VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -----------------o0o------------------- VŨ NGỌC LONG TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS USING GAMES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH VỚI VIỆC SỬ DỤNG TRÒ CHƠI TRONG DẠY-HỌC TỪ MỚI M.A THESIS (MINOR) Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 01 11 HANOI – 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -----------------o0o------------------- VŨ NGỌC LONG TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS USING GAMES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH VỚI VIỆC SỬ DỤNG TRÒ CHƠI TRONG DẠY-HỌC TỪ MỚI M.A THESIS (MINOR) Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 01 11 Supervisor: Kiều Thị Thu Hương HANOI – 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com i DECLARATION I hereby, certify the thesis entitled “Teachers and Students’ Attitude towards Using Games in Teaching and Learning Vocabulary” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions. I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study and research. January, 2014 Vũ Ngọc Long TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to show my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis.
I have sincere thanks to the Post-graduate Faculty of ULIS, VNUH for giving me permission to commence and go ahead with this M. thesis and to use the research materials. I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Vice-Dean of the English Faculty – Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, whose encouragement, guidance and support enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject and to accomplish the final version of the thesis as expected.
This thesis would not be possible were it not for my lecturers in the M. course, namely Prof. Hoàng Văn Vân, Assoc. Lê Hùng Tiến, Assoc.
Võ Đại Quang, Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm, Dr. Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, Dr. Ngô Hữu Hoàng, Dr.
Lê Văn Canh and Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn. I would like to thank them for their interesting lectures, devotion, assistance and valuable hints. Especially, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents, whose endless love and encouragement helped me finish this work.
Lastly, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the study. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary iii ABSTRACT This study has been conducted to investigate Teachers and Students’ Attitude towards Using Games in Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. The subjects of the study are thirty twelfth-grade students and thirty English teachers from different high schools in Chi Linh District in the school year 2013 – 2014. The data have been collected via questionnaires.
The findings exhibit that although language games enable teaching and learning vocabulary to be better, they are not often made use of in language classes. The study confirms that even though vocabulary games add interests and motivate students to learn, they have not got many opportunities to get involved in those activities. Although many high school teachers recognize the effectiveness of vocabulary games, the majority of them are not willing to design, or to conduct such activities for word teaching. Based on the findings, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachers and students to teach and learn new words by using language games.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi PART A – INTRODUCTION. Statement of the problem.
Objectives of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Design of the study.
4 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW. An Overview of Vocabulary Teaching. An Overview of Language Games. Classification of language games.
Reasons for using games in vocabulary teaching. The previous studies. 11 CHAPTER II: THE STUDY. Data gathering instruments.
Findings and discussion. Summary of the study. Limitations of the study. 29 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Suggestions for further studies. V TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary vi ABBRIVIATIONS LLs: language learners TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary 1 PART A – INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem Learning vocabulary is an essential activities for people who wish to study a foreign language. Vocabulary enables language learners to produce what they want to say.
With a rich source of words, it is easier for LLs to communicate exactly what they want to convey without much explanations. This is why teaching new words to student is a crucial part of language lessons. However, not all teachers put emphasis on teaching. These teachers believe that grammar should be focused on more than vocabulary.
They fear that students may make mistakes in sentence building if they learn too many words before getting familiar with basic grammar rules. Some teachers even think that words would be best learned through experience, because there are not many suitable contexts for teaching words in the language classroom. The beliefs mentioned above are true to a certain extent. Without grammar rules, very little is communicated, but without words nothing is communicated, as Wilkins (1972, p.
The most important thing for language teachers to do is to find suitable vocabulary teaching techniques. In Chi Linh District, the translation method is officially applied to word teaching in high schools. New words are normally delivered to students with their meanings explained by teachers, which is very time-consuming. For most of the students, learning new words is a boring task.
What they do is to listen to the words they need to learn, looking up for their meanings in the dictionary, and then write those words again and again. The process is repeated until language learners remember the words, yet they find it difficult to keep these words in their long term memory. It can be considered the result of a less impressive new-word learning way. Vocabulary games have been proved beneficial to word teaching.
Language games can motivate students in the English vocabulary learning process. By using vocabulary games in language classrooms, teachers can help students make use of TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary 2 their words to interact with other classmates, and get to know more words through oral communication. Besides adding elements of fun, games can help store a long lasting word source in students’ long-term memory. However, language games are quite new activities to language teachers and learners of some high schools in Chi Linh District.
They are not often properly exploited. Some students say they seldom play language games in leaning words in classes. Some teachers hardly ever design any lessons including vocabulary games. Their students therefore seldom have a chance to learn new words through vocabulary games.
Thus, the present study has been carried out to investigate the attitudes of teachers and learners towards games for teaching and learning vocabulary. Research questions The research focuses on finding the answers to the following question: What are the attitudes of teachers and learners towards using games in teaching and learning vocabulary? 3. Objectives of the study This study has been carried out in order to discover: the attitudes of teachers towards language games in teaching vocabulary. how teachers apply games for vocabulary teaching.
the attitudes of students towards learning vocabulary by language games. how students get involved in using language games for word learning. Significance of the study The aim of the study is to reveal the attitudes of both language teachers and learners towards language games for vocabulary teaching and learning on the one hand. On the other hand, it provides facts for teachers to compare vocabulary games with other word-teaching activities.
Vocabulary games in this sense can be viewed as a positive factor contributing to making word teaching more effective. Games help increase language learners’ word-retention naturally. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Scope of the study The study has been conducted in Chi Linh District, Hai Duong Province.
There are four high schools in this area. The research aims at the attitudes of the teachers and students in these schools towards language games. The researcher would like to explore how vocabulary games are applied to teaching and learning words in English language classes. A survey research has been done with the participation of thirty English language teachers and twelfth- grade students of different high schools in Chi Linh District, Hai Duong Province.
Design of the study The study includes three parts: PART I is the Introduction of the study which states the problem, the research question, objectives, scope, significance and design of the whole paper. PART II is the Development which is composed of two chapters. Chapter one presents the Literature Review of the study. Chapter two demonstrates the research’s methodology including the subjects of the study, data gathering instruments, procedures, findings and discussion.
Part THREE is the Conclusion which summarizes significant findings of the investigation, elaborates contributions of the research, puts forward practical suggestions for future research, and addresses notable limitations as well. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary 4 PART B – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. An Overview of Vocabulary Teaching 1. Definitions of vocabulary There are different definitions of vocabulary.
Linguistic scholars describe vocabulary with their own sets of criteria, depending on the areas they base on to develop the term. Vocabulary is commonly defined as “a list of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a foreign language. 5) states that “vocabulary items are not often single orthographic units, but rather multi-word units.” This means speakers tend to use words which can be put together to make sense rather than using an equivalent number of individual words. Vocabulary “may be individual words, or full sentences – institutionalized utterances – that convey social or pragmatic meaning within a given community.
Besides, Grave (2000) considers vocabulary as the whole stock of words of a branch of language possessed by every learner. Although the definitions are not the same, scholars tend to describe vocabulary items more than single words. Vocabulary therefore covers a bigger aspect of language and it is the medium for language learners to express their ideas. We can consider vocabulary as the backbone of a language.
From what have been stated and suggested by scholars and linguists, vocabulary can be seen as all of the words in a language which are used in a particular context or the words an individual person knows. Role of teaching and learning vocabulary Teaching and learning vocabulary have been recognized as being necessary in any learning language stages. It bridges over the gaps between language skills. Students may be very good at learning language grammar, they still cannot communicate TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.vocabulary 5 successfully in a second or foreign language without words.
The ability to express a wide range of meanings depends much on the number of words they have accumulated, as presented by McCarthy (1990, p. 147) considers knowing words as the key to understand others and being understood by others. And as what Selinker (1994, p. 270) asserted, words are probably the most important component for learners when learning a language.
89) agrees that “lexis is the core or heart of language.” It is obvious that vocabulary is very important. It is normally not surprising if a language learner with a large number of words can often communicate better than others who just know some. Language students will be able to convey their ideas more precisely and better with a good source of vocabulary.