Luận văn the effects of using collocations in teaching english vocabulary for 11th grade students at son tay high school

HOANG THI DUNG THE EFFECTS OF USING COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING ENGLISII VOCABULARY FOR 11™-GRADE STUDENTS AT SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL .Ính hưởng của tiệc sử dụng kết hợp tù tổng Anh đến việc

HOANG THI DUNG

THE EFFECTS OF USING COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING

ENGLISII VOCABULARY FOR 11™-GRADE STUDENTS AT

SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL

.Ính hưởng của tiệc sử dụng kết hợp tù tổng Anh đến việc học từ

vựng của học simh lớp 11 trường THƯT Sơn Tây

MLA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methudology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2016

HOANG THI DUNG

THE EFFECTS OF USING COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING

ENGLISH VOCABULARY FOR 11™-GRADE STUDENTS AT

SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL

Anh hwéng cia viée sit dung két hop tir tiéng Anh dén viée học từ

ving cita hac sink lớp II rường THPT Sơu Tây

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Prof Dr Nguyén Quang

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

hereby certify that the thesis entitled “The effects of using colfocations in teaching

English vocabulary for 11"-grade students at Son Tay high school” is entirely the

result of my own work [he material in this thesis has not been submitted for

assessment in any other formal course I also accept all the requirements of ULIS

relating Lo (he relenliem and use of M.A Graduation Thesis deposited in the library

The rescarch reported in this thesis was approved by ULIS

Signed:

Date submitted: Hanoi,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To accomplish this study, I am indebted to many people for their thoughtful help

First and foremost, 1 would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisor, Prof Dr Nguyen Quang for his valuable guidance, critical feedback and enormous encouragement, without which my thesis would be far from completion

I am also grateful to all the lectures of the Graduate Department, University of

Languages and Tnternalional Studies for their guidance aml enthusiasm during my

husband, for their love, care and tolerance when I was in the process of conducting and

writing this thesis

ABSTRACT

This paper reports a quasi - experimental rescarch that aimed to address the impacts of collocation teaching on grade 1] students’ vocabulary improvements Data for the study including two proficiency tests and a follow-up questionnaire were collected from 92 students at Son Tay High school

In this study, 46 students who followed the conventional vocabulary teaching methods

belong to control group, and 46 others parlicipated in experimental group in which they

are exposed to different strategics related to collocation learning The scores taken from the two tests were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social

Sciences (SPSS) for Windows version 20.0 soliware package The results show that

English collocation teaching has improved the students’ vocabulary leaming ‘The

findings from the questiormaire medicate thal studerts also have posilive alilnde

towards the new vocabulary teaching method They have become well aware of the collocations* importance in language learning And they have also developed the habit

of learning collocations independently outside the classroom The findings from the tests and the questionnaire support each other to affirm the undeniable positive effects

of the collocation teaching Recommendations for students’ English vocabulary improvements and suggestions for further studies are provided on the basis of the research findings as well

iii

Scope of the sturdy

Significance of the study

Organization of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER J: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 The role and the importance of vocabulary in ELT

12 Colloealion ào me

1.2.1 Definition of collocation

1.2.2 Classification of collocation

1.3 Collocation in teaching vocabulary

1.3.1 The nnporlance of using collocation in BIT

1.3.2, Directions for teaching collocations in English vocabulary

13.2.1 Raising the students’ awareness of the importance of collocations

1.3.2.2 Making students be well aware of collocations

14

14

1.3.2.3 Yeaching collecations through exercises

13.2.4 Teaching collocations through context

2.3.2 Data collection instruments

2.3.2.1 Pretest and Posttest

2.3.2.2 Survey questionnaire

2.1.Procedure

2.4.1 The pre implementation phase

2.4.2, The implementation phase

2.4.3 The post implementation phase

3.2, Discussion

3 2.1, Vocabulary gains as resulting from collocation teaching

5.2.2, Students”

wow 3 Summary

attitude towards collocation teaching

PART C: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1 Recapiulatlon

3 Limitations of the research

4, Suggestions for further study

Survey Questionnaire (Vietnamese version)

39

39

40

Numbor of Cases or Subjects of the study Probability of chance (indicator of significance) Standard Deviation

Statistic Package for Social Science Obtained Value

Degree of Freedom

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Lexical Collocations Adopted from Benson et al (1986a)

Grammatical Collocations Adopted from Benson et al (1986a)

Grammatical collocations in G8 group Adopted from Benson

et al (1986a) The main tasks for three implementation phases Descriptive statistics for protest of the Experimental group and Control group

Independent Samples T-est of pro-Lests Results of desoriptive statistics of the CG and HG in Pre-test

afier the treatment,

PART A: INFRODUCTION

This chapter provides the background to the study and statement of the problem, the

aims and research questions, the scope as well the significance of the study It also

outlines the organization of the thesis

1, Rationale

In recent years, language teachers and researchers have witnessed a number of changes

in language teaching and Iearning The latest, developments have tried to get learners involved in the most effective methods so as to enhance their proficiency in the target language

Learning a second language involves the manipulation of four main skills including speaking, writing, listening and reading, which leads to effective communication One

key factor in this process is the amount of vocabulary one possesses as vocabulary

forms the integral part of the meaning of any language (McCarthy, 1988) As a result, vocabulary acquisition is currently receiving special attention in L2 pedagogy and research, and how learners acquire vocabulary effeclively and efficiently and how it can best be taught are contentious issues in applied linguistics (Lewis, 2006)

Many Buglish leemers, đespite their quite proficient ability in grammar, reading and

some other L2 skills, are experiencing difficultics in remembering and proficiently using words that they have leamt [heir lack on vocabulary leaming skills can be taken info account for this obstacle As car be observed ia cerlain number of HFT classes, vocabulary teaching is generally given by classical techniques Nowadays, linguists all aver the world are studying a variety of effective approaches in vocabulary teaching

and presenting

New words can be approached from checking their meanings in the dictionary; or

example sentences containing the vocabulary items can be another considering method

Apart {rom thosc, learners can also relale Ihe new vocabularies with the words they

have leant to figure out the meaning; or teachers may give verbal explanation of new vocabulary items mainly in English; and providing synonyms or antonyms of the new vocabularies is another choice as well Also, teachers can usc pictures, realia, group work, etc to convey the words’ meaning to their students However, it is evident that some of these techniques cannot bring about a great deal of vocabulary retention for leamers are not able to make use of presented words in performing academic tasks and communicative activities (Hedge, 2008)

Collocation is also among these techniques Within the lexical approach, particular

attention 1s intended for collecations and expressions that embrace institutionalized utterances and sentence frames and heads As Lewis affirms, we attempt to think of

collocalions, and to use these collocalions in our expressions imslead ol” mdividual

words It means, rather than trying to split things into even smaller pieces, we have a

cogrizamL allempl to see things in larger, more holistic manners (Lewis, 1997)

Therefore, teachers of English should be encouraged to attach more importance to vooabulary teaching through collocation rather than only the acquisition of grammar

and the use of traditional vocabulary teaching strategies in their classes

As a foreign language teacher at Son ‘Tay high school, the researcher of the cwrent study also tries her best to support her students in acquiring accurate and native-like

8, she observes and finds out that her

students, who are at grade 11, have to deal with countless difficulties in productive

competence effectively Tn her caching proc

skills Fxamining learners’ writing, the researcher could quickly notice the “mis- collocations” that are widespread in their written assignments The similar situation can also be found out in speaking skill when students know the meaning of each

scparale word, but they are slill unable to connect these words Logether ralurally and

correctly and use them fluently and constantly [his may be due to their ignorance

of collocations and the interference of the mother tongue which reflect their lack of

proficiency in the target language In order to overcome these problems, a number off

methods can be taken into consider; among them is using, collocations ‘Therefore, it is crucial to conduct research on the effects of teaching English collocations to enhance students’ vocabulary ability The results gained from this study at Son Tay High school are expected to contribute to changing Vietnamese

'L teachers and learners’

traditional perspectives so as to constitute one of the most important parts of vocabulary teaching

2 Aims of the study

This paper aims to find out whether and how teaching vocabulary through collocations will result in better vocabulary learning than those using conventional techniques The research also focuses on investigating the students’ altitudes towards leaching collocations My purpose is to show the contribution of collocations to vocabulary learning of students in Hnglish Foreign Tamguage (FFT) cka

Son Tay high schoot

in Hanoi It is hypothesized that leaming vocabulary through collocations is an effective strategy that positively contributes to the development of vocabulary leaming, and students have positive attitudes with regard to learning vocabulary in collocations rather than that in other vocabulary teaching methods

4 Scope of the study

Though the use of collocation can be applied in different aspects in language teaching including the macro skills, grammar, vocabulary, cte., the researcher has chosen tơ focus only on vocabulary teaching for the fact that collocation is so central to teaching new words If a student wants to master a new word completely, it cannot be denied that he/she has to proficiently use that word in combining with other words or phrases

A lange number of studies prove that presenting new words through collocations result

in a betler learning of the words than presenting them usimg traditional techmques

Therefore, this rescarch investigates the use of collocation in teaching vocabulary

In the research conducted, the subject was a small group of grade 11 students who were nomrandomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group The material scope used for teaching students during 10 weeks of the investigation is restricted to Fglish Lexthook for grade 11

5 Significance of the study

Although it is widely acknowledged that collocations are not only indispensable but also challenging for English language leamers, and that they therefore should play an integral part in L2 teaching at any level, leamers' difficulties with collocations have not

‘bean investigated in much detail so far

The curent study primarily focuses on finding out the feasibility of applying collocations as effectively as possible to 1.2 teaching in the effort of improving

students’ method of learmng vocabulary Therefore, it is much to the author’s

expectation that the results of the current research will help teachers of language become well aware of what they should do to improve their leaching performance in class, and students gain more insight into the importance of collocations.

6 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters, organized as follows:

Part A: Introduction presents the background to the study, the aims of research, the significance, the scope, and the structure of the thesis

Part B: Development is organized around three chapters as follows

Chapter 1: Literature Review discusses relevant theoretical points of view

conceming what can be done and how to develop foreign language learners’ oral

commnication skills Furthennore, the review of the previous studies related Lo the

thesis is also provided

Chapter 2: Research Methodology describes the research method the data caltcetion instruments and (he information of the parlicipants in the study as well as

the steps to conduct the study

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion consisis of an analysis of the dala and a

discussion of the findings

Part C: Conclusion and recommendations offers a summary of the findings,

recommendations, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER T: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the author will present some theoretical background that proves

necessary in the realization of this research and helps provide related literature to the

study First, the studies related to the L2 teaching and learning of vocabulary, especially the application of collocation use in teaching English vacabularies that same

prominent researchers al! over the world have conducted and whal they have fourrd out

will be reviewed systematically with the purpose of providing the basis of the investigating issue

1.1 The role and the importance of vocabulary in ELT

Learning any foreign language involves the proficient manipulation of all macro skills including speaking writing, hstening and reading, which leads to effective

communication One capital factor in this process is the amount of vocabulary one

possesses as voeabnlary forms the biggest parl of ihe meaning of any language

(McCarthy, 1988), Indeed, vocabulary acquisition is currently receiving much attention

in second language pedagogical field and research, therefore how leamers acquire vovabulary effectively and olficiently and bow il can best be taughl arc contentious issues in applied linguistics (Lewis, 2006)

There have been a great number of different approaches related to language leaming,

each with different perspectives on vocabulary (Richards & Rodgers, 2001) It is the

fact that learning a language should not be reduced to only leaming vocabulary, but it

is also nue that “no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how

successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way” (MoCarthy, 1990), Language leaching methodologies sometimes have allached great

importance to vocabulary learning, and sometimes it has been neglected (Schumitt, 2000) In practice, prammar and pronunciation are at the core of language leanne, while vocabulary is ignored in most forcign language classes (Fernandez, Prahlad, Rubtsova, & Sabitov, 2009) Nowadays it is widely accepted that vocabulary learning

is one of the essential elements of both acquiring native language and learning a foreign language (Morra & Camba, 2009) Learning vocabulary is considered as a crucial element to help Jeamers obtain a high level of proficiency in the target language

by a large number of theoreticians (Boers & Lindstromberg, 2008) In addition, special attontion has been paid to foreign language vocabulary acquisition by those involved in foreign language learning (Zu, 2009) It is also believed that those possessing a large and varied range of voeabulary are compeleneics im terms of forcign language communication, which is one of the important aspects of language learning

(McCrostie, 2007)

For all intents and purposes, vocabulary should be considered as an integral part off learning a foreign language since it leads the way to communication Such as writing and reading, vocabulary knowledge is one of the components of language skills (Nation & Waring, 1997) And of course, not only teachers, but also students need to

be made well aware of the significance of vocabulary to fulfill their English language competence

12 Collocation

1.21 Definition of collocation

Although collocation has become the subject of linguistics only recently, there have

becr a number of ideas what “collocation” is by different hinguisis According Lo Bahns:

(1993), “collocation is a term which is used and understood in many different ways” Tirst, a look at some typical ones among the varied definitions that researchers and linguists have brought out is taken, Many scholars belicve that the term is first used in

1981 by Palmer, an Hnglish linguist and teacher, who defines “collocation” as “a

succession of two or more words that must be learned as an integral whole and not

pioccd together from its component parts” Some others, however, regard Firth, a

British linguist, as the one who sets the foundation of collocation and develops a

lexical and the most traditional approach to this phenamenon He introduces the term meaning by collocation as a new mode of meaning of words and distinguishes it from

‘both the “conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words” and “contextual

nearing” One of Firth’s revolutionary concepls is to perceive lexical relalions as

syntagmatic rathor than paradigmatic ones He takes “dark night” as an cxample His analysis is that one of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and one of the meanings of dark is ils colloeability with night Thus, a complete analysis of the

meanmg of a word would have to include all its collocations According to Firth

(1957), “collocations of a given word” are defined as “statements of the habitual or

customary places of that word.”

Tlalliday (1966), one of Firth’s followers, considers collocations as examples of word combinations By the examples for his argument: “he argued strongly” and “the strength of his argument”, which are grammatical transformations of the initial

collocation “strong argument”, he states that collocation cuts across grammar

boundaries

According to Moon (1997), collocations can be defined in many ways, and some

of these definitions are as follows: collocations are words that occur together with

high frequency and refer to the combination of words that have a certain mutual expectancy “fhe combination is not a fixed expression but there is a greater

than chance kelihood that the words will co-occur” (Jackson, 1988:96) Also,

MeCarten (2007) states that the way in which two or more words are typically used is generally called collocation As cited from Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2002), “collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-

sounding speech and writing” Richards et al (1992) suggests a more specific way to define: “Collocation is the way in which words are used together regularly Collocation refers to restrictions on how words can be used together, for instance, which prepositions are used with the particular verbs of which verbs and nouns are used together”

1.2.2 Classification of collocation

Based on the core characteristics of collocations, a wide variety of ways to classify collocations have been pul forward by different lirygnists and lexicographers Tn fact, there is much effort to categorize the individual collocations as part of a gencral scheme since the nature of collocations make it challenging to make a thorough

distinction among various kinds of collecalions

Benson et al (1986a), mostly the pioneers as for the classification of collocations,

categorize collocalions systematically into two tajor groups: Fexical coHucatiens and

grammatical collocations Lexical collocation could be made up of nouns, adjectives, verbs, or adverbs, like “warmest regards”, “strictly accurate”, etc There are seven subgroups of lexical collocations whose structures and examples are given below:

Table L.1 Lexical Collocations Adopted from Benson ct al (1986a)

verb (meaning creation or activation}+ noun compose music;

verb (meaning eradication or nullification): revoke a license,

adjective + noun strong tea; a rough estimate

bulfalo, a herd of buffalo

The other group, grammatical collocation, consists of a dominant word, such as a noun,

an adjective, or a verb, and a preposition or grammatical structure like an infinitive or a

clause Benson ct al (19864) further calegorized the grammatical collocations into

cight small proups, labeled as G1 to G8, as being illustrated clearly in the following

Teun + preposition love for

adjective + lat clause She was afraid that she would

(fail the examination

Table 1.3 Grammatical coHocations in G8 group Adopted from Benson et al

(1986a)

8+ V+ Odte O¡ Ile sent a book to his brother G8 (1) SIV 1011 Od He sent his brother a book

S+V+Odto Oi They returned the book to her

G8 @) (do not allow the dative

movement transformation)

ộ 8+ V+ Od for O1 She bought a shit for her husband

G8 3) S1V1Oi1 Od She bought her husband a shirt

G8 (0) S+V+O+Prep+O W imvited them to the meoting,

W+V+0loV Ti surprised me to lear of her decision

G8 (8) It+V+O+ that clause _ | It surprised me that our offer was rejected

S+V+C (adjective or She was enthusiastic [he flowers smell

989) oun) nice

Tn terms of structure, Bahn (1993) shares the same classification with Renson et al.,

apart from adding another type namely long collocations which consist of more than two components ‘his way of classification is of many linguistic researchers’ and

{eachers’ interest

‘That is a quite special type of collocation, as can be seen in the instances get access to, take good care of, etc Flexible word pairs include collocations between subject and verb, or verb and abject, any of the inlervening words may occur between the words of

collocations

Hill (as cited in Michael Lewis, 2000: 63) produces another classification of

collogalions according to strength into (our calcgories: unique collocations, strong

collocations, weak collocations and medium-strength collocations First, there are

unique collocalions which are fixed and carmot make way for any olber ilems As examples, he gives the two collocations “foot the bil?” and “shrug your shoulders” The two collocations are unique because the verbs “foot” and “shrug” are not used with any ofher nouns Tn the second place, there are strong collovalions like “wenchant criticism” and “rancid butter” ‘hese are not unique but not many possible collocates

can be used to substitute it Thirdly, weak collocations relates to collocations with a

wide variety of collocates, as adjectives “long”, “short”, “cheap”, “expensive”,

“good” or “bad” can combine with many different nouns, for instance an expensive shirt, a long shirt, etc These combinations are “more predictable” and easy to the 1uajority of students Finally, the fourth type is medium-strongth collocations, for example “holds a conversation” and “a major operation” Hill thinks that students are concerned will this type which is neither strong nor weak

Distinctions are made between grammatical collocations and semantic collocations

by Kathleen and Dragomir in their paper named Collacations They affirm that grammatical collocations often contain prepositions, including paired syntactic categories such as vert-preposition (e.g come to, put on), adjeotivet preposition (e.g afraid that, fond of), and noun preposition (e.g, by accident, witness to) In these cases,

the open-class word is called the base and determines the words it can collocate with,

the collocatars Semantic collocations are lexically restricted word pairs, where only a

subse of Ihe synonyms of the collocalor can be used im the same lexical context

1.3 Collocation in teaching vocabulary

1.31 The importance of using collocations in ELT

Tn ELT, many Frylish language teachers prefer emphasizing grammar lo vocabulary ia their class because grammar is a finite system, whereas vocabulary is not (Sheehan,

2004) And when the teaching of vocabulary items is taken into account, most teachers

only prefer to use classical vocabulary teaching techniques such as synonyms, antonyms, mother tongue translation and definition As a result, students do not make any effort to reach the word meaning and it is inevitable that they probably will nat yemember the meaning of the new words, or even worse, they will not be able to use the new words they have leamed even if they remember the meaning hecause they do

nol know the suitable collocates Therefore, it is not surprisirys when Hill (1999, cited

in Richard & Rodgers, 2001) states that most leamers with “good vocabularies” have problems with fluency because their collocational competence is very limited And

what is more, in his research in 1981, Channel claims that leamers may fail to realize

the potential of words they know well because they only use them in a limited number

of collocations of which they are sure For those facts, it is a widely sccepled idoa among lmgusts that collocation is an indispensable part of knowledge of second language acquisition and they are essential to non-native speakers of Inglish in order

to speak or write fluently and aceurately (Jaén, 2007)

13

It is easy to realize how complicated the area of collocation is, and also, how crucial it

is due to its frequent use in daily life’s communication in general and in linguistics in particular Collocations aro advantageous in helping English learners enhance their accuracy, fluency, and naturalness

13.2 Directions for teaching collocations in English vocabulary

1.3.2.1 Raising the students’ awareness of the importance of collocations

Collocations require to be taught so that the learners would be aware of them because

they would help learners nol onily to understand vocabulary bul also to link ideas more effectively when they write or speak Numerous linguists and language teachers have

underscored the remarkable significance of collocation consciousness-raising in ELT

Teaching collocalions would provide Iearners with a helpful deviee in producing language It could facilitate the productive tasks by making it easier, more precise and

more tatural and native-like Conzett (2000) underlies thal students should be taught

the word Collocation itself This is because students have already formed in the mind the collocations in their mother tongue without consciousness Thus it is not

challenging for them to understand what collocation means, and it helps save much time by using this term in class Actually, some people may argue that if students do not know the concept, they can still learn and use collocations, however when they

Tave knowledge of what collocations are, sludenls would be more aware of the

existence and significance of collocations, and of course, they can leam how to develop their knowledge of collocations independently (Woolard, 2000)

1.3.2.2, Making students be well aware of collacations

Teaching collocations and avoiding the interference of the mother tongue

Foreign language learners tend to transfer negatively already-known words and group

of words from Ll into the target language because of imerference They do translate expressions either consciously or unconsciously from LI inla 1.2 due to

“interlanguage’ or first language translation, as stated by many researchers such as Selinker (1969), which is a considerable problem that disrupts learners’ performance in the targct language Therefore, for the reason that a common collocation in students’ native language is not necessarily the same in Linglish and vice versa, it is indispensible

for teachers to make their learners notice the difference between collocations of each

language and think in the target language as far as possible in order to avoid translating

the LI collocations into the L2, since these translations would lead to errors in writing,

or speaking

Highlighting and noticing

The vocabulary acquisition could benefit from developing the learners’ noticing in teaching collocations by drawing Iheir atlenlion towards some words or clements that are always found together One way of making students do so is highlighting, which could be achieved by underlining the collocation, coloring il, writing iin ilalies or im

‘bold These are effective ways to draw the learners’ attention to collocations in order to

notice them In Morgan’s perspectives (cited in Lewis, 2000), the leamers will not

make progress unless they are trained to notice words that go together This training, he

affirms, will increase their fluency in speaking and writing,

Another way to develop among students is noticing As noticing is an interesting factor im memorizing knowledge in long-term memory, there arc several factors that make it stronger According to Lewis (2000: 117), noticing should be reinforced

by homework, cooperation, involvement, and motivation Other important factors that

foster noticing are repetition and “meaningful contexts” as claimed by Kennedy (2003)

“the provision of systematic, repeated exposure to collocations in meaningful contexts lies at the heart of the teaching cnterprise.” As a general comment, noticing collocations facilitates their acquisition but it is “a complex process” in which teachers should be attentive enough to give the guidance to draw students’ attention

15

1.3.2.3 Teaching collocations through exercises

In Lewis’ book, M named Teaching Callocation (2000), countless exercises have been introduced to develop students’ collecational knowledge, McCarthy and ©’Del (2005) also provide a wealthy source of exercises on collocation ‘Teachers can consider carefully which kind of exercises should be applied in class hasing on different factors such as students’ level, teaching time allocation, teachers’ creativity, course book, ete 1.3.2.4, Teaching collocations through context

Teas remarked that the acquisition of collocations becomes muck easier if the most

common collocates of a word are taught in context Indeed, Hocy (cited in Michacl

Lewis, 2000} supports that “learning items in context may be easier than learning

them out of context” This means thal students can base on their knowledge of the

surrounding words/ phrases in the texts to work out the meaning of some certain

collocations However, for the reason that students do nol have adequale stock of

vocabulary to guess the words from context, teachers have to give students the specific

instructions in terms of the meaning of word “chunks” in context

1.3.2.5 Storing collocations

Students need to have an organized vocabulary journal to record collocations They can organize their journals in differem ways: grammatically, by common key word, by topie, cle They can also make use of lables or spider-grams, which work well with visual learners For example, students can record certain collocations under headings such as have/ take/ get/ do or make An instance of spider — gram is taken from English

Collocation in use by McCarthy and O’Dell, as follow:

16

Storing collocations: The spider — grams

Storing collocations: The spider — grams

[Topic: LAWS AND PUNISHMENT]

effect on foreign language learning in many aspects

17

‘The results of the data obtained from the experimental research by Hlahe and Hamid (2013) on the effects of teaching lexical collocations on speaking ability of students also reveal that teaching lexical collocation is a useful mean to maximize collocation knowledge, having positive effects on LI'L leamers’ speaking ability It appears that through the use of collocation knowledge, L2 learners can manage to have more control over speaking ability in Hnglish and comprehend the ideas within the dialogues and conversations Concurrently, Tue (2012) did an action research on the effects of collocation using on the writing skill of her sludents Afler 14 weeks of the intervention, she had come up with the result that collocation instruction brought positive influences to improve the writing ability of students

Krom the above review of literature, the researcher recognized that there is still no research on vocabulary, the aspect that needs to be taken so much notice of, moreover,

it is essential to find out whether the collocation method is suitable to the Vietmamese context ‘Therefore, she decided to fill in the gap by studying on the effects of using collocation in teaching vocabulary for students at a school in Vietnam

15 Summary

This chapter reviews the literature on vocabulary, the common knowledge of collocation in general and the use of collocations in L2 vocabulary teaching and learning in particular The chapter, thus, reviews the benefits of collocation in

vocabulary exercises as well as how these exercises can be developed and used im the

classroom Next chapter, Chapter II, will describe the study inchiding the context and

the design of the sludy

CHAPTER TI: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The present research is conducted in a specific context with regard to filling certain gaps in the literature to date, including

(1) To what extent does using collocations in teaching Linglish vocabulary affect students’ learning of new words at grade 11 at Son Tay high school?

(2) What are students' attitudes towards teaching collocations?

Based on that, in the following part, the researcher provides a detailed description of the research methodology

2.1, Research method:

The objectives of the sludy are

(1) to explore the relationship between collocation teaching and grade 11 students’ improvements in their English vocabulary

(2) to investigate students’ attitudes towards collocation teaching, ie how effective they think collocation teaching method is towards their Fnglish vocabulary learning,

As regards the first purpose, two types of variables are identified for the study: the dependent variable and the independent variable The former in this study is the students’ scores in their vocabulary tests whereas the latter is using collocation in leaching vocabulary

Despite the advantage of the cxperimental method in the study which sets out to

investigate the correlation between the interventicn and its outcome, it is not always

feasible to carry oul a tue experiment Indeed, it is impossible Lo randomly assign the subjects to either the control or experimental group in an educational context because the classroom groups are already in place and have ta be intact

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Instead, a quasi-experiment is employed naturally in the studying process with the subjects for both the experimental group and the control group being the intact groups

of students In order to have a strong quasi-oxperimental design, the researcher trics to control the internal threats to validity by making use of pretesting ‘I'o be confident that there is no significant difference among the participants of the Experimental Group and Control Group regarding the variables under exploration, both groups were pre-tested

at the commencement of the study One proup is the control group in which the new

vovabulary is instructed merely via Wradilioual Lechmiques (definitions, synonyms,

antonyms, first language translations) The second group is the experimental group who is taught the same vocabulary via collocations

Tn order to look for the solution for Ihe second aim, a wrilien questionnaire is carried

out to ensure that the problem is answered effectively

2.2, Context of the research

The research is conducted at Son Tay High school, a school founded in 1959 at Son

Tay Town, Ila Noi Currently there are roughly 1000 students attending different

classes of grade 10, 11 and 12 The school offers two types of classes namely classes for gifted students and standard classes ‘this study focuses only on participants in

standard classes

The particular site is chosen for two main reasons The first one is that the researcher

has nearly two years of teaching experience at Son Tay Iligh school, so she can easily

get access to the participants of the research, and be accustomed to the teaching and

lcaming, environment there Secondly, the researcher is supported enthusiastically from

the leader and the teachers of Linglish in her research

for this study is because the number of period of different subjects is allocated more equally than that for specialized classes They spend three English periods a week, each period lasts forty-five minutes The participants ail live inside Son Tay town and its surrounding outskirts Despite the fact that they have been learning Linglish from grade

3 due to the general curriculum of the Minisry of Education and Training, their nglish level is quite limited and they are not really motivated in learnmg English This

is partly because they are science subject oriented students who are not going ta have Fnglish as one of the subjects iu their university entrance exam Nearly half of them have attempted to leam English for graduating purpose which do not require a high level of English competency However, throughout the process of teaching them, the researcher realives that her students Have not approached the suitable method with regard to Jeaming Huglish ‘There is no change in the number of students in each class during the whole process of the research

92 students in the two classes are chosen as the participants for the study for three reasons: (1) they all have got one year of grade 10 at Son Tay high school to get used

to the study environment there, especially to English subject without approaching suitable methods to upgrade their level of English, (2) the researcher herself is assigned

to cover mainly 11-grade students, and she is teaching both two classes during the

treatment, and (3) aller the researcher explains the purposes of the sludy for them, they are willing to take part in it

The two classes study the same texthook of English 11 with three periods a week As

can be scen, the textbook is theme-bascd, including 16 units and 6 review lessons which are presented in the format of a Zest youself for students to check their own knowledge Rach unil comesponds with a topic and consists of 5 parts (Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language Vocus) There is no separate part for Vocabulary Vocabulary is indirectly taught and learnt (ie., learning vocabulary as a

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by-product of doing other things such as reading or listening, etc.) It is taught integrated with skills such as reading, speakang, listening, and writing

2.3.2 Data collection instruments

Vor the purpose of ensuring the validity of the research, a number of instruments are carried out in chronological order First and foremost, two tests including Pre-Test and Post-Test (see Appendix 2 and 3) are applied to the participants to measure the effects

of teaching collocations on 11" farm students’ English vocabulary acquirement

2.3.2.1 Pre-test and Post-iest

The first test (Pre-Test) is to cheek in advance how much students know and in what way they have manipulated English collocations before the intervention The second tes (Posl-Test) is the tool to measure how much sludents get improved aller the application of 10 weeks learning collocation intensively in their studying process

To select the appropriale words for the tests and im order to ensure that the selected

words are entirely and officially suitable to the participants’ level, the tests are designed based on language inputs of the seven-year-system English textbook 11 by

Viemamese Educational Publishing House, and the book English Collocation In Use

by McCarthy and ©” Dell is also used for reference in terms of collocation exercise

types

Both lesis are designed in the same form melding 40 collocation items which are

divided into five types of exercises Part | consists of 10 multiple choice questions in

which students are required ta choose the correct answer among four given choices The second part asks test-takers to match the words in the leit column to the words or

phrases in the right to build five correct items of collocation In the third part of the esl, students have to identify whether the given collocalions are correct or incorrect in certain contexts, and then correct the wrong ones Part 4 is gap-filling exercise in

which 10 collocations are omitted from its contexts Students in this task have to

choose from the given items the most suitable one to fill in cach blank The last part

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involves in students translating 10 collocation phrases from Vietnamese into Hnglish in

context

Each correct answer will reecive one point; therefore, the maximum score that a student is able to get is 40 The time allowance for each test is 45 minutes excluding the time of delivering the test paper

Before the experiment, the Pre-Test is given to both groups at the same time on the same day After the experimental period, the Post-Test, the version of the Pre-Test in

which some changes are made to avoid the similarity m the question order of both

tests, is used again to measure the two groups’ English vocabulary gains for four months The steps of administering the Post-Test are the same as the Pre-Test Descriptive statistics such as means, and standard deviations were computed using SPSS ‘l-test is calculated to compare the similarities and differences between pre-test

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the curent study, a written questionnaire is conducted in the research with the fulfillment of all the students in the experimental group at the same time

Before students complete the questionnaires, the researcher oxplains what the items meant, Students are encouraged to raise any queries they have ‘They do not need to provide their name in the questionnaires to secure confidentiality issue

10 questions are carefully designed for students who are in the experimental group for their vocabulary improvements to draw their evaluative opinions of collocation

teaching All the questions are relaled to students’ feedback and atlilude lo the

selationship between collocation using in teaching English vocabulary and the students’ improvements The first question asks students to give their opinion on whelher the provision of collocation general knowledge is useful The four following questions focus on collocation learning effects In question 6 and 7, students are

required Lo take a sland on the collocation activities applied durmg the experiment Question 8 and 9 are about students’ viewpoint on the effects of collocation teaching to

their self-learning The last one, question 10, investigates if students want further

collocation teaching or not

‘Lhe type of question items in the questionnaire is all five point Likert scale (See Appendix 6) Students are asked to tick in the blanks that are suitable to their opinion Students were given 20 minutes to respond to the questionnaire The questionnaire is written in English and then translated into Vietnamese to assure that respondents do not have any language problems in fully understanding every inside question

The data collected from the questionnaire are then analyzed in details in the following sections ‘he results of the questionnaire would help the researcher draw out supplemental stalcments on the issuc discussed,

2.4, Procedure

The researcher completes the experimental study in ten weeks, dividing into three main phases: the pro-implementation phase, implementation phasc, and the post-

implementation phase, with the suitable utility of collocation strategies and materials to the students The strategies applied in the process include:

(1) giving an orientation to the students about the concept and the importance of collocation knowledge in their language skills

(2) introducing different methods, materials to leam collocations as well as the

means to which students can approach (computer, technology, ouline database,

authentic materials, etc.)

(3) teaching collocation through activites and exercises,

(4) showing students ways to leam, revise and store collocations independently,

The research is carried out over tem weeks, starting from Lie second week of the first

semester of the academic year 2015-2016 at Son ‘lay High school, Ha Noi, Different

strategies in teaching collocations are stnok closely to the syllabus and the contents of

the textbook are made the most of in order to ensure that the research intervention does

not affect the studying of general English subject assigned by the Ministry of

Education and Training Thus, the application of collocation teaching is integrated into

the teaching of different skills regarding to the lessons’ content

In the first week of the study, all of 92 students in contral and experimental groups are fallen through pre-tests which helps the rescarcher delve into the current pollocstion imowledge of her students From week 2 onwards, only students in the experimental group are engaged in the application of collocation leaching which is 9-week length

241 The pre-implementation phase

‘The pre-implementation phase aims to give an orientation to the students about the definition and importance of collocation knowledge in their language skills Tn week 2, the researcher explains to her experimental students the main types of collocation

which are all listed in a handout for them to revise af home Furthermore, the troduction of the general materials and the means from which students can be

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facilitated in learning, collocations is also given In this phase, teacher, also researcher,

stresses the significance of online database, collocation dictionary, and authentic materials She uses projector to show the link to downlead the electronic version of

Oxford Collocations dictionary for students of English, aud of course, the paperback

version was also brought to the class to illustrate Besides, the teacher introduces the

book English Collocations in Use Intermediate by McCarthy and 0” Dell to students More than that, some authentic sources from magazines, newspapers, and internet are recornmended in front of the whole class so as to supporl students in looking for and understanding collocations in context

242 The implementation phase

The implementation phase continues [rom weck 3 un, including

« Teacher applying activities to help students acquire collocations

« Teacher instructing students haw to learn, revise, and store collocations

individually

The teacher of the experimental group attaches numerous kinds of activity inside the classroom for her students’ acquirement of collocation, especially in reading, speaking, and writing periods

Ta terms of teaching reading skills, the teacher Ines Lo chrect sludents’ allention to the

collocations in each reading text in the textbook She firstly underlines or highlights the collocation items appearing in a model reading Then she elicits by giving students guided questions so thai they can lear the way to identify the collovation in the seadings For example, in unit 4 of the textbook for grade 11 named “volunteer work”, the guided questions are

The word “volunteer” appears in the passage in different parts of speech What are they?

“ Then, if it is a noun, which preposition’ adjective/adverb/verb does it collocate with?

Uf it is an adjective, which words does it go with?

These questions are given one by one, right after the students reading the whole text

After that, the Loacher helps students work oul which collocation patterns these phrases belong to Only by that way can students improve their awareness and have deeper

perception of collocations As a tesull, they đo form the habits of identifying

collocations and learning words in chunks whenever they acquire any reading text

instead of individual words as before

Being well aware that collocalions can make speaking wore natural, the rescarcher combines collocation in teaching speaking skills in class ‘the teacher uses a variety of ways to apply collocation in teaching speaking For the reason that speaking period always comes after the reading skill, one of the approaches is that after teaching collocations in reading texts, the teacher skillfully makes use of these chunks to design

a speaking task Taking the following as an example for speaking exercise 1 of Unit 4

“volunteer work” in the textbook

Decide which of the following activities are volunteer work:

Taking part in excursion

« — Helping people in remote or mountainous areas

© Taking care of the sick and the old

* Participating in un Faglish speaking club

* Providing education for disadvantaged children

+ Joning the Green Saturday Movement

In the above activity, collocations are integrated into each phrase ‘then, students are asked to use these phrases including collocalions lo apply in conlext for speaking which is produced by teacher For example:

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Work in groups Talk about the voluntary work you have ever done to help people Remember using the above phrases

By giving such instructions one by one, the teacher gradually shifts her students into

using collocations rather than individual words

Regarding another productive skill, namely writing, the teacher lets students

brainstorm the group of collocational items related to the writing topic before asking them to write Or to make it clearer, the teacher researcher has students fill in the spider chart with the collocates of the key word related to the main topic As for correcting

students’ writing products, teacher presents the collocation errors to the class without mentioning students’ names This can make students more aware of the mistakes in

writing and from that, they avoid making mistakes in language use

Apart from applying different activities concerning collocations, the teacher shows

students ways to acquire, revise and store collocations on their own both inside and

outside classroom

Firstly, the techniques to search for collocations through some sources such as

dictionary or corpora are delivered to students The corpora are the collections of

written and spoken sources produced by native speakers of English, which are stored electrically and can be accessed using search software The teacher uses projector and

intemet to access some corpora sources such as the British National Corpus

(http:/Avww.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/) or Corpus of Contemporary American English

‘http://corpus.byu.edw/coca/) Similarly, the teacher also illustrates the ways to look for collocates from the electronic and paperback versions of Collocations Dictionary, After

that, the teacher tries asking students to work in groups to share knowledge and discuss

which methods of searching for collocations that they find most suitable to them

Secondly, in week 9, the teacher designs some small games in order to help students revise collocations they have learnt One of the games is that she allows students to

work in group as well, and give each group a certain word Each student has to give

one collocating phrase that they have learnt in the previous lessons For example, the teacher assigns the verh “take” to a group of four students They one by one work out a

list of chunks using “take” as follows:

Tf there is a student who cannot work out any chunk in his/her tum, he/she can be the

loser of the group

Thirdly, it is necessary for students to keep a record of common collocations that they have acquired in their leaming process The teacher does instruct them to write down

collovalions in a notebook, and of course, sort out the ist of colloeations m terms of

verb, theme, or textbook’s content, etc., depending on the way that works best for

them Using “spider-diagrams” is also offective 1o replace listing method for the reason

that students can add more collocating items more easily

Meanwhile, the researcher still keeps using traditional techniques to teach vocabulary such as teaching individual words, giving explanation, definition, and translating the words out of the context by referring to the hst of words in the form of marginal glosses available in reading, passages of the textbook in the control group

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