Tài liệu Grade 10th students learning english vocabulary a case study at phalai high school

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH CODE: 09 GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY GRADE 10TH STUDENTS' LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY: A CASE STUDY AT PHALAI HIGH SCHOOL Supervisor : Dr. Nguyen Van Quang Name of student : Tran Van Thuat Date of birth : 25/07/1994 Class : 1271A03 (2012- 2016) Hanoi, 2016 DECLARATION GRADE 10TH STUDENTS' LEARNINGENGLISH VOCABULARY: A CASE STUDY AT PHALAI HIGH SCHOOL (Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfill for B.A degree in English studies) I certify that no part of the research has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgement and that the research is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, April, 2016 Student Tran Van Thuat Supervisor Dr. Nguyen Van Quang ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am, first of all, particularly indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Van Quang, for his invaluableadvice, instructions and correction, excellent suggestions and constant encouragement during the research period. Without his guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished. Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for their valuable lessons and precious helps. Thanks to their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when doing the research. Besides, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to the teachers and grade 10th students at Pha Lai High School who have participated in this research and many others who helped me during my study at Pha Lai High School. Last but not least, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to my family members for their constant support and thorough understanding. Their great encouragement and love have helped me to overcome the difficulties during my study. Hanoi, April, 2016 Student Tran Van Thuat Graduation Paper TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT PART A: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 1. Rationale ............................................................................................................ 1 2. Aims of the study ............................................................................................... 3 3. Scope of the study .............................................................................................. 4 4. Research questions ............................................................................................ 4 5. Methods of the study ......................................................................................... 4 6. Design of the study............................................................................................. 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................. 6 CHAPTER 1: THEORITICAL BACKGROUND ............................................... 6 1.1 Theory on vocabulary...................................................................................... 6 1.1.1 Definition of vocabulary ............................................................................. 6 1.1.2 The importance of vocabulary .................................................................... 7 1.1.3 Classification of vocabulary ....................................................................... 8 1.1.3.1 According to the concept of morpheme .................................................. 9 1.1.3.2 According to the meaning ..................................................................... 9 1.1.3.3 According to the function .................................................................... 10 1.1.3.4 According to the frequency of use ........................................................ 10 1.2 Vocabulary learning ...................................................................................... 12 1.2.1 Aspects need to be studied......................................................................... 12 1.2.2 English vocabularylearning strategies ..................................................... 13 1.2.2.1 Definition of English vocabulary learning strategies ........................... 13 1.2.2.2 Classification of English vocabulary learning strategies ..................... 13 CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS, INTERPRETATIONS & ANALYSES .................. 19 2.1 Methodology .................................................................................................. 19 2.1.1 Methods .................................................................................................... 19 Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) Graduation Paper 2.1.2 Subjects ..................................................................................................... 19 2.1.2.1 Grade 10th students at Phalai high school and their learning background ..................................................................................................... 19 2.1.2.2 English teachers at Pha Lai High school ............................................. 20 2.1.2.3 Tieng Anh 10 coursebook and its vocabulary topics ............................ 20 2.1.3 Questionaires ............................................................................................ 23 2.1.3.1 Purposes ............................................................................................. 23 2.1.3.2 Discription of survey questionaires ..................................................... 23 2.1.4 Procudure ................................................................................................. 24 2.1.5 Data analysis ............................................................................................ 24 2.2 Findings and discussions ............................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 3: SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH VOCABULARY LEARNINGFOR GRADE 10TH STUDENTS AT PHALAI HIGH SCHOOL . 36 3.1 Learning English vocabulary from pictures................................................. 36 3.2 Learning English vocabulary from funny games ......................................... 38 3.2.1 The jumble word game ............................................................................. 39 3.2.2 The “Crossword” game ............................................................................ 40 3.2.3 The word search game .............................................................................. 42 3.3 Leaning English vocabulary through mass media ....................................... 43 3.3.1 Using books, magazine, newspapers ......................................................... 43 3.3.2 Learning vocabulary by watching films or cartoons with English subtitles ........................................................................................................................... 46 3.3.3 Learning English vocabulary through Internet........................................... 56 PART C: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION ................................. 48 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 49 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) Graduation Paper LIST OF FIGURES ANDTABLES LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Students’ interests in learning English. .............................................. 24 Figure 2: The ways students often apply in memorizing words. .......................... 28 Figure 3: Students’ opinions toward current teaching method ............................ 32 Figure 4: Teachers’ opinions on using various techniques on teaching vocabulary ............................................................................................................ 33 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Vocabulary topics presented in Tieng Anh 10 coursebook .................... 22 Table 2: Teachers’ and students’ opinions toward the role of English vocabulary. .............................................................................................................................. 25 Table 3: Students’and teachers’ difficulties in learning and teaching vocabulary .............................................................................................................................. 26 Table 4: Strategies employed by students in getting the meaning of the words .... 27 Table 5: Current teaching techniques and thier effectiveness.............................. 29 Table 6: The frequency of adopted techniques on teaching vocabulary ............ 300 Table 7: Students ’expectations to improve their vocabulary learning................. 33 Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) Graduation Paper PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Each nation has their own language, custom and culture. To have a common voice, all nations in the world need have a common language and English is such a language. In Vietnam, since the implementation of the open door policy, it is now a great demand to learn English for the process of integrating into regional and international economic and diplomatic development. Studying English, students have chances to know many interesting things around the world. However, it is not easy work because English is very variety and complex. It has been, in fact, said that if language were a house, vocabulary would be a construction material to build up that house. Therefore, studying a language cannot be separated from studying vocabulary. Yet it is true that the vocabulary is the focus of language. It is in words that sound and meaning interlock to allow us to communicate with one another, and it is word that we arrange together to make sentences, conversation, and discourse of all kinds. However, it is not easy to study perfect English vocabulary. Almost students often face up with some problems in learning vocabulary at first. In fact, it is difficult to memorize a new word with its meaning, spelling and pronunciation, many students are often confused with knowing how can apply grammar into sentences, sometimes, they can not understand when being opposed to video and audio. For a long time, methodologists have continuously kept seeking effective ways to teach and learn English vocabulary. Some books on learning English vocabulary have been written by scholars such as Nation (1982, 1990 and 2000), Rubin and Thomson (1994) and Taylor (1990), etc. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 2 Graduation Paper In Vietnam,several studies into this field have been conducted with different type of learners to find out particular strategies employed by effective and ineffective learners in learning English vocabulary such as Huyen Tran’s study (2004) on vocabulary learning strategies used by students of English at Quy Nhon University or Mai Van Binh's (2007) on vocabulary learning strategies preferred by students at College of Finance and Business Administration. However, research on effective ways to learn English vocabulary for 10th form students at Phalai High School has not been done yet. From the above reasons, the researcher has the ambition of presenting some effective techniques to learn English vocabulary for students at PhaLai high school, where the researcher studied in his school days and practiced teaching, with hope that students will be interested in learning English. Due to his English knowledge limitation and the frame of the graduation paper, the researcher would like to choose the research paper entitle: “Grade 10th students’ learning English vocabulary: a case study at Pha Lai High school” 2. Aims of the study With the hope of helping grade 10th students at Pha Lai high school make progress in studying vocabulary, this graduation paper is about to help the students improve their own vocabulary and to prepare for them to the basic knowledge of vocabulary with higher requirement for the next grades. Specifically, the research aims at: - Covering background knowledge of vocabulary - Finding out reality of teaching and learning English at school. - Investigating difficulties experienced by students of grade 10th when learning English vocabulary; - Suggesting some ways of learning English vocabulary effectively for students of grade 10th in Phalai High school. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 3 Graduation Paper 3.Scope of the study In fact, there are various techniques to study English vocabulary. It requires much of time and effort; therefore, due to the limitation of knowledge and time, the researcher has no ambition to study all techniques. In this graduation paper, the reseacher mainly focuses on studying some difficulties faced by grade 10th students at Phalai high school (Phalai ward, Chilinh district, Haiduong) and suggesting some effective techniques in learning English vocabulary. 4. Research questions The research was carried out with an attempt to find out the answers to the following questions: - How do grade 10th students at Phalai high school learn English vocabulary? - What difficulties do grade 10th students at Phalai high school face when learning English vocabulay? - How can grade 10th students at Phalai high school learn English vocabulay effectively 5. Methods of the study To complete this graduation paper, a series of methods have been applied: First, collected references, books and websites related to vocabulary and techniques to study English were analyzed in details to form the theoretical background of this paper. Besides, in order to achieve the aims of the study mentioned above, the quantitative analysis is the main tool for analyzing the data, which is collected from the questionnaire for students and teachers of grade 10th at Phalai high school, the information from which has provided invaluably. 6. Design of the study The study is divided into three main parts: Introduction, Development, and conclusion. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 4 Graduation Paper Part A: Introduction shows the reasons to choose the study, the aims, scope, methods and design of the study. Part B: Development consists of three chapters: Chapter 1: “Theoretical background” focuses on the aims to answer the questions related to vocabulary, and strategies of learning English vocabulary. Chapter 2: “Findings, Interpretations and Analyses” refers to the survey questionnaire and analyzed findings of questionnaire results. Chapter 3: “Suggestions to improve English vocabularylearning for grade 10th students at PhaLai high school”contains some techniques to learn vocabulary and some more suggested ways to help students make progress in studying English vocabulary. Part C: Conclusion in which all the issued mentioned in the previous parts are summarized. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 5 Graduation Paper PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Theory on vocabulary 1.1.1 Definition of vocabulary In fact, there are many definitions of vocabulary which can be found in many various resources. Here are some main definitions of vocabulary: According to Steven Stalh (2005), “Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge, the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word first into the world…” Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can never be fully mastered, it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime. Because instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in sentence. Moreover, vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies. From the book entitled “A course in Language Teaching” written by Penny Ur vocabulary is defined as“…the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word”(21, p.60) . For example “foot-path”, “railway station”, “forget-menot”, which are made up of more than one word but express a single idea. There are also multi-word idioms such as “once in a blue moon”, where the meaning of the phrase cannot be deduced from an analysis of the component words. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words”. According to Richard, Platt (1992), vocabulary is “a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms.”(13, p.40). Whereas, the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (p.1331) offered its own definition. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 6 Graduation Paper Vocabulary here is simply understood as “the total number of words in a language.” Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Hoc (2002) considered their following definition of vocabulary as “logical”. According to them, when the term “vocabulary” of a language was mentioned, it should be mentioned as consisting of all the words, compounds and idioms used to transmit information on both “oral and written communication”. In conclusion, it is easy to see that there are many ways to define vocabulary. The way that linguists choose to define vocabulary depends on the way he assesses the importance of the components of each language. Of all the above definitions, the one that Richard and Platt (1992) proposes in the “Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics” is perhaps one of the most widely-accepted definitions since it given us the whole scope of vocabulary. 1.1.2 The importance of vocabulary It is impossible to assume the importance of vocabulary in English learning because of different reasons. Commenting on the role of vocabulary, Wilkins (1982), a famous British linguist said: “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed”. (Cited in A course in TEFL – Theory and Practice II by Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Hoc (8, p.35). What is more, there has been a statement “If language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the flesh”, (7, p.153). People consider vocabulary as the key to master English knowledge. With the lack of vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate with other people confidently. Moreover, it is hard to express idea and explain something necessary. Therefore, on a personal level, a good vocabulary is important in Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 7 Graduation Paper sharpening one’s thought and perception, to become fully conscious, must be formulated in words. A good vocabulary is important not only for more precision in thought but also in one’s daily affairs, the actions one must perform both on and off the job in ordinary living. Basically, people can relate to other people (love ones, friends, co-workers, society at large) and the rest of the external world (nature) in only two ways: physically and verbally. Vocabulary plays an important role in combining 4 basic English skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Naturally, when having multiform vocabulary, it is extremely advantageous to develop 4 above skills. For example, if we lack of necessary vocabulary, it will be difficult to express any ideas to others. Therefore, our speaking skill cannot make any progress. Additionally, if it is supposed that you have a poor vocabulary, how can you write a lively and excellent essay or normal paragraphs? Truly, it requires a great number of vocabularies. Normally, we also can get information from reading books. If books are Vietnamese certainly these are not any problems. However, these books are written in English and denoted in English style. If you do not have a good dictionary, it will take you lots of time to understand. In communication, it is a decisive factor to make us talk with others actively and understand each other quickly. With a poor vocabulary, the free flow of ideas and pen is blocked and dribbles out. With a good vocabulary, it will be helped to flow, unimpeded. 1.1.3 Classification of vocabulary According to Nu (2004), vocabulary can be classified in different ways according to different criteria such as the concept of morpheme, the meaning, the function of vocabulary items in a sentence, the frequency of use… Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 8 Graduation Paper 1.1.3.1 According to the concept of morpheme “A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit or part of a word. Words are made up from free and bound morphemes. According to the concept ofmorpheme we can classify words into three types: simple words, derived words and compound words”. (1, p.14) a. Simple words A simple word consists of one morpheme only and cannot be broken into smallest meaningful unit. For example: house, ball, tree, cow, etc. Most of single words are root to make up compound words or complex words in a language. b. Derived words A derived word is a word that consists of a root and one or more derivational morphemes. For example: teacher, inexpensive, fisherman and so on. c. Compound words Compound word is the one that has at least two roots, with or without derivation morphemes. For instance: football, earthquake, airport, superman… English has many compound words. Some of these are written as one word as in above examples. Other compounds are hyphenated such as Mother-in-law, Master-at-arms, Editor-in-chief… 1.1.3.2 According to the meaning A word can posses two kinds of meaning: lexical meaning and grammartical meaning. Therefore, vocabulary can be devided into notional and functional words. a. Notional words (Lexical words) Notional word are words with clear lexical meaning. They are subjects, action, qualities, etc and they have meaning in themselves. Notional words Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 9 Graduation Paper dform a great number of each speakr’s vcabulary. For instance, a book, a dog, to travel, to teach, beautiful… b. Functional words (Grammatical words) Functional words are those whose meaning is grammartical and they have meaning in the relation to the other words with wich they are used. Functional words are particles, articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjuctions…, for example, a, an, the, from…. 1.1.3.3 According to the function In a sentence, words have many different functions. English words can be classified basing on functions as different parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition. Each part of speech has to follow particular grammar rules so that when learning English words, we have to be aware of the importance of the parts of speech of that word in sentence. For example: - Noun: a boy, a lake, a chicken… - Verb: to wash, to drive, to study… - Adjective: excellent, friendly, industrious… Apart from the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of new words, learners need to know how these words function in a sentence. A word may have many functions in a sentence. For example, the word “English” can function as: I like English. Noun She is an English teacher. Adjective 1.1.3.4 According to the frequency of use The number of words in the English language is: 1,035,877. This is the estimate by the Global Language Monitor for January 1, 2016. Obviously, there are a variety of words in English. To save time, and even more important to reduce possible stress caused by learning by heart many new Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 10 Graduation Paper words in each lesson, learners should be aware of words with high frequency in use and those with low frequency. f High frequency words are quite simply those words which occur most frequently in written material, for example, "and", "and", "the", "as "as" and "it". They are often words that have little meaning on their own, but they do contribute a great deal to the meaning meaning of a sentence. Following is the list of first 100 high frequency words: In contrast, Low-frequency frequency words are those that are not often used. While these words may appear a number of times within one text (and be important for an understanding of that that text), readers are not likely to meet them again for a long time because they are only used in some specific situations such as words related to specific fields. For example: isotope, peninsula, refinery refinery… Tran Van Thuat- 1271A031271A03 (2012- 2016) 11 Graduation Paper 1.2 Vocabulary learning 1.2.1 Aspects need to be studied Many people believe that knowing a word means knowing its meaning. Cook (2001) states that “ a word is more than its meaning” (4, p.61). For Cook, knowing a word may involve four aspects: form of the word (for instance, spelling and pronunciation), grammartical properties (for example, grammartical category of a word, its possible and impossible structure), lexical properties (for instance, word combination), and geeneral meaning and specific meaning. According to Nation (1990), what is involves in “knowing” a word depends on whether a word is learned for receptive skills or productive skills. Taylor (1990) also shared the same point of view. Their argument is that, knowing a word involves not only knowing its spelling, morphology, pronunciation, and meaning or the equivalent of the word in learner’s mother tongue. Besides these aspects, the learner must know its collocations, register, polysemy (i.e, a single word with many meanings, eg. She broke her foot due to the foot of the stairs), or even its homonym (words either sound the same (homophones), have the same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings, for instance, He often lies in the sofa to lie to his wife.). The aspects of words mentioned above can be examined in details as follows: - Word form: When learning a word, learners should not learn what the word sounds like (its pronunciation of its spoken form), but also how it looks like (its spelling or its written form). - Grammar: a word may have unpridictable changes of form and meaning in different contexts. Therefore, when learning a new word, learners should know this information at the same time they learn the basic form of a word. For example, when a noun such asman, it should be noticed that the plural form of its is men. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 12 Graduation Paper - Collocation: Collocation is the way in which words are used together regularly in a specific language. It refers to the restriction on how words can be used together in right contexts. Therefore, this is another piece of information of a new item which may worth paying attention to. For example, we can say - Word meanings include denotation, connotation, appropriateness and meaning relationship. 1.2.2 English vocabularylearning strategies 1.2.2.1 Definition of vocabulary learning strategies It should be noted that there have been many the definitions of language learning strategies. Meanwhile, there is no official definition for vocabulary learning strategies. Perhaps it’s because that vocabulary learning strategies are part of language learning strategies and part of learning strategies as well. The working definition of vocabulary learning strategies in this research is adapted from Rubin (1987), cited in Schmitt (1997) that learning strategies are defined as “the process by which information is obtained, stored, retrieved, and used” and “therefore vocabulary learning strategies could be any which affect this broadly-defined process”. (17, p.203) 1.2.2.2 Classification ofvocabulary learning strategies A comprehensive inventory of vocabulary learning strategies is developed by Schmitt (1997). He distinguishes the strategies into two groups: The ones to determine the meaning of new words when encountered for the first time, and the ones to consolidate meaning when encountered again. The former contains determination and social strategies and the latter contains cognitive, metacognitive, memory and social strategies. Schmitt includes social strategies in both categories since they can be used for both purposes. Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 13 Graduation Paper a. Determination strategies One group of determination strategies involves analyzing the unknown word, its constituent elements or the surrounding context to determine the meaning. Identifying the part of speech will offer some information; the learner might be able to identify the word as an entity, state, action or quality. Inflectional or derivational word parts could also be examined. Due to the limited number of inflections available in English, learners should encounter and understand them quite rapidly. Derivational affixes are far more numerous, yet they offer tremendous insights into word class and definition. Nation (2001) refers to a study which found that 60% words containing the prefixes un-, re-, in- and dis- could be understood if the base word was known. (10, p.264) Dictionaries, while lacking the depth of processing that comes with guessing strategies, are commonly used by many learners of foreign languages. Although monolingual dictionaries may offer better quality anchovy information and also improve learners’ ability to paraphrase, Schmitt’s (1997)survey of attitudes to learning strategies showed a clear preference for bilingual dictionaries. This might be due to the sense of security they provide – Grabe and Stoller (1997) noted a learner’s unwillingness to give up his “accuracy anchor”. (6, p.112) To achieve maximum benefit, dictionary skills have to be taught in the same manner as other skills. It is important that learners are taught when not to use dictionaries because they may be overused, resulting in the neglect of other strategies and increasing the length of time taken to complete tasks. Nation (2001) presents a summary of studies carried out on dictionary use, which show a positive effect on vocabulary comprehension for all but high-level learners, but also an increase in completion time. (10, , p.283) Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 14 Graduation Paper b. Social strategies Some social strategies such as direct translation, paraphrasing, or using synonyms can be used to determine word definitions. In the first place, teachers are a valuable source of information for learners and they can provide information about second language vocabulary in several ways, if the teacher understands the learners’first language, then a direct translation is possible. Learners receiving a translation of foreign word may assume that it carries all of the functional and stylistic properties of its nearest root language equivalent and so use it in the same manner as they would in their language. There is also the attendant risk that learners used to hear translations will become reliant on them, which is likely to have a negative impact on their ability to hold conversations in the sencon language. Although this information could also be provided by classmates instead of teachers, some learners might feel that information from a teacher is more reliable. However, if classmates all work together at providing information through group work or pair work, the whole class will benefit from improved paraphrasing skills and by becoming less dependent on the teacher. Social strategies can also be used to consolidate information. Sanaoui’s (1995) study highlighted the need for learners to create their own opportunities for language use outside the classroom. Students may make an effort to use the second language together outside class, or seek opportunities to speak to native speakers or even to their teacher outside class. There are obvious benefits to practising second language vocabulary in a less academic setting. The more opportunities to speak a learner has, the more he/she will be able to experiment with new language. Accordingly, the experience of using the language for genuine communication is likely to increase learner motivation. (17, p.211). Tran Van Thuat- 1271A03- (2012- 2016) 15