(SKKN 2022) how to improve classroom vocabulary learning activities at dao duy tu secondary school in thanh hoa

THANH HOA OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING DAO DUY TU HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE HOW TO IMPROVE CLASSROOM VOCABULARY LEARNING ACTIVITIES AT DAO DUY TU SECONDARY SCHOOL IN THANH HOA Impl

THANH HOA OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DAO DUY TU HIGH SCHOOL

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

HOW TO IMPROVE CLASSROOM VOCABULARY LEARNING ACTIVITIES AT DAO DUY TU SECONDARY SCHOOL IN THANH HOA

Implementer: Bui thi Thao Position : Teacher

THANH HOA, 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Method of the study 2

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter I: Literature review 4

1 Definition of vocabulary 4

2 Classroom vocabulary learning activities 4

Chapter II: Research methodology 6

1 Research questions 6

2 The context of the study 6

2.1 The text book 6

2.2 The teachers of English 7

2.3 The 10th form students 7

3 Instruments of data collection 7

3.1 Survey questionnaire 7

3.2 Interview 13

4 Data collection and analysis 13

Chapter III: Data analysis and discussion 14

1 Data analysis from students’ questionnaires 14

2 Data analysis from teachers’ questionnaires 15

PART C: CONCLUSION 18

1 Summary of findings 18

2 Implications 19

REFERENCE

APPENDICES I Appendix 1 I Appendix 2 II

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Vocabulary plays an important role in learning a foreign language It is oneelement that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing alltogether In order to communicate well in a foreign language, students should acquire

an adequate number of words and should know how to use them accurately

Even though students realize the importance of vocabulary when learning alanguage, most Vietnamese students learn vocabulary passively due to severalreasons First, they find the teacher's explanation for the new words’ meaning,pronunciation, spelling or grammatical functions boring In processing learningEnglish in the class, language learners have nothing to do in a vocabulary learningsection but to listen to their teacher Second, students only think of vocabularylearning as learning the primary meaning of new words Therefore, they ignore allother functions of the words Third, students usually only learn new words in theirtextbooks or those given by teachers during classroom lessons As the result, theclass is often quiet and inactive and the lessons appear to be uninteresting Studentsjust seat in silence, do the exercises, and wait for the correct answers from theteachers They seem to get bored of having the same ways of learning every day.Therefore, classroom vocabulary learning activities help learners develop and usewords in different contexts and make the lessons enjoyable

It can not be denied that, classroom vocabulary learning activities are a wellcome break from the usual routine of the language class They help students to makeand sustain the effort of learning; provide practice in the various skills, such asspeaking, writing, listening and reading; encourage students to communicate Besides,vocabulary-learning activities bring real world context into the classroom, andstimulate students’ use of English in a flexible, meaningful and communicative way

That is the reason why I carry out this research entitled, “How to improve classroom

vocabulary learning activities at Dao Duy Tu secondary school in Thanh Hoa”

2 Aims of the study

The study was designed to achieve the following goals:

1 To find out the English teachers and students’ perception and attitude towardsvocabulary and the current situation of vocabulary learning and teaching

2 To evaluate the effectiveness of the currently used classroom vocabularylearning activities at Dao Duy Tu high school

3 To suggest how to use classroom vocabulary activities to improve vocabularyteaching and learning

4 Scope of the study

There are, of course, many ways to motivate the students to learn Englisheffectively However, in this research action , I would focus my research on theeffectiveness of classroom vocabulary learning activities at Dao Duy Tu secondaryschool in Thanh Hoa The reason is that my students are too passive to learnvocabulary They need to participate more actively in learning activities I hope thatthrough some classroom vocabulary activities, I will find the most effective learningactivities to improve students’ vocabulary learning My students have chance to usethe words productively

5 Methods of the study

To gain the aims given in section 2, the study uses quantitative researchapproach In order to gain the most successful results, data will be collected throughquestionnaires (one questionnaire for students, and the other for teachers of English athigh school) Collected data, then, will be processed and analyzed Besides, the study

is also carried out through informal interview with some students and teachers at DaoDuy Tu secondary school Additionally, the writer’s own experience in designingclassroom vocabulary learning activities and the analysis of current textbook andvocabulary teaching methods applied to teaching English for the 10th form students at

Dao Duy Tu secondary school in Thanh Hoa will contribute much to the evaluation ofthe effectiveness of these activities.

6 Design of the study

The research action is composed of three parts Part A is the introduction, whichpresents the rationale, aims as well as the scope, method, and the design of the study.Part B is the development of the study, divided into three chapters Chapter I is forliterature review, which provides the theoretical background of the study The focus ofthis chapter is the definition, classification, the importance of vocabulary Chapter IIincludes the description of the participants and the data collection instruments and themethods employed to analyze these data Chapter III presents the detailed analyses ofthe data collected from the survey questionnaires for the teachers and the students andthe discussion of the findings Lastly, part C is the conclusion of the study,recommendations for the teaching and learning activities at Dao Duy Tu secondaryschool in Thanh Hoa

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Definition of vocabulary

Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreignlanguage According to Harmer, if language structures make up the skeleton of alanguage, then it is its vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the flesh A word

is a unit of language that native speakers can identify, “words are the block from

which sentences are made” Knowing a word means being able to do thing with it: to

recognize it in connected speech or in print, to access its meaning, to pronounce it and

to be able to do these things within a fraction of a second (Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “vocabulary is a set of words known to a

person or other entity, or that are part of the specific language” Meanwhile, Hoang

simply defined vocabulary as “words of a specific language” (Hoang, et al., 2006: 262) In a more detailed definition, Lewis (1993: 89) states vocabulary “…may be

individual words, or full sentences- institutionalized utterances- that convey fixed social or pragmatic meaning within a given community.”

3 Classroom vocabulary learning activities

Students need lots of vocabulary to increase their ability and confidence incommunicating in English However, learning vocabulary is never easy for learners.Teachers, who motivate the students learning English, need to make learningvocabulary a fun involving and active process In order to learn and retain new words,learners should participate in different task-based activities in their classroom whether

it is a guessing task, a describing exercise or conversation making Such activitiesespecially focus on helping learners develop and use words in different contexts bymaking the lesson enjoyable

Vocabulary learning activities also lend themselves well to revision exerciseshelping learners recall material in a pleasant, entertaining way All authors referred to

in this thesis agree that even if vocabulary learning activities resulted only in noise andentertained students, they are still worth paying attention to and implementing in the

classroom since they motivate learners, promote communicative competence, andgenerate fluency.

In summary, vocabulary-learning activities are useful and effective tools thatshould be applied in vocabulary classes They make the lessons more interesting,enjoyable and effective

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1 Research questions

For the purpose of this study which stated in Part A, my research questions are:

1 What are the English teachers and students’ perception and attitude towards vocabulary learning/teaching?

2 How effective are the currently used classroom vocabulary learning activities at Dao Duy Tu High School?

2 The context of the study

2.1 The textbook

The textbook used for the 10th form students is English 10 (published in 2006),which is a theme-based compilation The textbook has 16 units and 6 review lessons.Each unit focuses on a specific topic and consists of five main sections namely:reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus The texts and the tasks werechosen from different sources of materials This, to some extent, stimulated students’interests

As I mentioned in chapter I, vocabulary is a language component that plays animportant role in deciding learners’ language proficiency When saying about the

importance of language, Pyles and Algeo said “When we first think about language,

we first think about words It is words that we arrange together to make sentences, conversation and discourse of all kinds” Because of its’ importance, vocabulary

exists in five main sections of English 10 (reading, speaking, listening, writing andlanguage focus) It is arranged with various themes, such as, a days in life (Unit 1),school talks (Unit 2),etc It can not be denied that vocabulary is central of each unit

To help students learn vocabulary more effectively, I think that teachers shouldgive more activities, such as: playing vocabulary games, guessing the meanings, usingvisual aids…etc However, in order to achieve the most from vocabulary classroomactivities, it is essential that suitable vocabulary classroom activities are chosen.Therefore, I often consider that how to use classroom vocabulary activities to improvestudents’ vocabularies at my school

2.2 Teachers of English

Nine teachers who were teaching at Dao Duy Tu school are invited to join thestudy (100% are female aged from fourty to over fifty) They have been teachingEnglish for at least nineteen years Most of them have to teach in a large class of over

45 students in each and each teacher has to teach four or five classes of this kind sothat they are to be responsible for the learning results of around 180 students All theteachers at Dao Duy Tu school are experienced and enthusiastic in teaching

2.3 The 10 th form students

Nearly 180 of 10th form students at Dao Duy Tu secondary school in Thanh Hoaare the target subjects of the study They are both male and female students aged fromsixteen to seventeen and have learnt English at junior high school for four years Theirproficiency in English is more than elementary because many of them did not payattention to studying English at lower classes They do not know the best way to learnEnglish, especially, vocabulary They find it difficult to learn and memorizevocabulary During vocabulary learning activities, it is the teachers who have to talkmuch and students have a very passive learning habit

3 Data collection instruments

This study attempts to investigate the current situation of vocabulary learningand teaching as well as the effectiveness of the vocabulary learning activities whichhave been used in 10th form classes at Dao Duy Tu secondary school To achieve theaims mentioned above, two survey questionnaires are conducted to collect data for thestudy One is for students and one for teachers Teachers and students can evaluatehow effective the currently used classroom vocabulary learning activities are Informalinterviews with teachers and students also provide useful information for the study

3.1 Survey questionnaires

There are varieties of methods that can be employed to collect data such asquestionnaire, interview, observation and so on Each method has its own advantagesand disadvantages The researcher chose questionnaire because it is one of the mostpopular instruments It is quite easy to prepare and it can be used with a large number

of subjects They have opportunities to reflect on their experience of using classroom

vocabulary activities to improve vocabulary learning and teaching The information,therefore, would be more detailed and more accurate.

There are two sets of questionnaire with both close-ended and open-endedquestions used for both teachers and students Questionnaires are administered to eightteachers and 180 students

 Questionnaire for students

The questionnaire consists of 2 questions (see Appendix 1) Question 1aims atgathering the general information about students’ own learning By answeringquestion 2 students comment on the classroom vocabulary learning activities that theirEnglish teachers often use and evaluate their effectiveness

 Questionnaire for teachers

The questionnaire designed for teachers also consists of 2 questions (seeAppendix 2) Question 1 aims at finding teachers’ perception their students’vocabulary learning and Question 2 is for evaluating the effectiveness and frequency

of use of the currently used classroom vocabulary learning activities

The activities stated in the questionnaire 3(for all teachers and students) are currentlyused to teach vocabulary Below is the description of these activities:

Classroom vocabulary learning activities

Activity 1: Word matching

This activity helps students revise vocabulary before listening or speaking This

is an example when you teach speaking (Unit 9) Students are divided into many pairsand delivered handouts Students are asked to match the words in column A with theirdefinitions in column B After 3 minutes, the teacher receives the answer of the firstfive pairs The teacher reads the answer of 5 pairs, comments and gives good marks tothe pair which has the best answer Afterward, the teacher asks students to use thesewords to practice speaking about the actions which we should or should not do toprotect our oceans

E.g: Match the following words in column A with their explanations in column B

A a substance added to soil to make it more fertile

B a substance used to kill plants growing where they are not wanted

C using very little of something

D a chemical substance used to kill insects

E a bin that hold rubbish until it is collected

Answer: 1E, 2A, 3B, 4D, 5C

Activity 2: Guess the word

“Guess the word” game is useful in vocabulary presentation The class is dividedinto four or five groups The teacher writes one of the new words on the board andasks students to listen carefully to the explanations in English Depending on theexplanations, the groups try to guess the Vietnamese equivalent of the word For eachcorrect guess, they get a point For example: When presenting new words in Unit 11(National parks), our teachers say: “This is an insect with four wings that can sting”.The quickest group who can find out the Vietnamese meaning of “bee” as “con ong”will get a point After all the words have been presented, the group with the highestscore is the winner

Activity 3: Word to sentence

This activity is used to review the text in reading skill and related vocabulary.This is an example in Unit 6 (An excursion)

T divides all class into many pairs

1 T writes three words on the board Sts make three sentences to summarize themain ideas of the learned letter in Unit 6

2 After three minutes, T checks up and gives marks

Given words: visiting, weather, permission

Suggested answer: Lan ‘s classmates is visiting Huong Pagoda at the end of the

first term They believe they will enjoy good weather Lan hopes she can get herparents’ permission to stay the night from home

Activity 4: Missing words

Procedure

1 Select a paragraph or a short text at a level suitable for your class Delete lexicalselected words from the text Number the blanks in the text Select words that can not

be predicted too easily but allow prediction

2 Divide the class into groups, and give each group a copy of the text Ask them

to fill in each blank with a suitable word in the box

3 Ask a member of each group to come to the board and write up their answerfor each blank

4 Ask students to compare their answers Are they all acceptable? Would theyreject any? Why?

5 Give the class feedback on their answers Use this phase of the activity todevelop the students’ awareness of lexical choice, vocabulary restrictions, andcollocation

Below is an example for unit 12 (Music):

E.g.: Complete the article by filling each blank with a word from the box.

Paul McCartney’s Space Station concert

Sir Paul McCartney has become the first (1)…… to sing live to an audience in space.The former Beatle woke up the crew of International Space Station with special (2)

…… of two songs that were carefully chosen for the space concert The first was the

Beatles classic Good Day Sunshine The second tune was a track titled English Tea from his new (3) …… Chaos and Creation in the Backyard NASA’s own television

(4) …… Showed the songs and live images of two-man space audience (5) …… tothem This is the first time live music has woken up astronauts NASA (6) …… Usesrecorded songs

Answers: 1 Musician 2 Versions 3 Album 4 Channel

5 listening 6 traditionally

Activity 5: Using visual aids

Channel versions canceled musician traditionally

Listening favor album space song