A study of english vocabulary learning strategies of 12th graders at nguyen tat thanh high school in hanoi, vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES PHAN DIỄM MY A study of English vocabulary learning Thanh high sc

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN DIỄM MY

A study of English vocabulary learning

Thanh high school in Hanoi, Vietnam

(Nghiên cứu về những chiến lược học từ vựng tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 12 trường THPT

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN DIỄM MY

A study of English vocabulary learning

Thanh high school in Hanoi, Vietnam

(Nghiên cứu về những chiến lược học từ vựng tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 12 trường THPT

Nguyễn Tất Thành, Hà Nội)

A Master Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Supervisor: Assoc.Prof Nguyễn Văn Trào, PhD Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2017

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DECLARATION

I declare that the thesis submitted for the Master of English degree at University of Languages and International studies is an undertaken work of my own research and has not been previously submitted at any other universities for any degrees Contributions of other researchers involved is made to indicate this clearly, with due reference to the literature, and acknowledgement of collaborative research and discussion This work was under the supervision and advice of Assoc.Prof Nguyen Van Trao, PhD, at University of Languages and International studies

Hanoi, November 2016

Phan Diem My

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this undertaking is a great thank to the participation and assistance of numerous people whose names may not all be enumerated, but contributions are sincerely appreciated and gratefully acknowledged

First of all, I would like to express my deep appreciation and indebtedness particularly to Assoc.Prof Nguyen Van Trao, PhD, my supervisor, whose expertise, endless support, kind and understanding spirit during my dissertation made it possible for me to work on a topic that was of great interest to me, for finding out time to reply to my emails, for being ever so kind to show interest in

my research and for giving his precious advice regarding the topic of my research It is my pleasure working with him

I also appreciate the authority of University of the Languages and International Studies in general and Faculty of Postgraduate Studies indeed for giving me their permission and required samples to carry out the research in the university library

I would like to express my gratitude to all my lecturers who put their faith in

me and urged me to do better

I am thankful to Nguyen Tat Thanh high school‘s teachers and students for their strong kindness and support during my data collection of the research

I am highly indebted to my mom, to all my relatives, friends and others who

in one way or another shared their support, either morally, financially and physically, and gave me a lot of encouragement for keeping up with this task

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Abstract

This study investigated the English vocabulary learning strategy use by 100 students with different levels (50 from talented classes and 50 from other classes) enrolled at Nguyen Tat Thanh High School in Hanoi, directly under Vietnam National University of Education The study found a curvilinear relationship between strategy use and English proficiency which means the high achievers (subjects with higher proficiency than the others) prefer using more grouping strategy to consolidate new words and have their own management and planning strategies to work well The remaining gaps between almost subjects‘ strong perception about the usefulness level of several strategies and their factual implementation are due to the common issue from a large number

of Vietnamese students called ―verbal passiveness‖ and the mistakes‖ learning style culture Hence, more vocabulary learning strategies should be introduced to learners and strategy training is essential for learning Choosing their own learning strategies according to their characteristics such as proficiency and learning style may be beneficial for learners It is high time for both learners and teachers to be mindful of the quality or depth of the learned vocabulary for the sake of achieving basic success in EFL learning, and also reach a general consensus on the learning goal during designing the course or curriculum

―afraid-of-making-iv

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

Abstract iii

TABLE OF CONTENT iv

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY 1

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY 2

3 THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS 2

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 3

5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 3

6 DESIGN OF THE STUDY 3

7 DEFINITION OF TERMS (OR KEY CONSTRUCTS) 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER 1: 6

LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1 Theoretical background 6

1.1 Background of vocabulary learning strategies 6

1.2 Taxonomy of language learning strategies 7

1.2.1 Stern's (1992) Classification of Language Learning Strategies 7

1.2.2 Schmitt’s classification of vocabulary learning strategies 8

2 Practical backgrounds 9

2.1 Students’ understanding and performance in their English vocabulary learning 9

2.2 High achievers’ opinions on vocabulary learning 10

2.3 Teachers’ performance in their English vocabulary teaching 10

3 Review of the previous studies 11

3.1 Carlo’s research (2004) 11

3.2 Francis’s research (2015) 11

3.3 Zheng’s research (2012) 12

3.4 Kim (2014) 12

3.5 According to Decarrico (2001) 12

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3.6 Nguyen‘s research (2015) 12

CHAPTER 2: 13

METHODOLOGY 13

1 Research questions restated 13

2 Research method 13

3 Setting of the Study 14

3.1 Teaching and learning condition 14

3.2 Participants of the study 14

3.2.1 Teachers 14

3.2.2 Students 14

4 Data collection instruments and procedures 15

4.1 Vocabulary learning strategies questionnaires 15

4.2 Think-aloud vocabulary task 16

4.3 Semi-structured interview 16

5 Data analysis procedures 16

CHAPTER 3: 17

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17

1 Students‘ understanding of vocabulary learning 17

2 Students‘ practices in their English vocabulary learning 18

3 Teachers‘ practices in their English vocabulary teaching 19

4 Students‘ vocabulary learning strategies 20

4.1 The most-used discovery strategies by the twelfth-form students (Table 4.1) 20

4.2 The most-used discovery strategies by the high achievers 21

4.3 The most-used consolidation strategies by the twelfth-form students 22

4.4 The most-used consolidation strategies by the high achievers 23

5 Students‘ perceptions of the usefulness of the strategies 24

5.1 The most useful discovery strategies perceived by the twelfth-form students 24

5.2 The most useful discovery strategies perceived by the high achievers 25

5.3 The most useful consolidation strategies perceived by the twelfth-form students 26

5.4 The most useful consolidation strategies perceived by the high achievers 27

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6 Think-aloud protocols by the high achievers 28

6.1 Guessing from context 28

6.2 Use of dictionaries 31

7 High achievers‘ opinions about vocabulary learning 32

7.1 Importance of vocabulary learning 32

7.2 What “knowing a word” means to the high achievers 32

7.2.1 Word meaning 32

7.2.2 Spelling and pronunciation 33

7.3 Lack of time on vocabulary learning 33

PART C: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 34

1 Summary of major findings 34

2 Concluding remarks and Recommendations 35

3 Limitations of the study 40

4 Suggestions for further researches 40

REFERENCES 42

APPENDICES 44

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1

PART A: INTRODUCTION

Some countries use English as the mother tongue and other countries learn it as second language in their schools; hence, undoubtedly, English constitutes the language of communication among people from different cultures Moreover, English is also used as the language of science, technology and computers that helps to integrate people around the world via Internet technology and emails Therefore, mastering a foreign language especially English is becoming strongly needed

In reality, studying a language is inseparable from studying vocabulary because of the fact that the vocabulary as the focus of language is in words that sound and meaning interlock

to help us communicate with one another and arrange together to make sentences, conversations, and discourse of all kinds Obviously, vocabulary is really important in every language skill as well as any language learning

However, to study perfect English vocabulary is not easy In fact, students have difficulty

in memorizing a new word with its meaning, spelling and pronunciation or often being confused with knowing how can apply grammar into sentences Moreover, day-by-day traditional teaching methods and similar activities make students become fed up with learning English; therefore, it is necessary to apply interesting techniques to teach English for the sake

of fostering students to learn English vocabulary better

The meaning variables are regarded as their biggest problem learners encounter in learning to use new words because each word contains more than one meaning while each of their meaning is included in the membership of an inter-related system; hence, it is highly required to reach the thorough knowledge of words for understanding the meaning of words and how to use them correctly For instance, if a speaker chooses to use one new word, the need is assigning the right meaning to the right word in the appropriate context but not in the surface positioning of the words nor their wide range of meaning

Besides, sometimes negative interference in foreign language learning process is caused

by mother tongue features due to learners accustomed to the rules and the ways of using mother tongue Moreover, the high influence of large class size and the lack of foreign language environment also generate many obstacles on the teaching method and learning style Often, new words in lessons and their related exercises are provided for students as a list of meanings or mostly but on non-context sentences; as a consequence, no idea of the

From the above reasons, investigating students‘ vocabulary learning strategies and also presenting some effective techniques to teach English vocabulary in high schools are my ambition in order that students can improve their English vocabulary learning Despite my knowledge limitation and the frame of the graduation paper, the research paper entitled ―A study of English vocabulary learning strategies of 12th graders at Nguyen Tat Thanh High School in Hanoi, Vietnam‖ was conducted with my entire best endeavor

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study investigates the Nguyen Tat Thanh High School pupils‘ perceptions and their actual use of learning English vocabulary strategies in their vocabulary learning Specifically, this study aims to:

- investigate the pupils‘ opinions on learning English vocabulary and their actual vocabulary learning;

- identify if there is a significant difference between the use of the strategies by the high achievers and other participants in the study; and

- suggest some implications for English vocabulary teaching and learning

3 THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The study is conducted to answer the following questions:

(1) Which discovery strategies and consolidation strategies do the twelfth form pupils and the high achievers use most frequently?

(2) Which discovery strategies and consolidation strategies do the twelfth form pupils and the high achievers perceive as most useful?

(3) Is there a significant difference between the use of strategies by high achievers and other participants in the study?

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(4) How do the high achievers in Nguyen Tat Thanh High School perceive vocabulary learning?

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The aim of the study is to investigate Discovery Strategies and Consolidation Strategies most frequently used by the English learners as well as the perceptions of these strategies‘ usefulness Furthermore, the features and behaviours of high achievers are examined by means of a think-aloud task and semi-structured interview Finally, the study would give teachers the mutual understanding about the vocabulary acquisition among the learners so that teachers could make adjustments or enhancements to vocabulary teaching

as well as strategy training

5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

As seen, one of the most difficulties in reading is caused by vocabulary; so the study is formed to fill this gap and undertake a preliminary exploratory investigation designed to examine types of strategies which pupils employ in order to obtain new vocabulary items based on questionnaires and oral interviews

The Nguyen-Tat-Thanh-high-school pupils‘ perceptions and their actual use of learning English vocabulary strategies are clearly viewed, hence to improve their vocabulary size and enrich words already known

A significant difference between the use of strategies by high achievers and other participants will be seen in the study

6 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The study includes five chapters:

The introductory chapter: Introduction, represents rationale of the study, aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, research questions and overview of the thesis Chapter 1: Literature review, presents a review of literature, concentrating on the issues relates vocabulary learning strategies and perceptions

Chapter 2: Methodology, describes the methodology employed in the study, the data collection instruments, the subjects, and the data collection procedures

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion, presents the results and give some discussions of the results

The conclusion chapter: Conclusion and Implications, summarizes the findings, shows the limitations, gives recommendations and makes suggestions for further research

7 DEFINITION OF TERMS (OR KEY CONSTRUCTS)

1 High achievers (n): Students who have high achievements in English study

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2 Manipulation (n): Use and handling

3 Language acquisition (n): an asset or object bought or obtained in language learning

4 Vocabulary enrichment (n): Action which helps expand vocabulary size

5 Synonym (n): a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word

or phrase in the same language

6 Antonym (n): a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly opposite to another word

or phrase in the same language

7 Collocation (n): the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance

8 Idiom (n): a phrase or a fixed expression that has a figurative or sometimes literal meaning An idiom's figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning.

9 Discovery Strategies (n): methods to discover new words‘ meaning

10 Consolidation Strategies (n): methods to consolidate new words‘ meaning

11 Think-aloud task (n): a method used to gather data in usability testing in product design and development, in psychology and a range of social sciences (e.g., reading, writing, translation research, decision making, and process tracing)

12 Semi-structured interview (n): a method of research used in the social sciences While

a structured interview has a rigorous set of questions which does not allow one to divert, a semi-structured interview is open, allowing new ideas to be brought up during the interview

as a result of what the interviewee says

13 Perception (n): the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment

14 Comprehension (n): ability to understand—usage

15 Text genres (n): a type of written or spoken discourse

16 First-hand documentation (n): an original document

17 Historical accounts (n): things of or relating to history; concerned with past events

18 Fiction (n): any narrative or descriptive content that is derived from imagination, in addition to, or rather than from, history or fact

19 Semantic (adj): be related to the study of meaning

20 Affixes (n): morphemes attached to a word stem to form a new word

21 Cognates (n): words that have a common etymological origin

22 Morphological relationships (n): relationships relevant to morphology linguistics

23 Efficacy (n): the capacity for beneficial change (or therapeutic effect) of a given intervention, most commonly used in the practice of medicine and pharmacology

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24 ELT settings (n): English Language Teaching settings

25 Metaphorical competence (n): A Language Learning Strength of Students with a Holistic Cognitive Style

26 Autonomy (n): Self-government; freedom to act or function independently

27 Follow-through (n): activity to carry through to complete a task; to see a task through

to its completion

28 Taxonomy (n): the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification

29 Bilingual (adj): be able to speak two languages with the facility of a native speaker

30 Retrieval (n): 1.The process of accessing information from memory or other storage devices 2 The possibility of being retrieved or restored

1.1 Background of vocabulary learning strategies

Besides mind to think, verbal language or speaking differentiates human from animals A child to first acquire speech is learning new words as well as the adult speaker with largest vocabulary has the best command of English So, what is vocabulary? A vocabulary is defined as ―all the words known and used by a particular person‖ and ―all the words which exist in a particular language or subject‖ (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary)

In other words, vocabulary constitutes the knowledge of words and word meanings More complex, words are divided into two forms called oral and print Oral vocabulary helps us recognize and use in listening and speaking; whereas print vocabulary is relevant to reading and writing Second, there are two forms of word knowledge called receptive and productive Receptive vocabulary supports us to recognize when we hear or see them; while productive vocabulary is to use when we speak or write Receptive vocabulary, which is typically larger than productive vocabulary may have some meanings, even sometimes we do not know their full definitions and connotations – or ever use them ourselves as we speak and write (Kamil & Hiebert, in press)

Besides, as a component of language, vocabulary maintains all of information about meaning and using word in language (Kridalaksana, 1993, p 27) and also be one of the important factors in learning English besides sound system, grammar and culture Serving as a useful and fundamental tool for communication, vocabulary usually grows, evolves with age and determines one‘s cultural literacy, which all becomes very vital to his/her own success in the world

The term ―strategy‖ originated from the military field refers to carefully designed plans for military operations, which has been taken on a new meaning and has been transformed into learning strategies if applied for a non-military setting like school study Language learning strategies are defined as ―…strategies that contribute to the development of the language system which the learner constructs and (which) affect learning directly‖ (Rubin,

1987, p.23) Therefore, learning strategies determine the approach for achieving the learning

Table A: Defining language learning strategies (Wenden & Rubin, 1987, p.32)

enterprises

To exploit available information to increase the proficiency of L2

tasks

plans, routines

To facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval

& use of information, to regulate learning

easier, faster, more enjoyable, self-directed, effective and transferable to new situations

1.2.1 Stern's (1992) Classification of Language Learning Strategies

According to Stern (1992, p.262), there are five main language learning strategies which can be presented as follows:

A Management and Planning Strategies

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The learner's intention to direct his own learning is related A learner helped by a teacher whose role is an adviser and resource person could manage the development of his own programme The learner must "decide what commitment to make to language learning set himself reasonable goals decide on an appropriate methodology, select appropriate resources, and monitor progress, evaluate his achievement in the light of previously determined goals and expectations‖

B Cognitive Strategies

Steps used in learning or problem solving require direct analysis, transformation, or synthesis of learning materials, included Clarification/Verification, Guessing/Inductive Inferencing, Deductive Reasoning, Practice, Memorization, Monitoring

C Communicative-Experiential Strategies

Circumlocution, gesturing, paraphrase, or asking for repetition and explanation are used

by learners to keep a conversation going They aim to avoid interrupting the flow of communication

1.2.2 Schmitt’s classification of vocabulary learning strategies

Schmitt (1993) separates into two groups which include: (i) Discovery Strategies and (ii) Consolidation Strategies

Learners must discover its meaning by guessing from their structural knowledge of the language, guessing from an L1 cognate, guessing from context, using reference materials, or asking others, in which Determination Strategies facilitate gaining knowledge of a new word from the first four options for learners to be able to discern the new word's part of speech in the guessing process

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Guessing an unknown word's meaning from context has been seen to fit in more comfortably with the communicative approach; nevertheless, it commonly refers to inferring a word's meaning from the surrounding words in a written text First, it highly requires the learner to have a certain level of language proficiency in order to use this strategy, including the ability to accurately decode the orthographical form of new words and also have adequate background knowledge of the subject and the strategic knowledge of how to effectively go through the inferencing process In addition, the context itself is considered rich enough with clues to enable guessing, with the most easily utilizable clues being in close proximity to the target word

A second way to discover a new meaning is the Social Strategy of asking someone who knows, particularly teachers (often in this position), who can be asked to give help in a variety

of ways: giving the L1 translation, a synonym, a definition by paraphrase or using the new word in a sentence, or any combination of these The advantage of L1 translations is being fast, easily understood by students, and possible to the transfer of all the knowledge (collocations, associations, etc.) onto the L2 equivalent; however, the disadvantages remain that the teacher must know learners' mother tongue and most translation pairs tend to be not exact equivalents

Grouping plays an important role in recalling, but learners often organize words into groups naturally without prompting Learners can learn new words by studying them with pictures of their meaning instead of definitions Alternatively, learners can create their own mental images of a word's meaning which is seen more effective than mere repetition for reading passages

The present study implements the theory given by Schmitt (1993) as the mainstreaming model during research and analysis schedules

2 Practical backgrounds

2.1 Students’ understanding and performance in their English vocabulary learning

Most students believe that vocabulary plays a very important role in language learning The students have the idea to learn vocabulary because they know in order to acquire vocabulary; they have to learn the basics, e.g pronunciation, spelling, and meanings of the words The traditional methods are favored by most students such as learning vocabulary by reading repeatedly, learning vocabulary by writing automatically, learning vocabulary by analyzing affixes and roots, learning vocabulary by association, learning vocabulary by keeping word cards with pictures, photographs, objects, etc Despite those methods being easy

to handle, most of them are considered to be not effective and systematic because of the fact that the students usually learn vocabulary one by one according to the word list Some methods, such as learning vocabulary by association and keeping word cards seem to be time-

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consuming; therefore, better methods are strongly needed to help them learn the vocabulary systematically

2.2 High achievers’ opinions on vocabulary learning

High achievers recognize the importance of vocabulary learning ‗Knowing a word‘ defines as knowing the semantic value of a word and many of the different meanings associated with a word Remembering a corresponding Vietnamese equivalent perhaps seems

to be ineffective and unnecessary because of the unequivalence between the first and second languages Most of the learners opt for monolingual dictionary when facing with a new word

or confirmed meaning

2.3 Teachers’ performance in their English vocabulary teaching

The important position of traditional teaching methods is still clearly seen in English vocabulary teaching Many teachers are not optimistic about the efficiency in their vocabulary teaching As for the teaching practice, some techniques are applied to help the students to learn new vocabulary by teachers, such as: guessing from contexts, using word parts, using word cards, learning vocabulary through reading, listening and speaking, etc Sometimes, word collocations, different meanings of an item, grammar-related words and affixes, etc are also taught Despite all these helpful techniques, the words are only dealt with in an isolated manner; hence, some more effective methods are strongly essential to stimulate the students‘ interests in learning the vocabulary The learners definitely feel boring with explaining the words one by one and learning words by memorizing the word list alone, and hence would lose interests in vocabulary learning after a while The efficiency of vocabulary teaching/learning could not be fulfilled without adequate methods and interests So the urgently existing problem is a better teaching method needed to effectively enlarge the learners‘ vocabulary and enhance the learners‘ understanding of the lexical meanings for the sake of improving the efficiency of English vocabulary teaching and learning in the class Teachers tend to build up their own curriculum based on the content of the lesson, the students‘ level, the grammatical items they want to teach to find a suitable method in order to achieve the best results

Techniques for presentation

 Presenting the new-word structures through contextualization

Either real or simulated situations have been used by teachers to make learning activity more effective and the students more motivated by means of contextualization in the teaching

of new words; also, the full use of real situations in the classroom is often made and combined with the appropriate facial expression and actions to make the lesson more interesting and the meaning of the items clearer

 Presenting the new-word structures through dialogues

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Reading and doing role plays in dialogues are usual activities that students prefer owing

to good results these activities can bring about By presenting new words and their equivalent structures through dialogues, teachers could save much more time creating situations because

of dialogues themselves being very clear in such situations Besides, some new structures introduced and clearly presented may be met by students to have knowledge

 Presenting the new words and their equivalent structures through visual aids

According to Adrian Doff, showing directly by using things seen such as objects, the classroom, the students themselves and pictures constitutes the simplest way and clearest way

to present a structure; particularly, in the class, visual aids could be shown at any stage of the lesson because of good visual aids not just used once but again and again

 Presenting the modal auxiliary verbs and their equivalent structures through examples

It is so effective when using examples in presenting new words and their equivalent structures Either inductive method or deductive method can be provided to achieve good results As illustrated, a series of examples of the structures are given to students to draw out the rules for themselves On the other hand, the rules with examples will be clearly explained

by teachers so that students study and finally make up sentences with the help of the teachers, which all helps students to have chances to use the language

3 Review of the previous studies

3.1 Carlo’s research (2004)

Carlo (2004) aimed to establish the vocabulary learning strategies applied during English lessons and outcomes in learning English A 15-week intervention was designed to build up breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in 254 bilingual and native English-speaking pupils from nine 5th-grade classrooms in four schools in California, Virginia and Massachusettes Shared book readings of a variety of text genres, including newspaper articles, diaries, first-hand documentation of the immigrant experience, historical accounts and fiction are provided for each weekly lesson Words are considered best learned from rich semantic contexts; because of the fact that activities helped children make semantic links to other words and concepts and thus to attain a deeper and richer understanding of each word‘s meaning, to infer meanings from context and to use roots, affixes, cognates, morphological relationships and comprehension monitoring

3.2 Francis’s research (2015)

Francis aimed to examine the efficacy of incorporation instructional practices associated with improved outcomes into middle-school social studies instruction in the same central Texas school districts as a means of improving vocabulary knowledge and comprehension for ELLs It includes (a) selecting words to improve students‘ academic language, (b) providing students with opportunities to encounter new words in texts and video clips The seventh-

3.4 Kim (2014)

The study was designed to investigate English vocabulary learning troubles that native speakers have in learning English word systems with roots and standard rules for prefixes and suffixes extending the way these core items are used A total of 54 student into two groups took part in the experiment at a private English School in Korea, in which the study was carried out over 10 weeks with only 10 minutes out of each 50-minute class used for studying the selected words The goal was to determine how affixation patterns of English words are acquired and expanded, hence help students learn English vocabulary much faster and avoid the need to repeatedly look up words

non-3.5 According to Decarrico (2001)

Guessing meaning from context, mnemonic devices, and vocabulary notebooks are provided to be several typical vocabulary learning strategies Meanwhile, using mnemonics (using keyword technique or visual element), word cards/ flashcards, guessing from context, coping strategies for production, using dictionaries, spelling rules, keeping records, and motivation are often used by good vocabulary learners (Thornburry, 2002)

3.6 Nguyen’s research (2015)

The study investigates vocabulary learning strategies

which are employed by the second-year students of different learning styles at at School

of Law, VNU as well as gives several possible ways to help students better their vocabulary learning strategies for fitting their learning styles The data collection tools were survey questionnaires and interviews; then the findings were coded and analysed by both quantitative and qualitative methods The major findings revealed that most of these students preferred visual learning style, auditory learning style

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CHAPTER 2:

METHODOLOGY

1 Research questions restated

The study is conducted to answer the following questions:

(1) Which discovery strategies and consolidation strategies do the twelfth form pupils and the high achievers use most frequently?

(2) Which discovery strategies and consolidation strategies do the twelfth form pupils and the high achievers perceive as most useful?

(3) Is there a significant difference between the use of strategies by high achievers and other participants in the study?

(4) How do the high achievers in Nguyen Tat Thanh High School perceive vocabulary learning?

2 Research method

In this study, questionnaires, think-aloud tasks and interviews were adopted to achieve the stated research aims Using questionnaires helps reduce expense and time involved in training interviewers and sending them to interview The questions are designed to be a high order, concise, meaningful questions and stated in common language Respondents were given the same set of questions phrased in exactly the same way; therefore, data covering large amounts of information can be collected from a large number of people may be collected and analysed more comparably and objectively in a short period of time and in a relatively cost effective way than those obtained via an interview For think-aloud protocols, participants are required to think aloud when performing a set of specified tasks and asked to say whatever comes into their mind to complete the task (including what they are looking at, thinking, doing, and feeling); hence, researchers have insights into the participant's cognitive processes during task performance

On the other hand, by interviewing, the interviewer can clarify questions and observe verbal and non-verbal behaviors of the respondents as well as the informants tend to respond

in any manner they see fit Indeed, interview is a means of obtaining personal information, attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs First, interviewer gives students open-practical questions; whereas think-aloud protocols are given in writing forms for selected students to follow and answer Second, the researcher gathered data by using various sources of data was done to better understand the scope of happenings in the classroom, then selected the suitable data for the research issue and organised the data in a logical way to identify trends and themes Next, data was interpreted to analyse and identify major themes throughout using different kinds of

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data from classroom data, individual data to subgroup data Finally, by assessing the effects of the intervention, the researcher evaluated the results and decided improvements

3 Setting of the Study

In reality, the interdependent relationship between teachers, educational materials and students is clearly seen All of those are the really-essential factors toward lectures‘ success Due to the time limitation, the questionnaires were only conducted in Nguyen Tat Thanh High School in Hanoi and found their reality The focus is based on the characteristics of the teachers and the students as well as the teaching and learning condition in the target school

3.1 Teaching and learning condition

At Nguyen Tat Thanh High School, the fairly-good teaching and learning condition is equipped with a system of the blackboards, modern equipment and furniture In terms of infrastructures, classroom in general, chairs and tables in specific are quite comfortable and large enough Each class is facilitated with illustrations English pictures for studying, which all prompts the English class atmosphere to be relatively pleasant However, the only one poor condition is about inadequate English reference books and teaching aids which pose the lectures not to attract students‘ attention Despite this good environment provided to teach English, my observations suggest that more and more new techniques should be collected and implemented to teach English effectively and scientifically

3.2 Participants of the study

3.2.1 Teachers

At Nguyen Tat Thanh High School, quite-young English teachers who all graduated from colleges and universities or even post-graduates are enthusiastic and have experience in their work Before class, their lessons are always prepared carefully and thoroughly but sometimes

by implementing the traditional teaching methods or just using their book and material related with the lesson Hence, it is strongly needed to apply interesting teaching aids in lessons, especially at high schools

3.2.2 Students

Most of the students performed their activeness and eagerness in English lessons; however, the traditional teaching methods such as teacher lecturing on the board, and students writing down words and grammar in their notebook do not work well for students to express their ability of logic and activeness So applying newly-effective techniques for teaching English is definitely necessary

Questionnaire I was distributed to 100 students (50 from talented classes and 50 from other classes), while Questionnaire II was handed out to the teachers respectively In order to help the subjects to understand the questions, every question and choices in student‘s questionnaires was dubbed in its Vietnamese translation The students were required to fulfill

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the questionnaire in one class hour, while the teachers were expected to finish it in their spare time of the day The answer sheets were collected after all subjects had finished them 100 copies of student questionnaires and 10 copies of teacher questionnaires were sent out, completed, collected and analyzed

4 Data collection instruments and procedures

4.1 Vocabulary learning strategies questionnaires

In this study, questionnaires, which consists of a variety of questions of different types such as multiple choice questions, ranking questions, yes/no questions and open-ended questions, were used (quantitative method) as a data collection instrument because of the following reasons The questionaires on vocabulary learning strategies set up were based on the referencing process related as well as the overall observation of traditionally and newly-applied learning methods by students First, a large amount of information is obtained from a wide range of individuals Then, researchers have a chance to find the appropriate answers to the needed questions Clearly, questionnaires as one of the most objective means of collecting data foster students express their own opinions without fear to be embarrassed or punished and disclose their names when filling in the questionnaires

This present study used a pre-questionnaire (Question 1 to 7) and a post-questionnaire (Question 8 to 11) The pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire were administered to the teachers and students so as to investigate the teachers and students‘ attitudes towards English vocabulary teaching and learning The post-questionnaire has a different format and content with the pre-questionnaire, which evaluates different vocabulary learning strategies students use in their study process as well as their perception of effectiveness

These two sets of the survey questionnaires were conducted to get information about teaching and learning English vocabulary in Nguyen Tat Thanh High School (one for students, one for teachers) Teachers and students were asked to choose the most suitable answers corresponding with their opinion The questionnaires are designed as below:

For teachers (Questionnaire II): there are 3 questions to find out

Question 1 finds out the techniques or methods are used in teaching vocabulary and their effectiveness

Question 2 reveals the teachers‘ attitudes towards the vocabulary teaching

Question 3 shows the teachers‘ self-evaluation about their vocabulary teaching

For students (Questionnaire I): there are 11 questions conducted in order to study and the

data collection is separate from talented classes and others

Question 1 aims to find out the students‘ attitudes towards learning English vocabulary in particular

Question 2 investigates the students‘ knowledge relevant to vocabulary learning

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Question 3+4 aim to reveal advantages and disadvantages students have when learning vocabulary

Question 5 finds out the students‘ general ways in learning the meaning of words

Questions 6+7 investigate the students‘ feelings and self-evaluation on vocabulary learning and their effectiveness

Questions 8+9 are designed to examine vocabulary learning strategies the students often use

in their study process

Questions 10+11 search the students‘ opinions on the usefulness of these strategies

4.2 Think-aloud vocabulary task

By applying think-alouds, the researcher could model comprehension processes such as making predictions, creating images, linking information in text with prior knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and overcoming problems with word recognition or comprehension (Gunning, 1996) Students' strengths and weakness can be diagnosed by teachers Eight excerpts in written forms are designed to examine guessing ability of the high achievers in vocabulary learning

4.3 Semi-structured interview

Semi-structured interviews, which are believed to provide a 'deeper' understanding of social phenomena than those obtained from purely quantitative methods, such as questionnaires, not only comprise several key questions for defining the areas to be explored but also help the interviewer or interviewee in order to pursue an idea or response in more details In this study, five questions were used to interview the high achievers

Question 1 explores the high achievers‘ general knowledge about the meaning of a word Questions 2+3 find out the high achievers‘ opinions on the importance of vocabulary learning Question 4 investigates their study plans

Question 5 examines their outside-classroom learning strategies

5 Data analysis procedures

All the data were collected and analysed using a systematic process of analysis and interpretation according to the preset criteria So the result of the analysis can be used to compare the changes in my own teaching and also my students‘ learning

Turning back to the investigated classes, after several weeks, these classes were recorded again All available information and data were synthesized The outcomes are considered very positive More complex interactions took place during the lessons There is much greater involvement and interest in vocabulary improvements expressed by the students, and the complexity of their language is enhanced

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CHAPTER 3:

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1 Students’ understanding of vocabulary learning

Most of the students believe that vocabulary plays a very important role in language learning The students have the idea to learn vocabulary because they know in order to acquire vocabulary; they have to learn the basics: e.g., pronunciation, spelling, and meanings

of the words (see Table 1 below)

Table 1 Students’ understanding of vocabulary learning

Question 1 In your opinion, what is the position of vocabulary in English learning?

Very important 54%

Important 31.3%

Not important 14.7%

Question 2 What contents does vocabulary learning refer to?

Pronunciation and spelling of words 28%

Pronunciation, spelling and the meaning in the word list 36.7%

Collocations of words 24%

All the meanings related to the item 11.3%

Question 3 In your opinion, what is the difficulty in your vocabulary learning?

Table 1 shows that students find it most difficult in absorbing new words‘ meaning

(41.3%), then quite difficult with word collocation (24.7%) In order to study more

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effectively, they recognise that learning new words by contexts (30.4%) and by native culture (27.2%) help the study process better

2 Students’ practices in their English vocabulary learning

The traditional methods are favored by most students such as learning vocabulary by reading repeatedly, learning vocabulary by writing automatically, learning vocabulary by analyzing affixes and roots, learning vocabulary by association, learning vocabulary by keeping word cards with pictures, photographs, objects, etc Despite those methods being easy

to handle, most of them are considered to be not effective and systematic because of the fact that the students usually learn vocabulary one by one according to the word list Some methods, such as learning vocabulary by association and keeping word cards seem to be time-consuming; therefore, better methods are strongly needed to help them learn the vocabulary systematically

Table 2 Students’ practices in their English vocabulary learning

Question 5 “How do you usually learn vocabulary?”

By reading repeatedly 28.4%

By writing automatically 34.8%

By analyzing affixes and roots 23.6%

By association 10.8%

By keeping word cards with pictures, photographs, objects, etc 2.4%

Question 6 How do you feel learning English vocabulary?

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3 Teachers’ practices in their English vocabulary teaching

The important position of traditional teaching methods is still clearly seen in English vocabulary teaching Many teachers are not optimistic about the efficiency in their vocabulary teaching As for the teaching practice, some techniques are applied to help the students to learn new vocabulary by teachers, such as: guessing from contexts, using word parts, using word cards, learning vocabulary through reading, listening and speaking, etc Sometimes, word collocations, different meanings of an item, grammar-related words and affixes, etc are also taught Despite all these helpful techniques, the words are only dealt with in an isolated manner; hence, some more effective methods are strongly essential to stimulate the students‘ interests in learning the vocabulary The learners definitely feel bored with explaining the words one by one and learning words by memorizing the word list alone, and hence would lose interests in vocabulary learning after a while The efficiency of vocabulary teaching/learning couldn‘t be fulfilled without adequate methods and interests So the urgently existing problem is a better teaching method needed to effectively enlarge the learners‘ vocabulary and enhance the learners‘ understanding of the lexical meanings for the sake of improving the efficiency of English vocabulary teaching and learning in the class

Table 3 Teachers’ practices in their English vocabulary teaching

Question 1 How do you usually teach vocabulary?

Ask students to read after me 20%

Explain the meaning listed in the text and make sentence examples 51.4%

Explain the root, stem, affix etc 15.7%

Explain the collocations of a word 12.9%

Question 2 How do you feel teaching English vocabulary?

Boring 57.9%

Interesting 23.7%

Headache 13.2%

Very interesting 5.2%

Question 3 How do you feel your efficiency of vocabulary teaching?

Not very efficient 60.5%

Inefficient 7.8%

Efficient 26.3%

Very efficient 5.4%

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4 Students’ vocabulary learning strategies

The results will be presented by Tables organized in the ranking manner from the highest

to the lowest

4.1 The most-used discovery strategies by the twelfth-form students (Table 4.1)

- The most commonly-used Discovery strategy for both the twelfth-form students and high achievers is guessing followed by the use of the dictionary

Table 4.1 Discovery strategies used by the twelfth form pupils

Guess its meaning from the context

Look up the word in a Vietnamese/English dictionary

Use an electronic or online dictionary

Ask my classmates or peers for the meaning

Learn words from the mass media

Try to think of an English word that is similar

Look up the word in an English dictionary

Ask my teacher(s) for the meaning

Look at the parts of speech

Look for the clues in the word itself

Learn words from word lists or glossary

Ignore it

Learn words through ICQ or chat room communication

Interact with native speakers (e.g the NET)

(Total number of respondents: 50)

The five highest-ranking discovery strategies used by the twelfth-form students are Guess its meaning from the context (84%), Look up the word in a Vietnamese/English dictionary (81.5%), Use an electronic or online dictionary (79.5%), Ask my classmates or peers for the meaning (77.5%) and Learn words from the mass media (73.5%) respectively They mostly guess the meanings of new words throughout contexts; however, the use of dictionary (either Vietnamese/English dictionary, English dictionary or electronic dictionary) is definitely usual for them to discover the new ones The two lowest are Learn words through ICQ or chat room communication (27%) and Interact with native speakers (20%)

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4.2 The most-used discovery strategies by the high achievers

- To consolidate a word in memory, the twelfth-form students and high achievers favour focusing on the spoken and written form of words

Table 4.2 Discovery strategies used by the high achievers

Guess its meaning from the context

Look for the clues in the word itself

Look up the word in an English dictionary

Learn words from the mass media

Look at the parts of speech

Look up the word in a Vietnamese/English dictionary

Learn words from word lists or glossary

Use an electronic or online dictionary

Ask my teacher(s) for the meaning

Interact with native speakers

Try to think of an English word that is similar

Ask my classmates or peers for the meaning

(Total number of respondents: 50)

Guess its meaning from the context (90%), Look for the clues in the word itself (75%), Look up the word in an English dictionary (50%) and Learn words from the mass media (40%) are the four highest-ranking discovery strategies used by the high achievers The two lowest are Ask my teacher(s) for the meaning (20%), Interact with native speakers (5%); while no students Try to think of an English word that is similar, Ask my classmates or peers for the meaning, Ignore it (0%)

Generally, both the twelfth-form students and high achievers prefer Guess its meaning from the context and Look up the word in a dictionary Based on Stern‘s theory, both the twelfth-form students and high achievers tend to use Cognitive strategies Whereas the twelfth-form students tend to ask peers or their classmates (77.5%) or their teachers (59%) for the meaning of new words frequently (which means they prefer using Interpersonal strategies

or Social strategy in Schmitt‘s theory), the high achievers seldom ask their teachers for the meaning (20%) or even none of them asks their classmates or peers for the meaning of the