Difficulties in learning English vocabulary faced by the 10th from students at Đông Sơn 1 upper secondary school = Những khó khăn trong việc học từ vựng Tiếng A

v LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Charts: Chart 1: Students’ level of English vocabulary Chart 2: Students’ attitudes towards vocabulary learning in English acquisition Chart 3: Students’ att

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

LÊ THỊ MINH

DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY

UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

(Những khó khăn trong việc học từ vựng Tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 10 tại

trường THPT Đông Sơn I)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

LÊ THỊ MINH

DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY

UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

(Những khó khăn trong việc học từ vựng Tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 10 tại

trường THPT Đông Sơn I)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Lâm Thị Phúc Hân, M.A

HANOI – 2013

v

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Charts:

Chart 1: Students’ level of English vocabulary

Chart 2: Students’ attitudes towards vocabulary learning in English acquisition Chart 3: Students’ attitudes towards learning new words

Chart 4: Students’ difficulties in learning new words

Chart 5: Students’ evaluation of their ways of learning new words

Chart 6: Students’ attitudes towards teacher’s role in their English vocabulary acquisition

Chart 7: Teachers’ ways to present new words

Chart 8: Effective ways of new words presentation to students

Chart 9: Students’ evaluation towards teachers’ teaching method

Tables:

Table 1: Students’ time for learning new words

Table 2: Students’ ways of learning new words

Table 3: Students’ expectation to ways of learning new words

Table 4: Students’ preference towards teachers’ activities in vocabulary lesson Table 5: Students’ expectation towards teachers’ activities in vocabulary lesson

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DECLARATION ……….… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……… ii

ABSTRACT ……… iii

ABBREVIATIONS ……… ……… iv

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES ……… v

PART A: INTRODUCTION ……….………….………… 1

1 Rationale for the study ……….……… 1

2 Aims of the study ……… 2

3 Research questions ……… 2

4 Scope of the study ……….… 2

5 Methods of the study ……… 3

6 Organization of the study ……… 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT ……… 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW ……… 5

1.1 Introduction……….… 5

1.2 An overview of vocabulary….……… 5

1.2.1 Definitions of vocabulary ……… ……… 5

1.2.2 The notion of word ……… 5

1.2.3 Vocabulary item ……… 6

1.2.4 Roles of vocabulary in foreign language learning ……… 6

1.3 Vocabulary learning ……… 7

1.3.1 Aspects of knowing a word ……… 7

1.3.2 Explicit and implicit vocabulary learning ……… 9

1.3.3 Difficulties in vocabulary learning ……….…… 10

1.4 Summary……… 12

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY ……… 13

2.1 Introduction ……… 13

2.2 The context of teaching and learning English at DSUSS ……… 13

vii

2.3 Research methodology ……… 15

2.3.1 Restating the research question ……….……… 15

2.3.2 Participants ……… 15

2.3.3 Data collection ……… 15

2.3.3.1 Data collection instruments ……… 15

2.3.3.2 Data collection procedure ……… 16

2.4 Data analysis and discussion ……… 17

2.4.1 Students’ level of English vocabulary ……… 17

2.4.2 Students’ attitudes towards learning English vocabulary …… 18

2.4.3 Students’ difficulties in learning a new word ……… 19

2.4.4 Students’ preference and attitudes towards ways of learning English vocabulary ………

20 2.4.5 Students’ preference, attitudes and expectation towards English vocabulary teaching method ………

23 2.5 Summary ……… 26

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS ……… 27

3.1 Introduction ……… 27

3.2 Students’ difficulties in learning English vocabulary ……… 27

3.2.1 Difficulties related to students themselves ……… 27

3.2.1.1 Ineffective ways of learning vocabulary ……… 27

3.2.1.2 Lack of motivation ……… 27

3.2.2 Difficulties related to vocabulary itself ……… 28

3.2.3 Difficulties related to teachers ……… 30

3.2.3.1 Teachers’ attitude to students ……… 30

3.2.3.2 Teacher’s teaching method ……… 30

3.2.4 Others ……… 31 3.2.4.1 The poor application of teaching aids and reference

materials

31

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3.2.4.2 The challenging curriculum ……… 31

3.3 Suggestions ……… 31

3.3.1 For the teachers ……… 31

3.3.1.1 Improving awareness of teachers’ roles ……… 31

3.3.1.2 Improving vocabulary teaching method ……… 32

3.3.1.3 Improving students’ self-study ……… 33

3.2.2 For the students ….……… 38

3.2.3 For the administrators at DSUSS ……… 39

3.4 Summary ……… ……… 39

PART C CONCLUSION ……… 40

1 Recapitulation ……… 40

2 Concluding remarks ……… 41

3 Limitations of the study ……… 41

4 Suggestions for further research ……… 42

REFERENCES ……… 43

APPENDICES ……….I APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

APPENDIX 2: SURVEY INTERVIEW

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

As far as we know, English is a common language in international communication In Vietnam, with the reformation of the economy and society, as well as the implementation of the open - door policy, English has been used more and more widely English also becomes a compulsory subject in education curriculum

It is known that, in learning a foreign language in general, and English in particular, the knowledge and mastery of vocabulary play an extremely important role McCarthy (1990) states that “No matter how well the student learns grammar,

no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express

a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way.” By having rich vocabulary, students can improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities; not only in the way they comprehend but also in the way they produce language

In reality, in Viet Nam, vocabulary lessons are not paid enough attention in order to help students learn new words more interestedly and effectively As a result, most of them have formed a habit of only learning new words found in their text books or through teacher’s sources They normally learn vocabulary by such methods as listing new words on a notebook and learning them by heart, writing new words repeatedly down on papers, reading new words out loud several times, and so forth These above seem not to be very effective and interesting ways for vocabulary acquisition Moreover, students only think of vocabulary learning as knowing the primary meaning of new words, they ignore all other functions of the words Many of them may also recognize a word in a written or spoken form and think that they already "know the word", but they may not be able to use that word properly in different contexts or pronounce it correctly Many students, after learning English for many years, they can only read and understand short and simple texts and hardly communicate in English

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As a teacher of English, I have dealt with many questions relating to vocabulary learning which are raised by my students or among my colleagues For example, what are the effective ways of learning vocabulary? How to retain a new word in the mind? Therefore, I conducted a study to find out the main difficulties in learning vocabulary faced by the 10th form students at Dong Son I upper secondary school (DSUSS) Then I would like to give some suggestions to help students learn English vocabulary more effectively

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to find out the difficulties faced by the 10th form students at DSUSS when they learn English vocabulary Then some suggestions will be given

to help students learn English vocabulary more effectively

- What are the suggestions that help the students learn English vocabulary better?

4 Scope of the study

The study was designed to find out the difficulties in learning English vocabulary faced by the 10th form students at DSUSS In the context of teaching and learning English at DSUSS, English vocabulary mentioned here mean the new

words in the English textbook Tieng Anh 10 that students are taught or learn by

themselves The target population is the 10th form students They have experienced from 4 to 7 years of learning English, but their English knowledge is not very good

The findings of the study would be much beneficial to both teachers who are considering whether to improve their students’ vocabulary and students who wants

to overcome the difficulties and boredom in learning vocabulary

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5 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the purpose of the study, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used A survey questionnaire and an informal interview were implemented with 120 10th form students who were chosen randomly The questionnaire consists of 18 questions grouped into 2 main parts, that is background information which helps to seek for information concerning students’ background and the reality of learning English vocabulary which serves for gathering information of students’ attitudes to vocabulary learning, the ways the students learn English vocabulary, some difficulties they face when learning English vocabulary, the ways they are taught English vocabulary and their expectation towards English vocabulary teaching method The informal interview with 30 students was conducted basing on the students’ answers in the survey questionnaire

6 Organization of the study

The thesis is composed of three main parts:

Part A - Introduction

In this part the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope, the method, and the organization of the study are presented

Part B - Development

This part is divided into three chapters

Chapter 1: Literature Review

This chapter presents the theoretical background for the study It focuses on some concepts in the second language vocabulary learning and some difficulties in second language vocabulary learning

Chapter 2: The study

This is the main part of the study It describes the context of the study, the participants, the data collection methods and data analysis procedure

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Chapter 3: Findings and Suggestions

This chapter presents some main findings in the study, the relevant discussion and some teaching and learning implications

Part C - Conclusion

This part summarizes the study, states the concluding remarks, the limitation of the research and offers suggestions for further research

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Introduction

This chapter provides a brief review of the theoretical knowledge relevant to

the study including An overview of vocabulary; Vocabulary learning; What can cause difficulties in vocabulary learning

1.2 An overview of vocabulary

1.2.1 Definitions of vocabulary

Different linguistics defined vocabulary in different ways Penny Ur (1996:60) defined vocabulary as “the words we teach in the foreign language However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound

of two or three words or multi-word idioms” Richards and Platt (1992: 400) also noted that vocabulary is “a set of lexemes, including words, compound words and idioms” These statements indicate that vocabulary is “the total number of words in

a language” (Hornby, 1995:1331)

1.2.2 The notion of “word”

Vocabulary mastery begins with a word So what is a word? Michael McCarthy (1990) defined words as “free-standing items of language that have

meaning For example: the word eating is free-standing in itself, and that within it has another potentially free-standing element eat, independently meaningful from the second element -ing

Pyles and Algeo (1970:96) said “when most of us think about language, we think first about words It is true that the vocabulary is the focus of language It is

in words that sounds and meanings inter-lock to allow us to communicate with one another, and it is words that we arrange together to make sentences, conversations and discourse of all kinds”

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1.2.3 Vocabulary item

As in Penny Ur’s definition of vocabulary, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word For example, post office and mother-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea Another term to call for vocabulary is “chunks” as stated by Schmitt, N & McCarthy, M (1997): “Some of the vocabulary people know is originally learned as parts of multi-word chunks, often as phrases, idioms, or proverbs” A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words”

1.2.4 Roles of vocabulary in second language learning

The prominent role of vocabulary knowledge in second language learning has been increasingly recognized According to Bogaards, P and B Laufer (2004: 1), “… much has been done in the field of vocabulary in the context of the acquisition of foreign or second languages… The growth of interest in L.2 vocabulary since the days of “a neglected aspect of language learning” (Meara, 1980) has also been reflected in authored and edited books specifically devoted to vocabulary”

Michael West (1930: 514) stressed that “the primary thing in learning a

language is the acquisition of a vocabulary, and practice in using it”

McCarthy stated that “the biggest component of any language course is vocabulary” (McCarthy, 1990: viii) “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words

to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way.”

A leading linguist researcher Paul Nationnotes: “Vocabulary is not an end in itself A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing easier to perform” When learners’ working memory is not loaded with hesitation about the correct spelling, pronunciation and contextual use of the words, they can concentrate fully on higher level aspects of language such as using precise sentence

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structures and appropriate expressions for the type of conversation that is going on These all show that the success of a student in becoming proficient in any language depends in part on the extent and richness of his/ her vocabulary, so vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus, and vocabulary should be taught on a well-planned and regular basis

To sum up, vocabulary is considered an important aspect of learning a foreign language Second language vocabulary acquisition has become an increasingly interesting topic of discussion for researchers, teachers, curriculum designers, theorists, and others involved in second language learning and teaching

1.3 Vocabulary learning

1.3.1 Aspects of knowing a word

There have been many definitions as to what it is exactly to know a word

According to Cook (2001:61), “a word is more than its meaning”, knowing a word may involve four aspects: form of the word (for instance spelling and pronunciation), grammatical properties (for example, grammatical category of a word, its possible and impossible structure), lexical properties (for instance, word combinations and appropriateness), and general meaning and specific meaning

Nation (1990:30-33) and Taylor (1990:1-4) share the same idea that knowing

a word involves not only knowing its spelling, morphology, pronunciation, meaning, or the equivalent of the word in the learner’s mother tongue but also its collocations, register, polysemy, and even its homonym There is also the issue of precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and howwell we understand and use words in different modes, receptive or productive; and for different purposes

Yings (2000) describes some types of context clues that may be available to the readers to guess the meaning of unknown words: the morphology (for instance, derivation), reference word (such as pronouns), cohesion (for instance, co-

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occurrence), definitions, antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms (sometimes provided in the same sentence), alternatives, restatements, examples, summary, comparison and contrast, and punctuation

In summary, aspects of knowing a word compose of:

- Word form: pronunciation and spelling

The basic, and by all learners first perceived, characteristics of each lexical item are what it sounds and looks like Both these aspects ought to be accurately

presented and learned There are two parts of the form of a word – written (spelling) and spoken (pronunciation) form If learners have encountered only one

of the forms, they “have receptive, but not productive, knowledge of the word” (Thornbury, 2002: 15)

- Grammar: The form of a word can changes unpredictably in certain grammatical

contexts Therefore, when learners learn a new word, they should know this information at the same time they learn the basic form of a word For example,

when they learn the noun person they should learn its plural form as people

- Collocation: collocation is the way in which two or more words go together in a

certain context In many cases a word has more than one meaning only Then it is the context and collocations that give essential clues to recognize which meaning is intended Therefore, this is another piece of information of a new item, which may

worth paying attention to For example, we say throw a ball but toss a coin, we cannot say dense hair instead of thick hair

- Word meanings include denotation, connotation, appropriateness and meaning

relationship

+ The denotation refers to things or concepts This is often the sort of

definition given in dictionaries such as whale denotes a very large mammal that

lives in the sea or rosedenotes a kind of flowers with red color and symbolizes for love

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+ The connotation is association, or positive and negative feelings the word evokes which may not be indicated in a dictionary definition Connotation includes stylistic, affective, evaluation, intensifying value, pragmatic communicative values, the word acquires by virtue of where, when, how and by whom, for what purpose and in what context it is or it may be used

+ Appropriateness is more subtle aspect of meaning which indicates whether a particular item is appropriate one to use in a certain context or not Thus, it is useful for a learner to know whether a certain word is very common, or relatively rare or taboo in polite conversation, or tends to be used in writing but not in speech, or is more suitable for a formal than informal discourse or belongs to a certain dialect + Associations or meaning relationships show how the meaning of one item relates to the meaning of the others These are various relationships and here are some of the main ones like synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, co- hyponyms or co- ordinates, super ordinates, and translation

- Word - formation: Words can change their shape and their grammatical value

Vocabulary items whether one- word or multi- word, can often be broken down into

their components "bits" Learners need to know affixing rules and derivation

principles in word formation and how to use words to fit different grammatical

contexts For example, if learners know the meaning of affixes sub, un and able, this will help them guess the meaning of words such as substandard, uncomfortable and enable

1.3.2 Explicit and implicit vocabulary learning

1.3.2.1 Explicit (or Direct) vocabulary learning

In explicit vocabulary learning, learners do exercises and activities that focus their attention on vocabulary (Nation, 1990:2) For example, when students are doing word-building exercises, guessing the meaning of unknown words in context learning words in word lists, or playing vocabulary games, they are learning

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vocabulary explicitly Such activities usually take place in class with a lot of help and instruction from teachers To make successful instruction for explicit vocabulary learning, teachers often consider the following to teach high-frequency words, to maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families instead of individual words, and to consider meaning associations attached to the word Thanks to such careful explanations and guidance of teachers, students at low and intermediate levels may acquire vocabulary explicitly before they begin implicit learning mainly by themselves

1.3.2.2 Implicit (or Incidental) vocabulary learning

Implicit vocabulary learning has been explained by researchers as incidental vocabulary learning It is the learning of new words as a by-product of a meaning-focused communicative activity, such as reading, listening, and interaction It occurs through “multiple exposures to a word in different contexts” (Huckin and Coady, 1999)

Krashen (1981) believes that there are some certain conditions for such learning to occur Firstly, the learners must be interested in understanding the message From the point of view of vocabulary learning, this interest creates a need

to understand the unknown words in the message Secondly, the message should contain some items that are just outside the learners' present level of achievement These items, however, should be understandable from the context in which they occur This includes both language and non-language contexts Thirdly, the learners should not feel worried or threatened by their contact with the foreign language

1.3.3 Difficulties in vocabulary learning

Vocabulary can never be mastered fully, the expansion and elaboration of it extends across a lifetime since words represent complex and often multiple meanings (Kamil & Hiebert 2005:2) For example, the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2001) contains over 110 000 words, phrases and definitions Moreover, individuals have different sets of vocabulary and they

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use them for different purposes For example, oral and printed languages often use different vocabulary and a failure in distinguishing the proper vocabulary for the occasion can lead to misunderstandings (Kamil & Hiebert 2005:3)

There are several features which have an effect on vocabulary learning and can make learning a word difficult Carter and McCarthy (1988:13) point out that learning vocabulary effectively is closely bound up with a teacher’s understanding and learner’s perception of the difficulties of words and therefore the role of the teacher must be taken into account also in vocabulary learning Carter and McCarthy (1988:13) continue that the difficulty of a word may result from several reasons and due to the vast number of possible reasons and the complexity of the learning process these reasons have been hard to classify appropriately

Nation (1990:33-50) mentions three different factors which have influence

on making a word difficult to learn The first is the learner’s previous experience of English and their mother tongue since one’s first language affects the second language vocabulary acquisition and usually borrowing and interference between first and second language vocabulary occurs For example, learning the function and meaning of a word can be difficult since words rarely correspond exactly to a word of another language

The second factor which causes difficulties in learning the words of a second language is the way a word is learned or taught In fact, bad organization in the learning situation can cause problems in learning a word According to Nation (1990:43) this “unteaching” is rather common Consequently, teaching can have three effects; positive, neutral and negative When the effect is positive, the learners move closer to mastering the language When the effect is neutral, nothing

is learned When the effect is negative, learning occurs but the learning will have a negative impact on what has been taught before or on what will be taught

in the future (Nation 1990:49)

Nation (1990:45) continues that the relationship with other words can also

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cause problems in the learning of a new word Nation (1990:47) summarizes that the more similar items are, the more likely they are to be closely associated with each other For example, words which in some sense are close to each other, such as long and short, which are both adjectives and are antonyms, having the opposite meaning, can easily become hard to learn if they are presented together for the first time This can cause problems since learner may mix the meanings of these two words due to the fact that they are closely related

The third aspect is the intrinsic difficulty of the word which basically means that some words are harder to learn than others According to Nation (1990:48), nouns and adjectives are usually easier to learn than verbs and adverbs In addition,

it is easier to learn to recognize a word for and recall its meaning than to produce the word at suitable time A teacher cannot have a great impact on reducing the intrinsic difficulty but he or she can be aware of it and try to recognize it when it occurs (Nation 1990:49)

Laufer (1997:154) has also studied the intralexical factors affecting vocabulary learning and she mentions several factors which can make learning a word difficult For example, phonological factors, length, semantic features, abstractness and multiple meaning may have an impact on how easily the word can

be learned

1.4 Summary

In this chapter, some information about history of research on vocabulary learning has been introduced such as definition of vocabulary, aspects of knowing a word, explicit and implicit vocabulary learning, difficulties in vocabulary learning This will serve as a base for the study to get its aim: finding out some difficulties in learning English vocabulary faced by the 10th form students at Dong Son I upper secondary school

2.2 The context of teaching and learning English at DSUSS

DSUSS is a state - run school located in the country of Thanh Hoa province It was established in 1965 It is one of the three 3 upper secondary schools in Dong Son district All subjects including English are taught with new course books and new methods according to the renovation program put forth by the Ministry of Education and Training

2.2.1 The teachers and their teaching methods

In DSUSS there are 8 English teachers whose teaching experience varies from

4 to 30 years All of them are female and have BA degrees in English language teaching from different tertiary institutions in Vietnam Though some of them used

to teach Russian before teaching English, most of them have twice participated in textbook training workshops run by key teachers They are also very enthusiastic teachers with great responsibility for the students, and at the moment they are in charge of teaching English in 28 classes

It is obvious that most of the English teachers at DSUSS are deeply influenced

by grammar-translation method For most of the teachers, the common method of

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teaching is the traditional teacher - centered In classes, explanation, translation, asking and answering questions are the main class activities Therefore, when teaching vocabulary the teachers often spends a lot of teaching - hours explaining new words, new structures and even translating the reading texts into Vietnamese The major interaction patterns in the classroom are:

- Teacher - whole class (most of the time)

- Teacher - student interaction (sometimes)

- Students initiating interaction: pair work, group work, questions and comments (occasionally)

2.2.2 The students

With regard to students, there are around 43 students of mixed ability in each class There are 28 classes, among which the 10th form students take up 8 classes Most of the students come from the countryside, so they have less or no exposure to authentic English In addition, most of them do not have the habit of learning English independently and tend to depend on the textbooks and the teachers for knowledge The majority of them learn English because it is a compulsory school subject and they learn it just to pass the national examinations They do not have an obvious communicative need in the target language Most of the students say that they can hardly express their ideas in speaking and writing lessons and it is difficult for them to get the gist of information from the conversation or texts in listening and reading lessons All they need is the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of the target language enough to pass the national grammar - based examinations

2.2.3 The available resources

All the classrooms are well-equipped with furniture, light, board There are 2 computer rooms equipped with LCD projectors, computers and speakers and board

So it is possible for teachers to take the advantages of information technology into language teaching However, the English teachers at DSUSS rarely exploit these resources because they have difficulties in designing lessons using power-point

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program There is also a library in DSUSS but with few English books or magazines

2.3 Research methodology

2.3.1 Restating the research questions

The aims of the study, as stated in part A, are to find out:

- What are the difficulties in learning English vocabulary faced by the 10th form students at DSUSS ?

- What are the suggestions that help the students learn English vocabulary better?

2.3.2 Participants

A total of 120 10th form students at DSUSS participated in the study These participants were randomly selected from 6 different classes 70 of them were female and 50 were male All of the participants are at the age of 16 and have been studying English for at least 4 years at secondary schools Most of them come from the countryside in Thanh Hoa province The researcher chose the 10th form students because they have begun their first year in upper secondary education and they may have difficulties in learning English in general and in English vocabulary acquisition specifically

2.3.3 Data collection

2.3.3.1 Data collection instruments

To collect necessary data and information for the study, the researcher used two kinds of research instruments, that is questionnaire and interview

 Survey questionnaire:

The survey questionnaire was chosen as the main instrument for data collection Survey questionnaire is a simple and familiar instrument of collecting

- The first section helps to collect background information about the participants

- The second section helps to collect the information about the reality of the participants’ learning English vocabulary: their attitude towards learning English vocabulary, how they learn, how they are taught, and the difficulties

they face when learning English vocabulary

The sample of the questionnaire is presented in appendix 1

 Informal interview:

Besides survey questionnaire, informal interview was also used to collect more data about the participants Basing on the participants’ answers to the survey questionnaire, the writer interviewed the participants to clarify their thought and attitude, so the data for the study would be more sufficient and valid

The sample of the informal interview is presented in appendix 2

2.3.3.2 Data collection procedure

Firstly, a pilot survey was conducted with 10 participants to help the writer get a clearer idea about the data for the study Then the writer edited the questions

in the questionnaire with the supervisor’s help After that the questionnaires were delivered to 120 10th form students The survey questionnaire required 10 minutes

to complete and was administered in the students’ English class Before doing the

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questionnaire, students were told that their participation was voluntary and their responses would remain confidential; they were also asked to give their opinions as honestly as possible, which was crucial to the success of this study After the respondents were given the questionnaire, they were encouraged to read it thoroughly and answer frankly and truly

Four days after the survey the writer conducted an informal interview with 30

participants basing on the data collected from questionnaire

2.4 Data analysis and discussion

This section deals with the treatment of all the data gathered from the survey questionnaires and informal interviews The results are statistically presented in the forms of tables and charts, categories into five groups: students’ level of English vocabulary, students’ attitudes towards learning English vocabulary, students’ difficulties in learning a new word, students’ preference and attitudes towards ways

of learning English vocabulary and students’ preference, attitudes and expectation towards English vocabulary teaching method

2.4.1 Students’ level of English vocabulary (Q1)

Chart 1: Students’ level of English vocabulary

As can be seen from chart 1, a large number of students thought that their level of English vocabulary was medium This number presents 58% 15% of them thought their English vocabulary was rather good 25 % of them supposed their vocabulary was bad Only 2% of the students found that their vocabulary was good

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These figures indicate that a majority of students have English vocabulary at medium or undermedium level This can be one of the problems in students’ vocabulary learning process

2.4.2 Students’ attitudes towards learning English vocabulary (Q2, Q3, Q4)

57%

43%

0%

Very important Important Not important

Chart 2: Students’ attitudes towards vocabulary learning in English acquisition

As shown in chart 2, all of these students are well aware of the importance of vocabulary learning in their English acquisition 57% of the students considered vocabulary learning a very important element in English acquisition The rest, that was 43% of them thought vocabulary was important It is their good attitudes

towards the importance of vocabulary learning that motivates them in their learning

process

83%

Very difficult Difficult Not difficult

Chart 3: Students’ attitudes towards learning new words

Considering chart 3, we can see that most of the students found learning vocabulary difficult 10% of them found it very difficult, 83 % found it difficult

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and only 7% found it not difficult This means that English vocabulary acquisition

is really a challenge for students

Table 1: Students’ time for learning new words

Table 1 shows that more than half of the students learnt new words at least twice a week 27% of them learnt new words 3 times and 33% of them learnt new words twice a week A small number of students learnt new words every day, accounting for 18.5% The same percentage corresponds to the number of students who only learnt when they feel like 3% of students learnt new words once a week

It can be inferred from these figures that many students are aware of the necessity

of self-learning and they spend a certain amount of time learning new words at home but some others seem to pay little attention to vocabulary learning

2.4.3 Students’ difficulties in learning a new word (Q5, I1, I2)

Word usage Word lexical similarity

Chart 4: Students’ difficulties in learning new words

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The result in Chart 4 shows that many students, accounting for 35 %, found

it difficult to learn new words because they did not know how to pronounce them correctly The similar number of students (30%) usually found it difficult to understand the usage of new words The number of the students who complained about the length of new words, the multi-meaning and the lexical similarity of new

words, takes up the same percentage (11.66%)

Students’ answers in the informal interview reveal that 100% of the surveyed students were not taught to learn to pronounce words from dictionary phonetic transcription, or from some relative pronunciation rules in English so they did not know how to pronounce the words correctly Moreover, 15% of them thought that their teachers spoke so fast that they could not remember the words’ pronunciation

Students also give the reason why they have difficulties in understanding words usage as they do not consider English as their target subject They either did not pay attention in class at all (10%) or paid little attention and did not practise

Other ways (pictures, internet, TV, radio program …) 13%

Table 2: Ways of learning new words

It can be inferred that when most students choose to write the words and Vietnamese equivalents, or write the words many times, they focus only on the spelling aspect of the words rather than on how to use the words in sentences or context

70%

30%

Uneffective Effective

Chart 5: Students’ evaluation of their ways of learning new words

Chart 5 shows that only 30% of students found their ways of learning new words effective while 70% complained that they were likely to forget the words easily When being interviewed, 57% of the students said that they usually learned

to prepare for teacher’s check in class, they tried to remember the words quickly but forgot them easily The rest, taking up 13% said that they did not really pay attention when learning vocabulary

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Moreover, when being asked directly, 87% of the students said that they did not use reference books or dictionary because they did not have them (73%) or they thought it took much time (more than 13%) and 88% of students said that they hesitated to ask their teacher or classmates because they were not interested in English or they felt afraid of their teachers or their classmates did not know, too They also did not work in groups at home

Spend more time learning new words by yourself 13%

Spend more time learning new words with your friends 25%

Other ways (internet, software, TV, radio program …) 22%

Table 3: Students’ expectation to ways of learning new words

As can be seen from table 3, 27% of students wanted to read and listen to English more often, they thought that it would help them remember longer 25% of students wanted to spend more time learning new words with their friends because they would be more motivated Learning alone would make them feel bored and demotivated 22% of the students wanted to learn new words in other ways but when being asked, it is surprising that 15% of students could not decide which way

of learning they wanted to apply, only 7% of them gave out the specific way of learning vocabulary which was via internet and games