Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS an application of the lexical approach to teaching english for vocational purposes an action research project at food industrial college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---***--- NGUYỄN HOÀNG THU NGA AN APPLICATION OF THE LEXICAL

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

NGUYỄN HOÀNG THU NGA

AN APPLICATION OF THE LEXICAL APPROACH TO TEACHING

ENGLISH FOR VOCATIONAL PURPOSES:

AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT FOOD INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE

Áp dụng đường hướng từ vựng để dạy tiếng Anh phục vụ mục đích nghề nghiệp:

Một nghiên cứu cải tiến dạy học tại Trường Cao đẳng Công nghiệp Thực phẩm

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01

Hanoi, June 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

NGUYỄN HOÀNG THU NGA

AN APPLICATION OF THE LEXICAL APPROACH TO TEACHING

ENGLISH FOR VOCATIONAL PURPOSES:

AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT FOOD INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE

Áp dụng đường hướng từ vựng để dạy tiếng Anh phục vụ mục đích nghề nghiệp:

Một nghiên cứu cải tiến dạy học tại Trường Cao đẳng Công nghiệp Thực phẩm

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology

Supervisor : Assoc Prof Lê Văn Canh

Hanoi, June 2018

DECLARATION

An application of the Lexical approach to teaching English

for vocational purposes:

An action research project at Food Industrial College

-*** -

I certify that no part of the thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person‟s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my supervisor - Assoc Prof Le Van Canh for his

help, willingness, patience and valuable advice through the whole work on

my master thesis I would also like to thank all the students who were willing

to patiently cooperate and participate in my research project

Nguyen Hoang Thu Nga

ABSTRACT

This master thesis examines the application of the Lexical Approach and its implications in teaching English at Food Industrial College (FIC) The aim of the study is to explore the effect of the use of the Lexical Approach (as defined by M

Lewis) on vocational students‟ English proficiency for their future use of English in the workplace

The theoretical part mentioned above is expected to bring a general view for English learners to know more about the Lexical Approach in studying English The implications of the Lexical Approach in teaching English plays an important role in linguistic studies in general and in English teaching method in particular It enriches the knowledge of Vietnamese learners in language as well as the experiences for learning vocabulary

Keywords: activities, Lexical Approach, vocabulary, vocational English

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the study 1

1.3 Methodology 2

1.4 Scope of the study 2

1.5 Structure of the thesis 2

2 THE THEORETICAL PART 3

2.1 English for Vocational Purposes 3

2.1.1 What is English for Vocational Purposes? 3

2.2 The Lexical Approach 3

2.2.1 What is the Lexical Approach? 3

2.2.2 Features of the Lexical Approach 5

2.2.3 Research on the benefits of lexical approach to students’ proficiency 7

2.2.4 Implications for Teaching 8

2.3 Implementing lexis in the class of FIC 10

2.4 Activities and Exercises 14

2.5 Materials 16

3 THE PRACTICAL PART 17

3.1 The learners 17

3.1.1 Characterization of the learners 17

3.1.2 The students as English language learners 18

3.2 Testing the progress 18

3.3 Teaching plan 19

3.4 Evaluation of the sources 33

3.4.1 Pedagogical journal 33

3.4.2 Output of the learners 35

3.4.3 Pre-test and post-test 36

4 CONCLUSION 41

5 REFERENCES 43

6 APPENDICES 45

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Our society is changing day by day Exchange and learning each other languages are important needs of human beings In order to satisfy this demand we have to study foreign language There are thousands of different languages for us to choose, but the most popular language nowadays is English As it appears every corner all over the world from urban to rural; from power countries to poor countries… English helps to bring together people from many different cultures

Being aware of the importance of English, Food Industrial College (FIC) focuses on teaching English for students However, many students find it very difficult to study and communicate in English due to insufficient vocabulary As we know, vocabulary is central to English language teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understand others or express their own ideas In second language acquisition, over the past few years, the Lexical Approach has generated great interest as an alternative to traditional grammar-based teaching methods to teach vocabulary, but has never been used in the teaching of English for vocational purposes Since then, this study tries to explore how the Lexical Approach could be implemented in the English lessons The hypothesis is that students who are taught English applying the Lexical Approach are able to acquire lexical items more easily and remember them for a longer time

Therefore, applying the Lexical Approach to teaching English, especially English for vocational purposes is a useful way to help students to enlarge vocabulary, improve their English proficiency for their future use of English at work

1.2 Aims of the study

This study aims at exploring the effect of the use of the Lexical Approach on vocational students‟ English proficiency for their future use of English in the workplace

1.3 Methodology

In order to achieve the aim of the study, an action research approach was adopted This is because action research helps teachers to work on a specific issue

in their own classroom In this study, the research question is:

How to improve vocational students’ English proficiency so that they can use English for their future vocational purposes?

One hypothetical solution is that students‟ poor English proficiency is due to their lexical deficiency In order to address this issue, the use of lexical approach may be a solution

1.4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the effectiveness of piloting the Lexical Approach to improve the English proficiency of 25 second - year students in Food Industrial College The plan of this study can be used as an immediate solution to current students' problem in learning their essential vocabularies This study also gives some strategies with the aim of facilitating long term retention of vocabularies for students

1.5 Structure of the thesis

So as to reach the above aims, the thesis is divided into the following parts:

2 THE THEORETICAL PART

2.1 English for Vocational Purposes

2.1.1 What is English for Vocational Purposes?

English for vocational purposes (EVP), under the umbrella of English for specific purposes (ESP), has gained its prominence because more and more English language programs are geared for those who would like to learn English, which is relevant to their vocations The overarching goal of ESP instruction is to help specialist learners function well in workplaces or vocational higher education settings where English serves as a medium of communication

According to Basturkmen‟s (2010) ESP Branches, the one area of ESP, which remains rarely explored in the ESP literature, is English for Vocational Purposes (EVP) or Vocational English (VE), though some studies have reported vocationally-oriented language learning (hereafter VOLL) or VE programs (see Black & Yasukawa, 2012; Platt, 1996; Vogt &Kantelinen, 2013; Widodo, 2015) In these studies, English language programs are contextualized within the process of learning vocational competencies, and English language skills are viewed as social practices and specific disciplines as dynamic because the actual use of the language happens in authentic environments, in which students engage (Platt, 1996) In other words, the emphasis is on using the language to learn or make sense of vocational content In addition, vocational socialization (inducting learners into the culture of their chosen vocations or disciplines) and literacies (language as dynamic social practice) are key components of VOLL

2.2 The Lexical Approach

This chapter introduces the basis of the Lexical Approach and also how this

particular approach can be implemented in the English language lessons

2.2.1 What is the Lexical Approach?

A lexical approach to teaching means the primary focus is on helping students acquire vocabulary This movement away from a grammar-based syllabus

largely began in 1993 with the publication of “The Lexical Approach” by Michael

Lewis It was called an approach to differentiate it from a method In English language teaching, methods are systems for structuring lessons while approaches are less concerned with how the lesson is structured and more concerned with the general focus of instruction Teachers should be aware of this as there is some reluctance to adopt a more lexical approach because of the fear that it may mean revamping the way one teaches In reality, teachers can use any methodology with a lexical approach from grammar translation to task-based learning What changes is just the linguistic focus of the lesson While one might think the paradigm shift was away from teaching grammar structures towards teaching individual words, the linguistic focus of the lexical approach is really in between grammar and what we traditionally think of as vocabulary What it focuses on are structures made up of words, meaning that the actual paradigm shift was away from individual words to clusters of words, or lexical chunks as they are commonly referred to This new idea about the structural nature of the language does not exclude grammatical structures but instead recognizes that the language has far more structures than those that occur in the grammatical syllabus Consider the statement below:

The Lexical Approach is based on the idea that language is made up of other structural elements besides what we traditionally think of as grammar

In that statement, there are two distinct structures:

“X is based on the idea/belief/premise that + clause”

“X is made up of Y”

Both of these structures occur fairly frequently in the language with different variables Yet neither one would be found in a grammar book In his book, Michael Lewis suggested that teachers need to help students become aware of the lexical structures that commonly occur in the language The idea is that if students become aware of some of the many lexical structures, they will have a lot more information about how to combine individual words to build coherent structures like phrases, expressions and whole sentences, which should ultimately emulate those used by

native speakers Many teachers have noticed that it is no use of grammar which separates higher level students from native speakers – often the student‟s grammar will be better than a native speaker‟s – but the way words are combined into lexical chunks

2.2.2 Features of the Lexical Approach

The Lexical Approach

is based on the

idea

that

language is made up of other structural elements besides what we traditionally think of

as grammar

notion premise assumption belief

Noun/

Noun phrase + is based on the + abstract noun + that + clause

Using the Lexical Approach requires the investigation of spoken and written language in order to notice structures which are often ignored because they do not fall into the categories determined by the traditional understanding of grammar

Outlining the form of these structures (see example above), helps students acquire and use the structures and trains them to recognize other ones The idea is not so much that students remember the structure of various lexical chunks, for there are far too many to remember, but that they become aware of the structural nature of the language beyond the traditional grammar structures Once they have some awareness of how language is chunked together, they are more likely to notice the how a particular lexical chunk is structured and that dissection process is a step not only towards retaining that structure but also other structures like it

As mentioned earlier, the Lexical Approach focuses not on individual words but on clusters or chunks of words Part of the reason for this is that individual words, particularly many of those, which are high in frequency, can change meaning depending on the other words they are chunked together with The five sentences below indicate how the word “go” can change depending on the words it

is associated with

Can we go any faster?

Can you help me get my car going?

There's only a week to go until I get my exam results

I think I heard the doorbell go just now

I'll put it all away if you tell me where everything goes

The Lexical Approach consists of three main types of chunks:

Types of Chunks

Collocations: Words of the four main parts of speech which go together, usually, but not always, two words

Fixed expressions: Expressions which cannot be changed or can

only be changed minimally Most fixed expressions are idiomatic or are those used in polite speech (e.g., How‟s it going?)

Semi-fixed expressions: Expressions which have at least one slot

into which a number of different words or phrases can be inserted

Below those are examples of how two semi-fixed expressions can be broken down and expanded:

Collocations: Go on, come first, do homework…

Fixed expressions: All of a sudden, on the other hand, out of the blue…

Semi-fixed expressions: You know I…, Have you taken into account…

You know I

like

you

love adore care about miss

Slot-fillers Slot-fillers

According to many studies, learners tend to notice and remember words in chunks, particularly the ones which they consciously or unconsciously recognize as variable (semi-fixed expressions) because they can perceive that by changing the slot-filler, they can use the expression in many ways (it‟s “highly generative”)

Imagine a learner sitting at the dinner table and he/she hears the following:

“Would you please pass the sugar?”

“Would you please pass the butter?”

“Would you please pass the soup?”

“Would you please pass the ketchup?”

The learner will store the fixed part of the expression, “Would you please pass the _?” because their brain recognizes it as a structure which can be varied and applied in different situations to achieve a communicative end Likewise in this popular song, the third line would be the most easily acquired by a learner because of its generative value, i.e., it can be used in a variety of ways (with different names)

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear Mary

Happy birthday to you

2.2.3 Research on the benefits of lexical approach to students’ proficiency

There have been many attempts done by researchers concerning the relationship between lexical chunks and EFL learner‟s proficiency What is meant

by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) is a traditional term for the use or study of the English language by non-native speakers in countries where English is generally not a local medium of communication (Crystal, 2003, p 256) Starting with Erman and Warren (2000) who investigated written discourse finding that lexical chunks constitute 52.3% In another study, Granger (1998, p 151) mentions that “learners use fewer lexical chunks than their native speaker counterparts” Haswell (1991) stated that: in order to be a successful academic writer, an L2 learner is required to master the use of lexical chunks

On the contrary, the absence of such lexical chunks is a characteristic of novice writers Many other linguists have conducted experiments on the effect of lexical chunks on writing proficiency For example, Nattinger and Decarrico (1992) did an experiment to examine the ways that lexical chunks are organized in written discourse They concluded that the input of these lexical chunks can help EFL learners to express themselves well in the writing In another study, Ilyas and Salih (2011) investigated experimentally the effect of lexical chunks on the achievement

of second-year-university students of English in composition writing They found that the lexical chunks were beneficial to the second-year students Finally, Snellings, Van Gelderen, and de Glopper (2004) found out that lexical chunks have

a positive effect in improving narrative L2 writing

After all, all of these studies indicate, in a way or in another, to the importance of adopting the lexical chunks in developing writing skill And that the mastery of these chunks is crucial to create successful academic writers To date, to the researcher's knowledge, no study has investigated the impact of lexical chunks

on developing EFL learners skill in descriptive essay writing

2.2.4 Implications for Teaching

The average educated native speaker knows about 40,000 individual words and between 250,000 to 300,000 lexical chunks If you were to teach 10 items a lesson, five days a week, it would take about 120 years to teach them all! This calculation is based on the recommended number of new items that should be introduced in a lesson (10 –15) and does not even take into take into account the fact that studies have shown that a word (lexical item) must be encountered or used about seven times before it is acquired!

What should become obvious is that we cannot teach the bulk of the lexicon

Then how do language learners go from absolute beginners to native-speaker level

in a relatively short time, often in less than ten years? The answer is that most of the lexicon is not overtly taught but incidentally learned Learners are constantly acquiring new lexical items whenever they meet the language, be it listening to the

teacher talk in class, watching a film or using the internet Therefore, if the majority

of lexis is incidentally learned, we should be focusing not on the tiny portion of the lexicon that we can “teach” in the classroom but on strategies to make the acquisition of the bulk of the lexicon more effective How can we help students more easily acquire language during their exposure to it, both in the classroom and outside of it?

The most important learning strategy we can give students is just to train them to NOTICE lexical chunks during their exposure to language First we have to raise their awareness of the fact that language consists of lexical structures, then we need to define the main types of lexical structures (collocations, fixed and semi-fixed expressions) and finally we need to develop some activities that help them notice the lexical chunks in spoken and written texts

Once students have located the lexical chunks, they need to be analyzed so the learners can understand their construction, what they mean and how they are and might be used Again, in keeping with the idea that we are trying to give students strategies to notice and process new language, the purpose of analyzing the chunks is not so much so that students understand those particular chunks but, more generally, that they gain practice in doing this sort of processing with new language and they develop some global knowledge of lexical structuring To provide a simple example of this, if you have students find collocations in a text and then determine their structure, they will not only understand those collocations but they will be able

to make some basic generalizations about collocations Below are some collocations extracted from this paragraph:

As mentioned above, students not only become aware of the particular collocations but they should be able to make more general assumptions about lexical structures For example, two types of collocations seem to be most common

in the previous paragraph, adjective + noun and verb + noun One might conclude

that these are the most common types of collocation in English, but further

investigation of other texts would reveal that that might be true for adjective + noun collocations, but the frequency of verb + noun collocations is actually particular to

this type of text, i.e., one that gives instructions

The final step in the clarification stage with new lexical items is to illuminate the usage by supplying some slot-fillers This is a good thing to do for several reasons Firstly, it gives students multiple new lexical chunks rather than just one

Also, it emphasizes the structure by giving students other examples of it And finally, it gives students an idea of the generative value of the structure, i.e., all the different ways it can be used

gain

practice get

give provide

2.3 Implementing lexis in the class of FIC

At Food Industrial College (FIC), Grammar has been the focus of language

teaching for years In reality, we do not have to be grammatically correct to communicate effectively, but we need to be correct with our use of lexis According

to John Sinclair (1996):“A lexical mistake often causes misunderstanding, while a

grammar mistake rarely does” and Michael Lewis (1997): “However unpopular it

is with teachers, language which contains grammatical errors is unlikely to be

incomprehension, or in rare cases even offence, are quite likely Recognizing the lexical nature of language, and the centrality of lexis to the creation of meaning,

and consequently to communicative power, demotes grammar – and in particular, the often unnatural, inaccurate grammar of standard EFL – to a subsidiary role”

Grammar has been the basis of language teaching for so long because there are a limited number of essential structures and they can be quite easily graded and organized into a syllabus Therefore, most course books are based on a

grammatical syllabus

So how the lexis could be included to the English lessons? Lewis (1998) proposed several involving questions which should be considered by a teacher before entering a classroom:

1 Do you think your learners will learn most of their vocabulary in class or outside?

2 How will you use valuable class time to make learning vocabulary less daunting, more enjoyable and more efficient?

3 Will you concentrate on the quality or quantity of learners‟ lexicons?

4 What proportions of class time will you spend on vocabulary and grammar respectively?

5 How will you decide which lexical items deserve special attention in class?

6 How will you encourage learners to use their dictionary to help build their lexicon? What activities will you use to develop their dictionary skills?

7 How will you decide what items are worth recording in learners‟ notebooks?

8 Will you follow up what has been recorded in later lesson? How?

It is important to take into consideration not only what a teacher is going to teach, but also how, when, the reason and purpose of the lesson, with what

materials, etc (Lewis, 1998, pp 44-45) In addition to this, Ruth Gairns and Stuart

Redman suggest following, more specific, items which should be also taken into

account: frequency, cultural factors, need, level and expediency (1990, pp 58-64)

What is more, teacher‟s knowledge of the particular language as well as his or her knowledge of teaching, learning and interpersonal skills are equally crucial (Lewis,

1998, pp 44- 45)

Besides, speaking about the Lexical Approach, more time should be dedicated to multi-word items As for the amount of words the learners are supposed to master to be able to communicate at a decent level, it is approximately two thousand words However, it is important to add that if students are not given enough time to learn and practice so many items, they will never acquire those items properly Therefore, the Lexical Approach points out the importance of a good L1/L1 dictionaries and subsequent dictionary-based activities (Lewis, 1998,

pp 45-47)

In addition, Lewis as well as Woolard or Hill (in Lewis, 2000, p 43, 65) also

propose “the concept of a Lexical Notebook” (Lewis, 1998, p 49) instead of the

traditionally used vocabulary book where only individual words are kept This kind

of notebook should preferably include phrases, collocations and expressions (not the individual words) and those ought to be organized according to some sections, headings or topics (Lewis, 2000, p 26) for better orientation

Next, as Lewis recommends (1998), it is necessary to devote the time to help the learners develop their learning strategies concerning lexical items Those strategies include suggestions such as: not being worried if not every word is understood during reading or listening; not being worried about making mistakes…

Furthermore, teachers should also realize that the “mere” listening or noticing from

learners‟ side can be as fruitful, especially at the beginning, as speaking itself As Dave Willis (1990) explains, and Sarah Phillips (1993, p 17) shares similar opinion

as well, learners: “must also be given exposure to language relevant to the task they

have performed or are about to perform, and in particular they must be given the opportunity to see how competent speakers and writers use the target language to achieve similar outcomes” This is basically the core of TPR, which is a method

used mainly with young learners Within this method, they are not forced to speak;

they start speaking and using the language only when they want to

Another helpful tool for vocabulary acquisition is repetition Although being considered as annoying and boring, many researchers have come to the conclusion

that “repeating certain kinds of activities such as summarizing a text orally one day

and again a few days later may be the most efficient way of improving learners’

language” (Lewis, 1998, p.51) The effect of this statement may be increased if a

certain word (multi-word lexical item) is met several times without any particular intention Therefore, it follows that the traditional learning lists of new words, which usually appear in many textbooks and which have to be learnt by heart only for a test, does not seem to be appropriate and useful Instead, collocations and expressions should be learnt and reused several times (Lewis, 1998, pp 51-52)

Gairns and Redman, apart from recycling, also suggest frequency as the basis for the lexical item acquisition (1990, p.88)

Lewis also mentions so called Noticing, which is a technique based on a learner‟s unconscious noticing of language regularities such as “lexical chunks and grammatical or phonological patterns” (1998, p 53).And last but not least, it is the principle of pedagogical chunking which should encourage the lexical awareness of

the learners Lewis, however, warns that teachers should “not break language down

too far in the false hope of simplifying; your efforts, even if successful in the short term, are almost certainly counterproductive in terms of long-term acquisition”

(2000, p 133)

Speaking about implementing lexis in a class, there is also another principle according to which it is possible to introduce lexis This principle includes ten aspects, each dealing with different point of view from which the implementation of

the lexis can be approached The aspects are the following: topic, situation,

collocation, notion (functional language, e.g apology, requirement, wish, etc.), narration (making sequences), metaphor (metaphor as a pattern), person (changing

grammatical persons), phonological chunking, keywords (especially de-lexicalized

verbs) and grammar

Dave Willis, dealing with the lexical syllabus, adds to these principles the

necessity of organization of exposure The organization is based on three stages

Firstly, difficulty of the language the learners are supposed to learn should be

gradually graded so that the learners would not have to face some complexities at the very beginning, for it could be demotivating for them Secondly, the language should be carefully selected and not only randomly chosen It is preferable so that the chosen language would consist of patterns which the learners are most likely to come across outside the classroom Thirdly the language ought to be itemized (Willis, 1990, p iv)

2.4 Activities and Exercises

This chapter briefly introduces several basic types of activities and exercises which are typical of the Lexical Approach However, what is important to mention here again is that neither all the following exercises nor the Lexical Approach are something absolutely new and innovative The Lexical Approach only approaches teaching, and consequently exercises, from different point of view, and thus the aim (i.e vocabulary) is what differs

Also Lewis distinguishes Activities and Exercises The reason is that: firstly,

he finds Activities more cooperative, secondly, Activities have non-linguistic as well as linguistic outcome, and thirdly they are usually used in the class (1998, p

86) Gairns and Redman also highlight activities stating that they, besides the points mentioned above, support realism, authenticity, engagement, learners „self-reliance, and last but not least they also help learners to “commit information to long term memory” (1990, p 90) Whereas Exercises fit rather for the individual work, they are usually paper-based, they have only linguistic outcome, they are used for homework or reflective class (1998, p 86) and, as Willis completes, they “involve the production of language but not the use of language” (1990, p 1)

Below there is a list of the most common Exercises:

* Identifying chunks (it is the crucial skill which helps to work with dictionaries,

to translate better, to avoid mistakes, and also it encourages to record accurately

in the notebooks)

* Matching (matching parts of collocations and expressions)

* Completing (the focus is lexical; it is extended by the double-gap filling)

* Categorizing (learners are asked to sort certain items according to a certain pattern)

* Sequencing (learners are supposed to put several expressions into most probable

* Underlying chunks (learners should be given also more difficult texts)

* Putting items in the column (there should be at least three different columns, e.g

* Headings (matching paragraphs with suitable headings)

* Phrase matching (e.g Spaghetti matching)

* Recalling collocations (a teacher hides one column and learners have to recall

the hidden part)

* Word dominoes

* Exploring a de-lexicalized word (by using sentences, e.g just)

* Happy families (learners asked to create a sentence, e.g Do you have a noun

which follows play?)

* Kim’s game (show objects for a short time, afterwards learners have to recall as

much as possible)

* Pause reading (a teachers reads a text, pauses and learners have to fill in the

pause by some items using RVR – Random Volunteered Responses)

* Correction reading (a teachers reads, learners listen carefully, when the teacher

reads it for the second time, he or she changes something and the learners are

supposed to guess what was changed)

81) or Brumfit (1984) suggest, a balance should be guaranteed between the activities focused on accuracy and the activities concentrated on fluency (in Willis,

proficiency ; Features of the Lexical approach; Implications for Teaching and how lexis can be implemented in the class of FIC; Activities and Exercises and Materials

3 THE PRACTICAL PART

This chapter is approached as action research which was first described by Kurt Lewin (a German-American psychologist) in 1944 The aim of this kind of research is to find a solution to a problem According to Lewin, action research is a cyclical process consisting of three steps: planning, action and results

The first step (planning) includes the examining of the problem and description of the participants This research will be carried out with students who attend K27 class of Food Industrial College (FIC), and therefore in this case, firstly the hypothesis and the aim of the work will be mentioned Secondly, the students included in the research will be introduced Thirdly, there will be a description of the chosen teaching plan, and finally, means of testing the progress and the results will be stated

The second step (action) means realization of the teaching plan with the students The teaching plan will be complemented by my comments to each activity concerning its course

The final step (results) is connected to the evaluation of all gathered data, and also suggestion of possible changes for the problem

3.1 The learners

In order to understand learners‟ personal characterization and also approach them from the point of view of English language learners, I created a questionnaire (See attach 1), whereby all information needed was gathered and used for description of the learners

3.1.1 Characterization of the learners

25 students studying English as a foreign language in K27 class at Food Industrial College (FIC - Viet Tri City, Phu Tho Province) were selected based on nonrandom purpose sampling These students, aged from 18 to 20, consist of 15 girls, 10 boys When being ask about the most difficult challenge of learning English, most of them admitted that was insufficient vocabulary and willing to practice how to enlarge their vocabularies

3.1.2 The students as English language learners

Most of the chosen students started learning English at the third grade, which means that they have been learning English for years and all of them like to study English During their lessons they especially like various games, working with pictures and words and activities based on movement As for their favorite topics, they like discussing about friends, sport, travelling and other topics closely connected to their lives On the contrary, they do not like writing long texts and doing grammar exercises

For reading skill, the students mostly said that they do not mind it unless the particular text or story is not long and the English language must be comprehensible (they can understand most of the words)

According to the questionnaire and their answers, the conclusion may be that there are two main intelligences which prevail It is the linguistic-verbal and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (Cherry, Kendra, 1999) As regards the learning styles, the following two should be mentioned: the visual and kinesthetic one And finally speaking about learning strategies, all the students are probably cognitive learners

3.2 Testing the progress

This research aims to prove that:

a Students who are taught an English language accompanied by activities based on the Lexical Approach are able to acquire discussed lexical items more easily and remember it for a longer time

b It is possible to teach a sequence of five lessons based on activities typical of the Lexical Approach

In this thesis, I have collected the data from the three following sources, since I could verify in the work that they can enable me to describe and analyze results sufficiently from all possible aspects, and also to a large extent

1 My pedagogical journal - I recorded in detail everything that I was able to

observe during our sessions in this journal such as learners‟ answers, behavior, willingness and my comments, etc

2 The learners’ output – the output includes everything that the students created

during our sessions or as their homework (e.g description, vocabulary book…)

3 Pre-test and post-test - (The pre-test was carried out separately before the

teaching plan and the post-test was taken after the whole teaching plan The tests does not include oral part, only the written part (it would be highly demanding to individually test orally all the learners) The written test (See attach 26) consists of four activities which should have discovered at least an approximate level of their English in connection with the ability to use “chunks” (i.e collocations, expressions, phrases, etc.)

After the whole teaching procedure, results from each learner‟s pre-test and post-test were analyzed and compared individually Afterwards, the overall progress was also demonstrated by means of a chart (See attach 27) for better illustration

And finally are the comments on their output

3.3 Teaching plan

In the first school year, the students study and finish their English 1 (one of the general subjects) After that, they will study English for specific purposes according to their training major Below is the teaching plan consists of five lessons which I prepared and used for the second - year students This teaching plan is

designed for English for Chemistry and Food Technology As I carried out the

research during my teaching practice, and thus I was allowed only few lessons to teach it Since this thesis is focused on the Lexical Approach, all the tasks reflect the core of the Lexical Approach

Each of the five lessons includes information concerning the time, aims and materials Besides, there is also a comment to each activity which basically reflects notes from the pedagogical journal and which should provide information about the fact how the learners generally coped with the particular activity

This thesis mainly focuses on the typical activities of the Lexical Approach

Therefore, the teaching plan is included in the Methodology chapter (not as an appendix)

TEACHING PLAN

(English for Chemistry and Food Technology)

LESSON 1 Time: Total approximately 45 min

- Guessing (headline): 5 mins

- Guessing (the methods): 5 mins

- Matching: 5 mins

- Kind of the food products: 5 mins

- Order of the process: 5 mins

- To learn new basic vocabulary from the texts

- To learn correct pronunciation of the vocabulary

- To get to know basic chunks with the new vocabulary

- To provide students with knowledge for their future jobs

1) Guessing (the headline):

I show the students only the title of the text (without reading the content) and they have to say what they think the lesson is about (inspired by the activity Headings, see page 15)

Comment:

As I showed them the headline “Salted, brined and pickled vegetable products”, they guessed that the topic is about food, especially vegetable But they did not know the word type so that is maybe the reason why they had not added anything else

2) Guessing (the methods)

I asked the students what they would do when there were surplus fresh vegetables available and they had to use a simple method and ingredients of preservation

Comment:

The students were excited, some of them said that they will put the vegetable into plastic bags and put them into the refrigerator The others said they will prepare a solution of salt or vinegar and water to put the vegetables in They didn‟t know how

to call these methods of preserving food

Comment:

In the first lesson, I let them divide themselves into four groups as they wished

Neither of the groups had problems to match pictures with cabbage, spinach, broccoli, corn… However, all of them had difficulties with the product types (they did not know how to translate it) So I showed them again the picture with a note to demonstrate the food products Afterwards, they quickly corrected the pairs I intentionally gave them stripes with sentences (and not separate words) so that they could get used to the chunks

4) Kind of the food products

Based on the previous activities they should guess the kind of the food products (e.g Salted, brined meat or fish, and pickled vegetable products, etc.)

Comment:

I asked: “What do you think? What kind of food it is?” I repeated my question but they still did not answer so I gave them a clue: “The food is put in vinegar and sometimes sugar” Only after this they mostly answered: “pickles” I should have

probably used much easier question not to confuse them The separate words which served as options for the answer were helpful and they immediately reacted and knew what I had wanted them to say

5) Order of the process

The students are still in the same groups Each group is given stripes of paper with sentences (part of how to make salted, brined or pickled vegetable instruction)

Their task is to put the stripes (See attach 3) into the right order as they think it could be (they only predict the process) But the last two sentences are given to them only after the first reading so that they would not know the end before writing their orders (inspired by Sequencing, see page 15)

Comment:

One group (girls) was very quick and their order was correct too They only asked what solid salt means so I explained it Another group (boys) had the right order as well However, the third group (girls) finished it only partially (they did not know how to put together last five stripes The last group (girls) was the least successful group since they did not read the text at all, all the time they tried to discover how to put the stripes together according to the cuts and shapes – they did not manage to discover it Since we were still at the “get-to know stage” I understood that they had the difficulties, for some of the lexical items were very rare to meet Despite this fact, they mostly managed to deduce the meaning of the sentences

6) Reading

I asked the class to slowly read the text, (See attach 4) so that they could check the right order

Comment:

This was calming activity Everybody could follow the text especially with the help

of pictures There were probably many lexical items which they were not aware of but the context and pictures helped them

7) Finish reading

After reading the text, each group is given a question They are going to answer

their questions in pairs by writing the answers down to a note This activity is to check their understanding and practice the sentence structures and new lexical items

Comment:

The students all were really eager to give their answers Their answers were not all correct; the focus was to make them remember a meaningful and coherent text about how to preserve food and food products (See attach 5)

8) Order

After finishing the text each group is given the last two stripes (See attach 6) to complete the whole story (to complete the right order), (inspired by Sequencing, see page 15)

Comment:

Having finished and read the whole text, this task was very easy for each group So eventually each group can do the exercise correctly To check the answers, each group was asked to read their answers The hidden purpose of the reading was also

to practice the sentence structures and new lexical items There were four groups so all could hear the items four times

LESSON 2 Time:

- Total: approximately 45 min

- Right word: 5 min

- Questions: 5 min

- True X false: 10 min

- Where it comes from: 10 min

- Description of a word: 15 min

Materials:

- Text book – Unit 2: Fermented and Dried vegetable products

- Paper with True/False statements

- Stripes of paper with words and explanation

Aims:

- To learn other vocabulary from the reading passage

- To learn correct pronunciation of the vocabulary

- To revise previously discussed lexical items and chunks - to practice speaking

- To practice chunks when answering a question

- To check understanding of the lesson

1) Say the right word

I read the passage When I pause the students are supposed to say a suitable word to finish the sentence instead of me (inspired by Pause reading, see page 15)

2) Questions

I ask them several questions (See attach 7) concerning the passage and they have to answer them (preferably saying the whole sentence), (inspired by Lexical drills, see page 16)

Comment:

They were not sure about questions 5 and 7 Otherwise they knew everything (they used correctly the items) But, when answering, they did not use the whole sentence every time So I repeated their answer saying the whole sentence

3) True X False

Each student is given several pieces of paper with statements about the passage (See attach 8) Their task is to mark whether they are true of false (inspired by Correction reading, see page 16)

Comment:

This activity was probably a bit more difficult for them, for none of them had all

answers correct They were mostly confused by the third statement The reason is probably that the sentence was negative The purpose of this activity was to remind them of the contents of the passage and also to practice correcting reading

2 Where it comes from?

Each student is given a picture of the fermented food (See attach 9) They are supposed to write the name of the countries that the dishes are from (inspired by Identifying chunks, see page 14)

Comment:

There was a little bit difficult for this task Therefore, they were a bit confused

Otherwise, concerning the lexical point of view, they did not ask for any help – all was clear

3 Explanation

Students are divided into four groups Each group is given several words and also explanation of these words (See attach 10) Their task is to match each word with a suitable explanation (inspired by Matching, see page 15)

4 Description

Students are in their groups Each group chooses one method of preserving food they like and try to describe it (preparation, ingredients etc.), (inspired by Identifying chunks, see page 14)

Comment:

This activity was another very popular one among the students They wrote the descriptions (See attach 11) quite quickly and it was also noticeable that they enjoyed writing it (for deeper analysis see page 35)

LESSON 3

Time:

- Total: approximately 45 min

- Pictures: 5 min

- Missing information: 15 min

- Matching notes: 10 min

- Crossword: 10 min

- Chinese post: 5 min

Materials:

- Text book – Unit 3: Tea and Coffee

- Pictures from the textbook

- To practice completing chunks

- To check understanding of the text

- To encourage cooperation skills

1) Pictures

Each student is given half of one of these pictures (See attach 12) from the text

Then they have to mingle, ask their classmates about their halves and find the second half of the picture It is a warm-up activity whereby pairs are made

Comment:

They enjoyed this warm-up activity a lot The reason is probably that they did not have to actually create or do something difficult In addition to this, they smoothly recalled some basic information (content) about the text