Effective ways to improve vocabulary for huflit students majoring business english graduation paper, major business english

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies and the learning outcomes of students majoring Business English at Hu

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (HUFLIT)

DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

o0o GRADUATION PAPER

THE EFFECTIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE

VOCABULARY FOR HUFLIT STUDENTS MAJORING BUSINESS ENGLISH

Advisor: NGUYEN THI BACH YEN, M.A Student: LE HOAI BAO NGAN

Student’s number: 15DH710565 Major: BUSINESS ENGLISH

June, 2019

NAME: LE HOAI BAO NGAN

DATE SUBMITTED: JUNE 18th, 2019

Declaration

I certify that the attached material is my original work No other person’s work or ideas have been used without acknowledgement Except where I have clearly stated that I have used some of this material elsewhere, I have not presented this for

assessment in another course or unit at this or any other institution

INSTRUCTOR’S ASSESSMENT

Introduction _ /10 Literature Review _ /10 Research Methodology _ /10 Result and Discussion _ /10 Recommendation _ /10

Marks:

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies and the learning outcomes of students majoring Business English at Huflit It aimed at discovering some effective methods in improving vocabulary and awaking students to the importance of enriching vocabulary in learning English This study also attempted to find out the most-used and least-used strategies applied by learners of Business English as their major at Huflit One hundred Huflit students (45 males and 55 females) joined in this investigation An online survey, a paper-and-pencil survey and interviews were used for data collection The participants answered the questionnaire and then the filled inquiry forms and responses were collected After the survey, the results of this study significantly showed the majority of Huflit students frequently used familiar vocabulary learning strategies such as using bilingual dictionaries (77%), asking teachers for translation into Vietnamese (83%), using written repetition techniques (61%) However, in this research, it was indicated that students who usually employed the strategies that can give them more chances to practice new words, for example, reading English documents, interacting with foreigners, taking

a part-time job relating to business English got better academic achievement than those who only used simple and habitual strategies when learning new vocabularies

As a conclusion, vocabulary learning strategies can affect directly to students’ English acquisition More importantly, in order to be fluent in English, students must use a variety of vocabulary learning strategies regularly

Keywords: vocabulary learning strategies, Huflit students, English

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The globalization has greatly affected the world’s economies in recent years This phenomenon brought the great need for language performance and competence specifically in English which is one of the world’s global languages Lederer (2011) indicated that English is the most widely spoken language in the history of our planet, used in some way by at least one out of every seven human beings around the globe Majority of international phone calls are made in English, more than 70%

of International mails are written and addressed in English Half of the world’s books and as much as 80% of all computer texts are written and stored in English

In a survey conducted by Ford Foundation in India in 1983, nearly 99% respondents said that English was their best bet for a good career (as cited in Pushpa & Mani, 2016)

Thus, investigating to find out effective strategies to learn English is more and more popular Over the past decades, through many books and researches have been introduced by such linguistists as Oxford (1990), O’Malley and Charmot (1990), Nunan (1991), Nation (1990) and so on, it has been witnessed that among difficulties students often encounter in learning English, extending vocabulary knowledge has been specifically concerned It is said that “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” (as cited in Hoang Tat Truong, 1985, p.1) In other words, vocabulary is an essential element of language All things considered, in speaking, listening, reading and writing, vocabulary is always needed to communicate and understand others In some circumstances, learners make some grammar mistakes in sentences, but the receiver can still decode their message if they use keywords appropriately In comparison, learners acquiring a good knowledge of English grammar may feel embarrassed when they do not know the words to express themselves immidiately As Allen (1983) mentioned in his book “Through research the scholars are finding that lexical problems frequently interfere with communication; communication breaks

down when people do not use the right words.” Furthermore, a great deal of literature revealed that vocabulary provides the basis for mastering English skills i.e writing, reading, listening and speaking (Hammer, 2007; Carter, 1987; Iriyana, 2007) Then again, in 2008, Cook also stated his idea that “when you want to say something in a second language, it is the words that you feel you struggle for rather than the grammar or pronunciation.” The other noteworthy point is that vocabulary

is not only indispensable for communication, but also for academic study On a more advanced level of language learning, for instance as a student majoring in English, a fluent and impressive use of vocabulary in examinations can be the standard to distinguish the exellent students from the others To put it another way, vocabulary could be considered as an instrument to measure learner’s language ability That is the reason why most of standardized tests require knowledge of vocabulary such as TOEIC, TOFFLE, IELTs, GMAT, etc Having abundant vocabulary also allows students broaden their horizons in many different areas This

is a key to student’s success

Everthing has its own difficulty, learning vocabulary is not an exception It is not easy to gain vocabulary knowledge at all, which is painstaking, demanding lots

of efforts When learning vocabulary, the most common obstacle that learners often meet is retention problem That means vocabulary is hard to learn by heart but easy

to forget Many Vietnamese students constanly groaned that “Vocabulary just can not go inside my head” or “Water off the duck’s head.” The second problem students deal with is the inability to apply the words they have learned into practice

It seems to be a big problem when students do not know how to use words in correct contexts Another struggle that often crops up early in students’ learning is exposing to a vast amount of vocabulary So, it is hard to prioritize a suitable range

of vocabulary over the rest at certain stages of learning For all above reasons, to date there have been many researches on vocabulary learning strategies As a result,

a variety of methods to memorize new words has been detected Therefore, there is more freedom in choosing the strategies used during learning English Beside some

popular techniques like learning by heart, taking note, using flashcards, and so on , thanks to the development of technologies, many kinds of English learning software

or online programs are designed to help students enlarge their vocabulary size easier Markedly, Hayden (2013) recommended top three fun activities for high school students to build vocabulary containing reading, making flash cards and playing word building game on the Internet In 2011, an article posted by Oxford University Press ELT suggested five other tips to students like repeating little and often, learning in chunks, building real contexts, using a dictionary and extensive reading Additionally, numerous ways to use free digital tools and Internet resources were explored to encourage students in learning vocabulary by Dalton and Grisham (2011) Because there are tons of quick and effective strategies to learn vocabulary, most learners feel difficult to select the appropriate method for themselves Up to now, many works have been done; however, more studies need to be conducted to find the most useful ways to enrich vocabulary for students which are exclusively designed for Vietnamese students

In Vietnam, there have so far been some investigations on vocabulary learning strategies Nevertheless, research on vocabulary learning methods employed by students at Huflit has never been done In the role of a student majoring Business English at Huflit, I as well as my schoolfellows often raise many questions relating to vocabulary learning, e.g., How to learn vocabulary effectively? How to retain a new word in mind? How to use words that have been studied into contexts? In my point of view, I realized that it is really indispensable providing successful learning strategies to have a colorful vocabulary That is the main reason why I am interested in this topic

This paper tackles the issue of using vocabulary learning strategies by English language students at university level The objectives of this research are to find out what types of vocabulary learning strategies are most-used by EFL students

at Huflit as well as propose some strategies for students to learn words efficiently

This topic was also identified as having an importance to teachers in providing them the principal instructions to teach in foreign language classes Above all, the findings achieved from this investigation were to help develop learning and teaching English generally and learning and teaching English at Huflit particularly

This essay seeks to address the following questions:

1 What are most-used strategies by Huflit students in learning vocabulary?

2 Do these approaches have any positive impacts on expanding their vocabulary?

3 What are the most efficient strategies for Huflit students majoring Business English in learning vocabulary?

This paper has been organized in the following way

The first section is the introduction about the rationale, the objective, the research questions and the design of the study

Chapter 2 begins by laying out the theoretical dimensions of the research In this chapter, the definition and classification of learning strategies are reviewed Moreover, some valuable researches of previous authors having a particular relevance on this topic are covered

It followed by the methodology that describes how the report was carried out Chapter 3 includes the context of the study, the study participants and the methods used for this investigation

Next, chapter 4 outlines findings and discusses some effective vocabulary learning strategies The results will be indicated on the significant data displayed in the tables and figures

The last chapter assesses the conclusion, some implications, some recommendations and some limitations of the paper as well as suggestions for further research

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

If the previous chapter stated the rationale, the aims, the scope and the design

of the study, in this chapter, an overview of the importance of vocabulary in business English, definitions and classification of learning strategies would be presented generally Moreover, some studies on effective methods to improve vocabulary were also reviewed This is the sound basis in theory for the research in the next chapter

It has been consistently found that having a huge vocabulary is important foundation for learning English As Allen (1983) mentioned in his book “Through research the scholars are finding that lexical problems frequently interfere with communication; communication breaks down when people do not use the right words.” Similarly, a report conducted by Cook in 2008 indicated that “when you want to say something in a second language, it is the words that you feel you struggle for rather than the grammar or pronunciation.” On the other hand, it was suggested that learners of foreign language and second language never stop acquiring a new lexical item throughout the acquisition stages (Cater et al, 1988) that also means students always come across new words in listening and reading activities and grammar lessons and they also found themselves in a position of using their memories to keep words in mind when speaking and writing In the same line

of thinking, in 2006, once again, Biemiller & Boote claimed that enriching vocabulary knowledge has also been positively correlated with reading comprehension, listening, writing and speaking Because of these reasons above, there are more and more researches engaged by many scholars in many different ways to discover the most optimal vocabulary learning method

So far, there has been no consensus on the definition of learning strategies In the mid-seventies, one of the pioneers in this field, Rubin defined generally vocabulary learning strategies as “the techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledges.” In more explicit, many other linguists used Rigney’s

definition of language learning strategies as a basis when they came to conduct their research Particularly, Rubin defined the strategies as “any set of operations, steps, plans, routines used by the learners to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval and use of information, that is, what learner do to learn and do to regulate their learning” (Wenden & Rubin, 1981, p 19) In short, O’Malley and his colleagues described the strategies as “operations or steps used by a learner that will facilitate the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information” (O’Malley at al., 1985, p.23)

In their other words, learning strategies are “special ways of processing information that enhance comprehension, learning, or retention of the information.” Analogously, a definition of language learning strategies as “operations employed

by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information” was mentioned in Oxford’s study in 1990 Besides, in her own opinion, Oxford believed that “learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and more transferable to new situation.” Seven years later, Schmitt (1997) gave a definition of vocabulary learning strategies as “the processes by which a learner obtains, stores vocabulary items when encountering a word for the first time and retrieves, remembers and uses vocabulary items when communicating.”

As the definition, vocabulary learning strategies have been also classified differently by many different researchers In 1981, Rubin identified that there were two kinds of learning strategies: those contributing directly to learning and those contributing indirectly to learning In more detail, for the direct learning strategies, she divided into six types including clarification/verification, monitoring, memorization, guessing/inductive inferencing, deductive reasoning and practice The indirect strategies were divided into two types (creating opportunities for practice, production tricks) (Rubin, 1981, pp 124-126) In view of the classification from Rubin’s investigation, O’Malley et al (1985) developed a taxonomy of their own identifying 26 strategies divided into three main subcategories: metacognitive

strategies, cognitive strategies, and socialaffective strategies He also explained more about these types of strategies

“… metacognitive strategies involve contemplating learning processes such

as planning, monitoring, analysing, and assessing learning which are indirectly involved in learning Cognitive strategies are more limited to specific learning tasks and they involve more directly manipulation of the learning material itself They include strategies such as rehearsal, organization, inferencing, summarizing, deducing, imaginary, transfer, and elaboration Socialaffective strategies are related with social medicating activity and transacting with others.”

Obviously, the metacognitive and cognitive categories correspond approximately with Rubin’s direct and indirect strategies However, the supplement

of the social mediation category created a turning point in acknowledging the importance of interactional strategies in learning language

Having said that, Oxford (1990) perceived that many previous strategy inventories existed to accentuate cognitive and metacognitive strategies and to ascribe much less importance to social strategies Therefore, in her own study, she decided to divide the language learning strategies into six groups: memory strategies (which relate to how students remember language embracing creating mental linkage, applying images and sounds, reviewing well, and employing action), cognitive strategies (relating to how students think about their learning including practising, receiving and sending messages, analysing and reasoning, and creating structure for input and output), compensation strategies (which help learners overcome their knowledge gaps to continue the communication consisting

of guessing intelligently, and overcoming limitations in speaking and writing), metacognitive strategies (which relate to how students regulate their learning containing centering your learning, arranging, planning, and evaluating your learning), affective strategies (relating to learners’ feelings, comprising lowering anxiety, encouraging yourself and taking your emotional temperature), and social

strategies (which lead to increase interaction with the target language, such as asking questions, cooperating, and empathizing with others) Moreover, these six categories were further split into direct strategies and indirect strategies Even though the taxonomy of learning strategies worked out by Oxford was supposed to

be “perhaps the most comprehensive classification of learning strategies to date” (Ellis, 1994, p.539), there has been still dozens and hundreds of such strategies exist

In recent years, several attempts connecting with taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies proposed by many authors such as Gu and Johnson (1996), Schmitt (1997) and Nation (2001) If strategies of learning vocabulary were listed as metacognitive, cognitive, memory, and activation strategies by Gu and Johnson in

1996, Nation (2010) separated those into three general classes of “planning” (which mean creating context), “source” (relating to collocation) and “processes” (entailing sentences containing the new word) Nonetheless, significantly, vocabulary learning strategy classification system offered by Schmitt (1997) was the most popular He classified the strategies into two main types being discovery and consolidation strategies Then, these two broad groups were divided into determination, social, memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies Perceptibly, this taxonomic system was partly based on Oxford’s (1990) classification scheme, but Schmitt took this process a step further The details can be seen on the table below:

GROUP OF STRATEGIES VOCABULARY LEARNING

TECHNIQUES

DISCOVERY

STRATEGIES

DETERMINATION STRATEGIES

Analyze parts of speech Analyze affixes and roots Check for the cognate Analyze available pictures and gestures

Guess the meaning from textual context

Bilingual dictionary Word lists

Discover the meaning of new words through group work activities

CONSOLIDATION

STRATEGIES SOCIAL STRATEGIES

Study and practice the meaning of new words in a group

Ask teachers to check students’ flashcards or wordlists for accuracy

Interact with native speakers

Associate words with their collocations

Connect words to their synonyms and antonyms

Use semantic mapping techniques Use ‘scales’ for gradable adjectives

Group words together into categories

Use new words in sentences Group words together in a storyline

Study the spelling of a word Study the sound of a word Say new words aloud many times Draw image of word’s form Underline initial letter of the word Configuration

Use keyword method Use affixes and roots for remembering words

Use part of speech for

remembering words Paraphrase the words’ meaning Use cognates in study

Learn the words of an idiom together

Use physical action when learning

a word Use semantic feature grids

COGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Use verbal repetition technique Use written repetition technique Wordlists

Flashcards Take note in class Use the vocabulary section in textbook

Listen to tape of wordlists Keep a vocabulary notebook

METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Use English-language media (songs, movies, newscasts, etc.) Testing oneself with word tests Use spaced word practice Skip or pass new words in listening and reading

Continue to study words over time

Taxonomic system of vocabulary learning strategies

(Source: Schmitt, 1997, pp.207-208)

It is an undeniable fact that the more strategies explored, the more researches conducted so as to prove the effectiveness of those For instance, studies of Baxter (1980), Krashen (1989), Luppescu & Day (1993) has demonstrated that dictionaries have a great impact in learning language Further, it has been shown that the most frequent strategy in learning vocabulary was using bilingual dictionaries (Karipour, Yazdi, Soori & Shokrpour., 2011)

In 1927, Seibert revealed an important finding that studying aloud significantly efficient than studying aloud with written and studying silently As well as Seibert, Peter (2003) also investigated on the use of repeating aloud strategy Results from Peter’s work have also supported that repeating words aloud helps retention far better than silent repetition (as cited in Goundar, 2015)

On the other hands, there have been many studies confirming that guessing is also a beneficial strategy in learning vocabulary As a case in that point, Day, Komura and Hamamatsu (1991) operated an attempt in Japan with 181 high school and 397 university students In the research, students had to read a short story for approximately 30 minutes and soon after reading the text they had to do a multiple choice test Finally, it was found that students of both high schools and universities performed well (as cited in Goundar, 2015)

What’s more, the effects of vocabulary journals on the students’ vocabulary mastery were highlighted when Fika (2013) conducted his research on fifty students

of a Junior High School in Bandung After collecting data from pre-test, post-test, and interview, Fika (2013) concluded that the use of vocabulary journals was effective in enhancing vocabulary development

Additionally, in 2010, it was said that “the Internet has a great many resources for the development of vocabulary knowledge” (Kitao, 2010, p 208) In Kitao’s study, some examples of the types of Internet resources both for vocabulary teaching and learning were given

From these arguments, I would like to make outstanding contribution to display some most effective techniques that can help Huflit students improve their vocabulary size, especially for students majoring Business English With this in mind, some vocabulary learning strategies mentioned above will be used as the theoretical framework of the study in this thesis Thus, the exemplification of those strategies will be used in the questionnaire presented in Appendix

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter includes the research questions, the context of the study, participants, the procedures to collect and analyse data

To cater my research, I used nonexperimental study This approach allowed

me to conduct an online survey questionaire posted on my Facebook page Additionally, the paper survey and some pencil-and-paper interviews were also conducted at Huflit Form of questionaire and questions used both in the survey and interview were attached in Appendix Most of questions found in the questionnaire are closed-ended questions, which are followed by response options However, there are several questions being open-ended questions to explore the valuable answers of the respondents Throughout the survey, some effective ways of learning business vocabulary were presented

3.3 Participants

One hundred students studying at Huflit were recruited for this study Forty five of them were male and fifty-five were female All of volunteers chose Business English as their major The age of participants was between 20 and 25 Most of them came from HoChiMinh City

3.4 Data collection:

I decided choosing survey questionnaire to collect data because it is familiar, simple and time-saving Most of items in the questionnaire targeted at habits of learning vocabulary and effectiveness of these customs

The questionnaire created by Google Form consists of three sections The first section contains the questions to get participant’s personal information The second one includes multiple choice questions about methods that students have applied in enriching vocabulary knowledge In this section all vocabulary learning strategies were presented to the participants in statements with five options (always, usually, sometime, seldom and never) These five options were used as indicators for the frequencies of strategies use In the final section, the participants answered essay questions relating to virtues and defects of vocabulary learning strategies that they used The questionnaire was written in both Vietnamese and English so that all the informants could understand all questions obviously This questionnaire was based on the taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies proposed by Schmitt (1997)

Furthermore, to increase the reliability of the survey, some interviews were organized directly with volunteers being juniors, seniors, trainees, alumni, and alumnae in accordance with the prepared questions These conversations helped to have oppotunity to determine participants’attitudes, beliefs and behaviors so as to gain valuable information For more details, both interview questions and the online questionnaire forms were attached in Appendix

Participants needed about 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire on Facebook, nearly 15 minutes to answer all of the interview questions and around 20 minutes to reply the paper survey questionnaire Before filling out the questionnaire, students were expressed that their contribution was voluntary and responses about their personal information would remain confidentially Simultaneously, they also

undertook that they would give opinions as they truly think This is the determinant

of the study’s success

3.5 Data statistics

After 2 weeks, the data were gathered and calculated The quantitative method was applied for statistical analysis to explore some vocabulary learning strategies that Huflit students used most and how effective they are The questions

in the survey were analysed one by one The familiar answers were counted and converted to percentage out of 100 percent Then, all the outcomes were conveyed into bar charts In addition, all the interviewees’ responses and replies to essay questions were taken note and coded Some of these answers were transformed into

a pie chart so as to make it easier in making comparison and the remainder was discussed to discover new helpful approaches in learning business English vocabulary

With reference to cover the strategies of vocabulary learning that Huflit students used most, the students’ responses to questions in section 2 in the questionnaire were counted and analyzed Then, the percentages of five options (always, usually, sometime, seldom and never) were calculated and tabulated as aggregation of participants’ answers The term most-used, least-used, high frequency and low frequency were used in the data analysis procedure Most-used

or high frequency includes percentage of always and usually responses Likewise, least-used or low frequency consists of percentage of sometimes, seldom and never responses As an example, for the strategy statement “Use bilingual dictionary”, it is indicated that it is the most-used strategy The aggregation of this is number is always = 36 and usually = 41, so the most-used percentage of this strategy is 77% which is aggregated from 36% for always and 41% for usually respectively The percentages of most-used, least-used strategies for learning vocabulary were displayed according to five main categories of vocabulary learning strategies including determination, social, memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies

In terms of some effective strategies that help Huflit students increase their vocabulary knowledge faster and easier, the answers of question “Which accumulated average mark did you get at Huflit?” and “What scaled score did you get in Toeic test?” were considered and compared with vocabulary learning strategies that students chose in section 2 of the questionnaire For each accumulated average mark interviewees got at Huflit, the vocabulary learning strategies used were noted Then, the percentages of these strategies were counted

so as to find the most-used strategies The same procedure also applied for the scale score students achieved in Toeic test After that, the results were conveyed to tables and the effective approaches are the strategies that good students (who accomplished over 8.0 as their average mark at Huflit and accomplished Toeic test with the scale score above 605) employed with high frequency in learning vocabulary

On the other hand, this procedure had some difficulties in convincing people

to take part in because former students were so busy that they were not willing to spend their time in this survey Besides, because of limited time and condition, this research was only applied for a small number of students at Huflit, which might not

be accurate results for some other people

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, all the results from the survey questionnaire were presented Then, I also discussed and analyased those findings so as to find out the answers to the research questions made formerly

In term of the reasons why students at Huflit chose Business English as their major, the results, most of those interviewees reported that they studied Business English because they want to improve their English ability in business Besides, 25% of students really have passion for international trade Another popular reason

is the desire to earn a lot of money, which was the intention of about 20% Huflit students when they decided to take in Business English Ten percent of participants said that studying for a degree in Business English could help them live and work abroad in the future easier while 6% of ones chose this major only for following the trend Just over 2% of volunteers had other reasons that were Business English is easy to learn, this major is close to their part-time job, and so on

want to improve English ability

in businessothers

As can be seen from the pie chart, the most common problem students have had to cope with when studying Business English is how to enrich their vocabulary, chosen by 55% (over half of the participants) 25% of students said that they felt hard to write in business Just below 10% of interviewees reported that communicating in business was their obstacle in learning Business English Reading comprehensive texts in business was considered as a difficulty by the same percentage of contributors, at 8% The rest were got other troubles such as how to apply knowledge into practice, how to search information about business in English, etc Overall, the majority of Huflit students believed that improving vocabulary is their biggest problem in learning Business English

Writing in business

Reading comprehensive texts

in business englishOthers

Additionally, all the members joining in this research agreed that extending vocabulary is very important in learning Business English They think that a colorful vocabulary contributes to their success in learning Business English Indeed, when they have a wide vocabulary knowledge, their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills can be improved obviously They also feel more confident

to communicate or give a speech in English, which are key factors helping students have desirable jobs in business in the future

NeutralDisagreeTotally disagree

3 hoursMore than 3 hours

From the data from Figure 4, it is apparent that the length of time Huflit students often spent on learning vocabulary was less than one hour per day, which was selected by almost two-thirds of the participants (60%) However, only 4% of people doing this survey reported that it took them three hours expending their vocabulary every day There were about 27% of respondents indicating that they usually spent from one to two hours on enriching vocabulary Markedly, approximately 10% of those surveyed commented that they had never spent their time on increasing their vocabulary knowledge To sum up, Huflit students in general and Huflit students majoring Business English in particular spent very little time on studying vocabulary Less than one hour per day is the most popular length

of time they paid for enhancing vocabulary Some of them even forgot about learning new words, although in Figure 3, it is clear that all students realized that extending vocabulary is a vital part of learning Business English

When I asked students if they had ever used some strategies to improve their vocabulary, over three-quarters of them responded that they used to apply some techniques in learning new vocabularies On the contrary, the others said that they had never use any vocabulary learning strategies and they even did not know what are called strategies in learning vocabulary

76%

24%

Figure 5: Have you ever used some strategies to learn vocabulary?

YesNo

With reference to cover the strategies of vocabulary learning that Huflit students used most, by the manner mentioned in Chapter 3, the results were shown

in the charts below

Figure 6: Students’ use of Determination strategies in learning vocabulary

As can be seen from Figure 6 chart, responses to question 1 showed that 77%

of Huflit students always or usually used bilingual dictionary to find the meaning of

a new word while less than 21% of them used this strategy with low frequency Only 2% never did so

The second question presented how often the informants used monolingual dictionaries There is an undeniable fact that using monolingual dictionaries is rarely applied in our English learning setting And so, the results, 5% never used it 27% of participants used monolingual dictionaries regularly while nearly 70% used this kind of dictionary with low frequency

Table 1: Determination Strategies

Percent % Most-used Least-used

*Most-used = always + usually responses; Least-used = sometimes + seldom + never responses

Table 1 indicated that for Huflit students majoring Business English, the most-used determination strategy for the discovery of a new word meaning is using bilingual dictionaries (77%) Whereas the least used determination strategies is using monolingual dictionaries (73%)

Figure 7: Students’s use of Social strategies in learning vocabulary

The Figure 7 chart showed some social strategies that Huflit students used in learning vocabulary including asking teachers for translation into Vietnamese, interacting with foreigners, asking teachers for giving an examples which includes new words, asking teachers for checking meaning and spelling of new words for accuracy, and studying and practicing meaning of new vocab through group work activities

In question 3, 45% of informants always asked their teachers to translate new vocabularies into Vietnamese, 38% usually did so 17% sometimes and 2% never asked for their teachers’s help

Another social strategy that Huflit students used to learn and retain new words is asking teachers to create sentences that contain new vocab (question 21) The chart displayed that most of students sometimes used this strategy (41%) while only 5% always and 12% usually did so The others revealed that they rarely or never asked their teachers to give example sentences for new words, which are 29% and 13% respectively

Besides, students can ask teachers to check the meaning or spelling of new words for accuracy The results displays that 51% of people interviewed said that they usually used this technique in learning vocabulary Meanwhile, 34% of them sometimes did so It is only 6% of them always asked their teachers to correct the meaning or spelling of new vocabulary The rest seldom or even never used this strategy

In question 23, when asked whether they studied and practiced the meaning

of new words through group work activities or not, only 11% of informants always applied it 28% of them usually and the same number sometimes adopted it It is up

to 22% never increased their vocabulary in a group

There is also another fantastic way to practice vocabulary being communicating with native speakers This strategy has recently become more and more popular because of its effectiveness Moreover, many universities invited foreign teachers so that their students have chances to practice their English and their vocabulary