VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ………………. ĐẶNG THỊ HƯƠNG THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUALIZED VOCABULARY PRESENTATION ON 10TH FORM STUDENTS’ ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION. AN ACTION RESEARCH AT TO HIEU HIGH SCHOOL, HAI PHONG. ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TRONG NGỮ CẢNH TỚI VIỆC TIẾP THU TỪ VỰNG CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10.
NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG TÔ HIỆU, HẢI PHÒNG.A MINOR THESIS Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60-14-10 HA NOI- 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ………………. ĐẶNG THỊ HƯƠNG THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUALIZED VOCABULARY PRESENTATION ON 10TH FORM STUDENTS’ ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION. AN ACTION RESEARCH AT TO HIEU HIGH SCHOOL, HAI PHONG. ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TRONG NGỮ CẢNH TỚI VIỆC TIẾP THU TỪ VỰNG CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10.
NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG TÔ HIỆU, HẢI PHÒNG.A MINOR THESIS Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60-14-10 Supervisor: Dr. Lê Văn Canh HA NOI- 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgments ii Table of contents. iii List of abbreviations vi List of tables vi Abstract vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Aims and objectives 2 3.
Scope of the study 3 6. Significance of the study 3 7. Design of the study 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review 1. Definition of contextualized vocabulary presentation 5 1.
A contextualized presentation to vocabulary acquisition 6 1. Previous studies on contextualized vocabulary presentation 8 1. Guessing or inferencing strategy 9 1. Types of contextual clues 12 1.
Advantages and disadvantages of contextualized vocabulary presentation 16 to vocabulary acquisition 16 1. Activities and exercises for presenting and practicing words in context 16 1. The roles of vocabulary knowledge in guessing meaning of the unknown words 17 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Vocabulary in English textbook for 10th form non- English major students 18 1.
Summary 18 Chapter 2: Methodology 2. Rationale for the use of an action research 20 2. Action Research Procedure 22 2. Background of the study 23 2.
Data collection instruments 24 2. Focus group interview 25 2. Data collection procedures 25 Chapter 3: Data analysis and discussion 3. The results of the students‟ post-tests 28 3.
The results of focus group interview 29 3. Students‟ opinions of the usefulness of contextualized vocabulary presentation 29 3. Enhancing motivation for vocabulary learning 29 3. Memorizing words better 30 3.
Preference of contextualized vocabulary activities and exercises 30 3. The help of contextualized vocabulary presentation to word retention and using 31 3. Summary of major findings 32 PART C: CONCLUSIONS 1. Summary of the findings 33 2.
Limitations and suggestions for further study 35 REFERENCES 36 APPENDICES LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v APPENDIX 1: English vocabulary test I APPENDIX 2: The vocabulary items presented through minimal contexts Lesson 1 V APPENDIX 3: Description of teaching plan – Lesson 1 V APPENDIX 4: Focus group interview transcripts VIII APPENDIX 5: The students‟ vocabulary performance in post-tests X LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND LIST OF TABLES EFL: English as a Foreign Language L2: Second language N: Number M: Mean Std. Deviation: Standard Deviation I: Interviewer S: Student LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1.2: Components of a theory of learning words from context (From Sternberg and Powell, 1983) 8 Table 2.1: Differences between Action Research and Formal Research 21 Table 3.1: The results of the students‟ post-tests 29 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE Considering the crucial role attributed to vocabulary learning in second or foreign language learning, one can implicitly understand the importance of vocabulary teaching as well. In the past, vocabulary teaching and learning were often given little priority in second language programs, but recently there has been a renewed interest in the nature of vocabulary and its role in learning and teaching (Richards & Renandya, 2002: 255).A number of research studies have dealt with lexical problems, namely, problems which language learners face in vocabulary learning.
The research findings have revealed that lexical problems frequently interfere with communication. As a matter of fact, communication breaks down when people do not use the right words (Allen, 1983:5). It is also generally accepted that second or foreign language learners who possess good word power or knowledge of vocabulary are usually more successful language learners. Simply put, people with large vocabularies are more proficient users of the target language than those with limited vocabularies.
In fact, there is usually a positive correlation between one‟s knowledge of vocabulary and his/her level of language proficiency (Luppescu & Day: 1993). When teaching vocabulary to the 10th form students at To Hieu High school the author found out that word retention is a big problem to the students. Students tend to forget words quickly. Another problem is that they may remember words but they do not know how to use them appropriately.
It has often been suggested that learning vocabulary by using it in contexts should be employed as the main approach to improve vocabulary knowledge. A number of researchers such as Gairns and Redman (1986) and Oxford and Crookall (1988) have suggested that to learn words in context is an effective vocabulary learning strategy. This has urged the researcher to carry out this action research, which is aimed at finding out how contextualized vocabulary presentation affects students‟ vocabulary acquisition. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The research is aimed to explore the effectiveness of contextualized vocabulary presentation on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention. By acquisition, I mean the students understand the meaning of the taught words and know how to use them appropriately. Because one aspect of vocabulary acquisition is the students‟ ability to retrieve the words they have learned, the study is also aimed at measuring the impact of the contextualized vocabulary presentation on students‟ vocabulary retention. Specifically, the aims of the study are: 1) To examine the feasibility of presenting vocabulary in contexts to 10th graders in a particular high school.
2) To measure the effectiveness of this vocabulary teaching technique on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary retention. Therefore, the study is to achieve the following objectives: 1) To experiment presenting vocabulary in contexts in order to measure its effectiveness on students‟ vocabulary acquisition. 2) To examine the impact of presenting vocabulary in contexts on students‟ vocabulary retention. RESEARCH QUESTION To achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, the following research question was proposed: “To what extent does contextualized vocabulary presentation affect students‟ vocabulary acquisition?” 4.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Since the study is aimed at improving students‟ vocabulary acquisition through the application of a new vocabulary teaching technique, an action research designed is chosen for the study. In this action research, a series of progress tests was used in order to measure LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 the impact or effectiveness of this vocabulary technique on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention. Moreover, a focus group interview was conducted to obtain more in-depth data about how students assessed their progress when applying guessing strategies and whether contextualized vocabulary presentation affected students‟ vocabulary retention and learning. SCOPE OF THE STUDY The study is limited to the examination of how presenting vocabulary in contexts affect one group of grade 10 students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention.
No intention is made to generalize the findings. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The results of this action research will help the author to improve her approaches to vocabulary teaching. Those results can also be helpful to other teachers in the school or in other schools which are similar to the school where this research was conducted. DESIGN OF THE STUDY The research consists of three main parts: Part A, Part B and Part C.
Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the research question, the method of study, the research procedure, the scope of the study, the significance of the study and the design of the study. Part B: Development consists of 3 chapters. Chapter one reviews the literature relevant to the study including the definition of context and a number of researches in which contextualized vocabulary presentation has been used to helps students make improvement in their language study. This chapter also presents some types of contextual clues used to guess the meaning of unknown word and students‟ vocabulary learning strategies.
Chapter two discusses the method used in the study. It presents a thorough justification for the use of action research and the research‟s components and program. Chapter three presents the findings and discussion of the study. This part is apparently important because it justifies the effectiveness of the research.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Part C: Conclusion provides summary of the findings, implication, refection as well as presents limitations and suggestions for further study LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Definition of contextualized vocabulary presentation: From the perspective of human verbal communication, Hymes (1974) sees context as a limiter of the range of possible interpretations, and, on the other hand, a supporter of the intended interpretation. Context can be seen as information and in turn, information is that which reduces uncertainly. Taking a discoursal perspective, Nation and Coady (1988) claim that “context is also referred to as morphological, syntactic and discourse information in a given test, which can be classified and described in terms of general features.
102) In this study, context is defined as a particular linguistic environment where a particular word is used and interpreted semantically and pragmatically. In other words, context is the information that determines the grammatically, semantically and pragmatically appropriate use of particular words. Defined as such, contexts play a very important role in the identification of words in text. A word used in different contexts may have different meaning so simply learning the definition of a word with out examples of where and when it occurs will not help learners to fully understand its meaning.
If learners are not able to contextualize new words by connecting them to words and concepts they already know, the words will likely be less meaningful to them. And then if meaning is not contextualized, it will be difficult for learners to memorize as well as to use new words appropriately. If context determines the use and the interpretation of words, presenting words out of context would be confusing to the students. In other words, contextualized vocabulary presentation should be considered as one of effective vocabulary teaching technique.
The nature, the advantages and limitations of this technique will be reviewed in Section 1. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. A contextualized presentation to vocabulary acquisition Herman, Anderson, Nagy, and Pearson (1987) used four different types of context in a study of incidental vocabulary learning. They used a 1,230-word passage from a text and three edited versions with varying degrees of implicit and explicit clues about the target words.
Other contexts used in incidental learning of vocabulary experiments were a novel (Saragi et al., 1978), a graded reader (Horst et al., 1998), specially constructed paragraphs (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984), and narrative and expository texts of about 1,000 words (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). Studies on learning from context have used single sentences (Dempster, 1987; Laufer & Shmueli, 1997), multiple sentences (Dempster, 1987), L2 sentences together with their L1 translations (Griffin, 1992), L1 sentences containing the L2 target vocabulary (Pickering, 1982), three sentences one of which was a definition (Gipe & Arnold, 1979), and L1 and L2 glossed passages (Laufer & Shmueli, 1997). The wide range of contexts may lead to misinterpretation of results.