VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT VNUA NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC HỌC TỪ VỰNG CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM NHẤT NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH Student: DO THI MINH TIEN Student code: 621278 Major: ENGLISH Supervisor: PHAM HUONG LAN, M. Hanoi – 2021 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT VNUA NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC HỌC TỪ VỰNG CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM NHẤT NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH Student: DO THI MINH TIEN Student code: 621278 Major: ENGLISH Supervisor: PHAM HUONG LAN, M. Hanoi – 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “Vocabulary learning strategies of first year English-majored students at VNUA” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor in English Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.
Hanoi, 2021 Do Thi Minh Tien Approved by SUPERVISOR i TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION. Aims and objectives of the study .1 Aims of the study .2 Objectives of the study. Scope of the study ………………………………………………………………………3 5. Significance of the study ………………………………………………………………3 6.
Design of the study …………………………………………………………………….5 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………. Review of previous studies………………………………………. Review of the previous studies in the world……………………………. Review of the previous studies in Vietnam……………….
Review of theoretical background………………………………………. Vocabulary Learning Strategies…………………………………………. Types of vocabulary learning strategies……………………………. The importance of vocabulary learning strategy…………………….
Research governing orientation……………………………………………. Research setting/ context……………………………………………………. Data collecting instruments. Data collecting procedures.
17 Chapter 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3. Finding 1: Vocabulary learning strategies frequently used by students. Finding 2: The most and the least frequently used strategies. Social discovery strategies.
Social consolidation strategies. Limitations of the current research. Recommendations for learning and teaching English at VNUA……….30 REFERENCES 31 iii ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to find out a strategy often use and the most and least frequently used vocabulary learning strategies used by 70 first year English- majored students (K65) at Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA) in the second year semester of the academic 2020-2021. The research method was survey research with descriptive statistics; the survey questionnaire was adapted from Natpassorn Riankamol‟s 25- item Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Strategies and was depended on Schmitt‟s Taxonomy.
The findings indicated that Memory strategies were at the first rank while social discovery strategies were preferred the least. Through these findings, it showed that students concentrated on how to memorize during the process of increase the vocabulary to create motivation throughout their education. In memory strategies, the most frequently used vocabulary strategy was “I write a new word in a sentence so I can remember it”. And the least frequently used vocabulary strategy was “I ask the teacher to translate the words into English.” in social discovery strategies.
iv List of tables and figures Table 2.1 Items dividing into Schmitt‟s categories Table 2.2 The information of respondents Table 2.3 Usage averages of vocabulary learning strategies Table 2.4 Use of determination strategies Table 2.5 Use of Social discovery strategies Table 2.6 Use of Social consolidation strategies Table 2.7 Use of Memory strategies Table 2.8 Use of Cognitive strategies Table 2.9 Use of Metacognitive strategies Table 2.10 The most frequently used vocabulary learning strategies Table 2.11 The most frequently used vocabulary learning strategies v PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale Nowadays, English is one of the dominant languages in the world. One of the main factors to acquire a language is vocabulary. According to Harmer (1997), if grammar is regarded as a factor to create a frame of language, the vocabulary is a vital organ. One of the sources that the learner cannot communicate fluently is because of their poor vocabulary, so the people who have a large vocabulary after graduating from high school or university have more advantage.
There are many strategies that the learners apply to improve their learning vocabulary and much research were carried out to investigate those. Researchers such as Laufer and Nation (1999), Maximo (2000), Read (2000), Gu (2003), Marion (2008) and Nation (2011) and others have realised that the acquisition of vocabulary is essential. Language learners should employ a range of vocabulary strategies if they wish to make their vocabulary learning effective. Since the late 1970s, many researchers have paid much attention to vocabulary learning strategies and considered these as a vital issue among different strategies of language learning.
Once foreign language learners have effective vocabulary strategies, they will be more likely to become much more successful language learners. Vocabulary learning strategies enable autonomy and responsibility of students in their English learning (Oxford, 1994). ve Johnson, R, 1996) (Oxford R., 1997) When learning vocabulary, learners may apply more than one approach. For example, some people like learning by heart, others often divide into many topics (family, fruits, things in room, personalities, jobs, daily routine, etc.); some others apply to speak a full sentence, or they may make a combination of various strategies.
1 English is a relatively new major at Vietnam National University of Agriculture. Students of this major not only learn about pronunciation, semantics but also many other subjects at the same time as the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). All subjects require a number of vocabularies, so I myself experienced the difficulty in learning vocabulary when I was in my first year and I quickly forgot the vocabulary I had learned before. This might be a common situation among lots of other freshmen at VNUA.
In addition, to be eligible to graduate, students have to achieve level C1 according to the European reference framework. At level C1, students need to have 8000 vocabularies in their mind. It is obvious that learning vocabulary and applying some strategies to acquire lexicon to learn better are very important to students. Being aware that self-training about vocabulary strategies can give big help to students in the process of learning vocabulary in specific and in the process of learning English in general, I was greatly attracted by vocabulary learning strategies and decided to choose this as the topic for my graduation paper.
Hopefully the results of my research will help to make some useful suggestions in improving students‟ vocabulary learning. Aims and objectives of the study 2.1 Aims of the study This study aimed to look into some learning vocabulary strategies that first year English-majored students adopted for building up their English vocabulary during their study at Vietnam National University of Agriculture. It found out the most and the least frequently used vocabulary learning strategies. Thereby some suggestions would be made to help students with effective vocabulary learning strategies.2 Objectives of the study This study had following objectives: - Identifying the types of vocabulary learning strategies used by students 2 - Assessing how frequently vocabulary learning strategies are used - Making some suggestions for students about an effective use of vocabulary learning strategies.
Research questions This study aimed to find out the answers to the following questions: - Which strategies do students often use to learn vocabulary? - What are the most and the least frequently used vocabulary learning strategies by first year English- majored students at VNUA? 4. Scope of the study This study investigated some vocabulary learning strategies that used by 70 first year English- majored students (K65) at VNUA. It was conducted between January 20th and June 30th, 2021. Natpassorn Riankamol‟s 25-items Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Strategies was employed to collect the data.
Significance of the study The results of the study reflected the use of vocabulary learning strategies among students at VNUA. Based on this, some recommendations were made about the use of vocabulary learning strategies so as for students to reach better achievement in their learning. Suggestions may also be given in training vocabulary strategies for students from teachers. Design of the study This study was divided into three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
Part 1, Introduction, provides brief information about the rationale, the aims & objectives, the research questions, the scope, the significance and the design of the study. Part 2, Literature review, presents an overview about some previous studies and some theoretical background to the study. 3 Part 3, Methodology, includes the governing research orientation (the major method & the research questions) and the detailed methodology of the study (participants, data collecting instruments, data collecting procedures, data analysis) Part 4, Findings and Discussion, demonstrates the major findings of the study as well as discussion around these findings. Part 5, Conclusion, Limitations and Recommendations, claims the main points of the study, some limitations of the study and recommendations for further study as well as some suggestions to improve learning strategies among English-majored students at VNUA.
4 Part 2: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Review of previous studies 1. Review of some previous studies in the world Realizing the importance of lexical acquisition through learning vocabulary strategies, foreign researchers have conducted many studies on this issue. A research from Oxford (1997) pointed out that learning vocabulary strategies can be influenced by many factors like motivation, attitude, gender, learning styles and etc.
In another research by Nagy and Scott (2000), he indicated that students use contextual analysis to find out the meaning of a word by looking closely at surrounding text. Because when students read, they can meet with an enormous number of words as they read, some researchers believe that even a small improvement in the ability to use context clues has the potential to produce substantial, long-term vocabulary growth. A study was done by Gu and Johnson (1996) with the investigation of which strategies the learners at Chinese university used to learn vocabulary by comparing the results with vocabulary size and language proficiency. The authors concluded that students who are successful often choose the metacognitive strategies.
In the study was done with some researchers: S Baskin, A Iscan, B Karagoz, G Birol (2017) which applied Natpassorn Riankamol‟s 25- item Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Strategies. Their research was operated in Gaziosmanpasa University TOMER in the 2016- 2017 academic year with 22 students at level A1. The items were both in Turkish and English and it was divided into 5 groups according to Schmitt (1997, 2000). The subject is novices in learning English, so the result showed that determination strategies were 5 utilized the most and the type of strategy that students used the least was cognitive strategies.
In Schmitt (2000), the absorption of a second language depends on the lexical resource. Learning vocabulary is a sub-discipline of second language acquisition, both of which have focused their attention on the needs of a large number of learners to utilize their vocabulary knowledge. This can be done by the help of vocabulary learning strategies. In the study of Brown and Payne (1994), they found that all vocabulary learning strategies are linked to the five steps: the first step is encountering new words, the second step is getting an obvious image, the next is learning the meaning of the words, the fourth is making a strong memory connection between the forms and the meanings of the words, and the last step is using the words frequently.
Natpassorn Riankamol's study (2008) was to investigate which English learning vocabulary strategy students apply to find out most and the least at Triam Udomsuksa School in the first semester of the academic 2008. In his instrument, he used a 25-item questionnaire adapted from Schimitt's taxonomy, so a 25-item questionnaire was divided into some groups to measure the frequency of usage: determination strategies, social discovery strategies, social consolidation strategies, memory strategies, cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies. In his research, he used frequency, percentages and means to analyze the data. The mean score showed that the use of metacognitive strategies were most frequently.
The least frequently strategy was cognitive strategies.