MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -------- ∞0∞-------- NGUYEN THI THANH NHAN AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF AFFIXATION STRATEGY IN LEARNING VOCABULARY MASTER THESIS MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL HO CHI MINH CITY, 2021 Tai Lieu Chat Luong MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -------- ∞0∞-------- NGUYEN THI THANH NHAN AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF AFFIXATION STRATEGY IN LEARNING VOCABULARY Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Major code: 8 14 01 11 MASTER THESIS MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL Supervisor: Dr. LE THI THANH THU HO CHI MINH CITY, 2021 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc KHOA ĐÀO TẠO SAU ĐẠI HỌC GIẤY XÁC NHẬN Tôi tên là: Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nhàn Ngày sinh:13/04/1993 Nơi sinh: Dăk lăk Chuyên ngành: LL&PPGD Tiếng Anh Mã học viên: 1781401110024 Tôi đồng ý cung cấp toàn văn thông tin luận án/ luận văn tốt nghiệp hợp lệ về bản quyền cho Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh sẽ kết nối toàn văn thông tin luận án/ luận văn tốt nghiệp vào hệ thống thông tin khoa học của Sở Khoa học và Công nghệ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. Ký tên Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nhàn CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc Ý KIẾN CHO PHÉP BẢO VỆ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN Giảng viên hướng dẫn: Lê Thị Thanh Thu Học viên thực hiện: Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nhàn Lớp: MTESOL017A Ngày sinh: 13/04/1993 Nơi sinh: Dăk Lăk Tên đề tài: An investigation into students' application of affixation strategy in learning vocabulary Ý kiến của giáo viên hướng dẫn về việc cho phép học viên……………………………….
được bảo vệ luận văn trước Hội đồng:. Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, ngày……. Người nhận xét Lê Thị Thanh Thu i STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP I certify that this thesis entitled “An Investigation into the application of affixation strategy of Ton Duc Thang University non-English- majored students” is my original work. All the sources mentioned in the text go with proper references.
No others‟ work has been included in the thesis without acknowledgement. This work has not ever been submitted for assessment in any courses at this University or other institutions. Ho Chi Minh city, 2021 Nguyen Thi Thanh Nhan ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not be possible without the help of many individuals to whom I earnestly feel thankful for. First of all, I would like to express my immense gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr.
Le Thi Thanh Thu for her dedicated instruction. She has sacrificed her precious time and energy to get the most out of myself, becoming more focused, detail-oriented, and wholehearted with my work. I felt so blessed receiving her valuable guidance without which I would probably be disoriented. There is no word that can utterly say my appreciation and respect to her.
Besides, I also owe this thesis to my family who were so wonderful in keeping me emotionally and financially secure to pursuit my master degree. Although it has been hard during the pandemic time with all the delay and boredom, they always let me see the light at the end of the tunnel. Last but not least, I deeply wish to say thank you to all the teachers who taught me in class with their great expertise and irreplaceble hands-on experience. They prepared us so boldly for not only the thesis but also many incidents that might come in teacherhood.
iii ABSTRACT The study examines affixation strategy to figure its significance to intermediate level students‟ current learning situation at TDTU. The major focus of the research is the affixation strategy application level of Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) non-English-majored students. A questionnaire was employed to examine the students‟ frequency of application and the frequency of difficulties in applying. In addition, an interview was used to explore the circumstances in which different affixation techniques were applied by students and factors that help alleviate problems students have during application.
The study had the participation of 120 non-English-majored students at intermediate level at TDTU. It took place in the first semester of academic year 2020-2021. 120 respondents for the questionnaire were chosen using convenient sampling while nine interviewees were randomly picked from those 120 students. The findings of the study showed that students have made affixation strategy an integral part of their vocabulary learning, with the affixation techniques used at medium and high frequency.
Also, students used those techniques mostly in receptive skills as to reading, and listening and also in explicit vocabulary learning activities. Meanwhile, they applied those techniques less in productive skills such as speaking and writing. In addition, students met difficulties of the strategies at medium frequency. They believed teachers‟ instructions, their experience with affixation and using many strategies combined with affixation strategy could help improve the quality of their application.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP. Error! Bookmark not defined. TABLE OF CONTENTS .vii LIST OF TABLES. viii LIST OF FIGURES .1 Background to the study .2 Statement of problems .5 The significance of the study .3 Vocabulary learning process .4 Components of vocabulary learning.5 The importance of learning vocabulary .6 Effective vocabulary learning .2 Vocabulary learning strategies.1 Affixation definition and affixes .2 Affixation strategy and techniques .3 Techniques of affixation strategy .4 Difficulties encountered by learners in applying affixation strategy .5 The role of affixation strategy in learning vocabulary .4 Previous research on affixation strategy and research gap .1 Studies outside Vietnam .2 Studies inside Vietnam .1 The research site .2 English learning and teaching process .4 Testing and evaluation.3 Data collection instruments .4 Design of the study .5 Validity and reliability of the research .6 Procedures of the research.
43 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION .1 Data analysis methodology .2 Questionnaire analysis and discussion .1 Research question 1: To what extent do TDTU non-English-majored students apply affixation techniques in learning vocabulary?.2 Research question 2: How frequently do they encounter difficulties in applying affixation strategy? .3 Questionnaire result discussions .1 The frequency of students applying affixation techniques .2 The frequency of difficulties encountered by students when using affixation strategy .3 Interview analysis and discussion .1 The circumstances to apply affixation techniques .2 Factors to alleviate the difficulties of applying affixation strategy .4 Research findings summation. 70 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION .1 Summary of the research and findings .2 The implications of the study.3 Limitations of the study. 105 vii ABBREVIATION CEFR The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages CLT Communicative Language Teaching EFL English as a Foreign Language EMI English as the Medium of Instruction ESL English as a Second Language KET Key English Test TDTU Ton Duc Thang University TOEIC Test of English for International Communication viii LIST OF TABLES Table 4. 291) scale showing the frequency levels of strategy .2: Affixation techniques applied by TDTU non-English-majored students.
3: Frequency level of difficulties encountered by TDTU non-English-majored students. 49 LIST OF FIGURES Diagram 2. 1: Basic design of the research .1 Background to the study Learning vocabulary is considered an inseparable part of language learning. Albeit knowing that truth, EFL learners in Vietnam are still hampered from effectively controlling the vocabulary learning process.
Especially at tertiary level, even when students are grown enough to reflect on their learning, the persistent problems affecting their vocabulary development hardly go away. First of all, the traditional simple strategies still prevail in the vocabulary learning process of EFL students at Vietnamese universities. They constantly used a few old learning strategies. The traditional strategies such as repetition, translation, dictionary, visuality, especially memorization overshadowed other options which requires higher level of thinking such as context clue, social interaction, or internal analysis of word structure, such as affixation strategy.
Students preferred learning the word by writing, saying or spelling it (Tran & Tran, 2018). Likewise, Duong and Nguyen (2006) indicated an established role of memory strategy in Vietnamese EFL learners‟ vocabulary learning process. In addition, students managed to avoid communicating with foreigners as a way to improve their vocabulary knowledge. Instead, they opt for asking their friends or teachers for help (Nguyen, 2009).
Also, they like to guess meaning from pictures or objects. Students almost leave out the strategies for developing productive skills as the major focus of students is reading and grammar (Vu & Peters, 2021). Second, students have not fully activated their role in optimizing learning effects. Although students acknowledge the role of vocabulary learning in learning a foreign language, they still show a lack of interest in this process (Tran, 2020).
This 2 was partly attributed to the missing of practicality of the learning programme and the testing-oriented nature of educational system in Vietnam (Hoang, 2011). Students have few opportunities to actualize the vocabulary that they have learnt in class, and most of the time they learn individual words by heart (Vu & Peters, 2021). On the other hand, the long standing teacher-focused tradition have made it slow to lay down students‟ apprehension and insecurity. As a result, even with students who are well aware of their ability and responsibility in improving their English proficiency, they showed hesitation in initializing the autonomous learning practice without any support (Roe & Perkins, 2020).
Students‟ choices of learning strategy are heavily bonded with teachers‟ teaching scheme. However, Vietnamese teachers seem to underestimate the importance of strategy training for which students make little exploration and feel much less engaged in their own learning. Most importantly, vocabulary performance of Vietnamese students at universities is relatively disappointing. According to a study by Tran (2017) on university students in Vietnam, preintermediate and intermediate students showed a lack of knowledge of vocabulary form, meaning and frequently-seen idioms.
Likewise, it was sadly found by Dang (2020) that more than 90% of non-English majored students of General English program in Vietnam were unsuccessful in controlling the most 2000 frequent words despite of having 10 years of learning English formally.2 Statement of problems Vocabulary learning is critical to enrich the language knowledge of English learners. According to a study by Tarigan (2008, as cited in Uzer, 2017), language learners‟ proficiency was affected by their vocabulary size and quality. Every lexical item is a brick adding to the completion of the building of language competence. Without a rich vocabulary, students struggle to read and make sense of learning 3 materials as well as other information presented in English written form.
Joshi and Aaron (2000) found that vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading ability when fostering reading speed with decoding and comprehension. A similar conclusion was drawn by Afshari and Tavakoli (2017) concerning the correlation between vocabulary level and listening skill. In particular, they suggested “deeper understanding and knowledge of the words positively contributes to the successful listening performance” (p. Last but not least, the effort of students to expressing themselves in English will be disrupted due to the missing of so many words from their vocabulary schema.
On top of this, lacking the profound understanding of English words is another major cause to EFL learners‟ communicative desperation. “A requirement of making progress in communicating through foreign language is acquiring greater volumes of vocabulary and acquiring ever greater sophistication and control in the use of this vocabulary” (Milton, 2013, p. Inevitably, students continue to encounter difficulties during the process of learning vocabulary. Hague (1987) stressed that vocabulary is up to now “the most sizeable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether a foreign or one‟s mother tongue, because of tens of thousands of different meanings” (p.