Using mind map to improve vocabulary knowledge for the first year english language teaching education students of FLF at HPU2

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY ====== DO THI VAN TRANG USING MIND MAP TO IMPROVE VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE FOR THE FIRST YEAR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING EDUCATION STUDENTS OF FLF AT HPU2 (SUBMITED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH) SUPERVISOR: DANG NGOC NAM, M.A HA NOI, 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been completed without the support of many people First of all, I want to send my dearest appreciation towards to Mr Dang Ngoc Nam, M.A., my supervisor, for his valuable support and encouragement My sincere thanks also go to my teachers in the FLF at HPU2 who I owe an enormous intellectual debt during my years of university work I must also not forget to thank my family deeply, for their whole-hearted care and endless patronage i ABSTRACT Learning vocabulary is one of the primary emphases to every foreign leaner where it is always mentioned in the objectives of four skills This study was done aiming at investigating the common ways of learning vocabulary and their difficulties in studying vocabulary ; introducing the mind- map technique to the first year English Language Teaching Education at HPU2 as well First, to learn about the current ways of learning vocabulary, the survey questionnaire was conducted with 48 students of K41 English Language Teaching Education Second, a pre-test and post-test were done to appreciate the quality of vocabulary studying among these students before and after the treatment during five weeks of the second semester of the 2015-2016 academic school year Last, the classroom observation also was used to find whether students like the technique Based on the results of these methods, the difficulties of students in learning vocabulary have been found out as well as MM Technique was introduced received positive responds from students ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: Using Mind Map to Improve Vocabulary for the first year English Language Teaching Education students of FLF at HPU2 I certify that no part of this study has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgements and that the study is originally written by me under serious guidance from my supervisor Date submitted: May 2016 Student Supervisor Do Thi Van Trang Dang Ngoc Nam, M.A iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FLF Foreign Language Faculty HPU2 Hanoi Pedagogical University Number MM Mind Map EG Experiment Group CG Control Group pp Pages iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES List of figures: Figure 1: Human Memory System 13 Finger 2: Network Tree 15 Figure 3: Event Chain 15 Figure 4: Cycle Concept Map 17 Figure 5: Spider Concept Map 18 Figure 6: Percentage of ―Yes‖ in Weeks 30 Figure 7: Difficulties in learning vocabulary 33 Figure 8: Results of the pre-tests in EG 35 Figure 9: Results of the pre-tests in CG 36 List of table: Table 1: Major aspects of vocabulary (Ur, 1996) 11 Table 2: Background information about the students of the research 22 Table 3: Planning of the pre-tests and the post-tests 27 Table 4: Results of the Classroom Observation with EG in weeks 30 Table 5: Advantages of MM in learning vocabulary 34 Table 6: Results of post-tests in EG 38 Table 7: Results of post-test in CG 39 v TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE INTRODUCTION I RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY II Aim of the study III Scope of the study IV Research Objectives V Methods of the study VI Significance of the study VII Research tasks VIII Design of the research PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.1 Literature review in brief I.2 An overview of vocabulary I.2.1 Definitions of vocabulary I.2.2 Types of vocabulary I.2.3 Aspects of vocabulary 11 I.2.4 How vocabulary is remembered 12 I.3 An overview of MM 14 I.3.1 Definitions of MM 14 I.3.2 Classifications of MM 14 I.3.3 Dominant of MM 18 I.3.4 Using MM to teach vocabulary………………………………………… 20 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY II.1 Subject of the study 22 II.2 Instruments for the thesis 23 vi II.2.1 Observation 23 II.2.2 Survey questionnaire 24 II.2.3 Tests 25 II.3 Planning 27 II.4 Procedures for Data Collection 28 Conclusion of the Chapter 29 CHAPTER THREE FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION III.1 Findings of the Observation 30 III.2 Findings of the Questionnaire 31 III.3 Findings of Tests 35 PART THREE CONCLUSION I Conclusion 41 II Limitations and suggestions for further study 42 II.1 Limitations 42 II.2 Suggestions for further study 42 References 44 APPENDIX A: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SHEET APPENDIX B: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE vii PART ONE INTRODUCTION I Rationale for the study The basic purpose of the language is to get an idea out of one brain into another A question is raised how people can communicate with others effectively if they not use the same language Therefore, people from different nationalities want to communicate, they commonly use English language That is the reason why it is called ―language of communication‖ or ―language of the world‖ English, nowadays, is spoken as the first language by nearly 400 million people and as the second language by 1.6 million people As its popularity, our education system attaches special importance to teaching and learning English in many school levels from primary to university or higher education one A plenty of programs and methods were introduced aiming at raising Vietnamese’s English skills It cannot be denied that vocabulary knowledge is a significant factor when studying any second language D A Wilkins, a famous linguist, stated that without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed With rich vocabulary, learners could improve their four English skills as well as comprehension and production in English So, learning vocabulary is always one of the most concerned of English learners In fact, the first year students in FLF at HPU2 said that they confuse in finding ways to improve their vocabulary They realized that it is not easy to deal with new words or how to use a word in a sentence In addition, it is hard for them to remember these new words for a long time Consequently, their vocabulary knowledge is not rich enough to associate with many other problems in studying English process Teaching methods also play a significant role to help students improve their English skills In lectures of FLF at HPU2, teachers always try to bring their students various ways to improve their English However, some methods are out of fashion for students Hence, how to improve vocabulary is still a big problem need solving For all reasons listed above with my own enthusiasm in vocabulary, I would decide to choose Using Mind Map to Improve Vocabulary Knowledge for the first year English Language Teaching Education students of FLF at HPU2 as the title of my thesis II Aim of the study The purpose of this thesis is finding more effective methods to improve vocabulary knowledge for students of FLF at HPU2 In detail, the primary aim of the study was set up as follows: To test the usefulness of MM techniques in improving vocabulary for students of FLF at HPU2;To investigate the experimental students’ attitudes towards learning vocabulary through applying MM Technique III Scope of the study The general research area of this study is vocabulary The phenomenon is strategies for enriching vocabulary by using MM Technique for the first year English Language Teaching Education students of FLF at HPU2 in the academic year of 2015-2016 Other aspects of vocabulary and MM Technique are also mentioned The participants involved in the study are forty eight K41A English Language Teaching Education students at HPU2 Week Mark under Mark 5.5 – Mark > 8.5 #1 20.8% 41.7% 37.5% #2 20.8% 45.8% 33.4% #3 25% 50% 25% #4 29.7% 50% 20.3% Table 7: Results of post-test in CG Basing on the two tables above, the figure was quite different among ranges of mark in these both groups of participants In the first range of mark, the number of participants in the first group was lower than that of the second one In the EG group, the ratio of participants who took part in the test and got the bad mark (under 5) slightly went down (from 12.5% to 8.3%) despite the increase in the 3rd week On the other hand, this ratio of the CG group went up quickly (from 22% to 27%) Hence, it was obvious that applying MM in the process of learning vocabulary could help to reduce the number of students who get the mark under It can be seen from these two tables, the ratio of the students in term of mark from 5.5 to was quite high in these both groups, nearly 50% Nonetheless, this level of mark in the CG group was increasing slightly Although it seemed to be positive, in general, it was not because of its effect on the number of participants in the third range of mark In the third range of mark, these two groups were oppositely different The ratio of the participants who could get the best mark (8.5 to 10) in the EG group was much higher than that of during weeks of the test In more detail, this ratio in the EG group was high and remained the same at more than 41% or slightly fluctuates However, there was the sharp decrease in that of CG The number of participants went down by 17.2% (from 37.5 to 20.3) 39 From these tables, it could be concluded that MM had a great effect on how the students can memorize the words they learn in weeks After applying MM, students could get the much higher marks and many of them could get the good mark (8.5 to 10) This was the considerable contribution of MM to the process of learning vocabulary The teachers of English should apply it soon and more often for students to get higher result of memorizing words Students themselves also need to initiatively using MM to study vocabulary easily and remember them better 40 PART THREE CONCLUSION The discussion about the classroom research which dealt with improving vocabulary knowledge of K41A English Language Teaching Education could be claimed in this chapter All contents will be summarized first and then indicating some limitations and some suggestions as well so that the findings in this study could really bring some benefits for teachers of English, students whose major is English and for future researches I Conclusion At the beginning, this research indicated the situation in which MM was being used to teach vocabulary for the junior students in the English faculty in FLF-HPU2 It is the fact that professors applied MM to help students learn new words at reading class However, there was just a small number of students knew that method They did notice that technique in so many sources even in some classes at school but they did not know how to use that strategy in learning vocabulary Therefore, the writer carried out that mind-mapping was not highly recommended in teaching vocabulary for first year students in FLF-HPU2 The second point is that the advantage of using MM in teaching new words was determined through a questionnaire survey In spite of difficulties that students might have when learning by that way in the first time, almost students found it exciting to learn vocabulary and they were eager to learn more In addition, it was easier for them to study a new word and enrich their vocabulary knowledge by adding more other related words to learner’s MM Not only easier to study, MM helps learners remember words longer than traditional ways by using a system of various symbols, colors, images that give stronger 41 impression on our brain From the survey, it is clear that MM is a great tool to help students enriching their English vocabulary The last aspect is that MM Technique can improve students’ mark on reading comprehension tests The MM causes these tests result to improve more significant than traditional teaching method Hence, not only useful for studying vocabulary, but also MM provides advantages on reading comprehension In addition, with the positive results of MM in this thesis, it is also believed to improve logical thinking and rememorizing II Limitations and suggestions for further study II.1 Limitations Besides the writer’s aspiration, there was also some drawbacks like time limited, the number of participants in the survey and some other unwilling factors which have led to some certain restrictions The first point is that the time to organize the survey was too short to get an objective result Another aspect is that the number of students taking part in the survey was too small so that the result could not be persuasively affected It is the fact that only 48 students joined the survey whereas the number of the first year students was incredibly larger Therefore, the result could not represent for the whole junior students in the FLF-HPU2 Last but not least, the resources for this method were limited so the general background could be affected as well II.2 Suggestions for further study MM is still an unknown strategy to students and teachers as well There is also just some studies about this method therefore researchers need to utilize this technique frequently in their theories Furthermore, the study should be invested 42 with other kinds of participants and with other kinds of English skills like reading, speaking, writing and listening to discover other benefits of MM to learning other foreigner languages Finally, in the further study, researchers are encouraged to combine more instruments in a longer period of time to get the influential result such as recordings and interview and such 43 REFERENCES Appleby, D.C (2008) Favorites activities for the teaching of psychology American Psychological Association, pp 119-123 Brinkmann, A.(2003) Graphical Knowledge Display: Mind Mapping and Concept Mapping as Efficient Tools in Mathematics Education Mathematics Education Review, pp 35-48 Boyson, G (2009) The use of Mind Mapping in teaching and learning The Learning Institute, Assignment Buzan, T (1976) Use Both Sides of Your Brain New York: E P Dutton & Co Buzan, T and Buzan, B (2000) The mind map book (Millenium Ed.) London: BBC Books Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Third edition Cambridge University Press Dang, T.D (2011) Using mind maps and diagrams to teach vocabulary for first year mainstream students, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education Graduation paper University of Languages and International Studies, National University, Hanoi Ellis, R and Beaton, A (1993) Psycholinguistic Determinants of Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning Language Learning, Vol 43, Issue 4, pp 559-617 44 Goodnough, K and Long, R (2002) Mind Mapping: A Graphic Organizer for the Pedagogical Toolbox Science Scope, Vol 25, No 8, pp 20-24 Hornby , A.S (1974) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Oxford: University Gu, Y (2010) Learning Strategies for Vocabulary Development Vitoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Harmer, J (1991) The Practice of Language English Teaching London: Longman Holland, B., Holland, L and Davies, J (2003/2004) An investigation into the concept of Mind Mapping and the use of Mind Mapping software to support and improve student academic performance Learning and Teaching Projects 2003/2004, pp 89-94 Li, M., Yang, Y., and Chen, H (2010) Using Mind Maps as a Strategy for Vocabulary Acquisition in Chinese Universities In Computational Intelligence and Software Engineering (CiSE), 2010 International Conference on (pp 1-3) IEEE McCarthy, M (1990) Vocabulary Oxford University Press (OUP) Mento, A.J., Martinnelli, P and Jones, R.M (1999) Mind Mapping in Executive Education: Applications and Outcomes Development, pp.390-416 45 Journal of Management Nguyen, T.T.L (2012) Using mind mapping (MM) to teach vocabulary to the first year non-English major students at Bac Giang University of Agriculture and Forestry (BUAF) Oxford, R.L (1990) Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Newbury House Pamela H Interaction One Reading Siliver Edition Reinitz, Dr (2010) Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition American Psychological Association Richards, J C (1976) The role of vocabulary teaching TESOL Quarterly, 10, pp.77 Richards, J C et al (2002) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics London: Longman, pp 580 Schmitt, N and Schmitt, D (2010) Vocabulary notebooks: theoretical underpinnings and practical suggestions ELT Journal, 49, pp.133-243 Stahl, S.A (1999) Vocabulary Development: From research to practice (Vol.2) Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books Stephen, L (2014) VocabularyDevelopment Part 1: Types of Vocabulary Classroom Strategy Thornbury, S (2002) How to Teach Vocabulary England: Longman Tompkins, G.E (2005) 50 Ways to develop strategies writers NJ: Pearson 46 Trianto, M Pd (2009) Mendesain Model Pembelajaran Inovatif: Konsep, Landasan, dan Implementasinya pada Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Dasar Pendidikan (KTSP) Jakarta Kencana Ur, P (2005) A course in language teaching: Practice and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wilkins, D.A (1979) Notional Syllabuses Oxford: Oxford University Press Wilson, N & McLean, S (1994) Questionnaire Design: a Practical Introduction Newtown Abbey: Co Antrim: University of Ulster Press Windura, S (2008) Mind Map: Langkah Demi Langkah Jakarta: PT.Elex Media Komputindo Websites: http://www.feedagg.com/feed/23414/ http://www.usingmindmaps.com/what-is-a-mind-map.html 47 APPENDIX A Classroom Observation Sheet No Statement Yes Students feel enthusiastic to follow the lesson Students give attention to the teacher’s explanation Students are active during learning process Students apply mind-mapping strategy well Students understand the teacher’s explanation Students the evaluation well Students ask their teacher if they have any difficulties No APPENDIX B: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Student:………………………………Class:………………… How long have you been learning English? a Less than years b years c 7years d more than years Do you like studying English? a Yes b No Do you think that vocabulary is important when we study a second language? a Yes B No How often you study vocabulary? a Everyday b Whenever I like c Never d Other option: ………… How you study vocabulary by yourself? a) Vietnamese Translation b) Visual Aids c) English Explanation d) Real Objects e) Context Clues f) Mind-mapping g) Others: ………… How are you taught vocabulary at school? a) Vietnamese Translation b) Visual Aids c) English Explanation d) Real Objects e) Context Clues f) Mind-mapping g) Others: …………… What difficulties you have when you study vocabulary? a) Pronounce them b) Spell them c) Remember them d) Use them e) Other Have you ever heard about Mind Map? a) Ever b) No If ―Ever‖, continue with the question and 10 Have you ever used Mind Map for studying vocabulary? a) Ever b) No 10.Which advantages can mind maps bring to the learners? Advantages of Mind Map Strong agree It is easier for learners to remember vocabulary items It is quicker for learners to remember vocabulary items Learners will remember vocabulary items longer Learners can learn more vocabulary Agree Disagree Strong disagree than usual Learners will be motivated in learning vocabulary APPENDIX C: Reading lesson plan for EG Period 4th: Reading Time: 45 minutes Class: K41A English Language Teaching Education Students of FLF at HPU2 Number of students: 24 School: Hanoi Pedagogical University Number Levels of students: Pre-B1 Objectives: By the end of lesson, students will be able to: - Answer all the following up questions for reading comprehension - Understand the meaning of all new given words in the passage - Improve the vocabulary knowledge and know how to use MM to learning vocabulary Teaching material: reading passage in Interaction One Reading, Board… Procedure: Time 5’ 15’ T’ activities - Give Ss the passages Ss’ activities - Scan the passage for Let Ss scan the reading passage 5minutes and find the for 5minutes and seek for the new new vocabulary passage - Using MM to teach new words for Ss words in the - Pay attention to the researcher’s explanation and MM 20’ - Giving time for Ss to the reading - Answer the following up questions in reading passage - Collect the reading passage - Hand in the passage the APPENDIX D: Reading Lesson Plan for CG Period 4th: Reading Time: 45 minutes Class: K41A English Language Teaching Education Students of FLF at HPU2 Number of students: 24 School: HPU2 Level of students: Pre-B1 Objectives: By the end of lesson, students will be able to: - Answer all the following up questions for reading comprehension - Understand the meaning of all new given words in the passage - Improve the vocabulary knowledge about the topic Teaching material: reading passage in Interaction One Reading, Board… Procedure: Time Researcher’s activities Ss’ activities 5’ - Give Ss the passages - Scan Let Ss scan the reading passage for 5minutes and seek the passage for 5minutes and find the new words in the passage for the new vocabulary 10’ - Write down the new words on - Pay the board meaning Explanation and by give the Vietnamese or English attention researcher’s to the explanation and take notes the new words in the notebook Explanation 20’ - Giving time for Ss to the - Answer the following up reading questions in the reading passage - Collect the reading passage - Hand in the passage