QUY NHON UNIVERSITY VÕ TRẦN THU THẢO USING FLASHCARDS TO TEACH VOCABULARY FOR YOUNG LEARNERS AT AN ENGLISH CENTER IN QUY NHON Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140111 Supe
INTRODUCTION
Rationale
In terms of students‟ competences, English teaching has the aim at developing the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing This means that the students are expected to practice these language skills through the activities given in the class In supporting the development of the four language skills, it is necessary to learn language components, including pronunciation, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary It is believed that vocabulary is one of the language components that play a significant part in the development of the language skills Building up a useful vocabulary is important to the teaching and learning progress of a foreign language Limited vocabulary; therefore, is likely to be a barrier for students in their foreign language learning For this reason, vocabulary is highly important to any language
Whether learners are adults or young children, they need to broaden their own vocabulary Especially, for young learners who are at the beginning level of language learning, vocabulary will go hand in hand with them in the long journey of their language development Insufficient vocabulary may become a long-term trouble In fact, to learn English vocabulary, memorization is very important for the learners In mastering English vocabulary, the students do not only need to learn a lot of English words but also to remember them (Thornbury, 2002: 23) Accordingly, low proficiency makes students find a difficult in acquiring the language knowledge and taking part in class activities It is clear that they could not communicate well because they lack words they need
As the importance of mastering vocabulary is obvious, the teaching of vocabulary should always receive high attention However, the traditional vocabulary teaching techniques in such a way as presenting new words on blackboard together with its phonics, meaning and requiring students to learn long word lists are still kept in many language classrooms, which lead to the inefficiency of vocabulary retention, especially to young learners How words should be learnt attracts a lot of discussion from many influential experts They have suggested different ways to increase a learner‟s vocabulary which is considered as a key aspect of learning a language There are some learning techniques that are proven effective such as extensive reading, contextualized word study, using games and visual aids, incidental learning of vocabulary and so on Each of these ways has its own advantages and disadvantages One of the techniques is using flashcards in teaching and learning vocabulary which increasingly draws plenty of attention from researchers Among them, Nation and Meara (2002) suggested that flashcards should have an important place in language learning With advances in flashcard technology, this learning material has become much more powerful than ever before; that is the reason why teachers can make use of it to bring students success of learning a foreign language
This study aims to help the young learner to be more successful in English vocabulary retention and to investigate teachers‟ perceptions towards using flashcards to teach vocabulary Hence, conducting a study utilizing action research could be the suitable strategy in the context when the teacher in the study was also the researcher to examine the classroom setting, to perform the teaching technique in a particular class as well as to identify solutions for problems arising in teaching and learning English For these purposes, it is urgent for me to do an action research on the topic, “Using flashcards to teach vocabulary for young learners at an English center in Quy Nhon”.
Research aims and objectives
The research is to provide a suggested technique in teaching English vocabulary in an English center in Quy Nhon to make students more interested in the lesson as well as to master learned knowledge of that lesson in an effective way The major aims of the study are to point out teachers‟ attitudes towards teaching vocabulary by using flashcards and to improve young learners‟ vocabulary retention at an English center in Quy Nhon through using flashcards
To be more specific for the aim of the research, this study has been carried out to explore:
- To investigate teachers‟ perceptions of teaching vocabulary through using flashcards
- To investigate the extent to which flashcards can improve young learners‟ vocabulary retention.
Research questions
In an attempt to achieve the above-presented aims, the study seeks to answer the following research questions:
1 What are the teachers‟ perceptions towards teaching vocabulary by using flashcards?
2 To what extent do flashcards improve young learners‟ vocabulary retention?
Scope of the study
The research concentrates on investigating how utilizing flashcards improves young learners‟ vocabulary retention Due to time constraints and the length of the study, it has the participation of fifteen students from ten to twelve and five English teachers at IALC English center in Quy Nhon The study was conducted in eight weeks Furthermore the study was to investigate attitudes of teachers towards using flashcards and to measure students‟ ability of remembering word meaning, word spelling and word pronunciation when using flashcards Other aspect of vocabulary such as: grammar, collocation were not taken into consideration in the research The course book which the researcher used in this action research was “Everybody Up 4” Textbook, published by Oxford University Press.
Significance of the study
It is hoped that this study may provide some insights in both theoretical and practical significance In term of the theory, the study could contribute to the general theory of vocabulary and vocabulary retention improvement techniques to help pupils remember and recall vocabulary better and for a longer time Practically, the study will help to improve teachers‟ teaching practices to enhance young learners‟ vocabulary retention Furthermore, teachers can drill and perform the new words to young learners basing on the advantages and positive effectiveness of flashcards.
Design of the study
The thesis consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope and the design of the study
Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents theories related to vocabulary and flashcards Previous studies on flashcards are also reviewed
Chapter 3, Methodology, presents the research methods, the setting of the study, the participants, the research data and the research procedures
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, presents the findings of the study and some explanations, and comments on these findings
Chapter 5, Conclusion, provides the pedagogical implications, some limitations of the study and suggestions for future study
LITERATURE REVIEW
Vocabulary
There are many definitions of vocabulary in existence Vocabulary is the key of the language McCarthy (1990: 32) defined vocabulary is the word in a specific language or freestanding items of language that have meaning According to Richard (2001:4), one of the first things applied linguistics focused on was vocabulary, which is one of the most visible components of language Instead of thinking that vocabulary is taught, it can be presented, explained, used in a variety of activities, but it must be learned by the individual (Rivers, 1981) Another way of defining vocabulary, Ur (1998) wrote that the words we teach in the foreign language can be considered as vocabulary Actually, vocabulary are not only the words of a language including single items and phrases but also chunks of several words which express a concepts meaningfully in the way any individual word could
It is clear that learning vocabulary is important to language learners because they surely need enough words in their target language to communicate efficiently
In vocabulary learning, the words to be learned can be classified into two categories which are content words and function words Content words carry a lexical meaning, and function words cover grammatical meaning In language, to understand functions of words students can arrange words in a correct sentence and analyze the sentence (Cameron, 2001: 82) Based on the meaning of words, content words are the word classes of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs In teaching content words, the teacher can explain the words and their meanings in a direct and explicit way (Cameron, 2001: 82)
On the other hand, function words are the classes of articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns In teaching function words, the teacher teaches words incidentally and uses them continuously in a range of different discourse contexts (Cameron, 2001)
However, according to Nation (2001: 78), groups of English vocabulary have been categorized by frequency of overall occurrence in order to determine which words are most necessary for students to learn There are two common divisions: high-frequency words and low-frequency words High-frequency words which, include function words and content words, account for a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and written texts and occur in all kinds of uses of the language Low-frequency words cover over 5 percent of the words in an academic text In fact, English students try their best to master a large amount of vocabulary Based on the learners‟ English level and the discussed issue, vocabulary and its compounds and idioms focused in the present study will be chosen basing on frequency and usefulness to the need of the learners
Learners acquire vocabulary in various ways Students are exposed to a lot of new vocabulary during lessons by the teacher, by texts or other materials they work with A lot of this vocabulary is automatically absorbed (Harmer, 2002) Various techniques and activities are aimed directly at learning vocabulary, which is usually put into sets of somehow related words, often by topics or meaning
The first stage of teaching vocabulary is presentation Pre-teaching activities often activate students' attention and desire to explore a particular topics or subjects in detail within the lessons
The second stage of teaching vocabulary is comprehension Both McCarthy (1992) and Thornbury (2004) stated that there are two general possibilities of engaging vocabulary presentation In this stage, the form is introduced first, followed by illustration to make the word‟s meaning clear to learners It is important that forms are often presented with the text or other forms of contexts and students are encouraged to explore meanings and other aspects of words themselves Moreover, there are many possibilities how to explain or give the meaning of the words To make words easy to understand for the learners requires teacher‟s skills and hard work It is necessary to mention that there are various techniques, but the teacher plays a significant role to make their lessons successful
The third stage is practice Learners should be provided with plenty opportunities to practice the newly-learnt language content because it is crucial for successful remembering This is done by various forms of practice activities Mechanical practice is usually applied in the forms of oral repetition (Thornbury, 2004) Furthermore, he emphasized that it is necessary to link new word items into learners‟ existing knowledge This step is done by types of activities, where students make judgments about words, such as matching, comparing, filling in the blank and so on
The last stage is revision After the teachers have finished introducing new word items, they should ask students to review the previous language content The aim of this activity is to know whether the students really understand language content that they have been learned previously or not
Following these strategies is important to teach second language vocabulary both to adults and young learners However, the procedure is not fixed and not the only choice, the teacher can modify these stages for smarter learning activities in their own situations
Commonly, there are many techniques concerning the teaching of vocabulary There are a few aspects necessary to remember if English teachers want to present a new vocabulary or lexical items to their students successfully
In these techniques, Gairns and Redman (1986) mentioned some visual forms such as realia (real objects), picture, and mime or gesture Realia means using a variety of real objects so that the students can remember the written materials related to the lessons The objects can be shown in connection with specific words found in the lessons Mime or gesture is useful if it emphasizes the importance of gestures and facial expression on communication (Klippel,
1994) Learners can remember their learning material with the help of visual aids (Zebrowska, 1975); however, it is not easy to use this technique if the words have an abstract meaning, for example, happiness
This technique can be divided into four categories, namely, definitions and illustrative sentences, synonyms and antonyms, explanation, translation (Mendez and Rodriguez,1999)
Definition and illustration sentences: with this technique the English teachers are expected to introduce a word in English through the use of other simple words in the same language
Synonyms and antonyms: they are especially important in building new vocabulary because learners are able to know some lexical items based on their own meaning features Synonyms are words that have the same meaning as the unknown in a given context There may be written-related signals that identify the presence of synonyms for the readers They could be commas, dashes, and colons Meanwhile, antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning of the unknown word in a given context Signals such as instead, although, but, yet, and however can help leaners make sense of the unknown words
Explanation: This technique explains the meaning and the use of a foreign word in the foreign language itself In this case, the language used should be as meaningful simple as possible
Translation: Second language (L2) is overwhelmingly used to express first language (L1) in every language activity Learners tend to compare L1 and L2 in different aspects Contrastive linguistics stated that this technique is not a good way to learn an L2 communicatively because it has many drawbacks
Flashcards
There are some definitions about flashcards According to Harmer
(2002), flashcards are the tool which the teacher can hold up for the students to see A flashcard is made of a little piece of heavy paper with some typical sizes All flashcards bear language content related to the learning lessons On one side is a new word in the target language that needs remembering; the other side may include L1 translations, examples, drawings, L2 synonyms or any content helping learners remember the words in the target side Flashcards may have different colors Colors may make flashcards more interesting to learn with, so color pens and papers should be used for more interesting flashcards To avoid learning monotonously, teachers and students can use various shapes of flashcards Flashcards become a learning aid to help students learn vocabulary visually and actively so try to make them beautiful
In classroom, teachers can use flashcards to introduce new lexical items and develop different activities to help students remember those words To make sure that everyone can see the letters on the card, teacher‟s flashcards are made large enough so teachers can interact with students at different seats in large classes For students, they can make themselves sets of flashcards to learn and revise their words with Students should follow teacher‟s advice on size (it can be smaller than teacher‟s flashcard so students can bring them along easily), a number of flashcards in a set, how to use flashcards to learn and revise their words or spaced repetition
In Longman Dictionary (1985:107), in language teaching, flashcards are cards holding words, sentences, or images It is used in a language class as an assist It can be concluded from these definitions that flashcards are cards with a word or words, or a sentence, or a picture on it used to learn and to remember vocabulary There are two kinds of flashcards: picture flashcards and word flashcards (Haycraft, 1978)
According to Wright & Haleem (1991:50), picture flashcards are cards with pictures printed or drawn on having 15x20 cm They should be small enough for the users to easily handle and big enough for the whole class to see clearly The teachers can prepare them in free time at home Advantages of picture flashcards are the attractiveness and colorfulness with details which blackboard pictures do not have Picture flashcards are useful for presenting, practicing and revising vocabulary of lessons
Bowen (1982) described word flashcards, which are cards containing written words, may be "flashed" by the instructor in front of the class The height and width of a word flashcard are around 8cm and 10cm, respectively, while its length depends on the size of the class They may be used to represent words or structures
Flashcards are slowly shown in the stage of introduction of new lexical items, but in memory-checking stages, flashcards should be swapped at the speed of one flashcard per second, from back to front Students can use flashcards to learn their words in classroom or learn with their friends informally Working creatively is better for the brain In other words, teachers should help students keep their right and left brains balanced by asking them to prepare themselves sets of flashcards Blank flashcards should be available just in case an unknown word appears and it deserves learning Once flashcards are at hand, learners have more opportunities to upgrade their word stock with their readily-made flashcards
To enhance vocabulary memory with flashcards in practice stage, students should look at the new word on the first side and quickly try to relate the words in definition, first language equivalents, examples, synonyms and so on Any word should be learned in meaningful ways After that step, turn the card over and see whether words are memorized correctly Words identified correctly are put in a new stack and unidentified words are put back in the old stack to learn again until all words in the learning session are memorized When all words are identified correctly, the flashcards with all identified words are put into a set for future use The number of words used per lesson should be around 7 (Miller, 1955), so students can work well over a long period of time Over time, going through this set of flashcards again should be carried out because long term memory needs time and revision to remember new things Teacher should make students know that revisiting the flashcards is an important point
In many researches, flashcard-based learning may facilitate learning new vocabulary sets and should go hand in hand with meaning-focused activities Researchers also agreed that it should have a place in L2 vocabulary instruction (Nation & Webb, 2011) Given the effectiveness and popularity of flashcard-based learning and teaching, it is necessary to examine the reasons flashcard-integrated activities can optimize effects of vocabulary retention
Firstly, flashcard learning is a kind of pair learning and it has also been used in teaching English as second language (Hart, 1982) L2 vocabulary should be taught and learnt in meaningful contexts Pair learning techniques may be as effective as or more effective than vocabulary learning from context (Webb, 2007) because in a pair learning tasks, large numbers of words can be learnt in a quite short time (Nation, 1980) There is the second reason that wordlists are quite popular in language curricula Unfortunately, some researchers indicate that working with flashcards help learners in acquiring vocabulary more effectively than word lists (Schmitt & Schmitt,
1995) Even though learning wordlists intentionally is better than learning vocabulary incidentally Learners often spend a lot of time trying to remember an available wordlist which they write in their notebooks In the SLA setting of Vietnam, it is not difficult to meet wordlist in language lessons as L2 teachers and learners believe that wordlists can increase vocabulary quickly (Nation, 1980) Oxford and Crookall (1990) noted that word lists with mother-tongue translation, are not very useful because learners might not be able to utilize these new words in a communicative way without any support
To overcome the shortcoming, teachers should be encouraged to make full use of flashcards for their language lessons because recent studies have also suggested that flashcard-based learning help transfer to normal language use and is a useful learning activity (Elgort, 2011)
Secondly, the increasing popularity of using flashcard-based learning brings effectiveness This techniques of learning and teaching is still bound because students and teachers failed to determine the block size (number of words learnt at once), retrieval format (practically-used flashcard to recall words), spaced repetition (period of time to repeat learning words), and feedback timing (frequency and times to give feedback in flashcard-based instructions)
To optimize the usefulness of the technique, teachers and learners should raise their awareness on these mentioned aspects related to flashcard use
2.2.4 Flashcard as a language teaching and learning tool
There are many types of materials that can support teachers in language classrooms; however, teachers need to be flexible in using sources of teaching tools based on different learners Brown (1994) confirmed that “much of the richness of language instruction is derived from supporting materials” Adult learners can interact with many learning resources, and the text-based materials are considered more effective for them while it is less effective for young learners due to their age (Moon, 2006)
As mentioned above, it is noted that the motivation of students is of great importance Thus, teachers should apply various teaching techniques to motivate students Shaaban (2001) agreed that young children need to have a non- anxiety learning environment In fact, young children love to play and they will learn effectively when they are having fun (Scott & Lisbeth, 1990) From this point of view, flashcards should be used in young learners‟ English classrooms because they can be suitable to learning characteristics of young learners
In SLA, flashcards are not only enjoyable but also effective The reason why English flashcards are used so successfully is that they are a very simple and enjoyable way to memorize both vocabulary and other language aspects Both children and adults alike benefits from using flashcards to learn Although flashcards can be used for both children and adults, they have primarily been used for teaching children Children are not very good at learning attentively for a long time, but they learn better when playing or making something Learning with flashcards gives the students the feeling of learning to play games and playing to learn as students can feel studying as easy as playing a game or making a simple craftwork Children generally find it easier to associate learning materials visually with words and this is why many of the flashcards we will encounter with feature word related pictures
Young learners
Most discussion about age and acquisition focus on the question of whether there is a critical period for language acquisition The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) claims that there is a biological timetable CPH is believed the notion that language is best learned in the early years of the childhood
After this time span, further language acquisition gets more difficult However, in the study of Snow and Hoefnagel-Hoehle (1982), the results failed to support the CPH According to them, the fastest second language acquisition occurred in subjects aged 12 to 15 years, and the slowest occurred in subjects aged 3 to 5 years To some extent, adolescents are often the most successful language learners; however, there are still some features that should be taken into consideration such as learning goal, language content, experience, social environment and so on Basically, there is a common assumption that to master a language, learners might have some other characteristics and age is one of those
At different ages, learners may have very different language learning characteristics Harmer (2007) mentioned that linguists have divided English learners into groups such as young children, adolescences and adults He emphasized that learners have different needs in language learning Of course, reasons to attend language classes vary It is positive that students want to learn to communicate in the target language or to cram for their exam Students in Vietnam often take English as a compulsory subject in their exams so language lessons need to be modified to meet their demands There is also another group of students who learn English because they think it is useful for their future because workforce market becomes more and more competitive Adult learners usually have a clearer and greater target of learning languages, for instance, the ability of producing good communication, improvement in reading comprehension or writing skill Adult learners have disadvantages in their age, but they have advantages in life experience For young learners, they have a variety of aims to learn and they have more time to realize their aims Knowing what learners want to learn is necessary for teachers to enhance the teaching efficiency; especially in the times of industrial revolution 4.0 learning and teaching are changing dramatically
It‟s most difficult to teach young children languages although it doesn‟t require that the teacher has much rather knowledge but experience (Harmer,
2007) When working with children, teachers should find out their young learners‟ needs, their language learning characteristics, what they want in their language lessons, what can motivate them and so on Understanding young learners clearly will help teachers define appropriate teaching approaches for boosting the teaching and learning effects (Moon, 2000) A very essential question is raised: “who can be regarded as young learners?”
Harmer (2007) gave the definition of young children as “those up to the ages of nine or ten” while in Thornbury‟s view (2006) “young learners” tells about children at pre-primary school and primary school age or even sometimes including adolescents He explained that in some countries, young learners learn English to prepare for their secondary school but there is a trend that young learners are taught English sooner and sooner, even at pre-primary school Scrivener (2011) also showed that in many countries, young learners are students at low ages In many parts of the world, including Vietnam, young learners can be students at kindergartens which provide their students with language classes Starting to learn a language early will help children acquire the new language better because they have more years to experience and develop their language skills Many people think that it is better for children, but the results are hard to prove now However, it is a trend Although many researches appreciate effectiveness of teaching young learners English in the early stage of life, some researchers showed concern of the disadvantages of this phenomenon (Thornbury, 2006)
Brown (1994) suggested five characteristics of young learners, namely, intellectual development, attention span, sensory input, affective factors, and authentic meaningful language In SLA, both students and teachers will benefit from successful application of these five aspects
The critical period hypothesis (CPH) agreed that the young children can acquire knowledge “quickly” and “naturally” only at a certain age and this capability may decrease gradually However, that idea may not be true anymore because there is evidence that the older learners sometimes had better language acquisition than the younger ones, which depends on specific learning contexts as well as learners‟ abilities (Harmer, 2007) Moreover, adult learners may get a better word retention than young ones thanks to their mental ability Children can be excellent language students but only being compared to friends at the same age, not being compared to adult learners
If adults are aware of the language they are learning, they have very good learning behaviors so they can make facilitate their learning and set obtainable language goals In contrast, young learners have lower awareness to language learning They only pay attention to what makes them excited (Moon, 2006), but only for short time spans Harmer (2007) mentioned the limited span of attention of young learners, even though they are so excited with the activities, they easily get bored after a very short time and the different ages may have different attention span Benjamin (2002) wrote that it is common for students to pay careful attention to the lecture for around 10 minutes before they begin to lose interest In many other researches, researchers shared similar ideas Typically, the eighth edition of McKeachie‟s Teaching Tips (1986) pointed out that the attention of students was about 10 minutes and it decreased after that point For children, they were believed that their attention span used to be very short (Scott & Lisbeth, 1990) It is young learners‟ attention span that makes it easy to get bored with the lesson in the classroom because the longer the lessons, the poorer the retention McLeish
(1968) discussed that students listening to the first 15 minutes of a lecture retained approximately 41% of the material, students listening to a 30-minute lecture retained 25%, and those listening to a 40-minute one retained only 20% of the material The ability to retain lecture content decreased significantly if children had to work with longer lessons Sharing the ideas, teachers must do as much as possible to increase students‟ ability to pay attention to lessons as well as try to understand what students are really thinking about during a language class (Wilson & Korn, 2007) In some situations, children can spend a long period of time on the activities that interest them more, for instance, a child can watch his favorite cartoons on TV for during
2 or 3 hours without complaining tiredness or not agreeing to stop Accordingly, a young learners‟ lesson needs to be accompanied by lots of attractive activities due to their short span of attention (Scott & Lisbeth, 1990)
Brown (1994) mentioned five senses of interest stimulating young learners in language learning Physical activities give them chances to play with language Projects and hands-on activities get them learning when practicing words and structures Sensory aids, including visual aids such as pictures, videos and so on help students internalize concepts and non-verbal language allows students to imitate actions and remember words better
Among these five elements, he emphasized visual aids play a vital role in young learners‟ language teaching Whereas adult learners can mainly understand through instruction and explanation, young learners may, too However, it is necessary to notice that young learners are crucially interested in seeing, hearing, touching, or interacting with what they hear from teachers (Harmer, 2007) In addition, young learners often uncomfortable with abstract concepts so they find it more difficult to learn grammar or some abstract vocabularies Ur (2012) also advised teachers to give students tasks which help them learn vocabulary implicitly and avoid unclear explanation
According to Brown (2001) “children still have many inhibitions in learning English even though they are often innovative in language form It can make them reluctant to use the language communication.” (p 89) Children are often innovative They are extremely sensitive Therefore, the English teachers should help their students to laugh with (not laugh at) each other at various mistakes that they all make, be patient and supportive to build self esteem, be firm, and get as much oral participation as possible from students
Brown (2001:90) stated that “children are focused on the real purposes of the language for the here and now, so they are less willing to deal with language that is not useful.” Vocabulary sets that are close to real life will create a context in which language can be used to improve children‟s‟ attention
In short, it is crucial to explore young learners‟ characteristics to help the teachers design suitable activities in language classes The next section would present a type of research methodology that was used in the study – Action research.
Action research
Action research in language teaching has traditionally been known as one of the tools to investigate or explore a teacher‟s own teaching contexts in order to find out the solutions to them and bring about changes, even better, improvements in practice It is increasingly becoming one of the ways for school reform as its individual focus allows for a new engagement in educational changes
There are several theories of action research Harmer (2002) stated that action research refers to series of procedures that teachers can engage in their classroom either because they wish to improve aspect of their teaching or because they wish to evaluate the success and or appropriateness of certain activities and procedures
Watts (1985:118) defines action research as “a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research” This is to say that action research mainly refers to a disciplined inquiry performed by the teacher with the goal that the research will bring some information and change in his/her future practices This kind of research is handled in the context of the teachers‟ environment, that is, with the students and at the institution where the teacher works - on questions that deal with educational matters at hand
Carr and Kemmis (1986:162) defines that “Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out”
The model by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) is probably regarded the most popular one (see Figure 2.1)
Figure 3.1 Action research model based on Kemmis and McTaggart (1988)
The action research process has four steps as below:
- Planning: identifying a problem and developing a plan of action in order to bring improvements in a certain area of the research context
- Action: this stage includes some deliberate interventions into one‟s teaching situation that one put into action over a set period of time
- Observation: This phase involves the teacher in observing systematically the effects of the action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those involved It is the data collection phase where the researcher uses different tools to collect information
- Reflection: At this point, the teacher reflects, evaluates and describes the effects of the action in order to make sense of what has happened and to understand the issue more clearly
This action research aims to show the effects flashcards on the students‟ vocabulary retention In the process, the researcher worked together with the students to identify and investigate the problem which occurs in the vocabulary learning Then, the researcher applied the suitable solution that is using flashcards in vocabulary lessons to solve the problem, carried out the action in the class, and finally, analyzed and discussed the effects of this visual aid on the students‟ vocabulary retention
In this study, action research was chosen because it was conducted with a view of a teacher rather than a researcher, therefore, real solutions and evaluations are adopted It means that action research could encourage teachers who have a desire to be more professional in their career to become an “explorer” or an “investigator” because it is so immediate to teaching contexts, which leads to positive alternatives and changes as well as shows them personal approaches to teaching
In general, action researches on flashcard have become popular trend that attracted a growing number of researchers The next section concentrates on a review of previous researches on the connection between flashcards and vocabulary retention.
Previous studies on the relationship between flashcards and vocabulary
Flashcards are excellent English teaching tool when teachers are introducing new vocabulary words and drill practice There have existed various international researches on teaching vocabulary to young learners by using flashcards to find out how effective this technique is
Firstly, a research named “Using flashcards to improve 7 th grade students’ vocabulary: A classroom action research in SMP Maria Immaculata Yogyakarta” was carried out by Yasinta (2006) The researcher desired to find out whether flashcards could attract young learners‟ attention to study in an easier way and give them motivation in learning Based on the results of the procedure, several conclusions were drawn Flashcards are hoped to support young learners make sense of difficult words easily by looking at them and make them feel enjoyable and excited at vocabulary learning Moreover, looking at flashcards related to the words made children able to memorize the words by singing along with looking at the flashcards, which gave them more chances to practice pronunciation and attract their curiosity in learning new vocabulary Also, it offered a set of advice for having an enjoyable class situation: teachers should choose suitable techniques and materials that met learners‟ needs, instructions should be given in a short and clear way and new words should be presented through flashcards to draw students‟ attention
A pre – experimental research is “The effectiveness of flashcards in teaching vocabulary for seventh grade students of smp wahidiyah kediri” by
Lathifah and Imam (2013) In this study, the researchers intended to find out the students‟ score of vocabulary learning achievement and whether teaching vocabulary by using flashcards will bring any effects To conduct the study, the researcher collected data from 34 students and employed the measurement technique to measure the learners‟ vocabulary acquisition through flashcards
In the procedure, two tests were taken The first one called pre - test was aimed to gather the data before the experiment was conducted while the second called post - test was to gather the data after the experiment The test contained 30 items and time allowed was 60 minutes In the tests, learners had to find the words by looking at the flashcards and getting the clues (letters presented in hyphen) with supported sentences The direct classroom observation technique was utilized to record the observable phenomena towards the object At the end of the experiment, the writer collected the data and analyzed it Based on the data, the study revealed that flashcards gave learners higher interest in vocabulary learning and promoted their ability of gaining the new words faster and memorizing the words in the long run Besides, when the teacher asked learners to touch flashcards like the teacher did, they expressed their enthusiasm From this, it is easy to see that they love doing enjoyable and challenging things and being involved in cheerful learning process
There are some more researches that related to using flashcards in teaching and learning A study suggests that using paper flashcards is one of the most efficient means of deliberate vocabulary study techniques available (Elgort, 2010) Paired-associate vocabulary learning has long been considered a valuable method to quickly learn large amounts of second language meaning-form relationships The finding is the same idea with Altiner (2011) who also found the positive effect of using flashcard-based instruction on vocabulary learning Actually, lexical items learned with word cards, a type of intentional decontextualized study, are accessed in a similar manner as items already acquired This suggests that deliberate decontextualized vocabulary learning is, psychologically, an effective learning method Another study that was in line with this finding was Lin-Fang's (2013) which found using flashcard-based instruction as one of the most important factors of affecting vocabulary learning The last study which had the same result was Sinaei and Asadi (2014), in that study the positive effect of using flashcard-based instruction on vocabulary learning among elementary and intermediate learners of English has been proved
Komachali and Khodareza (2012) investigated the effects of using paperbased flashcards on Iranian EFL pre-university students‟ vocabulary knowledge The results indicated that the use of flashcards significantly helped the students‟ vocabulary growth, compared to traditional vocabulary instruction without such aids In the time if technology development, Quizlet, an online flashcard app, was found to be more effective than using paper flashcards at improving vocabulary test scores (Imrie, 2014)
In Vietnam, it was quite difficult to look for the studies related to the topic of using flashcards in teaching in Vietnam After a long time searching, a related study which was found, namely “Using flashcards to teach vocabulary effectively in a primary school” by Nguyen (2017) She concluded that there was a different achievement on the experimental group and control group, which means, using flashcards to teach vocabulary can help students have better and longer memory of word items taught Moreover, students after attending a lesson with flashcards really wanted to have chance to learn with this technique
Besides, Nguyen Trong Quyet (2018) undertook the study “The effects of using flashcards in teaching vocabulary to young learners in large classes” The researchers pointed that the flashcards were an effective way of enabling the students to achieve greater progress in vocabulary learning in large class As a result, the majority of students consider flashcard-based instruction a useful and supportive method thanks to its positive effects on providing them with robust vocabulary competence and stress -free language learning lesson Also, on the ground of its own features flashcard-based instruction will effectively facilitate learners‟ lexical learning Along with the development of computer assisted language learning and teaching materials, students will increasingly benefit from language lessons integrated with flashcards
Another study “Using flashcards to teach English vocabulary for primary students” at Thanh Hoa university of City Education and Training
Office was conducted by Nguyen Thi Le Hang (2019) After receiving an eight-week treatment, most of the students showed more positive attitudes towards flashcard applications More importantly, the findings from post – data suggested that flashcards contribute to improving students‟ vocabulary retention and their attitudes toward vocabulary learning The writer also noted down some unanticipated problems during her treatment First, she could realize when working in the groups better students were dominant in the activities Second, a few students used the mother tongue to communicate in the flashcard activities The author also recommended good preparation and class organization to increase the success of using flashcards in the classroom
Hence, it can be concluded that various researches have been conducted to find out the effect of using flashcards in vocabulary learning However, there also exists the limitation of research Most of the researches in Vietnam mainly investigated whether teaching vocabulary by using flashcards will bring any effects with the use of experimental research or qualitative and quantitative research Besides, the subjects as students were generally focused to find out their attitudes about flashcards in learning but there has been few research about this topic reflecting teachers‟ perception Therefore, in this action research paper, the researcher has a desire to make these matters clearer on teachers at IALC center in Quy Nhon
In summary, this chapter has provided the theoretical background for the whole paper through providing definitions of key terms and significant background information on vocabulary learning and vocabulary retention Review on young learners and their characteristics in language classes has also been discussed Moreover, details about the use of flashcards as a tool of teaching vocabulary have also been demonstrated, which help readers be clear about the specific strategies in which flashcards have already been utilized among different ages and see how the technique could fit in the specific context of this study In order to justify the efficiency of the use of flashcards in vocabulary teaching, a study in the context of an English center in Quy Nhon has been conducted with the methodology, which is going to be discussed further in the next chapter
This chapter focused on the details of the practical action research, including research design, research context, data collection instruments, and data collection procedures
The research design of this study is action research which is a systematic inquiry conducted by researchers, principals, teachers or school counselors Within the context of using flashcards to develop the vocabulary retention for students at IALC center, conducting a study employing action research is an appropriate approach The researcher in this study is also the teacher at the English center; therefore, she can get directly involved in identifying and investigating the problem which occurs in the vocabulary learning Then, the researcher would apply the suitable solutions to solve the problems, carry out the action in the class, and finally, discuss the teachers‟ attitudes about teaching vocabulary through flashcards as well as analyze the effects of flashcards on the young learners‟ vocabulary retention Steps in this action research follows the model, including: planning the action, doing the action in the class, observing the planned action and reflecting the use of action done (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988)
The participants of this study are fifteen students from ten to twelve, consisting of nine girls and six boys One third of these students have been learning English at IALC center in Quy Nhon for at least two years but others have not Therefore, the fact is that several students will learn better than others because of having a long period of absorbing English At their age, grammar structures are presented in a simple way and the purpose of the center is to convey as many new words as possible, which creates materials for them to build meaningful sentences and express what they desire effectively The learners were selected because the fact that they have been in a non-native class and adapted the traditional methods, which could be the main reason leading to students‟ low efficiency in learning vocabulary The traditional ways of teaching vocabulary with some techniques are described as follows:
Drawing: Teachers can draw pictures on the board to give an explanation or a short example of the words
Choral repetition: The technique are commonly used of teachers
Students simply have to repeat words or phrases after the instructor
Mimes, Expressions and Gestures: The lessons can be demonstrated by using actions to perform the same or make the similar actions for students‟ responses or commands in the classroom
Translation: Teacher lectures on the board and students take down words and the meaning in notebook
Synonyms and antonyms: In stead of introducing the individual word, teachers can introduce fast and interesting vocabulary by using opposite and equivalent words to help students receive explanation
Explanation: Teachers explain the meaning and the use of a foreign word in the foreign language itself The language used are meaningful simple as possible
Objects: Teachers use a variety of realia, pictures so that the students can remember the written materials related to the lessons
During the time teaching at IALC center, the researcher realized that the students in non-native class are not lazy but they did not seem to be interested in learning new words Some children say they are shy when speaking a word out loud or feel bored when acquiring new items The traditional techniques of teaching flashcards could be the main reasons for causing unsuccessful teaching and degrade young learners‟ motivation in vocabulary learning As a result, new techniques to improve students vocabulary learning attracted a lot of attention to the teachers at the center A wide range of methods to teach new words were used Using flashcards combining with various activities was considered to be researched in order to find out whether it supports the students‟ vocabulary learning
All the teachers participated are four females and one male, they all aged from 25 to 32 have been teaching at IALC center for at least three years Four teachers graduated from English Department, Quy Nhon University and another teacher was trained at English Faculty, Danang - University of Foreign languages They are dynamic and willing to donate their time and energy to English teaching in general and vocabulary teaching in particular These teachers were chosen because they were interested in applying and have already used flashcards in the classroom