VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------*****-------- NGUYỄN THỊ DUNG UTILIZING THE CAP (COLLOCATION-APPLYING PROCESS) TO IMPROVE A GROUP OF SECOND-YEAR MAINSTREAM STUDENTS’ USE OF COLLOCATIONS IN THEIR WRITINGS SỬ DỤNG CAP (QUÁ TRÌNH ÁP DỤNG CỤM TỪ KẾT HỢP) ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CỤM TỪ KẾT HỢP TRONG CÁC BÀI VIẾT CỦA 1 NHÓM SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ 2 HỆ ĐÀO TẠO CHUẨN M. Combined Program Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------*****-------- NGUYỄN THỊ DUNG UTILIZING THE CAP (COLLOCATION-APPLYING PROCESS) TO IMPROVE A GROUP OF SECOND-YEAR MAINSTREAM STUDENTS’ USE OF COLLOCATIONS IN THEIR WRITINGS SỬ DỤNG CAP (QUÁ TRÌNH ÁP DỤNG CỤM TỪ KẾT HỢP) ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CỤM TỪ KẾT HỢP TRONG CÁC BÀI VIẾT CỦA 1 NHÓM SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ 2 HỆ ĐÀO TẠO CHUẨN M. Combined Program Thesis Field : English Language Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10 Supervisor : Ms. Đinh Hải Yến (M.) Hanoi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF TABLES .vii LIST OF FIGURES .viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. ix PART A: INTRODUCTION. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study. Research aims and research questions.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Significance of the study. Organization of the study.
6 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of collocation(s). Characteristics of collocations. Types of collocations.
Causes of collocational errors. The importance of learning collocations. Consideration when teaching collocations. What is awareness?.
What is language awareness?. Levels of language awareness. 30 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The role of language awareness.
How to increase students‟ language awareness in teaching writing. The CAR Process by Ying and Hendricks (2002). Rationale for action research design. Defintion of action research.
The action research process. The reasons for choosing action research for this study. Background information about the participants. The CAR Process in this study.
Data collection instruments. Data collection procedures. 54 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. Contributions of the study.
78 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further studies .I vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: A summary of the participants‟ demographic features Table 2: A summary of the interviewees‟ profile Table 3: The CAR Process in this study and its differences from Ying and Hendricks‟ model Table 4: Research design Table 5: Results of the pre-test (production test) – first versions Table 6: Results of the pre-test (production test) – second versions Table 7: Pre-test results: Recognition test Table 8: Post-test results: Recognition test Table 9: Results of the post-test (production test) – first drafts Table 10: Results of the post-test (production test) – second versions Table 11: Results of part A of the questionnaire Table 12: Difficulties related to knowledge of collocation perceived by participants Table 13: Difficulties related to collocation awareness perceived by participants Table 14: Difficulties with collocation-related skills perceived by participants vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Ferrance’s action research process (2000) Figure 2: Kemmis‟ action research process (1988) Figure 3: McNiff and Whitehead‟s action research process (2006) Figure 4: Action research in phases of teaching by Stringer et al. (2010) viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language ix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Writing is deemed to be difficult because it involves employing a variety of skills from generating ideas, being grammatically correct to using appropriate language to express opinions in the process of writing (Ross, 1968, p. Students do not seem to have difficulty forming a central idea and using correct grammar. What is challenging to them is how to use the target language appropriately to convey a message precisely and add more meaning to what they express. It is difficult to solve this problem, especially for low- level students, despite teachers‟ search for materials suitable for teaching writing, commitment to correcting students‟ written work, and adoption of many methods to teach vocabulary (Hsueh, 1994, p.
In his opinion, the utilization of collocations may help to address this difficult problem because it enhances not only accuracy but also fluency. Besides, “giving students collocations of words newly or previously met will widen their understanding of what those words mean and, more importantly, how they are used” (Lewis, 2000, pp. The importance of collocation in improving learners‟ writing skills is borne out by Conzett‟s study (2000, quoted in Hsueh, 1994, p. More specifically, once familiarized with the concept of collocation, his students are able to produce more accurate language.
In addition, Sonomura also argues that “writing in English for academic purpose demands access to an infinite store of common collocations, combined in ways that have become stabilized and are the familiar expected, and recognized ways of saying things in written English” (1997, quoted in Hsueh, 1994, p. This view is also shared by McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, p. 6), who believe that using collocations helps “improve your style in writing.” 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com However, there is a lack of emphasis on teaching collocations to learners of English as a second language. According to Marton (1977) and Briskup (1992) (quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002, p.
53), the major cause for this phenomenon is that collocations do not create difficulty in comprehending a text as they are mostly made up of familiar and simple words. That is why language teachers do not draw students‟ attention to the collocations in a text, thereby causing students not to notice collocations and learn them. To tackle this problem, Lewis (2001, quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002) proposes that language teachers should increase learners‟ awareness of collocation by helping them to pay more attention to words and their combinations in reading. “This does not mean finding rare words but rather finding relatively common words which intermediate students already know (or half-know) and pointing out the words they occur with.” Besides, having been a writing teacher of 2nd-year students for two years, I myself have come to realize that most of the students I have taught during those two years are generally unconscious of the issue of collocation, lack the ability to notice collocations in a text and do not make an effort to learn them.
The majority of students in class K45E17 are also confronted with the above-mentioned problems when it comes to collocation. According to the findings of the pre-test (the production test), those students made a lot of mistakes about collocation in the first version, which were not corrected in the second one. This was particularly true for the two following types of collocation: verb + noun and adjective + noun. Besides, they did not score highly in the pre-test (recognition test) and chose the wrong collocate of even familiar words.
For example, they chose careful instead of good as a collocate 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com of care. More importantly, after the test was over, they answered that the test was on vocabulary without being able to specify that its focus was on collocation and that they had never learned collocations as a way to widen their vocabulary. For all the aforementioned reasons, I have decided to conduct an action research on raising second-year students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English through the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) Process, which is based on the CAR Process originally invented by Ying and Hendricks (2002). Research aims and research questions Conducting the present study, the researcher aimed to accomplish the following purposes.
First, the extent to which the CAR process could help to raise the learners‟ awareness of collocation in writing English would be examined. Second, on completion, the study would yield insights into the difficulties perceived by the students as they went through the CAR process. These aims were formulated into the following research questions: 1. To what extent does the CAR Process help to raise the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English? 2.
What difficulties are perceived by the participants when they went through the CAR Process? 3. Scope of the study First, the researcher chose to investigate the effectiveness of one specific process – the CAR process that aims to raise students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Second, the participants of this study were twenty 2nd-year students in class K45E17, which the researcher is teaching writing this semester. Methods of the study Given that the current study was carried out in an attempt to improve the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, the researcher decided to adopt the action research approach because this type of research is aimed at improving a situation.
In order to achieve this goal, the following instruments were utilized: A pre-test and post-test (production test) were targeted at investigating the students‟ use of collocations in their writings before and after the CAR Process. Another pre-test and post-test (recognition test) tried to find out the learners‟ ability to recognize correct collocations before and after the CAR Process. Between the pre-tests and the post-tests, the intervention – the CAR Process – was introduced and applied to see whether it helped raise the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English. Besides, a survey questionnaire was administered to further explore the participants‟ opinions on the benefits of the CAR Process and find out the difficulties perceived by them as they went through the CAR Process.
Finally, semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face with eight participants to clarify and supplement the data collected from the questionnaire. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Significance of the study As the study is finished, it is expected to benefit the target population, their teachers, and other researchers interested in the topic. First, because current research on raising students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, especially in Vietnam, is limited, this study will partly fill the gap in the literature and serve as a source of reference for other researchers who share an interest in related issues.
Second, the researcher hopes that this study can, to some extent, raise the students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English as well as in other English skills. Besides, the researcher also hopes that the participants can perceive their own difficulties during the CAR Process and be able to come up with solutions to deal with the difficulties. Organization of the study The rest of the paper includes two other parts as follows: Part B consists of three following chapters: Chapter 1 – Literature Review – provides the background of the study, including definitions of key concepts (collocation and language awareness) and review of related studies. Chapter 2 – Methodology – describes the participants and instruments of the study, as well as the procedure employed to conduct the research.
Chapter 3 – Results and Recommendations – presents and analyzes the findings according to the two research questions. Besides, the participants‟ suggestions on solving the difficulties perceived by them as they went through the CAR Process were mentioned. Part C - Conclusion – summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, the limitations and contributions of the research, as well as some suggestions for further studies. 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B - DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW 1.