A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year old vietnamese children’s english speaking a case of the children in an english centre

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -*** TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG A STUDY ON THE ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY IN 10-YEAR-OLD VIETNAMESE CHILDREN’S ENGLISH SPEAKING: A CASE OF THE CHILDREN IN AN ENGLISH CENTRE (NGHIÊN CỨU SỰ KÉO THEO CỦA QUAN HỆ BỘ PHẬN- TỒN PHẦN TRONG CÁCH NĨI TIẾNG ANH CỦA TRẺ EM VIỆT NAM 10 TUỔI: NGHIÊN CỨU TRÊN ĐỐI TƯỢNG HỌC SINH CỦA MỘT TRUNG TÂM TIẾNG ANH) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Code: 6014.0111 Supervisor: Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha HANOI, 2015 CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking A case of the children in an English centre” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, 2015 Tran Lan Huong i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At the end of my thesis, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all people who have helped and inspired me to finish the graduation paper First, I would like to express my especial thanks to my supervisor, Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha for her invaluable guidance Her expertise, understanding, and patience, added considerably to my research experience I also wish to thank the manager, the students and teachers at Amslink Centre, whose knowledge, experience, and supports directed me through my study A very special thank goes out to my friends, without whose support, motivation and encouragement I would not have such patience and determination in fulfilling this study I would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life and especially this hard time of preparation for graduation ii ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking The data was taken from the observation of 33 Vietnamese students at the age of ten and native teachers The results show two types of the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking: the first is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy and the second is the lack of one of properties of meronymy The first one is more popular to cause the entailment of meronymy Moreover, the study also indicates how teachers responded to children’s entailments of meronymy and goes to the conclusion that most of time teachers ignored these or sometimes just gave very simple feedback when what children said was too unreasonable iii TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES PART A INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Research questions Scope of the research Organization of the thesis PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW I MERONYMY Definition of meronymy Characteristics of meronymy 2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Me 2.2 Properties of Meronymy Types 3.1 Component – integral 3.2 Member – collection 3.3 Portion- Mass 3.4 Stuff- Object 3.5 Feature- Activity 3.6 Place- Area II CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Language acquisition Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking 2.1 The definitions of feedback 2.2 Types of feedback iv III RELATED STUDIES 18 Meronymy…………………………………………………………………… Children language acquisition………………………………………………… CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23 I THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 23 Teaching methodology 23 The students’ learning conditions 23 II PARTICIPANTS 24 III METHODOLOGY 25 Instrument 25 Data analysis methods 26 CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 28 I THE FREQUENCYOF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY 29 The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy 29 1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy 29 1.2 Non-meronymic relations 33 1.2.1 Attribution 33 1.2.2 Topological inclusion 34 1.2.3 Possession/ Ownership 35 The lack of properties of meronymy- Motivation 36 II TEACHERS’ FEEDBACK 38 The frequency of teachers’ feedback to entailment of meronymy 38 Types of feedback 39 PART C CONCLUSION 42 Recapitulation 42 Limitation 43 Suggestion for further study 43 REFERENCES 45 APPENDIX OBSERVATION DATA 48 v APPENDIX STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK CENTRE vi 54 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Six types of meronymic relation with relation elements …… LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)…………… 16 Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006) ……………… 17 Figure 3: The frequency of entailment of meronymy ……… 26 Figure 4: The teachers’ reaction to the students’ use …………… 36 LIST OF PICTURES Picture 1: Classroom’s view ………………………………………… .50 Picture 2: Classroom’s equipments ………………………………… 50 vii PART A INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Linguistics, the scientific study of language, is of all “the social sciences with the greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15) There have been different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is one of them When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with other lexical items, the theory of lexical semantics is met This approach posits two different, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to the physical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding between the linguistic elements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands of philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second language educators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involve words, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature that approaches the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives Still, the core semantic relation of every knowledge organization system is hierarchy There are two kinds of hierarchic relations that should be distinguished: hyponymy (is-a relation) and meronymy (part-of relation) In the way meronymy is currently applied in real life, especially by children, different kinds of meronymy are sometimes misleadingly summed up into one general part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make some types of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation about their entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking; therefore; the analysis of these in general and in the context of Vietnam in particular is really necessary This study is a theoretical approach to some knowledge of meronymy in general and the transitivity of meronymy in particular to clarify some entailment of meronymy concerning transitivity of Vietnamese children Research questions The study’s primary aim is to investigate the use of meronymy in English communication classes of 10-year-old students And then the researcher will try to analyze the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking and investigate how teachers responded to children’s use of meronymy This final goal is specified in the following research questions: What are the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese 10-year-old children’s English speaking? How teachers respond to students’ entailment of meronymy? Scope of the research Due to the limited time and knowledge, it will be not wise to cover all aspects of meronymy like its relationship with other semantic relations, the benefits of transitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion in information retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail, etc Moreover, it is also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking Conversely, my study just emphasizes on one aspect of meronymy- transitivity and some outstanding use related to this aspect of meronymy of 10- year- old children Organization of the thesis The thesis consists of three parts: Part A – Introduction comes to the general introduction including the rational, and the purposes of the present study Part B – Development: this part comprises of three chapters: Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature review covers the overview of the literature in which relevant theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning meronymy It reviews the research REFERENCES Anyon,D.(2001) The role of negative and positive feedback in the secondlanguage acquisition of the passe compose and impartfait The Modern Language Journal,85, pp.226-238 Bitchener, J., Young, S., & Cameron, D (2005) The effect of different typesof corrective feedback on ESL student writing Journal of Second Language Writing,14, pp.191–205 Boud,D (2000) Sustainable assessment: Rethinking assessment for thelearning society Studies in Continuing Education, 22 (2), pp.151-167 Brookhart, S (1998) How to give effective feedback to your students ELT Journal,63 (3), pp.35-37 Chaffin, Roger (1992) The Concept of a Semantic Relation, in Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.) Frames, Fields, and Contrasts, Hillsdale, New Jersey Law- rence Erlbaum Associates, pp 255 Crane,H.(2008) Feedback in the context of spoken language: Student'sfeedback on learning Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 73, pp.397-398 Croft, W and D.A Cruse (2004) Cognitive Linguistics Cambridge University Press Cambridge Cruse, D.A (1979) On the Transitivity of the Part- Whole Relation Journal of Linguistics, Vol.15, No.1, pp.29-38 Cruse, D.A (1986) Lexical Semantics Cambridge University Press Cambridge 10 Cruse, D.A (2000) Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics Oxford University Press Oxford 11 Eikmeyer, Hans- Jurgen and H.Rieser (1981) Meanings, Intentions, and Stereotypes A New Approach to Linguistic Semantics, in Eikmeyer, Hans-Jurgen and H Roeser (eds.) Words, Words and New Contexts: New Approaches in Word Semantics Walter de Gruyter Press Berlin 45 12 Finch, Geoffery (2000) Linguistic Terms and Concepts Macmillan Press Limited New York 13 Grains, R and S Redman (1986) Working with Words: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary Cambridge University Press Cambridge 14 Halliday, M.A.K (1985) Functional Grammar Hodder and Staughton Press Hong Kong 15 Kearns, K.(2000) Semantics Macmillan Press Limited London 16 Littlewood, W (1981) Communicative language teaching Cambrige University Press Cambridge 17 Long, M (1996) The role of linguistic environment in second languageacquisition ELT Journal, 1, pp.26-28 18 Lyons, J (1977) Semantics Vol.1 Cambridge University Press Cambridge 19 Lyons, J (1981) Language, Meaning and Context Fontana Press Singapore 20 Mc.Namara, E (1999) Positive Pupil Management and Motivation: Asecondary Teachers’ Guide David Fulton Publishers London 21 Murphy, Lynne (2003) Semantic Relations and the Lexicon Cambridge University Press Cambridge 22 Miller, G A and P N Joghnson- Laird (1976) Perception and Language Cambridge University Press Cambridge 23 Nguyen, B., et al (2003) BA Upgrade: English Language Teaching Methodology Van Hoa-Thong Tin Publisher Ha Noi 24 Saeed, J.I.(1997) Semantics Blackwell Publisher Oxford 25 The Oxford Universal Dictionary Illustrated (1968) Great Britain: Oxford University Press, London 26 Ur, P (1996) A course in language teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge 27 Winston, M., R Chaffin and D Herrmann (1987) A Taxonymy of Part- Whole Relations Cognitive Science, Vol.11, pp 417-444 46 47 APPENDIX OBSERVATION DATA N Class o Class 5F Class 2-4 5C 5- Class 14 5A 48 15 16 17 Class 5F Class 5F Class 5A 49 18 19 20 21 22 Class 5A Class 5C Class 5F Class 5C Class 23 Class 5F 50 5F 24 25 26 27- Class 5F Class 5C Class 5C Class 28 29 5F Class 5A 51 30 Class 5A 31- Class 36 5A 37 Class 5C 52 \ 53 38- Class 39 5A APPENDIX STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK CENTRE Picture 1: Classroom’s view Picture 2: Classroom’s equipment 54 ... which the combination of more than one semantic relation (35 cases) overwhelms the combination of more than one type of meronymy (3 cases) The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy. ..CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled ? ?A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children? ??s English speaking A case of the children in an English. .. Discussion demonstrates the findings accompanied by data analysis and discussion Part C – Conclusion recapitulates the major findings of the study and then it discusses the limitations of the present