BANKING ACADEMY THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ---------- GRADUATION THESIS TOPIC: A STUDY ON PERCEPTIONS AND FREQUENCY OF USE OF VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES AMONG ENGLISH – MAJOR STUDENTS AT BANKING ACADEMY Student : LE PHUONG THAO Class : K20ATCC Course : 2017 – 2021 Student ID. NGUYEN THI THU TRANG (M.A) Hanoi, May 2021 17014125833681000000 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby state that this thesis is entirely an intellectual product of my own, which was done with immense effort and devotion. It has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Wherever contributions of others are involved, every effort is made to indicate this clearly, with due reference to the literature, and acknowledgement of collaborative research and discussions.
I have read the University’s current research ethics guidelines and acknowledged my obligations and the rights of the participants. Hanoi, 22th May, 2021 Signature Le Phuong Thao i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Trang (MA) for everything that she made to contribute to the completion of my dissertation. During the process of research conduction, she has always been available to provide helpful comments and support for my thesis.
Had it not been for her enthusiasm in support of me, I would never have finished this thesis. She has also been an excellent mentor for developing my logical thinking, critical thinking and writing skill. I also wish to show my gratitude to all teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Banking Academy, especially Ms. Nguyen Mai Phuong, Ms.
Do Thu Hang, Ms. Tran Thanh Giang for helping me to collect responses of students in person. Above all, I wish to express my appreciation from the bottom of my heart to my family who are always by my side to give me motivational support and encouragement. There were a lot of times I did bear the thought of giving up halfway.
However, because of my family still being there, I was motivated to keep moving forward and reach where I am today. Save the best for last, I would like to thank myself for daring to embark on this challenging journey, being persistent and resilient and always striving for excellence. Due to time limitations and a restricted capacity of the author, this thesis might contain certain defects. Therefore, I would be really open-minded and grateful for any constructive comments to enhance its quality.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iii LIST OF TABLES. v LIST OF FIGURES .vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION .1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study .1 Statement of the problem.
Rationale for the study. Aims and objectives. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
4 CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW. Vocabulary and lexis. The importance of vocabulary and lexical competence:. Classification of Vocabulary.
Vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs). Definition of vocabulary learning strategy. Importance of vocabulary learning strategy. Classification of vocabulary learning strategies.
Previous research on Vocabulary Learning Strategies. 23 CHAPTER III – METHODOLOGY. Locale of the study. Data collection procedure:.
Data analysis procedure:. 30 CHAPTER IV – FINDING PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION.1 Reliability of the Measurement. Findings on participants’ perceptions on VLSs application. Findings on the correlation between the year of study and amount of time spent on learning English vocabulary and the vocabulary retention rate.
Findings on frequency of VLSs use. Discussion on students’ perception on VLSs application. Discussion on relationship between the year of studying and time spent on English vocabulary learning and the vocabulary retention rate. Discussion on frequent use of VLSs among English-major students .56 CHAPTER V – SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
Summary of findings. Implications for discovery strategies. Implications for learning/acquiring strategies. Implications for revision strategies.
Implications for expansion strategies. 73 CHAPTER VI – CONCLUSION. 85 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The concept of knowing a word by Nation (2001, p. 27) 10 Table 2: Sample of the study 26 Table 3: Other strategies applied by the participants 54 Table 4.1: Summary statistics of the Cronbach’s Alpha calculated……………….
2: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.3: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.4: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.5: The corrected item - total correlation of section 3.6: Survey participants’ response on perceptions on VLSs.7: Test of Homogeneity of Variances 39 Table 4.8: ANOVA statistics table 40 Table 4.9: Test of Homogeneity of Variances 40 Table 4.10: ANOVA statistics table 41 Table 4.11: Overall use of VLSs by step of respondents 42 Table 4.12: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in Discovery Category 42 Table 4.13: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in learning category 46 Table 4.14: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in revising category 48 Table 4.15: Students’ responses to strategies they apply in expanding category 51 Table 5.1: Suggested vocabulary note-taking…………………………………….70 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Difference between vocabulary and lexis by Van (2013) 7 Figure 2: Classification of VLSs devised by Schmitt (1997) 14 Figure 4.1: The applied scale of measurement…………………………………….2: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.3: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.4: The use of dictionary by genre of the participant…………………….5: Elements of words that are looked up in a dictionary……………….6: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.7: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.8: Summary of students’ responses from Table 4.9: Proportion of strategy category given more emphasis……………….54 vi ABSTRACT This study is conducted to investigate the perceptions of English-major students at Banking Academy of Vietnam on Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) and their frequency of VLSs use as well. In order to achieve the research goal, the researcher decided to work on three research questions including (1) How students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages perceive vocabulary learning strategies; (2) Whether there are correlations between the year of study and the amount of time spent on learning vocabulary and the retention rate of newly-learned words among English-major students; (3) Which vocabulary learning strategies students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages apply and the corresponding frequency of use. The researcher designs a questionnaire consisting of three sections and distributes online and physically to 251 students of all academic years in the Faculty of Foreign Language at Banking Academy. The collected data are encoded and descriptively analyzed by the SPSS software version 20.
It is shown in the study that the respondents have ever known or even been instructed to use VLSs and believe in the benefits of applying VLSs. Overall, the research also reveals that surveyed English-major students apply VLSs at a medium level, of which only the discovery group was adopted in a high level of frequency. Besides, no statistically significant difference is recognized between the academic year and the amount of time spent on vocabulary acquisition by the surveyed students and their vocabulary retention rate after one-week interval. Key words: Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs), perceptions on VLSs, vocabulary, teaching vocabulary, learning vocabulary, English as a foreign language (EFL).
vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations Interpretation VLSs Vocabulary Learning Strategies SD Standard deviation M Mean EFL English as a Foreign Language TFL Turkish as a foreign language ESP English for Specific Purpose LLSs Language Learning Strategies TOEIC Test of English for International Communication IELTS International English Language Testing System TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language viii CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1.1 Statement of the problem In the age of globalization, intercultural communication has been increasingly focused and developed. Among several major foreign languages that are widely accepted all over the world, it is a fact that English Language is regarded as the most common one. In the education program of Asian countries including Vietnam, English teaching has been also attached great importance and become the mandatory foreign language in schools’ curriculum. As a result, English Language becomes a primary major and is formally trained in most universities and colleges in Vietnam.
Accordingly, English Language major tends to appeal to a vast array of Vietnamese high school students rather than other foreign languages in Vietnam. According to official statistics in 2017 of Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam, the major of English Language ranked the fourth as 24,251 candidates registered as the first major for the university admission. It also accounted for the highest proportion of candidates applying for the foreign languages and culture majors (57%) (Van, 2017). When it comes to learning a language, there are four basic language skills including listening, reading, speaking and writing in foreign language education and training (Bağçeci & Yaşar, 2007; Barın, 1997, as cited in Darancık, 2018).
For successful and effective education and training in foreign language courses, these four basic language skills need to be developed and reinforced in accordance with the level and needs of the learners (Darancık, 2018). However, “in order to improve these four skills, vocabulary is an essential building block of language and as such it makes sense to be able to measure learners’ knowledge of it” (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001, p. Therefore, vocabulary has a crucial role to play in learning and teaching of a foreign language as it enables learners to get access to all forms of verbal and written communication of the word (Moeller, Ketsman & Masmaliyeva, 2009). For example, in reading and listening skills, first and foremost, students need to identify 1 key words of a passage or a speech.
In writing and speaking skills, learners need to cover a wide range of vocabulary in order to be able to express their ideas to readers and listeners clearly and effortlessly. Becoming an English major refers to specializing in English Language which requires learners to work on a huge repository of vocabulary. That is the reason why acquiring vocabulary and building a large vocabulary repository are leading concerns for English majors. A question given here is how English – major students can acquire vocabulary in an easy way and build a huge language knowledge for themselves.
In classroom context, English lecturers have been trying to adopt some applicable vocabulary teaching methods namely Situational Language Teaching, Communicative Approach and Direct Method (Mareva & Nyota, 2012). There have been many researchers studying on language teaching methods mainly focusing on improving four language skills (Demirezen, 2011; Du, 2017; Batool, N. However, the underlying focal point for English majors to hone English language skills lies in vocabulary. Rationale for the study First of all, it is necessary to take an overall look at current situation of English teaching methods in some Asian countries.
In Japan, although many innovative plans and actions have been designed and launched to stimulate speaking skills, learning by grammar and translation in a teacher-focused way continues to be driven by the contents of textbooks, exam pressure and teaching methods (Goto Butler, 2015). In Thailand, even though teachers expect students to learn through communication and engage them in the learning process, in the end they need to spend time giving in- depth instructions on grammar and reading comprehension. The reason is that these areas are attached great importance in the National University Entrance Examination. In Vietnam, English teaching methods in classes seems to be quite similar with those features mentioned above.
Prior to the university admission, students tend to get accustomed to the traditional English teaching education in secondary and high schools in which the assessment of teaching effectiveness only focuses on reading comprehension and grammar, especially in grade-level exams. Therefore, the whole 2 education system has not yet invested effectively in teaching practical language skills such as listening and speaking (Chon, 2018). Vocabulary teaching for English – specialized university students have not been emphasized and formally taught in teaching curriculum.