VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** DƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG THE EFFECTS OF USING SENSE RELATIONS ON LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF 9TH GRADE STUDENTS IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL IN HANOI Ảnh hưởng của việc sử dụng mối quan hệ về nghĩa vào việc học từ vựng của học sinh lớp 9 tại một trường THCS ở Hà Nội M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi – 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** DƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG THE EFFECTS OF USING SENSE RELATIONS ON LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF 9TH GRADE STUDENTS IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL IN HANOI Ảnh hưởng của việc sử dụng mối quan hệ về nghĩa vào việc học từ vựng của học sinh lớp 9 tại một trường THCS ở Hà Nội M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231. Trần Thị Thu Hiền Hanoi – 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “The effects of using sense relations on learning English vocabulary of 9th grade students in a secondary school in Hanoi” is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, and this thesis has not been submitted for any other degrees.
Ha Noi, August 2018 Dương Thị Hương i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to send my sincere gratitude to Dr. Tran Thị Thu Hien for helping me finish this study. This paper would not be finished without her sincere patience and encouraging guidance. Her patience and helpful advice helped me confidently express my ideas into this paper.
Furthermore, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their valuable lectures which have helped me a great deal in gaining a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. My special thanks are for the principal and teachers at a secondary school in Hanoi that helped me carry out the study and for 29 grade-9 students who took part in the experimental teaching by using sense relations. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude and love to my beloved parents, my brothers, my husband and my friends who supported and encouraged me to complete this thesis. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Vietnamese students often face difficulties in learning vocabulary.
They fail to remember words and to recall words when necessary because of their learning habits and learning strategies. Based on literature review, it is found that sense relations can have positive effects on vocabulary learning. This thesis is entitled “The effects of using sense relations on learning English vocabulary of 9 th grade students in a secondary school in Hanoi” which aims to find out the improvement of the use of sense relations in teaching vocabulary. This research was a quantitative and qualitative method.
To obtain the data, test, the questionnaire and the interview were used. In selecting the sample, the writer used purposive sampling. The sample was the students in class 9A1 of a secondary school which consisted of 29 students. The result of test showed that using sense relations could improve the students‘ ability in English vocabulary mastery.
In addition, based on the analysis of the interview, the English teacher gave some suggestions for the application of sense relations in teaching vocabulary. It can be concluded that sense relations have a positive effect on students‘ vocabulary acquisition. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ELT : English Language Teaching Q : Question SR : Sense Relations iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES Figure 1.1: Example of hyponymy relation Chart 3.1: Frequency Distribution of Pre-test Chart 3.2: Frequency Distribution of Post-test Table 2.1: Summary of the questions in the students‘ questionnaire Table 2.2 : Data collection procedure Table 3.1: Students‘ habits of vocabulary learning at home v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
iv LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES. v PART ONE: INTRODUCTION. Rationale for the study. Aims and objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Methods of the study. Organization of the study.
5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. The importance of vocabulary. Types of vocabulary. Vocabulary teaching process.
Techniques in teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary acquisition process. Vocabulary learning strategies. 12 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Types of sense relations. Polysemy and homonymy. Other kinds of sense relations. Advantages of using sense relations in teaching and learning vocabulary17 1.
The research setting. Methods of the study. Data collection instruments. Data collection procedure.
31 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The pre-interview. The post-interview. 40 PART THREE: CONCLUSION.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further studies. viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study In the modern world, people need to know more than one language to communicate with others.
Vocabulary plays an important role in learning any foreign language because it can encourage students to improve four basic skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Language ability of learners will be improved overall by vocabulary improvement (Linse, 2006). However, many learners face a lot of challenges to learn and memorize new words. Therefore, language teachers are searching for useful methods which can be used to help their students acquire vocabulary well.
In fact, there are various techniques and methods that can be used to present vocabulary; however, there are some factors that should be taken into consideration concerning the manner of presenting new lexical items. Furthermore, if teachers want learners to retain new words, they should present them in suitable contexts, practice them, and revise them in order that their learners cannot forget them. As a result, learning vocabulary items depends on the way they are presented and the way they are revised. It is clear that finding out the suitable techniques of vocabulary teaching plays a crucial role in helping students acquire vocabulary.
Therefore, teaching vocabulary has become one of the common research subjects in English language studies recently. These days, the academics are comparing the previous methods of teaching vocabulary with the latest ones to find more effective ways. One of these popular comparisons has been made in the context of representing a new vocabulary item in semantically related and semantically unrelated sets. Moreover, some studies indicate that learning vocabulary through using sense relations has become crucially important for foreign language learners because teachers can easily engage their students in the class and help them remember new words quickly.
As an English teacher, the researcher realizes that teachers often have difficulty in teaching their students to learn vocabulary effectively. The fact is that the vocabulary acquisition of most Vietnamese students is quite low. The reason for this 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com could be that in Vietnam, vocabulary is learnt with traditional methods such as writing new words in a notebook and learning them by heart, reading new words several times. This can make students become bored and some students find it more difficult to remember words especially if they are young learners.
Generally, teaching students to master vocabulary is not an easy task for all language teachers. Therefore, the researcher thinks that using sense relations such as synonyms, hyponyms, etc., is one of the effective tools for teaching English in particular and teaching foreign languages in general. This can help learners easily remember the words that they learnt. Moreover, using sense relations could make lessons become more interesting and engaging.
From the reasons above, the author would like to carry out a research about ―the effects of using sense relations on vocabulary learning‖. Aims and objectives of the study The study mainly aims at examining whether sense relations can improve students‘ English vocabulary knowledge at the 9th grade students at a secondary school. Its inter-related objectives are: - Determining whether sense relations can improve students‘ English vocabulary for the 9th grade students at a secondary school or not - Providing some possible suggestions on the use of sense relations in teaching vocabulary 3. Research Questions In this study, the researcher attempts to answer the following questions: Do sense relations improve students‘ English vocabulary at the 9th grade students at a secondary school? What are possible suggestions on the use of sense relations in teaching vocabulary? 4.
Scope of the study The study was conducted at a secondary school, Thach That district, Hanoi city. It only focused on investigating whether sense relations improve the 9th grade students‘ English vocabulary knowledge. Other research aiming at studying on the 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com effects of sense relations on other aspects of English learning and other types of students in other institutions are out of the scope of the study. Significance of the study The study aims at determining if sense relations improve learners‘ English vocabulary.
Therefore, it can be useful for both theoretical and practical contributions. In terms of theoretical contributions, this thesis will be served as a reliable and useful reference material about using sense relations in teaching vocabulary for other readers and researchers in their further studies on related subjects. For the practical contributions, the findings and results of the research are significant to both teachers and students because using sense relations helps learners acquire vocabulary effectively and easily. This is one of the most useful techniques that teachers should make use of to facilitate their students‘ learning.
Methods of the study To achieve the aims of the study, action research was applied. The study was conducted in 8 weeks. In the first week, students‘ questionnaire and the teacher‘s pre-interview were used to investigate their opinions on ways of vocabulary learning and teaching. At the same time, a pre-test was given to 29 students of a class to find out the students‘ vocabulary knowledge before the experiment was conducted.
Then, the researcher asked the teacher to implement sense relations to teach vocabulary from week 2 to week 7. After that, in the last week, a post-test was delivered to the same population to measure the improvement of the students‘ vocabulary after the treatment. After the post-test, a post-interview was carried out with the teacher who participated in the experimental teaching in order to investigate the difficulties she had in applying sense relations to teach vocabulary as well as suggestions for the use of sense relations to teach vocabulary. Organization of the study The study is divided into three parts as follows: Part 1: Introduction This part is a brief description of the research including the rationale for conducting the research, the aims of the study, research questions, scope 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com of the study, significance of the study, and outline of the study Part 2: Development Chapter 1: Literature review This chapter deals with the theoretical framework of the subject and related studies.
Chapter 2: Methodology This chapter presents the research context and methodology of the study including the context, the subject, data collection instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis. Chapter 3: Findings and discussions This chapter presents the major findings and discussions from the students‘ pre-test and post-test, the questionnaire and interviews.