Vocabulary learning strategies a SURVEY WITH STUDENTS ATHIGH SCHOOL

Ministry of Education and Training Hanoi University Vocabulary learning strategies: A SURVEY WITH STUDENTS AT HIGH SCHOOL Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirement of the deg

Ministry of Education and Training

Hanoi University

Vocabulary learning strategies:

A SURVEY WITH STUDENTS AT

HIGH SCHOOL

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

Requirement of the degree

of master of art in tesol

Hanoi August 2015

Ministry of Education and Training

Hanoi University

VocabulARY learning strategies:

A SURVEY WITH STUDENTS AT

HIGH SCHOOL

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the

requirement of the degree

of master of art in tesol

supervisor:

Hanoi

August 2015

1.1 Back ground to the study

1.2 Aim of the study

1.3 Scope of the study

1.4 Significance of the study

1.5 Outline of the thesis

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Definition of vocabulary learning strategies

1.2 Studies on vocabulary learning strategies abroad

1.3 Studies on vocabulary learning strategies in Vietnam

IMPLICATION AND CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to my supervisor, NguyenThai Ha, MEd for her encouragement and guidance throughout the research Withouther well-designed plan and meticulous review of the draft, this study would have beenimpossible

I also wish to thank all the staff members of Post-graduate Department of HanoiUniversity for giving me the best environment to fulfill my thesis

I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciation to my colleagues fromCao Ba Quat Gia Lam (CBQGL) high school for their enthusiastic supports andconstructive suggestions in completing this research

My special thanks also go to the students at CBQGL high school who havehelped me to collect data for this study

Finally, my gratitude is extended to my family for their endless love, constantsupport and encouragement

ABSTRACT

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CBQGL: Cao Ba Quat Gia Lam

COG: Cognitive strategies

DET: Determination strategies

LSs: Learning strategies

MEM: Memory strategies

MET: Metacognitive strategies

SEEU : South East European University

SILL: Strategy Inventory for Language Learning

SOC: Social strategies

VLSs: VocabularyLSs

LIST OF TABLES

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study

At CBQGL high school - a public school located in Gia Lam district, Hanoi city,English is one of the compulsory subjects and students have to study four English skills:reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus that deal with pronunciationand grammar The time spent learning English at CBQGL high school is only 3 periods

a week for basic classes and 4 periods a week for advanced classes However, they allhave learned English for over seven years before entering this high school Despite thelarge amount of English learning time, their vocabulary is still poor Many studentscomplain that they spend most of their time to learn vocabulary but the results aredisappointing It is their lack of good vocabulary that has consequently badly affectedtheir writing, reading, listening and speaking proficiency The real situation leads to anassumption that the students may have problems in their VLSs To solve to problem ofpoor lexicon, the students should possess appropriate vocabulary learning strategies(VLSs)

For a long time many books on LSs have been introduced by such experts asOxford , O’Malley & Charmot , Nation and Nunan Some books on VLSs have beenwritten by such scholars as Nation , Rubin & Thompson and Taylor Moreover, anumber of recent foreign studies have been specifically carried out to investigate VLSsused by students at university or high school They were carried out by Hamzah,Kafipour & Abdullah (2009), Xhaferi (2008) at unversity context and Kudo (1999),Marttinen (2008) at high school context Besides, in Vietnam, there has so far beensome research on VLSs such as Trinh Tuyet Mai (2006) and Dinh Thuy Hang (2008).Trinh Tuyet Mai (2006) carried out a research on VLSs used by students at Lang SonCollege of Education, but Dinh Thuy Hang (2008) investigated students’ VLSs at HungVuong gifted high school However, research on VLSs employed by students atCBQGL high school has not been done yet

Based on the findings of previous studies relating to VLSs and the needsmentioned above the present research should be carried out with the aim to investigateVLSs used by students at CBQGL high school

1.2 Aims of the study

The purpose of the research is to investigate vocabulary-learning strategies used

by students at CBQGL high school To achieve this aim, the study provides the answers

to the following question: What VLSs are commonly used by the students of CBQGLhigh school?

1.3 Scope of the study

The study was designed to investigate VLSs which are employed by the students

of CBQGL high school It also finds out the differences in the use of VLSs amongstudents at grade 10, 11 and 12 The findings obtained from this study was to helpimprove teaching and learning English in general and teaching and learning Englishvocabulary in particular at CBQGL high school

1.4 Significance of the study

The study is significant for several reasons First, the findings of the study willprovide us plenty of useful information It is necessary to determine VLSs commonlyused by the students of CBQGL high school Therefore, it is hoped that the study willcontribute to improve the learning English for students Moreover, the informationobtained from the students’ viewpoints on VLSs will also establish a practical basis forEnglish teachers at CBQGL high school to adjust their ways of teaching vocabulary andtraining appropriate strategies as well

1.5 Outline of the thesis

The thesis is divided into five chapters below:

Chapter 1: Introduction, presents the background to the study, states the aims of

the study, scope of the study and significance of the study The outline of the study isalso discussed

Chapter 2: Literature review, deals with the brief review of the previous studies

relating to vocabulary learning strategies including the researchers’ findings on theissues The first section provides definition of VLSs The second section dicussesstudies on VLSs abroad The third section concerns studies on VLSs in Vietnam Thechapter includes with a review of previous studies on VLSs

Chapter 3: Methodology focuses on the research method used to gather and

anaylyze data First, research questions are addressed Then instruments for data

collection, subjects and procedures are described The chapter ends with data analysisand summary.

Chapter 4: Results and discusssion, reports the results of the use of VLSs by

students at CBQGL high school, differences among three grades on their strategy use.The major findings are considered as basic for some suggestions for future pedagogicalimplications

Chapter 5: Implications and Conclusion, provides several implications and

conclusion for CBQGL high school training for students, mentions some limitations ofthe present research and suggestions on further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter deals with the brief review of the previous studies relating to

vocabulary learning strategies including the researchers’ findings on the issues The firstsection provides definition of VLSs The second section dicusses studies on VLSsabroad The third section concerns studies on VLSs in Vietnam The chapter includeswith a review of previous studies on VLSs

2.1 Definition of vocabulary learning strategies

VLSs are “specific strategies for learning vocabulary” as Ellis put it VLSs can

be considered as a subset of general LSs in second language acquisition Schmitt echoesthis very broad definition in defining vocabulary-learning strategies Citing Rubin ,Schmitt claims learning is “the process by which information is obtained, stored,retrieved and used Therefore, VLSs could be any which affect this broadly definedprocess” (Rubin 1987, cited in Schmitt 1997, p.203)

Nation (2001), instead of providing a clear-cut definition of VLSs, has opted forlisting their characteristics According to Nation (2001), a strategy must:

• involve choice, i.e there should be several strategies to choose from;

• be complex, i.e there should be several steps to learn;

• require knowledge and benefit from training;

• increase the efficiency of vocabulary learning and vocabulary use;

Accordingly, we admit that vocabulary-learning strategies are one aspect of theoverall LSs Then what are learning strategies (LSs)?

LSs are attempts to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in thetarget language Strategy is best reserved for general tendencies or overallcharacteristics of the approach employed by the language learner, learning techniques asthe term to refer to particular forms of observable learning learner’s encoding process

LSs are techniques, approach or deliberate actions that students take in order tofacilitate the learning, recall of both linguistic and content area information

Language LSs are behaviors or actions which learners use to make languagelearning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable

O’Malley & Chamot (1990) are interested in LSs andcharacteristics of good language learner defined LSs as “the specialthoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend,learn or retain new information” (O’Malley & Chamot , 1990, p.1)

A strategy consists of mental or behavior activity related to some specific stage

in the overall process of language acquisition or language use (Ellis, 1994)

It can be observed that it seems difficult or even impossible to set a criterion tojudge which definition is perfect or comprehensive Ellis (1994), therefore, suggestedthat the following characteristics should be recognized

1(1) Strategies refer to both general approaches and specific actions ortechniques used to learn a language

2(2) Strategies are problem-oriented, and the learner employs a strategy toovercome some particular learning problem

3(3) Learners are generally aware of the strategies they use and can identifywhat they consist of and they are asked to pay attention to what they are doing andthinking

4(4) Strategies involve linguistic behavior (such as, pointing at an object so as totell its name)

5(5) Linguistic strategies can be performed in language learning

6(6) Some strategies are behavioral while others are mental Thus somestrategies are directly observable while others not

7(7) In the whole, strategies contribute indirectly to learning by providinglearners with data about the second or foreign language they can process However,some strategies may also contribute directly (e.g memorization strategies directed atspecific lexical items or grammatical rules)

8(8) Strategies use varies considerably because of both the kind of task thelearner is engaged in the individual learner preferences

Taking all the characteristics into account, Ellis (1994) suggested that strategiescould be defined as “production sets that exist as declarative knowledge and are used tosolve some learning problem”

2.2 Studies on vocabulary learning strategies abroad

A majority of recent studies have been specifically carried out to investigateVLSs used by students at university

In a university context, the most recent study was carried out by Hamzah,Kafipour & Abdullah This study mainly aims to explore the most and least frequentlyused VLSs by Iranian undergraduate students, the overall frequency of strategy used byIranian EFL undergraduate learners and the contribution of Iranian EFL undergraduatelearners’ VLSs to their vocabulary size They used Schmitt's vocabulary learningstrategy questionnaire with 41-items classified under 5 different groups of strategies asdetermination, memory, social, cognitive, and metacognitive One hundred twenty fiveIranian second year undergraduate students randomly selected among 30 provincesaround Iran participated in the study The other instrument utilized for this piece ofresearch is Nation's standardized vocabulary size test which includes 140 items anddetermines the learners' vocabulary size

After the analysis of data, they found that Iranian undergraduate EFL learnersare medium strategy users They revealed more interest in discovering the meaning ofnew words-determination strategy-rather than other categories Among the strategiesused to retain the meaning of new words, they used memory strategies more frequentlywhile social strategies were used less frequently Moreover, VLSs contribute tovocabulary size of the learners Only nine out of 41 VLSs showed a contribution andsignificant relation to vocabulary size However, this study has some suggestions thatfuture studies should take into consideration qualitative data collection to triangulate thedata It may show if what the learners reported in questionnaire is consistent with whatthey actually do To achieve this purpose, journal writing as a qualitative data collection

is beneficial Furthermore, other relevant variables can be investigated to find ifvocabulary learning contribute to them or not One of these variables which is expected

to be affected by VLSs is reading comprehension

Furthermore, in a univesity context, Xhaferi carried out a research toinvestigate VLSs used by students at South East European University (SEEU) in terms

of gender and teachers’ attitudes toward teaching vocabulary In this study, he aims tofind out what types of VLSs are used by female and male students at SEEU in learninghigh-frequency and low-frequency words The total sample of students involved in thestudy is 100 and were chosen randomly In addition, twenty English language teachers

expressed their attitudes that they hold about teaching vocabulary and what techniquesthey use to teach vocabulary This study used three research instruments The firstinstrument is a ten-item background questionnaire in order to get some backgroundinformation about students' English learning experiences The second instrument is astudent survey which includes 30 VLSs It was modified based on the Oxford's StrategyInventory for Language Learning (SILL) (1990) The participants should include fourmore strategies that they use but are not included in the list The third instrument is aten-item teacher questionnaire and the aim was to find more information about theteacher's attitudes toward teaching vocabulary and what teaching techniques they used

The findings of Xhaferi (2008) indicated that both females and males employdifferent strategies to discover the meaning of unknown words and to remember themeaning It presents the techniques that students use to learn high frequency and lowfrequency words in English It was demonstrated that learning new words is a complexprocess and the students need to use many strategies in order to remember the meaning

of the words They use the results obtained from teachers’ responses, differentapproaches The most-used teaching approaches are developing guessing strategy, usingflashcards, using pictures and illustrations, doing word games and puzzles, and usingdifferent texts to enrich students' vocabulary

However, the study by Xhaferi (2008) remains some limitation and has its ownsuggestions This empirical study only included a small number of participants and asmall number of teachers teaching English as a foreign language A larger sample fromdifferent institutions would definitely yield more findings that are generalizable Asother studies, the data were collected by using only three instruments, which do notreflect a reality because students could have not read the questions carefully but onlycircled them This study definitely will not be the only one in this field and does notoffer any conclusive findings about vocabulary learning and teaching at SEEU Thiswill lead to more thorough investigations in the field and both students and teacher willbenefit from these findings

In a high school context, Kudo carried out a research on 325 Japanese highschool students to serve his specific aim at investigation and systematicallycategorization of VLSs In a first study, the data were collected from Japanese seniorhigh school students (N=325) in a questionnaire in which participants answered thefrequency of 56 strategies Descriptive statistics indicated that many strategies wereinfrequently used In the second study, again, Japanese senior high school students

participated (N=504) Descriptive statistics indicated that the means of each categorydeclined compared to Study 1 probably because the items with high means had beeneliminated The questionnaire was used to measure the frequency of the VLSs Thesestrategies were operationalised as measured by the questionnaire developed by theresearcher, based on the study done by Schmitt (1997)

In this research, Kudo (1999) also carried out a main study with its aim todescribe what strategies Japanese senior high school students use to learn vocabulary,and to gain insights into what teachers and students can and should do in teaching andlearning vocabulary As a result, many findings of the questionnaires turned out to bequite congruent with those of Schmitt’s (1997) descriptive studies and Oxford’s (1990)classification schemes As far as classification is concerned, the main study seems tosupport Oxford’s (1990) classification schemes as a whole In addition, although someresearchers argue that strategies may be culture-specific (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990;Cohen, 1996), this research empirically provided evidence that this argument may nothold true While Oxford (1990) based her scheme on her research in Alabama, thisstudy was conducted in Japan, very different culture Therefore, the results of this studysuggest that learners may commonly employ LSs at least in Japan and in Alabama,rather than culture-specific

This study suggests that students should be exposed to many strategies Somestudents wrote that they did not know that there are so many different strategies to learnvocabulary Furthermore, they said that they planned to try some that they found in thequestionnaire and that looked interesting, but that they had never though of before Ifstudents can find strategies suitable to them and actually use them, this might increasetheir vocabulary size While it was found that Japanese senior high school students usedmany different strategies to learn vocabulary, it was also found that there were somethat they did not use such as the Keyword Method and semantic mapping It is possiblethat these “unknown” strategies will help them learn vocabulary In addition, as Schmitt(1997) argued, such cognitively demanding strategies lead to higher retention inmemory than do the cognitively shallow activities such as verbal repetition Therefore,English teachers might want to introduce such potentially effective techniques to theirstudents and encourage them to try these strategies out To accomplish this goal, teachereducators and teachers must be knowledgeable about as many strategies as possible andintroduce them to their students whenever students need help If teachers are not very

knowledgeable about strategies, they need to make the effort to investigate strategies bythemselves or consult with specialists.

There are some limitations in a large-scale study like this First, since thequestionnaire is self-report and the single source of information in this part of the study,

it is not clear whether the participants actually used the strategies, they indicated inlearning vocabulary Their responses may be just their beliefs or thoughts that they haveabout their use of strategies There must have been differences in the awareness ofstrategy use among individuals, and some may have inadvertently respondedincorrectly In order to investigate students’ actual use of strategies, researchers mustobserve classes where vocabulary learning is taking place, use think-aloud procedures(introspection), and interview the students to find out what they do to learn vocabularyand so forth Second, there may also have been some unclear points in the questionnaireitself “Never” to “always” may have been fuzzy because they interpretations of thesescales can change according to context For example, the participants many havethough of different contexts when they are asked how frequently they use a bilingualdictionary They might have thought of home context or school context Their answermay have been “It depends.” Therefore, it would have been better if the context hadbeen specified In addition, as one teacher pointed out, the definitions of some wordsmay not have been clear

Along with Kudo (1999), Marttinen also investigated VLSs used bystudents two upper secondary schools in Western Finland The purpose of his thesis was

to find out more about theLSs L1 Finnish students of upper secondary school use whenstudying English as their first foreign language Especially interesting was finding outwhat kind of different strategies upper secondary school students use in their study ofEnglish vocabulary and where they have gotten their information about these differentstrategies In addition, he wanted to study the possible gender differences, which mayhave an impact on strategy use Furthermore, he was interested in the relationship ofsecond language learning motivation and VLSs A questionnaire which was completed

by 50 upper secondary school students of two different schools in Western Finland (31males, 19 females) Thirty participants used the paper version of the questionnaire and

20 completed the questionnaire in the Web environment In addition, the strategies wereclassified by the vocabulary learning strategy taxonomy by Schmitt (1997)

After the analysis of data, Marttinen (2008) found out upper secondary schoolstudents acknowledge the meaning of vocabulary in language proficiency even though

they may not take the initiative to enhance their vocabulary learning abilities by usingdifferent VLSs or even actively take issues regarding vocabulary learning intoconsideration The distinction between vocabulary learning and vocabulary acquisition

is hard to make and the participants of the present study seemed to be somewhatconfused whether vocabulary acquisition outside the classroom is vocabulary learning.When planning further study in the field of vocabulary learning strategy use it would beuseful to take some suggestions into account A large number of participants and equalnumber of females and males could offer more accurate data and results In addition,interviews or observations could serve as useful tools for data acquisition instead of ortogether with a questionnaire used in the study

2.3 Studies on vocabulary learning strategies in Vietnam

Together with foreign studies on VLSs, this field of research has been attractingthe attention of researchers in Vietnam

There are two of all VLS studies are one by Trinh Tuyet Mai and another studyconducted by Dinh Thuy Hang As shown in the studies, both of them investigatedVLSs However, they have some differences Trinh Tuyet Mai (2006) carried out aninvestigation of the first year English major students’ VLSs in Lang Son College ofEducation, whereas Dinh Thuy Hang (2008) studied VLSs employed by students atHung Vuong gifted high school

The study done by Trinh Tuyet Mai aims to provide answers to the followingquestions: What VLSs are most frequently used by the first year English major students

at Lang Son College of Education and How does their choice of VLSs relate to theirpersonality, motivation and language learning backgrounds There were questionairesand one vocabulary test supporting questionaire one given to 31 students comprising 1male and 30 female These students come from different districts of Lang Son provinceand their age from 18 to 24 After the analysis of data, she found out that there were awide range of VLS use The study’s subjects prefer cognitive and metacognitive ones.Moreover, VLS were used at a quite low level of frequency and use more simple andshallow strategies of different categories neglecting those ones requiring muchmanupulation of information

The purpose of Dinh Thuy Hang’s study was to identify what VLSs arecommonly used by the students at Hung Vuong Gifted High School and to look at thedifferences in vocabulary learning strategy by gender and major in relation to strategy

use A vocabulary-learning strategy questionnaire was given to 67 students from HungVuong Gifted High School participated in the study Thirty-five students of English(n=35) and thirty-two students of math (n=32) Forty-seven students were female andtwenty were male The participants have been studying English for 5 to 8 years.Statistical analysis revealed that most of the strategies given in the questionnaire werenot used with high frequency Only one of five groups of strategies had the frequencyabove 50% (Determination strategies) The rest had the frequency below 50% This maylead to difficulties in long-term retention and use of vocabulary Significant differencesexisted in strategy use by field of study The results showed that means of vocabularylearning strategy use between the male and female were not so much different Most ofthe female had greater means than the male

2.4 Summary

As shown in the studies reviewed above, VLSs have been taken intoconsideration and attempted to study in a vast number of foreign researchers and severalVietnamese ones All of the studies mentioned above used Schmitt's vocabulary-learning strategy questionnaire to gather data from the students on theirs vocabulary-learning strategies This proves that the questionnaire is very reliable However, allabove-mentioned studies indicated that the data were collected by using questionnaires,which do not reflect the reality of students’ VLSs because students could have not readthe questions carefully but only circled them or there may also have been some unclearpoints in the questionnaire itself Besides, “Never” to “always” may have been fuzzybecause they interpretations of these scales can change according to context Therefore,

it is suggested that researchers should have a qualitative data collection, which is morebeneficial such as journal writing, think-aloud procedures (introspection), or interviewthe students in order to investigate students’ actual use of strategies

Second, based on the fact at CBQGL high school, students all have learnedEnglish for over seven years before entering this high school In spite of having largeamount of English learning time their vocabulary is still poor Many students complainthat they spend most of their time to learn vocabulary but the results are at low level It

is their lack of good vocabulary that has consequently badly affected their writing,reading, listening and speaking proficiency The real situation leads to an assumptionthat the students may have problems in their VLSs

For some reasons mentioned above, the present research is implemented

to investigate vocabulary-learning strategies used by students at CBQGL High School.The details will be presented in the methodology section

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The review of literature relating to the present study in the previous chapter hasprovided a theoretical basis for developing its methodology This chapter aiming atdepicting the methodology addresses the following issues: The research questions; thedata collection instruments; the subjects of the study; the research procedure descriptionand data analysis

3.1 Research questions

As stated in chapter 1, the purpose of the research is to investigate VLSs used bystudents at CBQGL high school To achieve this aim, the study provides the answers tothe following question: What VLSs are commonly used by the students of CBQGL highschool?

3.2 Data collection instruments

A questionnaire was chosen to identify what VLSs are commonlyused The questionnaire was designed to gather data from thestudents on their VLSs It contained fifty-eight closed-ended questionsand one open-ended question classified under five different groups ofstrategies as determination, memory, social, cognitive, andmetacognitive Questions from 1 to 9 belong to determinationstrategies, from 10 to 17 belong to social strategies, from 18 to 44belong to memory strategies, from 45 to 53 belong to cognitivestrategies and from 54 to 58 belong to metacognitive strategies Thequestionnaire was translated into Vietnamese so that students couldunderstand and respond to the items easily (see the Appendix) Theitems were adapted from Schmitt (1997) because they were reliableand used in most of above-mentioned studies Examples orexplanations were added in most of the questions in the questionnaire

to help students understand clearly about VLSs For example, inquestion 1, 2, 3, there were some changes Question 1: I analyze part of