Teaching vocabulary to primary children by using story telling method = Dạy từ vựng cho học sinh tiểu học thông qua phương pháp kể chuyện

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** PHẠM THỊ THU TRANG TEACHING VOCABULARY TO PRI

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

PHẠM THỊ THU TRANG

TEACHING VOCABULARY TO PRIMARY CHILDREN

BY USING STORY TELLING METHOD

(DẠY TỪ VỰNG CHO HỌC SINH TIỂU HỌC THÔNG

QUA PHƯƠNG PHÁP KỂ CHUYỆN)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

HANOI, 2012

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

PHẠM THỊ THU TRANG

TEACHING VOCABULARY TO PRIMARY CHILDREN

BY USING STORY TELLING METHOD

(DẠY TỪ VỰNG CHO HỌC SINH TIỂU HỌC THÔNG

QUA PHƯƠNG PHÁP KỂ CHUYỆN)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

Supervisor: Dr LÊ VĂN CANH

HANOI, 2012

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT……… ………… … iii

TABLE OFCONTENT……… iv

Part I: Introduction 1 Rationale of the study 1

1.1 Theoretical background 1

1.2 Practical background 1

2 Aims of the study 4

3 Research questions 4

4 Method of the study 4

5 Design of the study 4

Part II: Development Chapter I: Literature review 1.1 Vocabulary in language teaching and learning 6

1.1.1 Definition of vocabulary 6

1.1.2 The role of vocabulary in English teaching and learning 7

1.2.1 The value of teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories 8

1.2.2 The characteristics of teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories 11

Chapter II: The study 2.1 Description of the study 17

2.2 Description of the data instruments 19

2.2.1 Questionnaires 20

2.2.1.1 Questionnaires 1 20

2.2.1.2 Questionnaires 2 21

2.3 Procedure 22

2.4 Results and analysis from questionnaires 21

2.4.1 Preliminary results and analysis 21

2.4.2 Result and analysis after application stage 29

2.5 Summary 33

Part III: Conclusion * References vi

* Appendices viii

Part I: Introduction

1 Rationale of the study

1.1 Theoretical background

If a language was a house, vocabulary would be construction material

to build up that house Therefore, needless to say, vocabulary is an essential constituent of the language acquisition

In learning a foreign language, vocabulary plays an important role It

is one element that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing all together In order to communicate well in a foreign language, learners should acquire an adequate number of words and should know how to use them accurately

At the point of linguistics, vocabulary is all the word known and used

by person It means if someone had no vocabulary of a language, he or she could not use that language for reading, writing, speaking and listening It‟s known that vocabulary is an important part of language learning, without which no communication can be successful, so knowing vocabulary of a language is a minimum self-requirement for those who want to learn a foreign language

1.2 Practical background

Vietnam is the country with the population more than eighty seven million people It is considered one of the dynamic, metropolitan countries heading for regional and international integration As the result, the need for future generations who can use English to communicate is urgent because English has become an international language Nowadays, most educated people will expect to learn English and to use it well Thanks to English, the international relations among the countries all over the world

can be maintained and developed Consequently, the teaching of English as

a second and foreign language becomes a major international enterprise

So, it is very important to teach English to children as early as possible in order to prepare them facing the new era

In reality, the parents' growing need for their children to learn English when they are young, many primary schools cooperated with English centres to teach English for young learners Consequently, teaching and learning quality was been controlled That lead to very poor performance

in English since there had been no curriculum, no training course for the teachers and no guidelines on the way the centres had been operating Teaching English, especially for young learners, at primary schools had become a messy picture so it is important to design a suitable program that meet the needs of the society The purpose of the programme must provide

"standard English" to a large number of the students even the poorest, most remote areas The question needs answering how to transfer parents' needs into children needs for the programme

It had been customary that teaching English through stories was used

to reward the students for good behaviour as learning was believed to be about formal tests and formalized learning and teaching For the level at primary schools, teaching method is required with the very special techniques as the result when games, songs and stories are used to create

an English learning environment, the problem of changing the teacher's awareness is challenging We have to design training workshops to shift teachers from traditional methods to more student - centred approaches to make them aware that they can use stories to build up English for the children in a very natural way

However, organizing training workshops has not solved the root of

the growing need for children to learn English, we cannot answer this need

at present because the whole country does not have any university which can train teachers to teach English for primary students And so the challenge continues

Since young children are able to learn foreign language more naturally and to some extent more easily than older learners, children can start learning a foreign language as soon as they are old enough to accept the social requirements demanded by group teaching Children can learn English from the earliest age since they have got knowledge or ability to learn foreign language In this case, the teachers only need to develop, support, motivate and dig up their basic ability in improving it It is in line with Halliwel opinion (1998:3) that young children do not come to the language classroom empty handed but they bring with them on already well established set of instinct, skills and characteristic which will help them to learn another language

In teaching English to children the teacher should pay attention not only to how the right implementation of the techniques used but also on how these techniques are suited to the elementary students‟ characteristics

It is the target to create the teaching learning process becoming interesting and understanding to the children in order to reach the learning goal

To meet the goal, many teaching techniques can be implemented, one of them is using story By listening to the story, some important skills can be developed such as prediction, guessing, message decoding and assimilate new vocabulary Story can allow students to be creative and imaginative and also give students a sense of achievement

Story can be applied through telling and reading Story telling activities are a great way to allow students to express themselves freely and creatively in an authentic and real way According to Taylor

(2000:16), story telling is relating to tale one or more listener through voice and gestures Oral telling terms use to get much simpler language; in addition, the sentences are generally shorter With oral telling, we usually repeat things more redundancy, especially if the students are having difficulty to follow the story Telling story needs much time and energy, but different with story book reading, it is very simple and very efficient technique because the teacher only reads the text on that book From the above explanation, the writer is interested in conducting the research in titled “Teaching vocabulary to primary school children through stories.”

2 Aims of the study

This research is conducted to:

1 Find primary school students‟ perceived difficulties in learning English vocabulary

2 Investigate primary school students‟ attitudes toward teaching vocabulary through telling stories The investigation was carried out in three classes of 5th grade at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school

quantitative methods are used

5 Design of the study

The study has 3 parts Each part deals with different aspects of the study:

Part I deals with the introduction of the study

Part II consists of 2 chapters and in chapter I, the writer focuses on some main points: the role of vocabulary in learning and teaching English, the importance and the characteristics of teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories Chapter II is related to the investigation into the quality of teaching vocabulary through stories

In part III, there are some recommendations for effective use of stories in teaching methods Moreover, the conclusion in which the writer summaries all the main points studied and then some suggestions for further study are presented

Part II: Development Chapter 1: Literature review

1.1 Vocabulary in language teaching and learning

1.1.1 Definition of vocabulary

There have been many different definitions of vocabulary Wilkins (1972:11) gave his ideas about vocabulary: „Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed‟ In other words, vocabulary is an important part of language learning and the human existence, without which no communication can be successful

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2000:1011), vocabulary is defined as „words known to a person or used by

a particular language book, subject‟ and „total number words that make up

a language‟ The precious value of vocabulary is mainly for the students in that they reinforce key concepts

Moreover, Nation (2001: 103) also pointed out that: „Knowing a word means knowing at least its form, its meaning and its basic usages‟ Thus, learning English vocabulary is not quite simple to learn a word It means students have to learn many things concerning with that word such

as its forms, its meanings, and its usages Even if we learn a word, it takes

a lot of practice and context connections for us to learn it well

However, the writer completely agrees with the definitions of Nation because it gives us an overview about vocabulary There are many different opinions about this and in fact, vocabulary represents a major component of language learning, teaching and help students can understand lesson Vocabulary plays an important role in teaching process

and it is similar the first key to open the door of learning a second language for the learners

1.1.2 The role of vocabulary in English teaching and learning

Vocabulary‟s place among language learning goals has general goals and specific goals According to Nation the goals of language

learning can be summarized as shown in the Figure 1

Vocabulary Grammatical construction Ideas (content) Subject matter knowledge

Cultural knowledge

Fluency Strategies Process skills Text (discourse) Conservational discourse rules

Text schemata

Figure 1: General and specific goals for language learning

from Nation’s ideas

From the table above, vocabulary represents a major component of language learning and teaching Learning vocabulary is one of the first steps of learning a second language, yet one never reaches the last step of vocabulary acquisition According to Webster‟s Third New International Dictionary which is the largest non-historical dictionary of English, and Nation (1990:176): „English contains 114,000 word families‟ This is too

large a number to be a goal for even a very hardworking leaner Thus the question is what to learn and how to learn a manageable and usable amount

of vocabulary

Moreover, vocabulary is an essential constituent of second language acquisition An extensive vocabulary aids expressions and communication Linguistic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary And its size has been directly linked to reading comprehension A person may be judged by others based on his or her vocabulary so without words that defines objects, actions, and concepts, a speaker cannot express intended meanings And „learning the most frequent 2000-3000 words in a language provides a firm basic of about 80 percent of the words likely to be encountered‟ (Carter,166)

Vocabulary is a good place to begin a course in language teaching methodology Words are simple enough to begin learning on the first day

of a class and they are powerful enough to improve communication from the very beginning Words are small pieces of language which carries bits

of meaning Therefore, teachers must teach words from the very start Zechmeister, Chronis, Cull, d’ Anna and Healy (1998) regarded that

„the educated native speakers of English know about 20,000 word families‟ For each year early in their life, they add an average of 1,000 word families to their vocabulary stock‟, so this is the difficult goal for learners to achieve English vocabulary Studies of native speakers‟ vocabularies seem to suggest that „second language learners need to know very large numbers of words‟ (Nation 2001:101) As the result, it is generally agreed that English has large numbers of words so a teacher cannot teach them all but can develop the students‟ ability and motivation

to expand their own vocabulary at high school

1.2.1 The value of teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories

a) The educational value of stories

Story telling is a universal, traditional art form that has featured strongly in all cultures as an effective communication tool Important messages can be so skillfully conveyed through storytelling, as the listener

is so entranced by the magic images the storyteller paints before the children's eyes And it is in this way that we as educators of young children can promote their learning vocabulary in both mother tongue and foreign language

Children love stories because they are always eager to listen to stories and they want to know how stories work, understand what is happening Moreover they can enjoy hearing stories in English when they start English lesson Telling stories has long been recognized as an important part of healing, self-knowledge, and personal and spiritual vehicle for connecting the children to other people It is a means for understanding ourselves and our place in the world We conceive of our lives as a web of stories - a historical novel or a mini-series in the making

We tell stories in order to live We use stories to construct meaning and communicate ourselves to another with the means of vocabulary that is vocabulary Stories help us organize and make sense of the experiences of

a life

Stories have the potential to build authentic communities of shared meaning and values Considering the importance of storytelling a child's development, psychologists are promoted the positive effects of reading and telling children stories for decades It is a particularly good way to teach children realistic thinking as stories can show children how people realistically solve their problems Stories can help children relate new

things to what they know already, help children to look at real life from different viewpoints and imagine what if feel likes to be someone else They can introduce the child to other cultures and attitudes, let the children share their experiences with the group - everyone listens and feels sad or happy Furthermore, stories can link to other subjects the child is learning about in school, help they develop their thinking skills because they are interesting, enjoyable and fun enough to attract children to involve in

b) Stories for language and vocabulary teaching

Stories may bridge the gap between language study and language use and also to link classroom learning with the world outside Some of the activities do not always have a very large language element but are nevertheless important in creating a feeling among the pupils that learning English means fun, activity, creativity and enjoyment” (Ellis and Brewster, 2002: 17) Other important viewpoint shows that teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories is very useful because the

following reasons:

 Can be told with pictures and gestures to help children understand

 Help children enjoy learning English; develop learning skills and language skills (vocabulary, grammar, syntax and pronunciation) which are all the dimensions of teaching vocabulary

 Introduce new language in context

 Help children revise language they are familiar with

 Help children become aware of the structures of the language

 Help children acquire intonation and pronunciation by listening

 Can help bring English into other subjects and understand of sequence, concepts

 Can lead on to lots of activities using listening, speaking, reading, and writing

 Thus the question is what to learn and how to learn a manageable and usable amount of vocabulary

In conclusion, learning and teaching vocabulary through stories is one effective and useful way that can be applied in any classrooms The results of this research suggest that the stories are used not only for more effectively, but more importantly, for the useful practice and review of language lessons, thus leading toward the learners and teachers meet their goals Children will be much more involved and motivated to the teaching process when they see that their hard work in lessons has been leading somewhere That is why follow-up activities are so important for students

1.2.2 The characteristics of teaching vocabulary to primary children through stories

1 Teaching vocabulary through stories activities

We can use stories to give children more practice vocabulary at listening, speaking, reading and writing and other useful methods as well

as to stimulate their imagination and creativity, and vocabulary in practice

 "Listen and respond" - they listen and clap if the teacher makes a

mistake in the story, for example, Once upon the time there was a

little girl called Little Blue Riding Hood

 "listen and colour" - they follow instructions to colour a story poster

 "Listen and draw" - they draw 3 things Red Riding Hood in her

basket

 "Listen and make" - they trace and cut out a face mask of a

character

b) Speaking

Children can get valuable speaking practice through:

- saying rhymes and singing songs Some books have rhymes about stories,

or you can make up a simple question - and - answer rhyme about the story Or use a rhyme pattern that you know such as:

This is the way she walks through the wood

walks through the wood

walks through the wood

This is the way she walks through the wood

On a lovely summer morning

- playing vocabulary games Make picture cards for matching games: collect pairs or classifying sets, for examples, the pig and the wolf from

The Three Little Pigs

- practising new sounds Let them play “I spy" with items from the story,

in the Little Red riding Hood: I spy with my little eye something beginning

with 'b'

- starting to speak freely Elicit personal talk, for example, you are the fox

talk about yourself: I am Mr Fox I live in the forest I have three brothers

I like cheese!

- playing speaking games, let by you, for example, they pass the ball and

answer the questions about the story, such as: What did the animals always

say to Elmer?

- speaking in the groups They can prepare a guessing game of the class,

together, for example, "We live in three little houses One is made of straw,

one is made of sticks, and one is made of bricks Who are we?"

- Phonics - they group all the words, in the story with the same sound, for

example, hood, and house

- Speaking to reading - helping sound and word recognition You use

pictures of the new words in the story and giving the children the syllable

beats - two for basket/ forest, ect

- Speaking and reading - helping children to recognize phrases and make

phrases from single words, for example, the big bad wolf/ covered with

elephant berries

- The alphabet - practicing the names of the letters and drawing attention to the letters in the stories

- Reading independently - asking the children to find information, for

example, what did the elephants say when Elmer shouted 'Boo'?

d) Writing

These activities will help children with starting to write with spelling

- Classifying and copying selected words and phrases from story books:

nature words, action words / phrases: he walked and walked…

- Labeling pictures from stories, for example, here are the three little pigs

outside their house…

- Gap - filling from a story, for example, she put the… and cakes in her

basket

e) Things to do after retelling stories

* Adapting the story

If you change the plot of the story a little bit, but keep the characters and setting similar, you can use familiar words and phrases but still hold the children's interest because of the new story line When the teacher's story is adapted from another story about a very hungry caterpillar The children are very excited because they have been playing a game and now they have to be quite and listen They have heard the story before and know they can join in

* A 'make and do' activity based on story

Here is a follow - up activity that another teacher used The teacher can:

- gave children a plain drawing of the caterpillar

- let each child choose seven types of food or drink for their caterpillar

- let the children color all the caterpillars The caterpillars were the same color as the food and drink

- asked some children to describe their caterpillars to the class

- put all the caterpillar drawings on the wall as a display They were all different colors

While the children colored their drawing the teacher repeated parts

of the story The teacher also went round the class and talked to individual

children about what they were doing (Why has your caterpillar gone

green? Because…?) So the children listened and spoke about the couloirs

and food and drink that they were familiar with The teacher could also ask children to write the names of the things their caterpillar ate and the colors that they became

f) Getting children to add a story

Thanks to this method, children are very creative and they can use what they know to communicate new ideas With the short story, they have chance to revise a grammatical structure and vocabulary in a fun way For example, the short story that the teacher now tells her class is also about actions She tells her pupils a story about a strange zoo In the zoo, the animals do unusual things and then she allows the students continue And they have opportunities to talk everything about the story After this, they could each other write their own stories about the zoo

- include language the children familiar with

- include topics they are learning about

- use materials you have already you have already used but in a different way, for example, photos or pictures of animals

- prepare it so that the children can do follow - up activities such as colouring or mine

h) Using stories for project work

Children use language in a natural and spontaneous way when they are active

* Projects

- help co - operation between children

- can be organized so that all skills are practises while you are planning and preparing it together

The teacher does a language project to

- bring together all the language work the teacher has been doing in the class

- build on and extend what your pupils already know

- allow children to work together and co - operate

- give everyone in the class a chance to contribute

- achieve something worthwhile that other people can see and that everyone can be proud of

* Using a favourite story project

When children have read a few stories, you could do a story project Talk

to the children about

- why you are doing it (they can show much English they know)

- what they want to make or do: a wall display, a big book, a performance,

a puppet show based on the story

- what they want to put in it: Characters, evens from the story

- how they want to do it: in groups, the whole class together

- who will come to see it: their parents, other classes, other teachers

- where they will display it or perform it when it is finished: in their

classroom, in another part of the school

Make a plan together and decide when you want to finish Decide how often you are going to work on the project: once a week

Make sure that everyone is clear about what they have to do and

what they have to achieve: draw and colour a picture of a story character

and be able to say something about this character

- Plan what the group/s has to do each day up to the final day

- Allow starting and finishing time to take out and put away all the materials the children will use

Decide how many stories are going to be in the project, for example, one/two favourite stories This is the children's choice and also depends on

- the number of children in the class

- how much work they are going to do on each story

Make sure the children know it is their project and their work

- You have to help with organization

- you might be able to get the art teacher to co - operate with the drawing/ painting that are needed

i) Correction and project work

If the children are going to perform in public, or write for an outside audience, it is important that what they say or write is well - organised, tidy, and as accurate as possible This will make a good impression on the audience

You will need to act as their language adviser

1 Find out what meanings they want to express

2 Suggest new words and phrases that help them express these meanings

Be prepared to

- encourage children to be creative and to use their imagination

- help them improve and correct their speaking or writing

At the percentage stage - to prepare their final draft

- correct the project

- explain to their children that this is correction time

- let them do as much correction as they can

The children

- know they are performing or displaying to a wider audience

- are likely to take more notice of corrections in these circumstances

- should be involved in as much of correcting process as possible

A project should also

- encourage co - operation

- give children more confidence

- give children a chance to show what they can do apart from English

- give the teacher the opportunity to praise children's efforts

When children are performing or showing their work, stand back

- this is their time Do not correct at this stage If could discourage a child and damage their - esteem When the project is finished, use it as an opportunity to praise and encourage the children

Chapter 2: The study

In this chapter, the researcher describes subjects of the study, the data instruments, procedure and the results of the application of some techniques in presenting vocabulary to the 5th form students at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school Besides, this chapter also deals with the students‟ attitudes toward some techniques being applied

2.1 Description of the subjects of the study

The number of subjects in my study is 153 But when the researcher conducted the survey questionnaires, there are only 125 suitable respondents which have correct reflections in the real situation The other respondents lack the students‟ cooperation; they just chose the options by their own feeling The students are in the 5th form at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school, having an average age of 10

I had a chance to teach 3 classes: 5A1, 5A2, 5A3; therefore, I have learned about their learning situation and also had the overviews and comparison between classes

Class 5A1 has 47 students (19 girls and 28 boys) This is the English class Most students in this class consider English their favorite subject The students are always top of the grade in English examinations In English periods, the students have great enthusiasm about learning English Besides, the activities in class, they often hold extra activities and make good conditions for students to communicate with each other

Class 5A2 is a Math class There are 50 students in this class Because of being the Math class, so almost students are intelligent and active in learning Most of them find it easy to absorb the knowledge in English lesson Few students seem not to concentrate much on English

lessons; however, they can understand almost the important things for an English exam

Class 5A3 is the mixed-ability class, and there are still many weak students, especially boy-students The class has 49 students, 35 boys and

14 girls But the students are very obedient and hardworking Many of them do concentrate much on learning in English periods The teachers often give other exercises and activities to improve their motivation in learning English The students always try to fulfill the tasks as soon as possible because they really love English

2.2 Description of the data instruments

The first questionnaire was administered before I used story telling techniques to teach vocabulary The second questionnaire was administered to the same group of students after a period of using story telling techniques to teach vocabulary

2.2.1.1 Questionnaire 1

Question 1, 2, and 3 gathered information about the teaching and learning vocabulary situation in general The option from the questionnaires are given at different levels such as „very‟, „quite‟,‟ not very‟, „not at all‟…, so it is easy for students to choose suitable answers The other questions (from question 4 to 8) sought information about the real situation of telling story in learning vocabulary at Dinh Tien

Hoang primary school Students can base on the actual situation in the class to choose the answers

Those questions can help me to know the real situation of learning and teaching vocabulary through telling story at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school and then find out the effective solutions in applying story to motivate students in learning English vocabulary

2.2.1.2 Questionnaire 2

The first question collected information about how the students involved in the vocabulary lessons when teachers tell story to teach vocabulary

The second and third question sought information about the level of students‟ concentration and attention on learning vocabulary through telling story

The fourth and fifth questions aimed at getting information about the appropriateness and challenge of this technique used

The sixth question was designed to collect information about the appreciation of students about telling story and its role in presenting vocabulary

The seventh question gathered information about how the students were enjoying the activities of telling story

The last question collected information about the technique and activities used in English lessons when they are used The students can base on the actual situation in the class to choose the answers

Teaching vocabulary means that the teachers find the ways to present vocabulary and give many activities as many as possible to help them practice and solidate vocabulary In the study, the writer focus on the main purposes of those questions which were to assess the effectiveness of

telling story in teaching and learning English vocabulary, especially in increasing the motivation of students

of teaching and learning vocabulary at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school Students were suggested and introduced the aims of the questionnaire Careful and detailed instruction was given to the students so that they could understand and choose the suitable answers The students were allowed to do their task on their own, so that they could give their own opinions which were not influenced by other factors

The researcher spent 3 to 5 minutes answering all the questions of students about the questionnaire Then the researcher gave them about 10 minutes to finish all the questions Later, the questionnaires were collected

In the second stage, the researcher gave another questionnaire to the students in the fifth and sixth week in teaching vocabulary through telling story The teachers had to use the Vietnamese versions of questionnaires because some students are not good at English so they cannot understand the English ones and answer them exactly

Those questions helped me to understand more about the students‟ attitude toward the activities held in the class in the past six weeks as well

as the progress of the students in teaching vocabulary through telling story

Results and analysis

2.4.1 Results from the questionnaire

A Students’ attitudes toward the role of vocabulary learning and teaching English in general

Vocabulary is considered as an important part of language learning and teaching in general, and an essential constituent of second language acquisition in particular Thus, the students responded the question:

„According to you, how important is vocabulary in learning English?‟ as follows:

0 20 40 60 80 100

Very important Important Not important Not important at

they were very bad in learning vocabulary and use it in the real situation When the trainee teachers took part in the observation in three classes, they realized that there were many reasons for this, such as they had no motivation in English class; the teaching methods which the teachers applied were not suitable… This will be introduced in the next part

Table 2: Students’ self evaluation of their own vocabulary

As shown in the pie chart 3, most of the students considered that vocabulary teaching and learning were boring, only 5% of them found it very interesting The number of students who felt rather interested in vocabulary learning and teaching was only 37%, and the portion of students found that vocabulary learning and teaching a bit interesting represented a rather high percentage (48%) This pie chart illustrated that the portion of students who considered vocabulary lesson very interesting

or interesting was too small in comparison with the portion of those who considered vocabulary an important element in the learning process Although the students found vocabulary very important, they hardly got

interested in learning vocabulary

Very interesting Rather interesting

A bit interesting Boring

The kinds of words in presentation through telling story

Table 4 revealed the number of words, which was often presented in

a vocabulary lesson by teachers at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school The number of new words determined in a lesson by each teacher was different from each other As the table shows, 58% of the teachers taught all the vocabulary that their students do not know Words that were regarded as difficult to pronounce were presented to the students by the lowest rate (7%) which explained why many students found it difficult to pronounce words A bit higher percentage could be found in „words difficult to use‟ (10%) Besides, 25% of all teachers taught important words to students in a vocabulary lesson

All the words students do not know 58%

Only words difficult to pronounce 7%

Table 4: The number of words in presentation

The current research showed that it was no effective to teach a large number of new words at the same time Furthermore, teaching all the new

words could not bring an expected result Thus, students became passive,

they just copied teachers‟ explanations Thus, most of the teachers in the present study tend to teach all the new words As the result, students become exhausted and uninterested in learning too many lexical items at one time The number of the vocabulary was too large for students to remember in a short time Moreover, their ability of pronouncing words is limited because teachers do not pay more attention to help them pronounce words well And teachers are advised to pay more attention to help students know the functions of words in order to make students use words properly

Students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary

Find it difficult to pronounce new word 28%

Find it difficult to remember word forms 22%

Find it difficult to remember word meaning 26%

Table 5: Students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary

As shown in the table, we can see that students face many difficulties

in learning vocabulary The table shows that pronouncing words was the greatest difficulties – 28% of students found it easy to make pronunciation mistakes because of the complex and interlacing systems of sounds of English Moreover, 24% of students had difficulties in using words, which explains why students are not usually able to make sentences based on the new words they have learnt Besides, a smaller percentage (22%)

forms – they can remember Vietnamese meaning of the words more easily than how to write or how to spell those words The number of the students who had difficulties in remembering words meanings was relatively high (26%) in comparison to the rest Thus, the students who are weak in remembering words (both the words form and the words meanings) represented the greatest percentages (48%) In addition, the students learning vocabulary found it difficult in many aspects such as pronunciation, using words, remembering words, ect As the result, it is realized that the biggest obstacle for the students in learning vocabulary is remembering words

Always Sometimes Rarely Never

65%

20%

Pie Chart 6: The frequency of having difficulty in remembering words

As shown in the table, most of the students, 65% of all students always found it difficult to remember words they have learnt In contrast, the portion in which students never found it difficult to remember words was the smallest (5%) Moreover, the percentage of students who found it sometimes difficult to remember words was relatively high (20%) while the portion of the students found it rarely difficult to remember words was much smaller (10%) As being investigated, the students responded „never‟ and „rarely‟ to this question were ones who are very good at English There

are many reasons explaining why students could not remember the words they have learnt However, the fact that most of students learn English vocabulary rather passively They consider the teachers‟ explanation for the meaning or definition, spelling or grammatical function boring In class, students have nothing to do in vocabulary lesson but just listen to their teachers, repeating and copying words into their notebooks Therefore, teachers are advised to use different practical techniques in presenting vocabulary for students so that students increased their motivation in learning

Teachers’ common techniques in teaching and learning vocabulary through telling story

With such amount of vocabulary taught in each vocabulary lesson, teachers at the 5th form students at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school used different approaches in order to teach vocabulary to students

Translating and giving examples

Using antonyms and synonmyms

Using situation Using visual aids

Pie chart 7: Teachers’ common techniques in presenting

vocabulary through telling story

This pie chart showed the different ways that the teachers in present study made in an attempt to present vocabulary to their students According to this pie chart, nearly half of the teachers (43%) used the

techniques of translating and giving examples to explain new words Some students honestly responded their teachers even did not give them examples of new vocabulary, so they could not know the usage of words Besides, 13% of teachers presented vocabulary by using synonyms or antonyms; 29% of respondents found the use of situation for word explanation effective In addition, the smallest percentage represented the use of situation for the word order In addition, the smallest percentage represented the use of other methods such as used such as visual aids (relia, posters, maps, ect) in teaching vocabulary (15%)

When being asked about the way of learning English vocabulary, most 5th form students just copied new words provided by teachers or looked up words in the dictionary Many of them marked or underlined words they did not know in their textbooks and noted the meaning in Vietnamese Some students noted the time they had to copy lines and lines

of new words in their notebooks which were forgotten soon All of the learners expressed their wish to learn vocabulary effectively in more interesting ways than the traditional ways that they knew What we wanted

to know was whether the practical techniques were effectively or not Consequently, English teachers at 5th form at Dinh Tien Hoang primary school have got used to using traditional methods – translation method in teaching vocabulary and they do not want to change it By simply writing new words on the board and giving translation in presentation section, they can hardly active their students to guess the meanings of words by applying other effective techniques in presenting vocabulary The students, as the result, explained why many students felt bored with learning vocabulary Thus the recent approaches teachers adopted in presenting vocabulary have not met the demands of students yet