Luận văn sử dụng sơ Đồ ngữ nghĩa Để dạy từ vựng tiếng anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên năm cuối chuyên ngành tài chính và kế toán trường cao

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, IA NOL UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES, PHAM THI HANH USING SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH ESP VOCABULARY T

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, IA NOL UNIVERSITY

OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES,

PHAM THI HANH

USING SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH ESP VOCABULARY TO

FINAL-YEAR STUDENTS OF FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING

AT HANOI TOURISM COLLEGE

(Sử dụng so’ dé ngit nghia dé day tie vung tiéng Anh chuyén nganh cho sinh

viên năm cuỗi, chuyên ngành tài chính và kế toán, trường Cao đẳng Du lịch

Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR TIIESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CUAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.2 The role of vocabularv in seoond langtuage learring -2-: c2 6

1.5 The nature of ESP vocabulary HH1 kg tr re 9

1.6 Challenges of ESP vocabulary leaming 1n H

1.7, What should be taught in I2SP vocabulary leaching ii 12

1.8 Characteristics of Ginancial & aocounting English vooabulary 14

1.8.1 The morphological characteristics HH n0 0e rre 14

1.8.3 The semanti characteristies HH n0 0e rre 15

1.9 Vocabulary retention HHu re HH n0 0e rre 16

1.10 Semantic mapping as a vocabulary instruction stralegy 16

1.10.1 Delinitons of semanlie mapping HH n0 0e rre 16

1.10.2 Procedures to construot a somantic mAp, ccsnt cre 17

1.10.3 Previous studies of the impact of semantic mapping on students’ vocabulary

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

2.1, The context of the study ¬— 1n 25

2.1.1 Research setting ¬— 1n 25

3.1.1 The eflecliveness of semantic mapping on studenls’ word retention .32

3.1.2 Students perceptions of the benefits of semantic mapping to their word retention

3.2 Diseussion HHu re HHu re HH n0 0e rre 36

PART €: CONCLUSION

2 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS GE: General English

ESP: English for specific purpose

HTC: Hanoi Tourism College

L2: The second language

LIST OF TABLES

w a

Table 3.1 Students’ test scores in three progress tests

Table 3.2.: Students’ perceptions of the benefits of semantic mapping to

their ESP vocabulary learning

vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In recent years, the demand for learning Hnglish for specific purpose

(ESP) has been spread nationwide Due to the social needs, ESP is taught in

almost universities, colleges and vocational schools Most of English

departments offer courses in ESP after General English (GE) during the basic

years [Ianoi Tourism College (ITC) is a typical example of the training

inslitutions that combines ESP within its current English teaching situation in

response to the demand for specific language learning target In Hanoi Tourism

College, teachers are required to tcach English to students from various ficlds such as Restaurant, Hotel, ‘Iravel agency, ‘Tour guidmg, Finance and accounting,

and food production

One of the concerns about the ESP program at the College is how to help

students learn the HSP vocabulary better ‘This is really critical given the role af

vocabulary in second language learning either for General Purposes or for

Specific Purposes Many scholars have considered vocabulary acquisilion as

beimg fundamental and crucial component to any foreign language learners

Wilkins (1972, p.11) emphasizes the importance of vocabulary as “without

grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be

conveyed” For ESP, Robinson (1991), pointed out that for many people,

vocabulary, particularly specialist vocabulary (or terminology), is the key

element of ESP

At HTC, despite teachers’ efforts to try experimenting various vocabulary

techniques, the result is far from satisfaction Students still have serious

1

difficullies memorizing, recalling and using specialist vocabulary, ic,

vocabulary related to their field of finance and accounting The desire to help

sludonts address those difficultics motivate me Lo carry oul this study, which is

aimed at exploring the possibility of using the semantic mapping strategy to teach ESP vocabulary This teaching technique has not been used at IITC to the

best of my knowledge

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

Tho aim of the study is to explore the possibility of leaching ESP

vocabulary through semantic mapping with reference to the students’ attitudes

to, and opinions of, this instructional stratcgy as well as their retention of ESP

vocabulary Because it is just a stepping stone to the extensive application of the

semantic mapping strategy to teach ESP vocabulary, it is confined to two

3 Scope of the study

Firstly, the study limits itsclf to the investigation of the students’

perceptions of the usefulness of semantic mapping to their ESP vocabulary learning as well as their retention of ESP vocabulary as measured by the

questionnaire responses and progress tests Secondly, this study is similar to a

small-scale action research project in the sense that its primary purpose is to help

ihe researcher to improve her tcaching Therefore, the sludy was conducled with

the final-year participant students of three year-training program who were real

sludents in the rescarcher’s class Finally, the study uscd the the lextbook named

“English for finance and accounting” which was compiled by teachers from HTC and is in use at the college as instructional material

4 Research questions

In order to achieve the aim and objectives of the study, the following

research questions arc formulated

1 What are students’ perceived benefits of learning ESP vocabulary

through semantic mapping?

2 To what extent does semantic mapping help students learn ESP

vocabulary better as measured by their retention of vocabulary ?

5 Significance of the study

Although semantic mapping has been researched extensively in the context of second language vocabulary learning, litle research has been done in

ESP Although this study focuses only on the sludents’ perecived benelits of

semantic mapping to ther ESP vocabulary and the impact of this vocabulary technique on their ESP vocabulary retention, the findings of this study will shed

more light on the possibility of usmg scmantic mapping to teach ESP vocabulary These findings can also lay the foundation for a more extensive

study on the impact of this vocabulary strategy upon students’ ESP vocabulary acquisition in the context where ESP is taught as a minor subject

6 Methods of the study

Since the purpose of the study is to test the impact of semantic mapping on

students’ ESP vocabulary aquisition, a quasi- experimental design is appropriate The study is quasi-cxperimental in wo ways Firstly, no randomized sampling was used, instead an intact group of students were used in this study Second, the study design did not use the pretest-posttest design (Nunan, 1992) Instead, the

impact of the treatment was measured through progress tests and a final test In

addition to these tests, a student questionnaire was also employed

In order to obtain information for the two research questions stated in

Section 4 above, two main mslruments of data collection were uscd: the sludent

questionnaire and the progress tests Because the first research question is to find

out students perceptions of the treatment, the student questionnaire was designed

and administered to the students at the end of the treatment to obtam their

responses to the treatment Regarding to the second research question, two progress Lests and a final Lesl, which was administered al the end of the treatment, were used to measure the students’ retention of the taught vocabulary

under the influence of the treatment

17 Design of the study

The thesis is composed of three parts

Part A — the Introduction — introduces the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope, the research questions, the significance, the method, and

the design of the study are presented

Part B - the Development — consists of three chaplers, and is Lhe backbone

of the thesis Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework for the study This

framework provides the guidelines for conducting this research and for the

discussion of the data Chapter 2 provides the information about the context in which the study was conducted, the research participants, and the research

procedures including cxperiment the methods of data collection and data

analysis The findings of the study are presented and discussed in Chapter 3

Part C: Conclusion -the major findings are summarised with reference to

the research questions mentioned in section 4 of the Parl A Also tm this Part are the acknowledgement of the limitations of the study, the implications for

teaching ESP vocabulary using the semantic mapping and suggestions for

further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the litcrature on vocabulary tcaching and learning, and the

use of semantic mapping as a technique of teaching vocabulary will be reviewed The chapter starts with a definition of vocabulary and the importance of

vocabulary in second or foreign language learning in general and in learning

English for specific purposes (ESP) in particular Then, a review of what is

involved in teaching foreign language vocabulary as well as the challenges of

learning vocabulary will be presented ‘his provides a background for the next

seclions which focus on the linguistic features distinclive of ESP vocabulary and

what makes teaching and learning ESP vocabulary challenging, In addition to

5

these, some other basic issues related lo ESP vocabulary caching and learning

are presented and discussed Finally, previous studies on using semantic

mapping for teaching vacabulary are reviewed

14 What is vacabulary?

Up to now there are different definitions of vocabulary Hach linguist gives his/her own definition of vocabulary depending on the different criteria

that he/she considers the most important factors in terms of linguistics,

semantics, lexicology, etc

Homby (1995, p.1331) states that vocabulary is the total number of words

which ( with rules of combining them) makes up a language Similarly, Ur (1996) defines vocabulary as “the words we teach in the foreign language” (p

60) She adds that a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a

compound of two or three words or multi-ward lexical units or idioms ‘These

multi-word lexical units are a challenge to foreign language learners because thew meaning can nol be deduced from an analysis of component words Example of this vocabulary class are balance sheet, current account, write-off,

financial records, ole

For the purpose of this study, vocabulary is understood as the total number

of all the words that a language possesses Tt is not only simple words, but also

complex and compound words, creating the meaningful units of language

1.2 The role of vocabulary in second language learning

It is commonly accepted that vocabulary is one of the fundamental

clements of a language Pyles and Algco (1970) slates

When we first ihmk about language, we think firsL about

words It is words that we arrange together to make sentences,

conversations and discourses ofall kinds (p.96)

As words are the meaningful unils of a language, vocabulary is of critical importance to L2 learners ‘his is highlighted by McCarthy ( 1990), who argues,

ko matter how well the students learns grammar, no matter

how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without wards to

express

a wider range of meanings, communication in an 1.2 just

cannot happen in any meaningful way (p 8)

It can be inferred that if the primary goal of foreign language learning is

communication, vocabulary should be given spocial attention If the leamer has a

wide range of vocabulary with little grammar, he or she can not only make himself or herself understood but also understand the language easily On the

contrary, if the learner’s vocabulary is limited with much knowledge of grammar, he or she can find it very difficult to communicate or to understand the

language Laufer (1998) is right in noting “ the most striking differences belwcen

foreign learners and native learners is in the quantity of words each group

possesses” (p 225) Emphasizing the need to constantly expand the vocabulary,

Thornbury (1997) advices forcign language learners that they should try to

expand their vocabulary continuously because vocabulary acquisition is a never-

onding process

In realily, vocabulary dircclly link to language skills as listening,

speaking, reading and writing Therefore, a good vocabulary knowledge facilitates second language learners’ comprehending the text they are reading or

?

liskning, enable learners lo speak naturally and io write professionally

Obviously, there is no way of making advance in second language without

olforts to increase vocabulary

1.3 What is involved in leaching LZ vocabulary

According to Harmer (1991, p 158), to know the ward involves knowing

its

Meaning (its definition) - meanings in context, sense relations (synonyms,

anlonyms, hyponyms)

Usage —collocations, idioms and metaphors, style and register

Form — spelling and pronunciation, prefixes and suffixes, parts of speech Grammar — irregular forms, phrasal verbs, adverbs and adjectives

Becauso af this complexity of vocabulary knowledge, it is really challenging to teach and learn 1.2 vocabulary ‘hese challenges are discussed

in the following section

1.4 Challenges of L2 vocabulary learning

AAs mentioned above, vocabulary learning is a complex process According

to scholars (c.g Jenson, 1998; Sprenger,1999), onc of the most difficultics that

foreign language students is likely to be encountered is retaining words retrieving their meanings for communicative use This difficulty may be related

to inadequate initial information processing which results in words having a poor

"network of associations" Therefore, in order to help learners to deal with this problem, foreign language teachers have to consider ways of deepening the

associations and the semantic connections of the target vocabulary so as to

8

onsure accurate long term storage Towards this goal, somanlic mapping can be a

good teaching strategy

Because this study aims to investigate the potential advantages of semantic mapping asa strategy of Wcaching ESP vocabulary, it would be helplul to look into the distinctive features of ESP vocabulary

1.5 The nature of ESP vocabulary

Vocabulary plays a key role in learning foreign languages in general and

in professional course in particular ESP vocabulary is classified into different

categories: semi-technical vocabulary! sub-technical vocabulary, and technical

vocabulary or jargons

Sub-technical vocabulary: Sub-technical words are most frequent in ESP

vocabulary, Inman (ciled in Kermedy & Bolitho, 1984, p.S8) notes thai sub-

technical vocabulary seems to be involved in almost 80 per cent of scientific texts that is a quite high occurrence These are “words that have one or more

‘general’ English meanings and which in technical contexts take on extended

meanings (technical, or specialized in some fashion)” (Trimble, 1985, p 129),

According to Kennedy and Boltho (1984), sub-technical words are “words

which are not specific to a subject specialty but which occur regularly in

scientific and technical texts” (p.57-58) This fealure may lead to

misunderstanding of lhe meaning of KSP words by those who neither have the

relevant specialized knowledge nor sufficiently good English In addition, it

cher who lack relevant

often represents 4 problem for both the learner and the

knowledge of the field Consequently, it is the sub-technical lexis that teacher should give high priority when teaching ESP vocabulary

9

Technical vocabulary: Unlike semi-technical vocabulary, technical

vocabulary are words “ recognizably specific to particular topic, field or

discipline” (Nation 2001, p.198), Technical vocabulary is most obviously

associated with specialized texts or discourse ‘hese words have their specific meanings and they seem to be very uncommon to the people who are not related

to their fields of meaning (Fraser 2005) Technical vocabulary can be sub-

divided into three smaller categories:

Fully technical vocabulary Crypto technical vocabulary Lay-technical vocabulary

Fully technical vocabulary comprises those words whose meaning is

clearly technical They are specilic to the ficld and not likely to be known in

general language e.g: hypertension, obesity, hepatitis, Crypto technical vocabulary consists of polysemous words like “transmitter” which could be said

to be ‘oryptic” in that they have a hidden technical meaning, Lay-technicat

vocabulary comprises those terms which are obviously technical but are likely to

be known by the layperson

In summary, ESP vocabulary falls into two broad categories: scmi-

technical and technical ‘This means that in learning ESP, students have to cope with these two categories plus general vocabulary or non-technical vocabulary

However, the semi-technical vocabulary tends to outnumber the technical

vocabulary This is really a challenge to students whose Inglish is limited These

sludents arc likely to misundersland or gel confused about the meaning of the words Thus, it is more difficult for them to retain words that they have been

10

laugh According to Nation (2001, p.187), “It is wise to direct vocabulary

learning to more specialized areas when learners have master words of general

usofulnoss in English” (Nation, 2001, p.187) This scems thal semantic mapping

can be an effective technique of ESP vocabulary teaching ‘This technique allows teachers to elicit students’ words of general usefulness before helping them to

link these words with the ESP contexts through the process of scmantic

mapping The pros and cons of this vocabulary technique will be are discussed

later in this chapler

1.6 Challenges of ESP vocabulary learning

Tho first thing to realize about ESP vocabulary items is thal they frequently have more than ane meaning which cause troubles for most learners

The second is that ESP words are perceived as more complex than general words due to the fact that collocation is very frequent in HSP (Xhaferi, 2010, p 236) Compound nouns m ESP in terms of its form and meaning is the factor challenging studonts since longer words should be more difficult o learn and remember and their meanings are not sumply deduced from their parts ‘Trimble

(1985, p.131, 163) points oul that understanding and producing noun compounds

makes problems for many non-native students Some cxamples of compounds

given below will show that they themselves are the problems for anyone

learning, rcading, and translating a financial and accounting text: dormant

account, liquid asset, baby bond, red-chip company ane so on

Consequently, the primary concern for ESP teachers, apart from deciding what words should be taught or given priority, is helping learners familiar with

ESP collocations as compounds

11

1.7, What should be taught in ESP vocabulary teaching

It is word form, meaning and use that should be focused on in ESP

vocabulary teaching Consequently, Kennedy and Bolitho state that “the study of word lormalion and word relationships” (1984, p59), or sense relations, constitutes the two important aspects of teaching ESP vocabulary Besides,

Penny Ur (1996) added word form and collocation

1.7.4 Ward form

Vocabulary cannot be taught or learnt in complete isolalion Irom the rest

of linguistics components namely grammar, phonetics and phonology The

leamer has to know what the word sounds like (its pronunciation) and whal it looks like (its spelling) when learning vocabulary ‘This can be particularly

problematic for learners of English because there is often no clear relation

between how a word is written and how it is pronounced It is very important to

use the phonemic script in such cases so the students have clear written record of ihc pronunciation The teacher needs to make surc thal these aspecls arc accurately presented and learnt

L

Students should be taught lhe common prefixes and suffixes and haw they

Word formation

work, For example, if learners know the meaning of "in", "de" and "il", or “able”

this will help them guess the meaning of words such as "intangible",

"deregulation", and “illegal” or “ payable” However, studenls should be warned

that in many common words the affixes no longer have obvious connection with their root meaning (for example: "consider" -> "considerable”)

12

Another way vocabulary items arc buill is by combining two words: two nouns, or a gerund and a noun, or a noun and a verb to make one item: a single compound word or two soparate (lor example: "book list"t " sitting room")

173 Word relations

Word relations is very useful im vocabulary teaching and learning ‘They show how the meaning of one item relates to the meaning of others Kennedy

and Bolitha stress that “words do not exist in isolation” (1984, p.62) and so they

should be taught in context Gairns and Redman, (1986, p.22) also emphasizes

thal “lhe meaning of a word can only be understood and Icarnt in terms of relationship with other words in the language” or “werds are not learnt

mechanically, as little packets of meaning, but associatively” CMorgan &

Rinvolueri, 2004, p.7) In erder to understand word relationships, learners should

do activities involving synonyms (words with similar meaning), antonyms

GQvords with opposite meaning), hyponyms (subordinal

co-hyponyms (co-

ordinates) and hypernyms (super-ordinates) and collocations ‘These activities can be included in vocabulary teaching strategies as diagrams, mind maps, word

trees which group words by categories (building materials: stone, sand, wood),

by word families (to build, builder, building), by topic (at a building site),

According lo Gaims and Redman (1986) these strategies are considered the

most effective and favorite strategies in ESP vocabulary teaching because

“organization is the key to memory, this is an important part of teaching your

students how to he efficient learners” (p.100)

13

17.4 Callocation

A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that

correspond to somo conventional way of saying things Or in words of Firth

(1957) “collocations of a given word are statements of the habitual or customary places of that word” (p.181) It refers to the restrictions on how words can be

used together in right contexts, We can talk about “thick fog” and “dense fog”

with the same meaning However, we cannot say “dense hair” instead of “thick

hair”

Tt socms that word form, word formation, word relations or collocation can

be taught through semantic mapping

1.8 Characteristics of financial and accounting English vocabulary

According to the study by Nguyen Phuoc Vinh Co and Bui Kim Yen (2011), financial and accounting English vocabulary has the morphological and

semantic characteristics as following

1.8.1 The morphological characteristics

Morphologically, English words of finanec and accounting can be simple

words, compound words, and phrases with either pre-modifiers and post-

modificrs

Simple words: financial, accounting English vocabulary appears many

simple words such as ‘asset’ ‘bear’, ‘capital’, ‘debit’, ‘earnings’

Compound words: According to Nguyen and Ton (2010) cited in study

by Vinh Co and Kim Yon, collocalions, ospecially, noun plus nouns and

adjective plus nouns are one of the most characteristic features of financial and

14

accounling English vocabulary The corpus of the collocalions of compound

nouns in ‘Longman Business Dictionary’ given by these two authors shows that

the word ‘account’ has 65 collocations; ‘asset’ has 13 collocalions; ‘balance ' bas

14 collocations and so on

Besides, some compounds consisting of verb + preposition also add to the terminology of financial and accounting English such as ‘buy-back’ ‘buy-in’,

‘take-out’, ‘take-over’, ‘turn-over’, ‘write-down’, ‘write-off and so on

Phrases with premadifers or pust-modifiers: Another common

characteristics in financial and accounting terminology is premodified and

poslmodilicd noun phrases The long premodified noun phrases are as in ‘public

sector borrowing requirement’, ‘accounts receivable turnover’, etc., Kesides

them, we also see the long postmodified noun phrases as in ‘law of diminishing

returns’, ‘return on capital employed’, ‘halance brought down’, so on

182 The semantic characteristics

In terms of semantics, English vocabulary of finance and aceounting can

be classified broadly into two categories: (a) general words with specialized

senses, and (b) words with highly specialized meaning, i.c., compounds whose

meanings are not inferred by adding the meaning of components together

Firstly, the most basic characteristic is that general English words have specialized senses We will come across these terms in a financial and

accounting text such as ‘asset’, ‘balance’, ‘capital’, ‘earnings’, ‘gain’,

liabilities, and many other terms It is worth noting that these terms, when

combining with othor terms, usually give us a collocation paticrn thal may sound

15

odd in everyday English but is common collocations in financial and accounting

English

Regarding to the second category, Quirk & et al (1980) (cited in Cé and Yén 2011) note that scmantically, compounds can be scen lo be isolated from ordinary syntactic constructions by having a meaning which may be related to but can not simply be inferred from the meaning of its parts such as “deposit

1.9 Vocabulary Retention

Retention is defined as “an ability to recall or recognize what has been

learnt or experienced, memory” (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (1992,

p.773) Although no definition of vocabulary retenlion has been found in literature review by the researcher, for purpose of her study, she can state that

vocabulary retention is the storage of vocabulary in the memory, which becomes

available for use when needed So retention of vocabulary is ability to recall

words that have been learnt for communicative use

1.10 Semantic mapping as a vocabulary instruction strategy

1.161 Definitions of semantic mapping

Semantic mapping, a strategy popularly used in foreign language

instruction, is up to now defined by many scholars and rescarchers

Semantic mapping is defincd “ a visual representation of knowledge, a

picture of conceptual relationship” (Antonacci, 1991, p.174) or “ a graphic

arrangement showing the major ideas and relationships in text or among word

meanings” (Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, & Berg, 1984, p 22) According to Stoller

16

(1994), scmantic mapping is a * graphic display of information within calegorics

related to central concepts” creating associative networks for words Sharing the

points with Stoller, Johnson, Pittclman, and Heimlich (1986) notes thaL somanlic

mapping is a“ categorical structuring of information m graphic form” (p.779) It

is an individualized content approach in that students are required to relate new

words to their own expericnees and prior knowledge Defining in a simple way,

semantic mapping is the building up of “ a diagrammatic maps showing the

relationship between vocabulary suggesled by teachers, suggested by learners

and found in a reading text” (Nation 1990, p.129) In short, semantic mapping is the process of creating a graphic map, in which the new knowledge is integrated

in the old and words or concepts or ideas arc represented in calcgorics and

semantic relationship among them is visually shown

1182 Procedures to construct a semantic map

Semantic mappimg may be presented in a variety of ways Johnson and Pearson (1984) cited in Gunning (1992, p.164) slates that the procedures for

presenting semantic mapping are as follows

1 introduction of the topic: Write a key word, concept, term or topic

related lo classroom work on a sheet of paper, the blackboard, or ä

transparent slide

Na Brainstorming activities: Kneourage the students to think of as

many words as they can that are related to the selected key word or topic

we Presentation of largei words: Present target words unknown lo

students

17

4 Categorization: Guide the students to list the words by categories

and have them label the categories

5 Personalization: Have students add words or categories to the map

6 Review of target words: Check and ensure that students understand

meanings of target words and can use them

Figure 1 Semantic map for the topic of ‘Olympics’:

Note: The words with asterisks in the map mean that they were introduced by

the teacher.)

Lrom “Semantic mapping” by 1 Johnson, 8 Pittelman and J Leimbich, 1986, Reading Teacher, 39(8), p 778 Copyright 1986 by International Reading Association

As mentioned above, the process of crcating a semantic map for

vocabulary instruction incorporates activities as brainstorming, presenting target

words, categorizing, labcling categories and revicwing words (concapts)

1.10.3 Previous studies of the impact of semantic mapping on stadents'

vocabulary learning

Benefits of semantic mapping

Since vocabulary is acquired in all types of language activities, receptive

and productive alike, il has lo be taught im all types of lessons There is a varioly

of approaches to teach vocabulary that teachers can employ, and the choice of particular vocabulary techniques depends on many factors such as the nature of

the words to be taught, the objectives of the lesson, the students’ needs, etc

Therefore, each vocabulary technique has its own benefits and limitations What

follows is a brief review of the benefits of one vocabulary technique, Le,

semantic mapping

According to Al Kufaishi (1988), with semantic mapping words are

presented explicitly im their relationship with other words, so students can

“acquire and retain words better” (p.42) ‘This view is supported by Barcroft

(2004), who argued that semantic mapping, which enables learners to discover

conceplual relationships between vocabulary items and Lo integrate new words

into words they learnt, helps learners “enhance word learning and the retention” (p.200) In Barcroft’s words, in order for learning to occur, new information

18

should be incorporaicd inta what learncrs previously knows That is, the

instruction should guide learners to recall or use words and ideas available to

them in their word and concept repertoire lo help them associate meaning with

words they do not know In other words, integration in the context refers to the process in which students use their known words to acquire the unknown words

Having the same point with Barcroft , Schmitt and Me Carthy (1997) also

advocates that the integration of new words into the old “ help individuals learn

faster and recall better” (p.211) because il provides retrieval cues Mergel (1998)

emphasizes that semantic mapping encourages deep processing of the

information which leads to deeper learning and thus, longer retention of words

Ghazal (2007), in his empirical study, defines semantic mapping as a

diagram that * visually show how ideas fit together” (p.80) ‘This strategy

incorporates a variety of memory strategies like grouping, using imagery,

associaling and claborating and il is important for “improving bath memory and

comprehension of new vocabulary items” ( Oxford, 1990, p.62) in his study he argued for the need to use semantic mapping in second language vocabulary

tcaching Findings of his study indicated that scmantic mapping helped learners

become aware of the relationships of words in a text so that they can understand

the text beller and establish “associative networks for words” Thus, semantic

mapping not only mediates learners’ comprehension of the text but also their acquisition and retention of words as well

Svenconis and Kerst (1995) reported their study which was designed to

evaluate the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching through semantic mapping in

a hypertext or hypermedia environments Semantic mapping was evaluated in

20

the context of those factors likely to mflucnce ils cffeclivencss: semantic

structure ( tightly related or moderately related or loosely related groupings of

words), instructional method, and word pronunciation or sounding They

compared the results of two different vocabulary techniques: semantic mapping and word listing Findings showed that when words were taught without a focus

on pronunciation, both techniques showed no significant difference However,

when teachers used semantic mapping with an emphasis on the word

promuncialion, semantic mapping show ils superiorily They concluded that

“with the addition of the sound factor, semantic mapping did great mean scores

and improve retention or recall of the second language vocabulary words”

(p.50-51) These findings imply that semantic mapping alone is not effective In other words, the effectiveness of instructional techniques cannot be measured

withoul considering other contextual factors The effectiveness of semantic mapping in enhancing vocabulary retention was also confirmed in the single-

subject study by Susan and Mehrdad ( 2011) The result of their study showed

that the learner’s scares on the test with the session applied semantic mapping

as a technique of vocabulary presentation is much higher than his score on the

lest nol related to semantic mapping They attributed the result to the fact that

seeing the relationship among words through the map enabled learners to

remember or retain words better Tlowever, in their study, Sasan and Mehrdad

failed to measure when presenting semantically related words whether or not

nature of words and the length of each set of words make any difference

Another study implemented by Sacidi & Atmadi (2010) to cxamine the elfeel off semantic mapping to vocabulary learning across genders In their study, the

experimental group received the semantic mapping in the pre-reading stage, but

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the control group did not receive this treatment, The result of the study indicated

that the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary

lcarning Based on analyzed data, they came to conclusion thal “somantic

mapping technique can be used as an effective method for teaching vocabulary

in language classes” (p.60) As for the gender differences, no significant

difference between males and females It can be suggested that semantic

mapping can be used as an effective method for teaching vocabulary for both

male and female One more significant study of the effectiveness of semantic

mapping as a vocabulary instruction technique on intermediate foreign language

learners is conducted by Abdollahzadeh and Amiri (2009) The study compared

the effectiveness of employing semantic mapping versus traditional approaches

1m vocabulary instruction to EFL learners with different perceptual modalities,

or different Icaming styles (visual, auditory, kinacsthetic (movement oricnicd) and tactile ( touch-oriented)} The findings revealed that semantic mapping in

comparison to the traditional approaches greatly enhanced vocabulary learning

of RFT learners Although visual learners slightly outperformed other types of

learners on the post test, no significant differences were observed among

intermediale learners with different perceptual modalities employed semantic

mapping for vocabulary practice It can be seen that all mentioned types of

learners gain approximately equal benefit from employing semantic mapping in

vocabulary lcarning tasks

‘The review of the literature shows that semantic mapping has the

following benefits to second language vocabulary learning First, it helps

learners Jean vocabulary more deeply because they can sce how words arc

related to each other Learning vocabulary through semantic mapping is really an

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inieractive process in which stuđcnls have Lo recall the words they have stored in

their memory in order to understand the new words Thus, semantic mapping is

olfective in that Icarners nol only learn the now words but also integrate new words with the old in a visually-presented associative network for words ‘Lhis

process promotes a deep level of semantic processing, leading to better

understanding and retention of words Put differently, somantic mapping cnabics learners not only to obtain or understand the form, the meaning, the use, and the

collocation of target words but also Lo help them recall known words, and retam

the newly acquired words

Semantic mapping also offers students opportunities to use their previous

lexical knowledge, so they feel more secure and become more involved in the

learning process ‘Therefore, semantic mapping can have the motivating value

Limitations of yemantic mapping:

Despite its benefits, semantic mapping is just one of many vocabulary

techniques And like other vocabulary techniques, it has its own limitations

‘Those are discussed subsequently

Stoller and Grabe (1993) warned that “the potential overuse of scmantic

mapping must be avoided in second language contexts where students may be

easily overloaded” (p.34) For instance, when students are asked to think of

words related to the key word or topic, they often generate too many new words

or less frequent words The overuse induces learning overload, especially for the

students al lower language levels or for large classes Secondly scmantic

mapping may lead to the interference among words Since semantic mapping

functions to introduce words in a certain category, the words in the map are

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always scmantically similar This causes interference among words or studenls’

confusion Such an interference has been empirically supported For example,

Tinkham (1993) and Waring (1997) in their cmpirical studics bath confirmed

the strong interference effect on the vocabulary learnmg Likewise, Erten and Tekin,(2008) indicated in their study that due to “cross-association and possible

overloading in the short term memory” (p 408), vocabulary retention might be even hindered In a word, the potential lexical overload and interference effect

(hal semantic possesses are apparent and may influence negatively the

efficiency of vocabulary instruction Because of these inherent disadvantages,

semantic mapping should be used with care To be more specific, semantic

mapping should be used as onc, but not the only onc, classroom technique to

present vocabulary Teachers should use other techniques through the

consideration of faciurs mentioned carlicr in this chapter

Chapter summary

This chaptcr reviewed Uhe defimtions, the rele of vocabulary and

challenges of learning L2 vocabulary in general and ESP vocabulary in

particular, and what should be taughl in ESP vocabulary tcaching In addition,

nature of ESP vocabulary, characteristics of fmance and accounting English was

also reviewed The other important section in this chapter was semantic mapping

used as vocabulary instruction strategy in which definitions of, procedures of creating semantic maps, and previous studies of benefits and limitations of

semantic mapping were mentioned in detail

Its benefits include helping learners to learn vocabulary through deep processes, enhancing their retention of words, and better motivating them to

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learn words Its limitations of which the greatest are interference among words

and students’ confusion due to lexical overload have been observed when it is

overused,

This lileralure revicw also shows lhal litle research has been donc

regarding the use of semantic mapping in teaching ESP vocabulary ‘This study

is an attempt to find out the extent to which semantic mapping helps to increase

students’ retention of ESP word, particularly words rclated to the arca of finanec

and accounting,

CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY

This chapler first provides information aboul the context of the study This

is (ollowed by participants, then the presentation of resvarch methods including

the instruments used for the study and the methods of data analysis

2.1 The context of the study

2.1.4 Research setting

The study was carried out at [lanoi Tourism College (ITC), located in

Hoang Quoc Vict strecl There are two levels of taining al HTC college: 02

year- traming program and 03 year-traiming program A variety of specialized lraining programs are given lor studenls’ choice as Hospilalily Management,

Restaurant Management, Food Production Management, ‘[ravel Operation

Management, Tour guide, English for Tourism Management and Finance &

Accounting for Tourism English is a compulsory subject for all kinds of

students from different majors The English course is divided into two parts: General English (GE) taught in the first academic year and English for specific

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purpose (ESP) taught from the socond year Normally, ESP course lasts wo

terms for 02 year-college students and three terms for 03 year-college students

Howover, ESP course for 03 year- college students of ñnanco and accounting

takes only two terms, starting from the second term of the second year to the first

term of the final

2.1.2 Teaching material

The leaching material used in the study is the textbook “ English for

Finance and Accounting” compiled by the teachers of English in the faculty of

Foreign Languages for Tourism of HTC, is composed of twa parts and used for

two Lerms- the whole ESP course Parl one taught in the second term of the second year provides students with the simple speciatized knowledge of finance

and accounting related to business operations in tourist hotels Part two taught in

the first term of the final year or the last term of HSP course aims at upgrading

students’ professional knowledge of finance and accounting major in English One of the main purpose of this parl is providing students with amount of vocabulary and terms Ihe course book contains 12 units which are arranged in

the order of Vocabulary 1, Reading, Vocabulary 2, Listening, Practice, Speaking

and Writing The RSP course lasts 120 periods (45 minutes cach), of which 60

periods for the second year and the remaining for the first term of the final year

2.2 Research participants

The subjects in this study numbered 38 EFL final-year students of finance and

accounling (28 females & 10 malos) of the regular 03 year - training program

from one class C7E3 which were taught by the researcher, at HTC college As

other students of finance and accounting, they had taken entrance exams of

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group D (including 3 subjccis: Math, lilcraturc and English), so most of them

had experienced at least three years studying English at high school In addition,

they had limshed the GE course wilh the textbook Lilclincs Pre-intermediale by

‘Tom Hutchinson, which focuses on skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing In terms of ESP, they had learnt one term of English for Finance and

Accounting in Tourism in the second ycar Furthermore, they had had

specialized knowledge of finance and accounting in Vietnamese Although they

had finished one lerm of English for Finance and Accounting in Tourism, their

ESP were recognized by the teacher-researcher at low level ‘This was reflected

by their marks in the ESP exam in the second year, in which many ESP lexical

ilems were lesled Most of them (65.7%) had mark 5 and 6, 13.2% gol mark 7,

only 2.7% achieved mark 8 Sadly,18.4% got marks under mark 5

2.3 Data collection instruments

‘This study used quantitative methods The instruments used in this study are 03 tests (Iwo progress losts and one final achicverent lest), and a sludens” questionnaire Below is the detailed description of the instruments used for data

collection in this study

2.3.1 Tests

As stated above, the goal of the study is measuring the student’s word

retention, which means that how long a word is retained in students’ long-term

memory A serics of three tests were administered ta students al a two-weck

interval and the target words in the previous test were included and tested again

in the subsequent tests but in different linguistic contexts Test items are also

varied to include items such as gap-fill, matching (matching words to their

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definitions, matching words to hơr pariers lo rnako campound nouns),

multiple-choice, and cloze items Emphases were placed on the formation of

compound nouns, which is a prominent charactcristios of English vocabulary in

finance and accounting

A corpus of target words or lexical items that are extracted from the course book was developed and tested All the tests were designed in such a

way that they were marked abjectively Specifically, the nmultiple-choice format

with three answer choices was used for all tests and they were piloted with two

experienced colleagues with good knowledge of the subject before they wore administered to the students ‘I'his is to make sure that there were no ambiguities

in the tests, ie no test item with two possible correct answers In the tests, students are asked to choose the best answer by circling the letter A, B or C Time allocated for the tests was 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and 35 minutes, respectively The time variation was duc Lhe variation of the number off words to

be tested in each test The first test was taken in the shortest period of time because the number of words taught between the beginning of the experiment to

ths time of testing was the smallest (see Appendix 07)

2.3.2 Questionnaire

The aim of the questionnaire was to gain information about students’

perceptions of the benefits of the treatment, ie., the use of semantic mapping for

vocabulary The questionnaire was developed with reference 1o the benefits of

semantic mapping that were reported in the literature The questionnaire was

administered at the end of the treatment, after the final test There are four items

in the questionnaire, under which the respondents were expected to answer by

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choosing cither ‘yes’, or ‘no’ or ‘no idca’ Since participants were the Linal-ycar

students, questionnaire was designed in English However, to ensure that

everything in the questionnaire is clear to (hem, the leachor-rescarchor orally

translated it into Vietnamese (see Appendix 02) Students’ responses to the questionnaire were analyzed with reference to the students’ test scores in an

attempt to cstablish initial relationship betwecn students’ perceptions of the

treatment and their test scores

2.4 Treatment Procedures

Nine sessions of treatment was conducted over a period of six weeks with

a total number of 38 students in one intacl group, ic the group the researcher

was teaching, Prior to the treatment, the teacher- researcher previewed 04 units

of the textbook which would be taught in the period of 06 weeks by looking at

their topics to decide words to be taught, specifically words unfamiliar but

potentially challenging to the students and words to which semantic mapping was applicd , and to develop a corpus for Lesl development Then the tcachor- researcher found out overarching words Le., core words which may have many

derivatives and be collocaicd wilh many other words (c.g tax: taxation, tax

exemption, tax payer, ctc.) or words that can be catcgorical words to which many

other words can belong (e.g: bank: current account, mortgage, balance,

overdraft, maturity date, fine) Altogether 45 words or lexical items were

identified and chosen for the treatment and for test development

During the experiment, nine semantic maps were created, of which three ones based on vocabulary parts of the textbook and the remaining based on the

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rcading and lietoning texIs in order to [acililate students’ comprchension of the

texts

In the first session of the treatment, the researcher gave the students a brief

lalk of the importance of vocabulary in leaming ESP and the advantages of learning words through semantic mapping Next, she provided students with guidelines on how to create a semantic map with a simple illustration Then the

first two scmantic maps in the experiment was modeled, following a six-step

procedure as presented in Chapter | the Literature Review These inchide: (1)

introduction of the topic, (2) brainstorming, (3) presentation of target words, (4) categorization, (5) personalization, and (6) review of target words In order to

avoid the problem of lexical overload, which is one of the disadvantage of

semantic mapping, a number of categories for some semantic maps was

established by giving students some suggested questions for discussing In the

following sessions, students and the loacher-researcher together croalod maps for

the remaining topics However, after stages of brainstorming and presentation of target words, students were assigned to discuss in groups of four or five people

and dealt with tasks of categorization phase by themselves The tcachor-

researcher only observed and provided help if needed in this stage After they

completed the assigned tasks, the teacher-researcher checked through with the

class to ascertain that words are put in right categories and categories were given appropriate titles Following this phase is stages of personalization and review of

target words in which students are asked to add words to maps and to show their

understanding and use of target words In accordance with literature review of

nalure of ESP vocabulary, priority was given to larget words as scmi-technical words In the classroom, one-third of the classroom time was devoted to

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