skkn teaching vocabulary through collocations

Recent research proves that vocabulary is central to English language learning because students cannot understand other people and express their own ideas without enough vocabulary.. Wha

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI

Đơn vị : THPT NGÔ QUYỀN

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Mã số: ………

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Teaching vocabulary through collocations

Người thực hiện: Trần Văn Nghĩa

Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

Quản lý giáo dục

Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh

Lĩnh vực khác:

Có đính kèm:

Năm học:2015-2016

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN

1 Họ và tên: Trần Văn Nghĩa

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh :20/11/1963

3 Nam/Nữ: Nam

4 Địa chỉ: B 28, Khu phố 6, Tam Hiệp – thành phố Biên Hoà –Tỉnh Đồng Nai

5 Điện thoại: 0913130131 (NR):

7 Chức vụ: Tổ trưởng tổ tiếng Anh

8 Nhiệm vụ được giao: Quản lý tổ tiếng Anh, giảng dạy môn Tiếng Anh lớp 12A2, 12A3 và 12A9

9 Đơn vị công tác: THPT Ngô Quyền –Biên Hoà - Đồng Nai

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO

- Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: Thạc sĩ chuyên ngành

giảng dạy tiếng Anh

- Năm nhận bằng: 2001

- Chuyên ngành đào tạo: giảng dạy tiếng Anh

- Lĩnh vực chuyên môn có kinh nghiệm: Giảng dạy tiếng Anh

- Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 24 năm

- Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã có trong 5 năm gần đây:

1 Making speaking tasks more effective and easier for high school students

2 How to increase high school students’ oral communication

3 Improving High School Students’ Written Competence Through teaching Grammar in Context

4 Improving High School Students’ Speaking Skill Through Role- play

Research Title: Teaching vocabulary through collocations OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

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Literature review

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As teachers of English, we normally encourage our students to use English to communicate in real-life situations At school, we improve our students’ communicative competence with the four language skills : listening, speaking, reading and writing One more important aspect of communication that must be included in the curriculum is vocabulary Recent research proves that vocabulary is central to English language learning because students cannot understand other people and express their own ideas without enough vocabulary In my own experience of teaching, I know that the greater number of words our students have, the better they can convey meaning, interpret ideas from others, and express their own opinions and feelings In addition, vocabulary is of central importance for reading comprehension The more words students know, the better they are able to comprehend written and spoken texts What we should do to help students learn vocabulary in a group rather than a single word is the interest or concern of those who teach English as a second language In this study, my focus is on teaching vocabulary through collocations

Rationale

Research shows that collocations play a very vital part in English teaching and learning Collocations run through the whole of the English language No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of collocations To intermediate students and advanced students of English, collocations help enhance their spoken and written communication Collocations also enable learners to be aware of language chunks which are used by native English people in spoken and written discourse The precise meaning in any context is determined by that context: by the words surround and combine with the core word-by collocation ( Oxford Collocations Dictionary: 2003)

By definition, a collocation is a group of words that usually go together For instance, in English we often say ‘big problem‘’, 'heavy rain' It is grammatically correct to say ‘heavy problem', 'strong rain' or 'big rain', but both of phrases sound unusual Native English speakers say 'heavy rain', 'strong tea' 'by accident', but they never say 'heavy tea', 'strong rain' or 'for accident' Collocations are particularly important in terms of using accurate and natural or native-speaker-like English Teaching English through collocations help students become competent English users

Aims of the study

As an attempt to enrich students’ vocabulary, I will take into account the ways we teach and the way our students learn vocabulary It is my expectation that I can make an innovation in English language teaching and learning, especially teaching and learning vocabulary at Ngo Quyen High School where I have been working as a teacher of English for over 20 years

This study aims to explore the impact of using collocations on the development of students’ language competence at Ngo Quyen High School The study also aims to identify students’ problems, their learning styles with the expectation that collocations will help improve enrich their vocabulary The study project includes a short introduction , a review of current literature related to the definition of collocations, their benefits as well as limitations The final parts of the study paper are sections which discuss on significance of the study, outcomes and possible problems with a brief conclusion and expectations of the writer

Research Methodology

Research Questions Research

Instruments

Subjects Tools of Analysis

1 What is the effect of

collocations on the

development of students’

vocabulary?

2 How can collocations be

used effectively in class ?

- Pretest

- Post-test

-Grade 12 students -Age: 17-18

English proficiency:

Intermediate -Site : Ngo Quyen High School, Dong Nai Province

-Sample size: 50 ( 2 groups)

-Frequency count

-Percentage

- Transcription analysis

3 What are teachers/

students’ views or opinions

on collocations?

-Students’

questionnaire -Teacher’s interview

-The Subject

The sample includes two groups of 17-18 year-old students belonging to two different classes Each group has 25 students The group engaged in collocation lesson form the experimental group, while the other, which carries on with casual lessons form the control group A pre-test was conducted in order to show that the two groups have the same level of proficiency I taught both groups for the second term of the school year 2015, using collocation exercises with the experimental group and the control group was taught as usual The two groups were tested at the end of the second term so that I could get the scores for each student The test scores were analyzed and considered as data for the findings The four teachers and I made comparisons between the control group and the experimental group on their learning in order to see the effect of collocations on students’ development of vocabulary Data collection was discussed with the principal and vice-principal of the school

-Data collection

My research was conducted with two different methods for data collection The first thing I did was

to prepare open-ended questions for the survey that I would carry out A questionnaire finding out about students’ attitudes to collocations, their views of their own abilities and perception and awareness of what collocations are about

The next thing I did was interviewing the five teachers of English in my school The second thing

I would do was that I got my students to fill the questionnaire I had made to find a better way to teach and learn vocabulary The last thing I did was that I designed a lesson plan and exercises in which collocations were made use of ( please see the exercises below)

-Questionnaire

The questionnaire which uses closed-and open-ended questions covers different kinds of students, their views on collocations The questionnaire would be explained to students in Vietnamese because some students might not clearly understand all the items typed in the survey

-Interview

Interviewing was chosen as one of the two main methods of data collection By asking four teachers questions about views or opinions on using collocations and the techniques of teaching vocabulary

It took half an hour for one interview In order to make the interviewees comfortable, the place for the interview and the purpose of the interview were made clear to the interviewees The main part of the interview includes asking teachers 12 questions and recording their answers by a good cassette recorder Each teacher was interviewed once at the beginning of the research project Open-ended questions were designed for the teacher’s interview

Literature Review

Collocations are defined as words that occur together with high frequency and refer to the combination of words that have a certain mutual expectancy (Moon, 1997) “The combination is not

a fixed expression but there is a greater than chance likelihood that the words will co-occur” In the definition of collocations, (Jackson, 1988, p 96) says that the way in which two or more words are typically used is normally called collocations

Harmer (2007) points out that collocations are of great importance for language learning He says that the reason why second language learners have poor performance in the test of short formulaic expressions is not simply a lack of vocabulary, but insufficient acquisition of language chunks He also stresses that the knowledge of formulaic language consisting of idioms, proverbs, sayings, collocations, short set expressions, and long expressions is a vital element of language competence and is used to distinguish native speakers from non-native speakers or second language learners

In his book, Nattinger (1988) points out that it is rather easier to memorize a new word in a network

of associations, and that language chunks help learners to store information In emphasizing the importance of collocations, he says that collocations are useful in enhancing comprehension for the association of words, assist the learners in committing words to memory and also enable people to predict what kinds of words may be found together Collocations are also worthwhile for promoting language production because learners only notice certain lexical restrictions by learning collocations They do not need to reconstruct the language every time they want to say something Collocations will help our students change their habits and styles of learning individual words to the larger structure of the spoken and written discourse This benefit of collocations can help our students get better results in international testing systems such as TOEFL, IELTS and FCE

In pointing out the importance of vocabulary and collocations, (Harmer: 2007) says that and natural communicative approach emphasizes the importance of vocabulary development, which result in the teaching of vocabulary It is accepted that choosing our words carefully in certain situations is more important than choosing grammatical structures

Ways to help students make good use of collocations:

1 Using a collocation dictionary:

Students are usually encouraged to use a collocation dictionary at school and at home They can look

up any word and see which other words( adjectives, verbs, prepositions) are usually used together with it A good collocation dictionary gives us many examples for each word and tells learners

which prepositions or articles the word is used with Using collocation dictionary can help students

to build up collocational competence or ability to use word combination in texts or contexts

2 Recognition /investigation of collocations:

While our students are reading, we should encourage them to look at which words go together For example, If we teach our students to write about a topic, we should encourage them to find a newspaper article or a magazine article about that topic and look at the phrases that native journalists or reporters use Our students will see the same phrases again and again For a while, our students can acquire these phrases They can imitate how native English people use collocations

3 Practicing collocations in the classroom:

When students study vocabulary, we get them to learn the whole phrases, not single words For example, it is better to learn 'to get married to someone’ rather than just 'get married';

' make a noise' rather than just ' noise' If they need to learn the word 'contribution', ask them to study the phrase 'make a contribution to doing something' ; the word 'effort', we will ask them to study the phrase 'make an effort to do something' Students need to do exercises about collocations They are encouraged to write sentences and answers based on the reading texts with the use of collocations at sentence levels for beginners and pre-intermediate students, at text levels for intermediate and advanced students of English (please see exercises 5,6)

Application

The following exercises are designed to help students make use of collocations in improving the four language skills These exercises make the learning of vocabulary more effective and more meaningful for high school students from grade 10 to grade 12

Exercise 1: Rewrite the sentences to make them less formal, replacing the underlined part with Verb+ preposition The words in bracket must not be altered in any way.

1 Jane will telephone her boyfriend this evening.(call)

2 We should resolve our quarrel as soon as possible.(make)

3 They are going on a date tonight.(out)

4 Tom has been dating her for many years.(going)

5 We invited our colleagues to our house to celebrate the end of the project.(asked)

6 You know, my car stopped functioning.(broke)

7 I must return home early in the day.(get)

8 I think I can manage without a guide.(get)

9 We have just registered at the hotel.(checked)

10 They have ended their relationship.(broken)

Answer:

1 Jane will call her boyfriend up this evening.

2 We should make up as soon as possible.

3 They are going out tonight.

4 Tom has been going with her for many years.

5 We asked our colleagues over to celebrate the end of the project.

6 You know, my car broke down.

7 I must get back early in the day.

8 I think I can get by without a guide.

9 We have just checked in at the hotel.

10 They have broken up their relationship.

Exercise 2: Complete each sentence with one appropriate verb from the box.

communicate point complained make earned

lived harboured gained care concentrate

1 Marie Curie _ a degree in Physics with flying colours.

2 Because I can’t speak French, I must at the fruit I want to buy.

3 Many office workers _ to the manager about their salary.

4 She _ with her best friend in London for two years.

5 Marie Curie _the dream of a scientific career which was impossible for a woman at

that time

6 Uruguay a victory over Argentina in the final and became the first champion in the

history of the World Cup

7 I you know English you can with native-English speakers easily.

8 There are two things that _ humans different from all other animals.

9 She isn’t my closest friend She doesn’t _ about my feelings.

10 If you _ on the problem , you should find a solution.

Answer: ( English 10-units 3,8 )

1 earned 2 point 3 complained 4 lived 5 harboured

6 gained 7 communicate 8 make 9 care 10 concentrate

Exercise 3: Complete each sentence with one correct adjective from the box.

convenient high humane regular

important electronic native healthy

1 We arrived in Ha Noi very early The bus traveled at such a speed.

2 Television is not only a source of entertainment, but also a rather cheap one.

3 The doctor advised him to take exercise to lose weight.

4 Music is played during almost events and on special occasions.

5 Many people wrote letters demanding _ treatments of prisoners.

6 A computer is an storage device which manages large collections of data.

7 A environment includes clean streets and high ways with open spaces in cities for

parks and playgrounds

8 Although English is not my language I have lived and worked in London for many

years ( English 10-units 3,8 )

Answer:

1 high 2 convenient 3 regular 4 important

5 humane 6 electronic 7 healthy 8 native

Exercise 4:

Many years ago, my village was very poor The villagers had to work hard in the fields all day and could hardly make ends meet Their lives were simple and they were in need of many things Many people had to live in houses made of straw and mud, and few families had a radio or a

TV set However, in spite of the shortages, the villagers managed to send their children to school and college They hoped that with an education of science and technology, their children could find a way of bettering their lives

The children have met their parents’ wishes When they came back from college or technical high school, they introduced new farming methods, which resulted in bumper crops They also helped the villagers grow cash crops for export Soon, the lifestyle of my village changed Today, people live in brick houses In the evening, they can listen to the news on the radio or watch TV for entertainment Sometimes they go to town on their motorbikes to do some shopping or to visit their friends

“Our lives have changed a lot thanks to the knowledge our children brought home,” said an old farmer, “and I always tell my grandchildren to study harder so that they can do even more for the village than their parents did.”

( English 10-unit 8, page 83)

* MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS:

Direction: Read the text and choose the best answer by circling the letter A, B,C or D.

1.The phrase “ make an ends meet” is closest in meaning to ?

A meet all the things you need in the end

B have just enough money to buy the things you need

C satisfy all the things you need in life

D meet someone to work with you

2 The phrase “ cash crop” could be replaced by which of the following ?

A crop that farmers grow to sell rather than to use it themselves

B crop that farmers grow to use rather than to sell it

C crop that farmers grow to sell and to use it themselves

D crop that farmers grow on their own