A study on difficulties in learning english vocabulary of grade 5 students at dong chieu english cente

THU DAU MOT UNVIERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ************* GRADUATE PAPER TITLE: A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF GRADE STUDENTS AT DONG CHIEU ENGLISH CENTER Student name: Ho Thi Thu Hien Student code: 1722202010094 Class: D17AVGD01 Course: 2017-2021 Major: English Language Lecturer: Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao Binh Duong, October, 2020 THU DAU MOT UNVIERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ************* GRADUATE PAPER TITLE: A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF GRADE STUDENTS AT DONG CHIEU ENGLISH CENTER Student name: Ho Thi Thu Hien Student code: 1722202010094 Class: D17AVGD01 Course: 2017-2021 Major: English Language Lecturer: Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao Binh Duong, October, 2020 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Student full name: Ho Thi Thu Hien Student ID: 1722202010094 Title paper: A study on difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English center I hereby confirm that I am the sole author of the paper presented Where the work of others has been consulted, this is duly acknowledged in the paper’s bibliography I have also not consulted any other unnamed online sources All verbatim or referential use of the sources named in the bibliography has been specifically indicated in the text Binh Duong, October 2020 HO THI THU HIEN ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to thank the administrators and lecturers of Thu Dau Mot University for creating conditions for me to practice pedagogy at the center to expand my knowledge, accumulate more experience to help me complete my graduate report Next, I would like to express my deep thanks to Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao, who enthusiastically guided me in choosing the research topic, the approach and helping me to correct the shortcomings in the research process Thank you Mr Cao Vi Thien - Director of the Center for creating the best conditions for my teaching internship so that I can learn, experience and collect the data on difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English center Besides, it is impossible not to mention the contributions of dear grade students They helped me complete the survey as well as answer interview questions The most important thing is I want to thank my parents and friends, they always stand by me, give me a hand when I need it They always encouraged me to overcome difficulties so that I can successfully complete this graduation report Once again, I would like to thank all those who helped me during my internship I wish you are healthy, lucky and successful in your life and job Sincerely, iii ABSTRACT Nowadays, communication is very important in this era of globalization For good communication, proper language expression is essential Vocabulary is an important factor in language acquisition because words play an important role in expressing our feelings, emotions, and ideas to others during communication However, learning vocabulary is really a big challenge for students in learning a foreign language There are a lot of activities that have been done to help students overcome difficulties, but still limited The aims of this study is to find out difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English Center The study more over aims at exploring the causes of such difficulties To achieve these goals, research survey was conducted with 30 students from different classes at the center using questionnaires and interviews with students of the center to clarify information from the students Such questionnaires and interview will be suggested to each student to investigate difficulties in learning English vocabulary and the causes of those difficulties The results show that there are some difficulties in learning student's vocabulary and difficulties caused by both internal and external factors Internal factors such as lack of motivation and ineffective vocabulary learning and age External factors are the English learning conditions, the number of students in class and the lack of time to learn English This report is an attempt to find all the difficulties that hinder students and the factors that make it difficult to learn English vocabulary iv TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE i STATEMENT OF ATHORSHIP ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii ABSTRACT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE FOR STUDY 1.2 AIMS OF STUDY 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.5 METHOD OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 DEFINITION OF VOCABULARY 2.2 TYPES OF VOCABULARY 2.3 THE IMPORTANT OF LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY 2.4 FACTORS AFFECTING VOCABULARY 2.4.1 Internal factors 2.4.2 External factors 2.5 RELATED STUDY v CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 10 3.1 RESEARCH METHOD 10 3.2 PARTICIPANTS 10 3.3 DATA COLLECT 10 3.4 DATA ANALYSIS 10 3.4.1 Identification 10 3.4.2 Classification 10 3.4.3 Description 10 3.4.4 Explanation 11 CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 12 4.1 DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY 12 4.2 FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY 17 4.2.1 Internal factors 17 4.2.2 External factors 19 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 23 5.1 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 23 5.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 23 5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 24 REFERENCES 25 APPENDIX x Appendix 1: Questionnaire x Appendix 2: Interview xiv vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS L2: Second language vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ time for learning new words Table 2: Ways of learning new words viii LIST OF FIGURES Chart 1: Students’ level of English vocabulary Chart 2: Students’ attitudes towards the importance of vocabulary learning Chart 3: Students’ attitudes towards learning new words Chart 4: Students’ difficulties in learning new words Chart 5: Internal factors affecting learning English vocabulary Chart 7: The conditions that students lack in learning English vocabulary Chart 8: The problem of lack of student's time Chart 9: The student’s thinking about the number of students affects their ability to learn English vocabulary ix Options Number of students Percentage Writing words in English many times 12 40% Reading words many times 20% Learn through textual context 13% Learning words through listening 10% Learning words through communication 7% Making a word list 10% Other ways 0% Table 2: Ways of learning new words As illustrated in Table 2, most students (40%) are influenced by traditional ways of their learning habits such as writing words in English and Vietnamese repeatedly and trying to learn by heart According to Decarrico (2001) said that vocabulary should not be learned by memorizing without understanding Obviously, these are not effective ways to learn vocabulary Quite a few students often learn English vocabulary based on textual context (13%) A similar rate of 10% is the number of students learning vocabulary through listening and making a word list Only students learn new words through communication It can be inferred that when most students choose to write words and equivalent words in Vietnamese, or write words more than once, they focus on word spelling rather than on using words in sentences Through interviews, most students said that learning vocabulary is difficult to remember They complained that they tried to find effective ways to learn but 16 none of them worked for them Therefore, they accept vocabulary like rote learning but this makes it easier for them to forget the words they have learned and not be able to use them in context 4.2 FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY 4.2.1 Internal factors 100% 90% 80% 7% 6% 4% 7% 10% 10% 20% 17% 23% 37% 30% 30% 33% Age Ineffective ways of learning vocabulary 70% 60% 50% 26% 40% 30% 20% 40% 10% 0% Lack of motivation Chart 5: Internal factors affecting learning English vocabulary To understand more about the internal factors that make it difficult to learn English vocabulary, the researcher has collected the above results and below is a detailed analysis of these factors: Lack of motivation Up to 12 students rated “strong agreement” (40%) and students rated “agreement” (26%), students rated “neutral” (20%) and only students “disagreement” and “strong disagreement” (7%) for lacking of motivation The results of the study show that students are not very motivated to learn English Most students learn English simply because they have to Outside of the classroom, they spend very little time learning vocabulary 17 One notable reason for the fact that students are not motivated to learn English vocabulary is that English is not their favorite subject They often try to memorize the meaning of words that the teacher can check in class, so they are more likely to forget the word afterwards Although most of the students at this school are capable students, low motivation prevents them from developing their abilities As Reece & Walker (1997) emphasizes that a less competent but highly motivated student can achieve greater success than a smarter student who is not motivated 2.Age In grade 5, their ability to memorize words is improved and children can learn vocabulary faster than adults However, the effectiveness of memorization also depends on many factors such as the concentration of their positive intelligence, the attractiveness of the document content, psychological factors, emotions or their interests, Young children tend to pay less attention while adults tend to be attentive to lessons for longer According to the survey, talk about age has (37%) “agreement”, (30%) “strongly agreement” and (17%) choose “neutral” They only learn vocabulary when they like it and they get bored easily with new words that make it difficult for them to remember, pronounce and use When I interviewed, out of students in 5th grade said that they know many new words after each lesson, but they learn vocabulary when they like and not pay much attention during class” 3.Ineffective ways of learning vocabulary The results of the survey show that students not have many suitable English vocabulary learning strategies Up to 33% of students choose "strongly agreement", 30% choose "agreement" Besides that, 24% of students choose "neutral", they also think ineffective ways of learning vocabulary is one the 18 factors affecting learning English vocabulary However, only 10% "disagreement" and 3% strongly disagreement”, this number is not too significant They often have the habit of memorizing such as writing words many times in English and equivalent Vietnamese or reading aloud many times Furthermore, when they encounter a new word, they often wait for their teachers and friends to guide them In short, the students' way of learning vocabulary is very passive and unhelpful Through the interview, out of students in 5th grade said that they feel bored when learning new words by writing many times, this way of learning makes them spend a lot of time to learn vocabulary but they are also very difficult to remember in a long time 4.2.2 External factors For more details, the researcher collected the data and presented it in the chart above Below are the common factors that make it difficult to learn English vocabulary: The English learning conditions [PERCENTA GE] [PERCENTA GE] [PERCENTA GE] Lack of use visual aids such as pictures, flashcards, real objects, Lack of use body languages, gestures and facial expressions, … Lack of activities play (no vocabulary review, no vocabulary check, ) Chart 7: The conditions that students lack in learning English vocabulary Through the survey, many students complained that during vocabulary 19 learning, they are not provided with live pictures, real objects and not using body language (27%), leading to difficulties in learning vocabulary Besides, there are also some students (46%) who think they cannot organize games in the classroom much, not review and check words for students in the learning process not enjoy learning and often forget vocabulary Through interviews, many students have the same opinion They claim that their teachers just regularly check their homework, teach new lessons and follow up with students, leading to not only bored learning but also learning very little vocabulary in lessons Lack of time 35% 33% 30% 30% 27% 25% 20% 15% 10% 10% 5% 0% 0% Strong agreement Agreement Neutral Disagreement Strongly disagreement Chart 8: The problem of lack of student's time Through the survey, 10 students rated "agree" (33%), students rated "strongly agree" (30%), students rated "neutral" (27%) and only students rated "disagree" (10%) Most of the students have to study many subjects and not focus on learning English They only focus on a few subjects they like and 20 they are good at Especially they have to prepare the time and energy for the upcoming midterm exam Therefore, the time to learn English vocabulary is very limited Answering in the interview, most of the students said that the external factor that makes it difficult to learn vocabulary is lack of time There are many new words in each lesson and there is very little time to learn vocabulary that makes it difficult for them to understand and remember 0% 10% 17% 33% 40% The number of students in class STRONGLY AGREEMENT AGREEMENT NEUTRAL DISAGR E E M E NT STRONGLY DISAGR E M E NT Chart 9: The student’s thinking about the number of students affects their ability to learn English vocabulary This is one of the factors that many students think it affects the difficulty of learning English vocabulary, 40% of students choose "agreement", 33% choose "strongly agreement" In addition, 17% of the students chose "neutral", only 10% of the students chose "disagreement" Indeed, a class with a small student population is better than a classroom with a large number of students Students 21 will easily learn new vocabulary and participate in classroom activities led by teachers In addition, the teacher can recognize students easily and material can be effectively taught to a small number of students in the classroom 22 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS 5.1 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS The study aims to find out difficulties and factors that cause difficulties in learning English vocabulary for grade students at Dong Chieu English center The study begins with a document overview that provides a number of vocabulary definitions, vocabulary types, the importance of learning English vocabulary and the factors that affect vocabulary learning To find out the difficulty of learning English vocabulary for 5th graders, the survey questionnaire with 30 students, the interview with students at center to check their attitudes towards English vocabulary, their difficulties in learning vocabulary Then, some of the factors that cause difficulties for students were discovered by the researcher According to research results, learning English vocabulary of students at the center is not really effective Students often encounter difficulties from internal factors such as low motivation, ineffective vocabulary learning, natural characteristics of young learners and external factors such as English learning environment, the number of student in class and lack of time to learn It is hoped that all of the research objectives have been achieved and what has been discussed in the study may help students Hopefully, the research paper will make an important contribution to the current vocabulary learning at Dong Chieu English center 5.2 LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH First, due to limited time, knowledge and small scale, the topic is only implemented on a small population scale This number is not enough for the researcher to fully understand the difficulty of learning English vocabulary that 23 these students encounter Second, the researcher 's practical experience in teaching vocabulary is still limited, the class observation method has not been used, so the corrective comments may be subjective and incomplete 5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Learning English vocabulary is a complicated process depending on many factors and these can be difficult for students Further research can investigate vocabulary learning problems by looking at the difficulty related to the vocabulary itself and some other factors that affect vocabulary learning such as references, intelligence, beliefs, etc In particular, vocabulary learning strategies are considered very important, so later on, learning should study them to find the most effective and appropriate way to learn English vocabulary REFERENCES 24 Fu,Y M (2003) Motivation and vocabulary learning strategies Unpublished Master Thesis, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, P.R China Lenntiev, A A, & James, C V (1981) Psychology and the language learning Process Oxford: Pergamon Institute Miller, G A& Gildea, P M (1987) How children learn words: Scientific American, 257(3) Nation P (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Thornbury, S (2002), How to teach vocabulary England: Pearson Education Limited Pyles, T.& Algeo, J (1970) English- An introduction to language New York: Harcourt, Brace Hornby, A.S (1995) Oxford advanced learner dictionary of current English London: Oxford University Press Nguyễn, T.B.H (2010) Challenges in English vocabulary learning of ethnic minority grade 10 students at Muong Bi high school Bae Son, J (2001) CALL and Vocabulary Learning; A review English Linguistics Science 10 Nyikos & Fan, M (2007) A Review of Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Cohen, A., & Macaro, E (Eds) Language Learner Strategies Oxford: Oxford University Press 11 Collier, V.P (1988) The effect of age on acquisition of a second language for school New focus The National Clearing House for Bilingual Education No 2, Winter,1987-88 25 APPENDIX APPENDIX 1: SERVEY QUESTIONAIRE I am doing a study on difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English Center This purpose of this study is to find difficulties in vocabulary learning of grade The information you provide will only be used for the purpose of this research Your answers will greatly contribute to the success of the study I am very grateful for your help For each question, please put a tick in the box () beside the option(s) or write the answer that is the most appropriate for you Part I: Background information What’s your name? …………………………………… Your gender?  Male  Female Part II: The reality of learning English vocabulary What is your English vocabulary level?  Good  Rather good  Average  Bad What you think of the importance of vocabulary learning?  It is very important  It is important  It is not important x 5.How you feel about learning new words?  It is very difficult  It is difficult  It is not difficult How often you spend time learning new words?  Every day  Three times a week  Two times a week  One time a week  When you feel like to learn In your opinion, what you think is the most difficult in your learning a new word?  The word is so long  You not know how to pronounce the word correctly  Word stress is very difficult  The use of the word is so complicated for you How you usually learn new words?  Writing words in English many times  Reading words many times  Learn through textual context  Learning words through listening  Learning words through communication  Making a word list  Other ways xi Part III: Internal factors affecting learning English vocabulary Do you think lack of motivation is the factor caused difficulties for learning English vocabulary?  Strong agree  Agree  Neutral  Disagree  Strongly disagree 10 Do you think the factor caused difficulties for learning English vocabulary is learner’s age?  Strong agree  Agree  Neutral  Disagree  Strongly disagree 11 Do you think the factor caused difficulties for learning English vocabulary is ineffective ways of learning vocabulary?  Strong agree  Agree  Neutral  Disagree  Strongly disagree xii Part IV: External factors affecting learning English vocabulary 12 What English learning environment you think makes learning English words difficult?  Lack of use visual aids such as pictures, flashcards, real objects,  Lack of use body languages, gestures and facial expressions, …  Lack of activities play (no vocabulary review, no vocabulary check, ) 13 Do you think the factor caused difficulties for learning English vocabulary lack of time?  Strong agree  Agree  Neutral  Disagree  Strongly disagree 14 Do you think the number of students in class is the factor caused difficulties for learning English vocabulary?  Strong agree  Agree  Neutral  Disagree  Strongly disagree  Thank you so much for your cooperation! xiii APPENDIX 2: SURVEY INTERVIEW Question 1: How you feel about learning new words? Question 2: What you think of the importance of vocabulary learning? Question 3: In your opinion, what you think is the most difficult in your learning a new word? Question 4: How often you learn new words? Question 5: What factors you think caused difficulties for you in learning English vocabulary? xiv ... doing a study on difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English Center This purpose of this study is to find difficulties in vocabulary learning of grade The information... language learning also have an effect in his vocabulary learning? ?? Reece & Walker (1997) states that motivation is key in second language learning Motivation is one of the most important aspects of. .. that cause difficulties in learning English vocabulary of grade students at Dong Chieu English Center In the content of learning English at center, the English vocabulary mentioned here means new