VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE ---***--- THE EFFECTS OF CONCEPT CHECKING QUESTIONS ON A2 STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature By LÊ TRẦN MINH ANH Instructed by PHAN THANH HÙNG, Ph.D Ho Chi Minh City, July 2023 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis had not been completed without the assistance of many people who always stood by me through all of the ups and downs of this writing journey. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards my supervisor, Doctor Phan Thanh Hung. I am sincerely thankful for his dedication in giving feedback although he was living abroad. No matter how busy he was, he always replied to all of my emails in a fast and careful way.
I also would like to thank all of my family members and friends for their financial and mental support, especially on the day I just wanted to give up. But for their encouragement, I would not have been confident and motivated to finish the thesis. I am also sincerely grateful for the support of the research site and all of the participants who were my colleagues and students. They were all willing to allow me to conduct the research and take part in it wholeheartedly.
Last but not least, I want to express my thankfulness to the faculty and all of the lecturers teaching this MA program for sharing not only academic knowledge but also experience in conducting a thesis. II STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis which is “THE EFFECTS OF CONCEPT CHECKING QUESTIONS ON A2 STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION” is my own work. As far as I am concerned, it does not violate any copyright of other papers nor research. I also declare that this is a true copy that has not been submitted nor published to any other university, institution, or publisher.
Ho Chi Minh City, July 2023 Le Tran Minh Anh III TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .II STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY. III TABLE OF CONTENTS. IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. VII LIST OF TABLES.
VIII LIST OF FIGURES. IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Background to the study. Statements of the problem.
Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Organization of the thesis chapters. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Concept Checking Questions (CCQs). Definitions of CCQs. Types of CCQs. Characteristics of CCQs.
Forms of CCQs. Benefits of CCQs. Drawbacks of CCQs. Vocabulary and aspects of vocabulary.
How children are exposed to vocabulary. How vocabulary is remembered. How to measure vocabulary .Characteristics of A2 students .A2 students‟ vocabulary knowledge. 17 IV CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY.
Data collection procedure. Data analysis scheme. 29 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Types of CCQs.
Characteristic of CCQs. Forms of CCQs. The benefits of CCQs. The drawbacks of CCQs.
How to ask CCQs. How teachers address the drawbacks. Forms of CCQs. Stages to ask CCQs.
How CCQs are directed to students. What if students say wrong answers?. How CCQs are used in the experimental research. Summary of the observations and interviews.
Results of the independent t-test and Pearson. Receptive vocabulary knowledge - Passive recognition. Receptive vocabulary knowledge - Passive recall. Productive vocabulary knowledge - Active recognition.
Productive vocabulary knowledge - Active recall. Vocabulary knowledge test. Correlation between asking CCQs and students‟ performance in vocabulary acquisition. Discussion of the independent t-test and Pearson.
Summary of the chapter. Summary of findings. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for the study.
112 VI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CCQs: Concept checking questions CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages PPP: Presentation Practice Production VII LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Types of vocabulary knowledge. Participant recruitment criteria checklist. The description of pretest and pottest.
The schedule of observations and interviews. Forms of asking CCQs. Number of CCQs in each stage. How CCQs are directed to students.
How CCQs are used and directed to students in the experimental research. Scores of Passive Recognition Vocabulary in the posttests of the control group and experimental group. Scores of Passive Recall Vocabulary in the posttests of the control group and experimental group. Scores of Active Recognition Vocabulary in the posttests of the control group and experimental groups.
Scores of Active Recall Vocabulary in the posttests of the control group and experimental group. Scores of vocabulary knowledge in the posttests of the control group and experimental group. The correlation of the students‟ learning with CCQs and their points in the test. 53 VIII LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.
Developing knowledge of a word. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Conceptual framework of the study. 17 IX ABSTRACT Although asking “do you understand?” is the most explicit way to check for understanding in real life, this question can lead to dishonest answers from students in class due to their fear of embarrassment.
However, waiting to check students‟ exercises to evaluate their understanding may take a great amount of time. Employing concept checking questions can provide an in-between solution that can detect students‟ misunderstanding immediately; nevertheless, it remains an under- research topic in terms of vocabulary for A2 students. Therefore, the thesis aims to investigate (1) how teachers ask concept checking questions to check A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center, and (2) the effects of asking concept checking questions on A2 students‟ performance in vocabulary acquisition. A mixed-method research design was deployed to collect both qualitative data on how teachers ask concept checking questions, and quantitative data on the effect of using concept checking questions.
Four teachers were observed and interviewed, then their responses were coded into a thematic framework. 102 A2 students took part in experimental research, and their test scores were compared by using Pearson and an independent t-Test. The instruments include observation scheme, interview questions, pretest and posttest. The findings shed new light on how concept checking questions should be used and their effects on A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition; hence, assisting teachers to plan their lessons more effectively in order to help students engage in class activities more actively.
Keywords: concept checking questions, how to ask concept checking questions, effects, vocabulary acquisition, A2 students X CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Background to the study A significant shift from the teacher-centered classroom into a student-centered classroom has been witnessed for a decade; there is no longer a one-size-fits-all approach in a classroom context. Although teachers may try their best to explain and instruct students, the students can understand the lesson in various ways based on their background knowledge, comprehension, and focus of attention. Besides, students‟ acquisition is also affected by their learning styles.
According to Gilakjani (2012), there were three learning styles in total including visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic. Therefore, each learner may have different styles of learning and understanding the lessons, and as a matter of fact, teachers‟ instruction and explanation could be understood and interpreted in a wide range of ways by their students, which could lead to misunderstanding and misconception. “If teachers wait and look at independent practice, homework, quizzes, or final tests to find out whether learners have learned, it is too late to modify their instruction since the lesson is already done. Furthermore, it was believed that direct questions such as “Do you understand?” or “Are you clear?” were taboos that should be proscribed in class because students were thought not to give sincere answers due to their fear (Thornbury, 2022).
Hence, those questions failed to detect and address the misunderstanding. As a result, there is a great need to deploy a technique that could help teachers check students‟ progress and understanding to modify the instructions before students practice their errors into permanence (Nguyen, 2021). The aforementioned situation about misunderstanding in class could be worse in the case of an A2 one. It was stated in a research of Bierman (2020) that A2 students who were from eleven to fifteen years old find it easy to be distracted.
Their attention span was relatively short, which was approximately 30 minutes. 1 Hence, it was challenging to have them pay attention to the lesson from the beginning to the end of the class. To address that difficulty, concept checking questions (CCQs) were believed to be an effective way of formative assessment to estimate students‟ progress and adjust the effectiveness of instructions (Nguyen, 2021). Additionally, concept checking questions were mentioned in several previous research of Long & Sato (1983), Mercer & Dawes (2008), Wright (2016), and Liashenko (2018) in terms of their benefits, drawbacks, and techniques of asking as well.
Therefore, it is clear that concept checking questions played a certain role in teaching and learning a language. In language teaching, vocabulary was considered the most important element in English linguistics since it was a sub-skill that provides the foundation to acquire other skills such as reading, listening, writing, and speaking (Alqahtani, 2015). Therefore, the author opts for these sub-skills to conduct the research. Statements of the problem As mentioned in the background to the study, concept checking questions were introduced in many research.
It was shown that concept checking questions were beneficial to some extent (Florkowska, 2018); yet little research is done in terms of the effects of asking these questions on A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition. For example, the research of Kieu (2012) investigated the use of concept checking questions, but its focus was on the attitudes of university lecturers. Although it suggested some of the techniques of CCQs, the target population and the scope of the study were limited to advanced level and lecturers‟ perspectives, leaving an inquiry about the techniques for beginner students. In addition, the effects of CCQs were reported to be positive in a paper of Dang & Nguyen (2013) and Nguyen (2021); however, the studies only concentrated on grammatical points which left a research gap in students‟ 2 vocabulary acquisition.
For those mentioned reasons, this research aims to come up with the effects of CCQs on A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition and how to ask CCQs effectively. Research aims This study aims to investigate 1. how teachers ask concept checking questions to check A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center 2. the effects of asking concept checking questions on A2 students‟ performance in vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center 1.
How do teachers ask concept checking questions to check A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center? 2. What are the effects of asking concept checking questions on A2 students‟ performance in vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center? Firstly, the research investigates how teachers at VUS English Center ask concept checking questions to check A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition in class. Secondly, these collected uses of CCQs are used to examine if there are any effects of asking CCQs on A2 students‟ vocabulary acquisition. Hypothesis The means for the students learning with CCQs (experimental groups) and students learning without CCQs (control groups) are equal.
There is a positive correlation between asking concept checking questions and A2 students‟ performance in vocabulary acquisition at VUS English Center. Significance of the study This study aims to benefit both teachers and learners in teaching and acquiring vocabulary. The result of the research can directly contribute to the 3 development of teaching techniques when it comes to vocabulary acquisition, and by that saves time and effort devoted by teachers when planning and delivering a vocabulary lesson.