THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAN THI HAI NHU THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTEXT CLUES STRATEGY TO ENHANCE VOCABULARY AMONG GRADE 10 STUDENTS AT HOANH BO HIGH SHOOL HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐOÁN TỪ DỰA VÀO NGỮ CẢNH ĐỂ NÂNG CAO VỐN TỪ VỰNG CHO HỌC SINH KHỐI 10 Ở TRƯỜNG THPT HOÀNH BỒ M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAN THI HAI NHU THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTEXT CLUES STRATEGY TO ENHANCE VOCABULARY AMONG GRADE 10 STUDENTS AT HOANH BO HIGH SHOOL HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐOÁN TỪ DỰA VÀO NGỮ CẢNH ĐỂ NÂNG CAO VỐN TỪ VỰNG CHO HỌC SINH KHỐI 10 Ở TRƯỜNG THPT HOÀNH BỒ M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor 1: Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Huong Supervisor 2: Dr. Nguyen Thi Que THAI NGUYEN – 2019 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby declare that all work in this thesis entitled “The effectiveness of context clue strategy to enhance students’ vocabulary among grade 10that Hoanh Bo High School” is my own work. To the best of my knowledge, it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at SFL or any other educational institutions.
The thesis has not been submitted to any other examining body and has not been published. Any contribution made to research by others is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. Thai Nguyen, July 2019 Tran Thi Hai Nhu Approved by SUPERVISORS Supervisor 1: Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Huong Supervisor 2: Dr.
Nguyen Thi Que Date: July, 2019 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The researcher has succeeded in finishing this study, which has been greatly improved by comments, corrections, guidance and ideas of many people. It is hard to even begin to acknowledge personally all those who have had an impact on her life and study during that making of this study. In this occasion, the researcher would like to express her sincerest thanks to the following persons: To Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Huong and Dr.
Nguyen Thi Que, advisers, for their invaluable assistance and guidance in implementing this research, and for their constructive comments and suggestions in perfecting this thesis; All the teachers at the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their invaluable lessons, suggestions, moral support and prayers for the completion of this study; Mrs. Dang Thi Hien, the Headmaster of Hoanh Bo High School for her permission to conduct the study. All the teachers of English at Hoanh Bo High School for their suggestions and validation of the test items and questionnaires. All the students in 10A1 class at Hoanh Bo High School, the respondents of the study, for their willingness in joining the experimental learning period and answering follow-up questionnaires.
ii ABSTRACT The goal of this study attempted to test for the effectiveness of Context Clues Strategy in teaching vocabulary and investigated the students’ attitude towards the strategy experimented. The respondents of the study were 30 grade 10 students at Hoanh Bo High School in Quang Ninh province during their second semester of the school year 2018-2019. The study compared the performance of the group before and after the experimental teaching period which lasted for 8 weeks. An achievement test composed of 40 items testing different lexical resources of units 12, 13 and 14 in the course-book for grade 10 served as the pre-test and the post-test was administered to the respondents to determine if there was a significant difference in their performance.
Upon the accomplishment of the pilot teaching, a questionnaire was delivered to the respondents to investigate their attitudes towards the strategy used. The data gathered from the pre-test and the post-test then were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted to answer the following questions: 1. To what extent does the use of Context Clues enhance students’ vocabulary? 2. What are the students’ attitudes towards the strategy used? The experiment was conducted during the beginning periods for eight weeks.
The t-test for dependent samples was applied to determine the significance of the differences between the mean scores of the group prior to and after the experiment. The following are the major findings of the study: 1. The mean score of students in the post-test using Context Clues Games is significantly higher than that of those in the pre-test. The result proved that Context Clues Strategy is effective in enhancing students’ performance in vocabulary learning.
Students’ perceived Context Clues Strategy as beneficial to their vocabulary learning. A majority of the participants claimed that context clues were very much beneficial in helping them enhance their vocabulary learning while the rest of the respondents agreed that the use of context clues was useful in improving their lexical resources. Students agreed that using context clues is effective in enriching their lexical resources. Students strongly agreed that teacher’s implementation of context clues was appropriate and effective throughout the treatment period.
Based on the findings, the following conclusions were drawn: 1. There is a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the respondents after being exposed to Context Clues Strategy is supported in this study. Students’ attitudes towards the use of Context Clues Strategy and the teachers’ teaching methodology are positive. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Preliminaries PAGE TITLE PAGE ……………………………………………………………… Certificate of originality …………………………………………………… i ACKNOWLEDGMENT ………………………………………………… ii ABSTRACT.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. ………………………………………………… v LIST OF TABLES. Vii LIST OF FIGURES. Introduction and rationale 1 1.
Statement of the Problem ……. Significance of the Study ………………………………………. Scope of the Study ………………………. Definition of terms …………………………………………….… 4 II REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND STUDIES 5 2.
Review of Literature …………. Role of vocabulary in teaching and learning language 5 2. Strategy for vocabulary enrichment …………………………… 7 2. Types of context clues…………………………….
Review of related …………….…………………………… 16 III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18 3. Locale of the study ………………………………. 20 IV PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 23 4. The effectiveness of Context Clues on students’ vocabulary.
Results of the pre-test scores 23 4. Results of the post-test scores 26 4. The difference between pre-test and post-test scores 28 4. Students’ attitudes towards the Context Clues Strategy.
Students’ preferences on Types of Context Clues Strategy used by 31 teachers 4. Students’ attitudes on how context clues help figure out meanings 32 of complicated/ unfamiliar words 4. Students’ attitudes on benefits of CCG on vocabulary learning 34 4. Students’ evaluation on the learning period being exposed to the 35 use of context clue games? 4.
Students’ attitudes towards teacher’s method of context clue games 36 4. Students’ suggestions on the use of context clue games 37 V SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 39 5. 40 REFERENCES………………………………………………………… 42 vi LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 1. The result of pre-test score of students 24 2 The results of the post-test 26 3 The result of pre - test and post - test score of students 28 4.
T-test Results on the Pre-test and Post-test Scores 30 5. Preferences on Types of Context Clues Strategy used 31 6. Students’ attitudes on how context clues help figure out meanings of 33 complicated/ unfamiliar words 7. Students’ attitudes on benefits of CCG on vocabulary learning 34 8.
The effects of context clues in your vocabulary learning. Your teacher’s teaching method using context clue games. 37 LIST OF FIGURES FIGURES PAGE 1. Distribution of the pre - test and post - test scores of the Experimental 29 group 2.
Distribution of Preferences on Types of Context Clues Strategies used 32 3. Distribution of how context clues help figure out the meaning of 33 unfamiliar words. Distribution of Students’ attitudes s on benefits of CCG on vocabulary 335 learning vii LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A. A Letter asking permission.
A Letter to the Respondents II Appendix C. Pre-Test and Post - Test III Appendix D. Answer key to achievement test VII Appendix E. pre - test and post - test scores IX Appendix F: Statistical treatment of pre-test and post-test scores X Appendix G.
Students’ questionnaire XII Appendix H. The result of students’ questionnaire XIV Appendix I. Lesson plan XVII viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction and rationale In recent years, English has been playing a significant role in Vietnamese education since the joining of Vietnam in WTO in 2007 and the establishment of ASEAN Community in 2015 the two important and meaningful milestones for Vietnam, helping the country to integrate deeply into the region as well as the world.
Being an active member has helped to foster friendly and cooperative relations between Vietnam and its regional neighbors and international partners in many fields such as economy, politics, diplomacy, security, and culture. The open market policy together with a free flow of foreigners to the country for travel or business purposes is expected to offer great opportunities, new prospects as well as tough challenges for the country. As a matter of fact, English is more important than ever on the ground that the charters of AEC and most global organizations require English as the official language communicate. As a result, English has become a compulsory subject at all levels in the entire education system and an urgent need to master among people across the country.
One of the most important goals of learning a foreign language is to communicate effectively. However, in order to master the communication competence, second language learners are supposed to study the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing well, in which vocabulary and structure play a very important role in acquiring and developing them. To be more specific, language, the element for understanding the community of its speakers consists of a set of grammatical rules and vocabulary items. Therefore, vocabulary is a very important segment in language learning and teaching process.
According to Lowanne Piccollo (2011), “the elements of a foreign language are just like a tree. The trunk and branches signify grammar and the leaves signify vocabulary. Leaves cannot exist without the trunk and branches and the trunk and branches serve no purpose if there are no leaves”. In other words, "words are the bricks of a language”, (Tan, 2001).
That is the 1 reason why it is impossible to understand an oral discussion or written text without having acquired some basic elements of all parts of the language. Particularly, vocabulary is one of the most important goals which learners have to reach. And it can be said that if the learners want to communicate in English fluently, the first step towards that goal is to have a rich vocabulary. But how to enrich vocabulary for students is always a question which every teacher wants to seek for the answer.
Of all prominent techniques in teaching vocabulary in ESL and EFL teaching contexts, Context clue games is claimed to be fun and motivating which may help students learn vocabulary more actively and effectively Cesar Hernandez (2011). As a suggestion, there is a need to find out if this strategy is useful and appropriate to teach in a particular context of Vietnam. As a teacher of English for many years at Hoanh Bo high school in Quang Ninh province, the researcher has realized that there still exist many difficulties and challenges in teaching and learning English in her teaching context, which is shared by many Vietnamese educational institutions. Hoanh Bo High School is a mountainous school where students are not aware of the importance of learning English so they are not interested in this subject.
In addition, English teachers here all claim that one of the factors deterring the students’ mastery of English lie on students’ limited vocabulary and a lack of motivation in learning lexical items. This has led to students’ bad results in English proficiency examinations as well as hindered communication competence. The aforementioned reasons and observations have endlessly urged the researcher to find out if certain strategies are really useful and effective at her teaching context.