in the next chapter CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary The paper has explored role as well as difficulties of word formation perceived by first- year students at English division 1, FELTE, ULIS The results of the study indicate that although a large number of students recognize the importance of word 51 formation in their learning process, this linguistic field is still put little consideration on With respect to the students’ difficulties, basic knowledge is the biggest obstacle to learners Almost all students are at low level of morphological awareness Their practicing seems to be more positive when they can acquire some typical types such as affixation, compounding and conversion However, data show negative results that a few students can pass questions related to other processes like blending and clipping In addition to linguistic aspects, the lack of proper and relevant materials is also evaluated as a common problem that students face up to Among those barriers, strategies of teaching and learning are the ones challenging a majority of students because these strategies were assessed as not being adequate As data shown in chapter 4, teaching word formation in class is not managed synchronically as students expects to Furthermore, students’ performance of word formation outside class is also a drawback A number of learners fail to build up practicing plans of word formation systematically Most of them achieve eight types of word formation incoherently Therefore, they manage unsustainable improvement of linguistic acquisition From the outcome of the study, the author additionally provides some pedagogical suggestions to first- year students and teachers These implications are used for learning and teaching not only at ULIS but also at Vietnamese schools In detail, students are advised to build up a systematical learning strategy in which they must pay attention to deliberate vocabulary acquisition and use of context With respect to teaching, the paper strongly recommends teachers to vary techniques of teaching word formation to avoid tiresomeness of students The author correspondingly introduces some techniques, which are appreciated and applied by teachers in the world They are teaching word parts, using games, utilizing word maps, selecting and rating words 5.2 Limitations 52 Despite being studied with the author’s full effort, the paper has some unavoidable limitations as followed Firstly, although the questionnaire was accepted by the author’ supervisor, most participants and it was somehow evaluated as a well- designed questionnaire, the author still realized existing unsatisfactory points covering some issues related to teaching and learning strategies In addition, one of the biggest drawbacks, as far as the researcher was concerned, is using only questionnaire as the main research instrument Besides outstanding benefits which were mentioned in chapter - Methodology, questionnaire is assessed as an instrument with serious limitations like unreliability and invalidity These problems may come from simplicity and superficiality of answers, unreliable and unmotivated respondents, little or no opportunity to correct the respondents’ mistakes, social desirability, self- deception, acquiescence bias, halo effect and fatigue effects (Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh, Pham Minh Tam & Luong Quynh Trang (Eds), 2010) These impediments someway affected badly fairness, persuasiveness and utility of the thesis Due to the limitation of time and scale, participants of study only counted 60 students (35%) of 175 students at FELTE Furthermore, the study was just conducted at ULIS, English division, FELTE so its results hardly become overgeneralized to every school and academic institutions 5.3 Suggestions for further studies It will be ideal for other researchers to develop this topic in larger scale for longer time so as to find out difficulties related to word formation process or any issues related to morphological awareness To minimize limitations of research instrument, further research should be administered with both questionnaires and observation as main instruments Further research with larger scale can be applied for 53 the bigger number of students or even for all students in Vietnam Educators in Vietnam can have a more thorough view of English learning and teaching in schools; therefore they come up with practical plans to improve the issue REFERENCES Alber, R., 2010 Doing it Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary, [online] 17 December Available at: [Accessed April 2012] 54 Anon., 2008 Data Collection Methods for Program Evaluation: Questionnaires, [online] Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/evaluation/pdf/brief14.pdf [Accessed March 2012] Asassfeh, M.S., Shaboul, A.Y.M., Zuraiq, W and Alshboul, S., 2011 Lending Ears to EFL Learners: Language Difficulties, [pdf] ,28 (1) Available at: [Accessed 10 January 2012] August, D., Carlo, M., Dressler, C and Snow, C , 2005 The Critical Role of Vocabulary Development for English Language Learners, [pdf] 20(1), 50–57 Available through: Learning Disabilities Research & Practice , The Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children, [Accessed 10 April 2012] Behjat, F and Sadighi, F., 2011 The Acquisition of English Grammatical Morphemes: A Case of Iranian EFL Learners [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 13 April 2012] Chang, C.M., Wagner, R., Bonnie, A.M and Shu, Y.C.H., 2006 The role of morphological awareness in children’s vocabulary acquisition in English The United States of America Daulton, E.F., 2009 Word Formation and EFL in Japan [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 27 February 2012] 55 Domínguez, J.A., 1991 The Role of Morphology in the Process of Language Acquisition and Learning [pdf] Available at: http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/5487/1/RAEI_04_04.pdf [Accessed 27 April 2012] Emadin, A and Moghadam, M Y., 2011 The effect of teaching word formation knowledge on sentence restatement and inferencing [pdf] Available at: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf/Documents/English%20Language%20Teaching %20Conference%20-%20Iran%202008/Ahmad%20Emadin%20and %20Masoud%20Yazdani%20Moghadam.pdf> [Accessed April 2012] Epstein, P., n.d How to Teach English Vocabulary Using Games, [online] Available at: [Accessed April 2012] Geier, B.K., 2010 Morphological awareness, reading ability, and the reading of multi- morphemic words M.Ed Queen’s University Griva, E and Anastasiou, D., 2009 Morphological strategies training: The effectiveness and feasibility of morphological strategies training for students of English as a foreign language with and without spelling difficulties, 1(3), pp.199-223 Laufer and Batia, 1988 Ease and difficulty in Vocabulary Learning: Some teaching implication Annual meeting of the international association of teachers of English as a foreign language Edinburgh, Scotland 14th November 1988 Lawson, J M and Hogben, D., 1996 The vocabulary learning- strategies of foreignlanguage [pdf] Available at: [Accessed January 2012] 56 Merritt, S., 2006 Mastering Multiple Choice: The Definitive Guide to Better Grades on Multiple Choice Exams Canada: Brain Ranch Nadarajan, S., 2006 A crosslinguistic study of reduplication,13, pp 39-53 Nguyen, T Thuy Minh., Pham, M Tam and Luong, Qu Trang., 2010 Research methodology Hanoi: Vietnam National University Press Nguyen, T.Thuy., 2011 The exploitation of eliciting techniques by fourth- year students in their teaching practicum at English division I, faculty of English language teacher education, University of languages and international studiesVietnam national university B.A University of languages and international studies Nguyen, T.Vuong., 2004 Reading Hanoi: Vietnam national university press Bertram, D., n.d Likert scale, [pdf] Available at: [Accessed March 2012] Nurhemida, 2007 The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and English Vocabulary Knowledge of Indonesian Senior High School Students MA The University of Queensland Plag, I., 2002 Cambridge text books in linguistics: Word-formation in English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Quirk, R and Greenbeaum, S., 2008 A university grammar of English R.A.close Haiphong: Haiphong Press Nord Quird, R., 2006 Compounding, [online] Available at: [Accessed March 2012] 57 Shiu, L.J., 2011 EFL learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty in relation to second language proficiency, performance and knowledge Ph.D University of Toronto Sorbi, A., 2010 International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 4(1), pp 1-28 Tabatabaei, O and Yakhabi, M., 2011 The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Size of EFL Learners Najafabad: Islamic Azad University Zapata, A.A., 2007 Types of words and word-formation processes in English [ebook].Availableat: [ Accessed December 2011] 58 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRES I am Nguyen Minh Nghia from QH08.1.E9 I am doing the research on “Difficulties of word-formation encountered by first-year students at HULIS” I would like you to answer these following questions Your cooperation is highly appreciated The information you provide will be guaranteed and kept in secret The survey contains for sections: Section1: General information Section 2: Students’ attitude to word- formation Section3: Students’ perceived difficulties Section 4: Proficiency test Section 1: General information Please put a check mark (√) on the line that is most appropriate for your situation and provide written responses (in Chinese or English) where necessary  Sex: � Male � Female  What was your score for the English subject in the University Entrance Examination? My score was _  Do you have additional chances to be exposed to English or to use English out of English classes? � No � Yes If yes, please specify………………………………………………………… 59 Section 2: Students’ attitude to word- formation Do you practice word-formation processes in each skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in class? � No � Yes If yes, in what activities? Listening � Pre- listening � While- listening � Post- listening Speaking � Pre- speaking � While- speaking � Post- speaking Reading � Pre- reading � While- reading � Post- reading Writing � Pre- writing � While - writing � Post- writing How would you assess your general vocabulary size? (The number of English words) � Less than 500 words � 500- 1000 words � 1000- 2000 words � More than 2000 words Out of all your vocabularies, how many derived words can you estimate? (Example for derived words: advantage disadvantage, education educate) � Less than 100 words �100- 200 words � 200-300 words � More than 300 words What is the average time that you spend on learning vocabulary? � 30 minutes per day hour per day 60 � hours per day � Other:……………………………………………………………………………………… How many percent you spend on learning word- formation processes? � 100% � 50% � 30% � 0% �Other: …………………………………………………………………………………… How you evaluate the importance of word-formation? Please choose an appropriate number on the following scale: Not at all important Extremely important Please specify your choice: ………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Section 3: Students’ perceived difficulties Please match types of word- formation in column A with their corresponding examples in column B i ii iii iv Column A: Word- formation process Prefix Suffix Conversion Compounding a b c d 61 Column B: Corresponding examples Din-din, cha-cha, bon-bon Lemon lemonade NASA, UNESCO ‘Cause for because, bike for bicycle v vi vii viii ix Clipping Blending Acronyms Back- formation Reduplication e Teapot = tea + pot f Edit from editor, enthuse from enthusiasm g Motel = motor + hotel, Smog = smoke + fog h Possible Impossible i Abstract (n) /'æbstrækt/  Abstract (v) /əb'strækt/) i…….ii…… iii…….iv…….v…… vi…….vii………viii…… ix…… Please answer the following questions by using a tick on appropriate number: Strongly Agree Sometimes, I cannot find some words especially clipping words, blends, acronyms in dictionaries I think bound morpheme (related to lexical function, for example, im in “impossible”) is much more difficult than free morpheme (related to grammatical function, for example “es” in “She does aerobics”) I am taught about word-formation systematically I learn word formation systematically (caring for family words, synonyms, antonyms, etc.) I can find easily materials related to word- formation 62 Agree Neither Disagree Strongly disagree Section 4: Proficiency test Complete the blanks in the following texts Have you got some kinds of…… on you? Do you know that UFO means… Flying Object (IDENTIFY) a Identity/ unidentify c identity/ unidentified b identification/ unidentified d both b & c I this morning and was late for my English class (SLEEP) a Asleep b sleepy c above sleep d overslept Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the word whose bold part is pronounced differently from that of the rest a Bath b hat c pad d bathe Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the word that has stress on the first syllable a Debate b result c divide d conflict c off-day/ zigzag d day- off/ zigzag c car d shoes It was a (an)…, I got an accident on the… road a Off- day/ round b on- day/ square Holland is the country famous for … a Windmill b computer 63 When I was a child, in summer, I often wore… a Flip-flops b shoes c boots d sneakers Before leaving for army, the … gave his girlfriend a … a Greencoat/ Handchief b Redcoat/ hanky c yellowcoat/ handker d none of them … was an important invention of new entertainment generation in 18th century a Broad television b Broad casting c Casting 10 … is abandoned in US because it is considered as a cruel method a Electrocuting c electrokilling b electronic d.electriccuting 64 d Telecast ... scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” on one end to “Strongly Agree” on five, each item in Likert scale has five options: strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree and strongly disagree Likert-... style as commented by International linguistic researchers is unsustainable All matters above are strong motivations for the author to choose the topic “Difficulties of word-formation encountered