A study on improving english speaking skill for first year students in english faculty at thuong mai university

The purpose of this study was toinvestigate the speaking problems of the first-year English-major students atEnglish faculty of Thuong Mai University and the recommendations on improving

Spoken language production is often considered one of the most difficultaspects of language learning (Brown & Yule, 1983) In reality, many languagelearners find it difficult to express themselves in spoken language in the targetlanguage Each student has their own problems The purpose of this study was toinvestigate the speaking problems of the first-year English-major students atEnglish faculty of Thuong Mai University and the recommendations on improvingEnglish speaking skill The subjects of the study were two hundred students and twoEnglish teachers The research instruments used in this study were questionnairesand interview Based on the research findings some recommendations were made.The study was expected to help students improve their performance in speakingclasses

First and foremost, I would like to send my deepest gratitude to Mrs LuongThi Minh Phuong, the supervisor of this graduation paper Her detailed commentsand useful advices helped me to shape my ideas and to finish the graduation paper

as expected She also created favorable condition and provided many materials aswell as encouragements for me to fulfill this study Therefore, it is an undeniablefact that this study would not have been finished without her invaluable support.Secondly, I would like to express my particular appreciation to all the lecturers

of the English Faculty whose lectures have enriched my English knowledge duringthe past 4 years

Student

Nguyen Phuong Anh

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

LIST OF TABLES, DIAGRAMS AND FIGURES v

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS vi

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 2

1.4 Research subject 2

1.5 Previous studies 3

1.6 Methodology 4

1.6.1 Data collection 4

1.6.2 Data analysis 5

1.7 Structure of the study 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Definition of speaking and speaking skill 6

2.2 The significance of English speaking skill 7

2.3 Teaching English speaking 8

2.3.1 The role of the teacher 8

2.3.2 Activities for teaching English speaking 9

2.4 Learning English speaking 13

2.4.1 Vocabulary 13

2.4.2 Grammar 17

2.4.3 Acurracy and fluency 19

2.5 Theoretical justification 20

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 21

3.1 The questionnaires 21

3.1.1 Current situation 21

3.1.2 Difficulties while speaking English 25

3.2 The interview 26

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 28

4.1 Recommendations for students 28

4.1.1 Practical practicing 28

4.1.2 Develop the vocabulary 29

4.1.3 Improve listening skill 30

4.2 Recommendations for teachers 30

CONCLUSION 32

REFERENCE vii

APPENDIXES ix

LIST OF TABLES, DIAGRAMS AND FIGURES

1 Table 1 Students difficulties while speaking English 23

2 Table 2 Students’ opinions on TMU English courses 25

3 Chart 1 Students’ opinion on learning English speaking 21

4 Chart 2 Students’ frequency in practicing English speaking 22

5 Chart 3 Students self-assessing their speaking skill 22

6 Chart 4 Students’ ability to keep up with English classe;s of

7 Chart 5 Methods and techniques students have used to

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale of the study

In Vietnam, the education system is still leaning towards to theoretics morethan practice Students from public primary schools to high schools are spendingmore time reading how to make things instead of actually putting it into action Inother words, a large number of students do not get to apply what they have learnedinto real life For example in chemistry classes, students usually can only watchtheir teachers doing some simple experiments due to the shortage of equipment.This will led to the lack of practical knowledge and eventually limit students’abilities Among the subjects that require a lot of practicing, there is English Foryears English has been considered one of the most used languages in the world andhas become a common tool to communicate between countries Realizing theimportance of English, Vietnam has been strongly investing in English teaching inthe education system but according to a recent research, 80% of Vietnamesestudents spend 7-10 years studying English and only 20% of which can speakEnglish fluently This fact showed that the system should be focusing more onEnglish speaking skill in order to develop all skills equally

As a senior student in English faculty at Thuong Mai University who also hadbeen a freshman, the researcher has noticed that most first-year students have hardtime catching up with English courses due to their poor performance, especially inspeaking skill Poor performance happens due to the change of teaching methods,learning environment, etc, which leads to failing courses or dropping scores In highschool, English classes mainly focus on grammar and vocabulary while in college,speaking skill has a more important role Students have to use English tocommunicate while in English classes, to make speech and presentations usingEnglish, something they are not familiarized within lower education These changeshave made first-year students struggle to cope with and usually took them months oreven years to figure out techniques to improve their speaking skill

After ackowledging the problem, in this study, the researcher will explore thefactors which affect English speaking skill and the actual situation of the teaching

and learning condition at TMU as well as give some recommendations onimproving speaking skill effectively.

The study is carried out in order to help improving English speaking skill for

first-year English majored students The official title of the study is: “A study on

improving English speaking skill for first-year students in English faculty at Thuong Mai University” Through this study, the researcher hopes it can provide

the information of ways to overcome the weaknesses while speaking English andfurthermore to help students become fluent English speakers

1.2 Aims of the study

The first objective of this study is to identify the obstacles that studentsusually face while speaking English The second objective is to suggest realistic andeffective ways to improve English speaking skill for first-year English-majorstudents based on the obstacles The study focuses on resolving these two mainquestions:

- What are the difficulties that first-year English-major students face while speaking English?

- What are the effective ways to help improve English speaking skill for first-year English-major students?

1.3 Scope of the study

The study focuses on first-year English-major students at TMU in the last half

of the 2017-2018 second semester due to the limitation of time and is conducted on

200 students in one month time This study also emphasizes on the speaking skill ofthese students Base on that, the recommended techniques and methods onimproving English speaking skill are specifically created for English-major students

in general and first-year English-major students in particular

1.4 Research subject

At English faculty, the students come from provinces across the country withdifferent backgrounds Despite the differences, their English level is quitecomparable However, after observing, the researcher discovers that a specificamount of students have problems with their speaking skill, especially first-yearstudents of EF The change of teaching methods and way of studying in college

confuses them They admitted that English speaking is not their strength and most

of them did not spend much time improving the skill while in secondary school andhigh school as a result of speaking was not important in the learning process Still,they understand the importance of English speaking skill and are looking for aresolution for this problem

1.5 Previous studies

Up to this point, there has been a significant of studies on improving Englishoral communication skill While some of them suggested different techniques,methods and activities on English teaching or English learning, the others point outelements which affect speaking ability

Prieto (2007) performed a study about the cooperative learning tasks Thefindings of her study showed that one way to improve speaking skill is to interactwith others, learn from others, and the choice of the topics based on the learners’interests in order to encourage them In other words, the study emphasizes onpromoting the learning method for English learners, practicing English withpartners in particular There was no given information on suggestions on Englishteaching

Le Thi Thu Hang (2010) carried out a study on improving speaking skill for7th grade students for which mainly focuses on the importance ofteaching methods and how the methods will help young students with their speakingskill as well as suggestions on several techniques for implication in classes Themain participants of this study are the 7th grade students, in other words, they areyoung teenagers so the methods suggested are related to fun activities and games inorder to make English classes more interesting for these students Nevertheless, thisstudy alone does not provide any studying methods for the students but only giverecommendations for the teachers

Bozorgian (2012) investigated the relationship between listening skill and theother language skills The results revealed that there is a close relation betweenlistening comprehension and language proficiency That is, the higher the listeningskill, the better the speaking skill The author also stated in the study that to enhanceverbal communication skill, learners should be enhancing their listening skill as

well Despite this statement, the author did not mention any approach to improvelistening skill.

In another study, Phung Thi Son (2013) examined the factors which havenegative impact on HPU first-year English-major students’ speaking skill andmoreover, give recommendations on the teaching techniques The researcher showsthat a majority of first-year students at HPU have poor English speaking skill andsuggests helpful techniques with the hope to solve the problem However, the studystops at suggestions for teachers and a few simple methods for the students

In conclusion, all the studies mentioned above are related to speaking skill, theimportance of speaking skill as well as ways to improve this significant skill butnone of which seems to have enough options for English learners, especiallystudents With the attempt to help students improve their English speaking skill, thisstudy is carried out to provide suggestions which are believed to be most suitablefor them

1.6 Methodology

The main method uses to conduct this study is qualitative method A surveyquestionnaires and an interview is also carried out to collect data in order tounderstand first-year English-major students attitudes towards learning Englishspeaking and discover the difficulties while speaking English to find out mostsuitable methods and techniques to improve their speaking skill

1.6.1 Data collection

First data collection method is the survey questionnaires For this survey, atotal of 200 first-year English-major students in random classes of TMU areselected to answer 7 questions for this study to collect data Due to the limitation oftime, the researcher only focuses on the last half of the 2017-2018 second semester

As having studied the English 1, these students have experienced the teachingmethods as well as how the course is organized The main objective of this survey

to explore the cause of first-year English majored students difficulties with speakingskill by analyzing students’ attitudes towards English and how they spend time topractice speaking as well as main obstacles while communicating using English

The second data collection method uses is interview Two English teachers areinterviewed with two questions on their perspective of TMU English teachingsystem and their ideas on how to develop students’ English speaking ability throughtheir teaching methods.

1.6.2 Data analysis

After having been collected through the data collection process, the gatheredinformation is put into investigation and analysis Data analysis would be carriedout following the data collection procedure

1.7 Structure of the study

The study consists of 4 main chapters and the conclusion

- Chapter 1 is the Overview of the study In this very first part, the

researcher will explain the reason of choosing this topic as well as the aims of thestudy, scope, the research subject, summary of the previous studies, themethodology and the structure of the study

- Chapter 2: Literature review aims to answer questions related to definition

and the importance of speaking skill as well as speaking skill teaching and learningmethods

- Chapter 3: Research findings resolves the first research question by

analyzing the data collected from the survey questionnaires and interview

- Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions resolves the second

research questions by recommends adequate methods and techniques on improvingstudents’ speaking skill and teachers’ teaching methods

- The Conclusion which summarizes all the presented information as well as

the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

For this chapter, first, the author presents briefly the history of English, itsinfluence on the nowadays society as well as the general situation of practicalEnglish using in Vietnam The second and third part explains the definition ofEnglish verbal skill and the importance of this significant skill The last part focuses

on the importance of teaching and learning methods and also its impact on thelearning process

2.1 Definition of speaking and speaking skill

Over the years, there are a lot of definitions of speaking As someone havesaid speaking is an act of making vocal sounds based on the needs of expressingfeelings, thoughts, sharing ideas or knowledge in spoken language According toChaney (1998), speaking is the process of making and sharing meaning by usingverbal and non-verbal indications in different context As stated by Webster NewWorld Dictionary, speaking is to say words orally, to communicate by talking, tomake a speech (Nunan, 1995)

Speaking is also considered an interactive process of making meaning thatincludes producing, receiving and processing information (Brown, 1994 Burns andJoyce, 1997) Another definition of speaking from Eckard and Kearny (1981),Howarth (2001) and Abd El Fattah Torky (2006) stated that speaking is a two-wayprocess including a true communication of opinions, information or emotions.Speaking skill is the ability to communicate at some level which helps humancommunicate effectively Speaking is the most important language skills amongreading skill, listening skill and writing skill

In short, the researcher consider speaking is a complex process which takesplace in real life and requires the collaboration of different types of knowledgeregarding with good using of certain skills, involved with multiple factors and theefficiency of speaking depends on the speakers’ previous experiences, physicalsetting and the purpose of speech (Bygate, 1987 Brown,1994)

2.2 The significance of English speaking skill

In terms of speaking, when talk about speaking, it does not mean just sayingthe words through mouth but also delivering the message through the words ofmouth In addition, speaking is the most used skill among the four main languageskills Rivers (1981) studied the use of language outside the classroom situation anddiscovered that speaking is used twice as much as reading and writing combined.Nunan (1999) and Burkart & Sheppard (2004) argue the success in learning alanguage is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the targetlanguage According to Brown (1994), listening and speaking are learners’ languagetools Therefore, speaking is presumably a priority for most English learners(Florez, 1999) In addition, speaking can support other language skills Recentresearch has considered oral interaction as an important factor in the shaping of thelearner's developing language (Gass & Varionis, 1994) Correspondingly, it wasproved that learning speaking can help the development of reading capability(Hilferty, 2005), the development of writing (Trachsel & Severino, 2004) as well asthe development of listening skills (Regina, 1997) Of the most difficult skillslanguage learners face in language learning is speaking skill It is believed thatspeaking is the most important of the four language skills Many learners state thatthey have spent so many years studying English language but cannot speak itappropriately and understandably (Bueno, Madrid, & Mclaren, 2006)

Speaking is one of the most important skills of all the four language skillsbecause individuals who learn a language are referred to as the speakers of thatlanguage (Ur, 1996) The main aim of English language teaching is to give learnersthe ability to use English language effectively and correctly in communication(Davies & Pearse, 2000) However, it seems that language learners are not able tocommunicate fluently and accurately because they do not have enough knowledge

to their own goals So speakers should be both listeners and speakers at the sametime for the effective communication.

Efrizal (2012) PourhoseinGilakjani (2016) expressed that speaking is of greatsignificance for the people interaction where they speak everywhere and every day.Speaking is the way of communicating ideas and messages orally If we want toencourage students to communicate in English, we should use the language in realcommunication and ask them to do the same process

Richards and Rodgers (2001) stated that in the traditional methods, thespeaking skill was ignored in the classrooms where the emphasis was on readingand writing skills For example, in The Grammar-Translation method, reading andwriting were the important skills and speaking and listening skills were not of greatsignificance According to Ur (2000), of all the four language skills called listening,speaking, reading, and writing, speaking is the most important one that is verynecessary for the effective communication Baker and Westrup (2003) who said thatlearners who speak English very well can have greater chance for better education,finding good jobs, and getting promotion

2.3 Teaching English speaking

2.3.1 The role of the teacher

Harmer (2007) states that except a prompter and a feedback provider, ateacher's role is also a participant, whose aim should be to comment, keep an eyecontact and show facial expressions, which should impress and encourage learners

Ur (1996) and Brown (1983) call such assessment formative evaluation, whosepurpose is forming and enhancing in contrast to summative evaluation, which is aresult of a long process and takes place at the end of a term

The atmosphere for the speaking fluency development in a class is highlyinfluenced by teachers' reactions, which are besides formal assessment an importantpart of teacher's feedback Klippel (1984, p.6) makes quite a critical remark when

he claims that a lot of teaching situations never get beyond a rational plus factoriented stage Considering feedback at least some informal sharing of feelings andideas in a form of oral praise or warning between a teacher and the pupils shouldtake place during the lessons

Although drilling may not sound suitable for teaching speaking fluency,Thornbury (2007, p 64) lifts up the importance of repetitive practice, which canfollow after pointing out some particular mistakes, as a tool that moves the itemsinto long-term memory They can later function as a store of memorized phrases orchunks on which a learner can depend The long-term aim must always be to askstudents to demonstrate that they learn to use, not to repeat, what they have beentaught (Brown, 1983).

To sum up, teacher's feedback plays a significant role in learner's fluencyspeaking development All the teacher's positive reactions and encouragementcontribute to the efficient learning process of speaking and on the other handteacher's impatience or even emphasizing learners' inability can greatly discouragelearners from their efforts

2.3.2 Activities for teaching English speaking

a Role plays, simulations and discussions

A division of communicative tasks, which is used by many authors, is play, simulation and discussion In a role-play learners pretend to be someone elseand do what is set for them to do, e g an unwilling shop assistant A teacher canhand out the roles in a form of role-cards where each learner reads the role which hewill play

role-On the other hand, in a simulation learners play themselves in a simulatedsituation and do what has been set for them to do They might be e g phoning toarrange a meeting In discussion each one is himself or herself and does not have aset task what to say, e.g Balloon debate – a popular discussion game where learnersare pretending being balloon passengers which is overloaded and must persuade theothers why they should be saved and not sacrificed (Thornbury 2007, p 98)

Wingate (1993, p 43) recommends all of these three kinds of tasks becausethey protect your students inner selves from suffering any blows to their confidenceand morale while getting to use the new items of language Bygate (1987, p 59)stresses the importance of using such activities because they are opportunities forlearners to use English for various purposes of language, for the situation outsidethe class

All the activities, mentioned in this chapter, serve as examples of the activitieswhose application in English lessons greatly contributes to learners' fluencyspeaking development, however, an overall teacher's support within the lessons,aiming at the usage of all the opportunities to activate learners' speaking as much aspossible, is also undoubtedly an inseparable component of learners' fluencyspeaking development Using classroom English, warm up and follow up speakingactivities as well as informal chat in a form of teachers' comments on what is going

on during lessons highly contribute to the whole process just as teacher's feedbackwhich is discussed in the final chapter of the theoretical part of the thesis

b Using pictures

Different possibilities how to use pictures for developing speaking fluency aredescribed by Bygate (1987, p 71) A similar game as Picture differences is a gameFinding similarities Two different pictures are handed out per pair and the aim is, notlooking at each other picture, to find as many similarities as possible An activityDescribe and arrange uses a picture story, consisting from four pictures, where onelearner has the pictures in the right order and the other must listen to the story toarrange his pictures in the same way In a Story construction activity four members

of a group are given a different picture and are to compile a story together

Identifying a picture from a set is an activity where one learner from a pair has

a set of pictures and has to identify just one of them which the other one is holding(Littlewood, in Bygate, 1987, p 67)

c Feedback and oral testing

- Feedback variety:

Harmer (2007) sees a clear difference between feedback during communicative' activities, which intends to measure correctness (e.g grammar,vocabulary), and 'communicative activities', whose aim is to improve fluency Aclear difference is understood also by Brown (1983, p.53), who claims 'when astudent is trying to formulate and structure a long turn in a foreign language, the lastthing a teacher should be thinking of is correcting that student's pronunciation'

'non Mistakes correction:

There are many ways how mistakes can be pointed out and corrected.Thornbury (2007, p.60) claims that learners are able to identify many of their ownmistakes themselves One way, how it could be done, is to record their performanceand when playing back, they have a chance to evaluate it Another way ofcorrecting learners' mistakes is noting them down by a teacher during fluencyspeaking activities and subsequent analysis either with a whole class or anindividual Correct forms can be elicited from the students, or be written on theboard or a teacher can prepare some kind of extra practice, which help learners withtheir difficulties Any kind of correcting is chosen, teachers should always regard asvery important not to let awareness of errors outweigh the importance of the wholespeaking activity (Ladousse,1987, p.15)

- Feedback timing:

Some authors (Ur, 1996, Harmer, 2007) warn teachers not to disturb pupils'oral production in the middle of their speech and not to concentrate on trivialmistakes but recommend to interfere only if learners flounder about ormisunderstand each other Making mistakes is an unavoidable part of any learningprocess and there is always time after the activity when mistakes should be assessedand corrected Some teachers claim that they cannot let errors go even in fluentactivities, but it is important if the interventions are economical and effective andthe stream of words and thoughts is not threatened This is probably possible onlywhen dealing with mistakes, which represent momentary failure, not errors, whichmean a weak point in a learner's knowledge (Thornbury 2007, p.92) From my point

of view it is just errors, which should not remain uncorrected as they could ruin themeaning of the whole activity

- Oral testing:

When dealing with oral testing, Ur (1996) mentions some advantages anddisadvantages as well She is persuaded that testing language knowledge shouldinclude all the language skills, including speaking, because besides the fact, thatsome students can speak well but write badly, if there is an oral test ahead, moreattention is paid to its practice On the other hand, she admits it is a great investment

of time and speaking is also very difficult to judge quickly and objectively Toprevent pupils' and parents' feeling that oral testing can be biased, Anderson (1984,p.76) suggests an assessment procedure which, used by different teachers, leads toagreed scoring He believes, if concentrating at teaching speaking fluency, teachers'judgement should not be aimed at faultless precision but at transferring all thenecessary information slots, such as e g colour, size, direction and so on, whichwould be allocated one point each Other language aspects, such as pronunciation,choice of vocabulary or rhetorical style are recommended not be assessed(Anderson 1984, p.76).

In contrast to Anderson's (1984) suggestion, Brown (1983) describes assessingspoken English production as a whole In order to maintain such assessment whichwould contain different aspects of the learner's speech, he suggests to use aninformal chart:

Date

Type of speech required

Grammatical correctness

Appropriate vocabulary

Fluency / pronunciat ion

Information transfer score

In the researcher‘s opinion, some kind of oral testing should have its place inEnglish lessons, especially in basic schools where children are considered asbeginners Emphasis on oral production at the beginning of a learning process of aforeign language, as it has already been mentioned in this work, should be a naturalpart of learning, similarly to the learning process of mother tongue Although oral

testing may seem not so objective as testing written production, it gives learners anopportunity to have all the language skills tested and can serve as a tool which leads

to paying more attention to its practice

2.4 Learning English speaking

2.4.1 Vocabulary

a Defining Word and Vocabulary

“1” (Foley and Thompson 2003, p 10) However, before discussing the

importance of vocabulary and other issues concerning vocabulary learning, a cleardistinction between the terms word and vocabulary should be made Some scholars(e.g Bowen et al., 1985; Jackson and Amvela, 2000; Read, 2000; Trask, 1995)

indicate that ‘word’ may be easy to perceive, but is hard to define Trask (1995, pp 46-51) points out that “there are the difficulties in the definition of the word because words do not have meanings in isolation, but they are related to the meanings of other words in ways that may be simple or complex” Moreover, “a word, at least, relates to the fields of morphology, semantics, etymology or lexicology” (Jackson and Amvela 2000, p 48).

Since the term ‘word’ is difficult to define, and the main purposes of the

present investigation emphasise vocabulary learning strategies used by languagelearners to learn or acquire vocabulary items; therefore, the researcher does not lookinto the history of words or any aspects related to a word except defining the terms

‘word’ and ‘vocabulary’ in this section Instead, the researcher attempts todistinguish particularly the term word and vocabulary that best suit the context ofthe present investigation with the hope that it may result in a better understanding of

the term ‘vocabulary learning’.

A few researchers, such as Jackson and Amvela (2000); Richards et al (1992);and Hornby et al (1984), have viewed word and vocabulary in a comparative way.Word is “an uninterruptible unit of structure consisting of one or more morphemesand which typically occurs in the structure of phrases The morphemes are theultimate grammatical constituents, the minimal meaningful units of language”,while vocabulary (which is synonymous with ‘lexis’, or ‘lexicon’) is viewed as “a

collection of words” or “a package of sub-sets of words that are used in particular

contexts” Richards et al (1992) define the term word as “the smallest of the

linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing” (p 406), butvocabulary, as “a set of lexemes which includes single words, compound words and

idioms” (p 400) Besides, word is defined as “sound or combination of sounds forming a unit of the grammar or vocabulary of a language”, whereas vocabulary

as “the total number of words which make up a language; and a range of wordsknown to, or used by a person” (Hornby et al., 1984) In addition, regarding the

definition of word and vocabulary, a word is “a unit formed of sounds or letters that have a meaning” (Sheeler and Markley 2000, p 2), while vocabulary is defined as

“total number of words we know and are able to use” (Nandy 1994, p 1; Sesnan

2001, p 123)

We can see, based on some scholars’ view points of word and vocabulary, thatword is the smallest meaningful unit of language used for making phrases andsentences that usually represents an object, idea, action, etc Vocabulary is seen as

“a set of lexemes - the study of vocabulary items – which includes single words, compound words and idioms” In other words, a word is a form which can occur in

isolation and have meaning, or a sound or combination of sounds forming a unit of

the grammar or vocabulary of a language, and so act as ‘a part of vocabulary’ in a

language Therefore, vocabulary consists of more than just single words (Read

2000, p 20; Richards 2000, p xi), and more than this, vocabulary concerns not onlysimple words in all their aspects, but also complex and compound words, as well asthe meaningful units of language (Jackson and Amvela 2000, pp 1-2) Regardingvocabulary learning, there is no question that vocabulary learning is referred to aslearning “A collection or the total stock of words in a language that are used inparticular contexts” To be precise, vocabulary learning means learning a package

of sub-sets of words as well as learning how to use strategies to cope with unknown

or unfamiliar words

b The importance of vocabulary

Of all the language skills, it is widely acknowledged that vocabulary is a veryimportant part in English language learning and that no one can communicate in anymeaningful way without vocabulary Bowen et al (1985, p.322) and McCarthy

(1990, p iix) indicate that the single, biggest component of any language course isvocabulary This is consistent with Nation (1990, p.2) who affirms that learners alsosee vocabulary as being a very, if not the most, important element in languagelearning Learners feel that many of their difficulties, in both receptive andproductive language use, result from the lack of vocabulary knowledge However,many scholars in the fields of vocabulary learning and teaching (e.g Allen, 1983;Carter and McCarthy, 1988; Hedge, 2000; Long and Richards, 1997; Maley, 1986;Richards, 1985; Zimmerman, 1997) indicate that vocabulary has long beenneglected in the language classroom Consequently, the main purpose of this section

is to study and review the importance of vocabulary in language learning so as tolook at what we know about English vocabulary as well as to reflect on how this hasbeen applied in language teaching and learning

Words are the tools learners use to think, to express ideas and feelings, as well

as to explore and analyse the world around them A limited vocabulary keeps themfrom expressing their thoughts and feelings On the other hand, a large, richvocabulary gives them the right words to use at the right time Kitajima (2001, p.470) affirms that without words that label objects, actions, and concepts, one cannot

express intended meanings “The more words one is able to use correctly, the better one will be able to express oneself easily and with self-confidence and to understand the world one lives in” (Nandy 1994, p 1).

There is no question that in a good language learning classroom, bothvocabulary and grammar are essential, but when compared vocabulary withgrammar, vocabulary is much more important and should receive more attentionthan grammar Allen (1983, p 5) indicates that in the best classes, neither grammarnor vocabulary is neglected, but vocabulary is more essential and should be taughtbefore grammar Likewise, Flower (2000, p 5) states, “Words are the mostimportant things students must learn Grammar is important, but vocabulary is muchmore important” This is consistent with Lewis (1993, p 115) who also views theimportance of vocabulary as the centre of language teaching and learning sincelanguage consists of ‘grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar’ and

‘grammar, as structure, is subordinate to lexis’ That is to say, these scholars see