KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC cấu TẠO từ CỦA SINH VIÊN năm NHẤT KHOA sư PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG đại HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ đại HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ nội

The study is an investigation of perceived difficulties through word formation learning process of firstyear students at English division 1, faculty of English language teacher education (FELTE), university of languages and international studies, Vietnam national university. To address the research problem, the paper used questionnaires as the main research instrument to collect data. In the thesis, role of word formation perceived by students was provided. Besides, it is revealed that from the study that first year students at ULIS have difficulties related to morphological awareness, materials and strategies of teaching and learning when they study vocabulary as well as practice English skills. Based on the findings and the students’ suggestions, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachers and students to solve the problems. In detail, students are advised to build up a systematical learning strategy and pay attention to deliberate vocabulary acquisition and use of context. To teachers, the thesis recommends teachers to use flexible techniques to avoid tiresomeness of students. The paper also comes up with some useful teaching techniques for teachers.

The study is an investigation of perceived difficulties through word formationlearning process of first-year students at English division 1, faculty of Englishlanguage teacher education (FELTE), university of languages and internationalstudies, Vietnam national university

To address the research problem, the paper used questionnaires as the mainresearch instrument to collect data In the thesis, role of word formation perceived bystudents was provided Besides, it is revealed that from the study that first- yearstudents at ULIS have difficulties related to morphological awareness, materials andstrategies of teaching and learning when they study vocabulary as well as practiceEnglish skills

Based on the findings and the students’ suggestions, the researcher proposessome recommendations for teachers and students to solve the problems In detail,students are advised to build up a systematical learning strategy and pay attention todeliberate vocabulary acquisition and use of context To teachers, the thesisrecommends teachers to use flexible techniques to avoid tiresomeness of students Thepaper also comes up with some useful teaching techniques for teachers

1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2.3 Role of word- formation in teaching and learning English 17

2.4 Common EFL learners’ perceived difficulties in morphological

3.2.1 Reasons for choosing questionnaires 26

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: Frequency of practicing word formation in class……… 32

Figure 1.2: Frequency of practicing word formation in class (in each skill)…………32

Figure 2: Average time spent on learning vocabulary……… 33

Figure 3: Percentage of time spent on learning word-formation process……….34

Figure 4: Lexical size……… 35

Figure 5: Estimated derived words……… 35

Figure 6.1: Result of question 6 (Recognition ability to eight word formation processes)……… 37

Figure 6.2: Result of question 6 (Frequency of choosing right answers)……….38

Figure 7.1: Result of proficiency test……… 39

Figure 7.2: Result of proficiency test……… 40

Figure 7.2.1: Affixation………41

Figure 7.2.2: Compounding……… 41

Figure 7.2.3: Conversion……… 42

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: ELT program and Double- major program for first-year students at English

Division 1, FELTE, ULIS-VNU……… 25

Table 2: Students’ perceived importance of word formation……… 36 Table 3: Material difficulties perceived by first- year students at ULIS………….…43 Table 4: Learning and teaching strategies………44

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as Foreign Language

ELLs: English Language Learners

ESL: English as a Second Language

FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education L2: Second Language

ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies VNU: Vietnam National University

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Due to the increasingly important role of English in almost every field of oursocial life, from communicative uses to business uses, the demand of learning Englishhas been rising rapidly In the situation of Vietnam, being aware of English’s role,most schools and academic institutions have taken English as a compulsory subject.Consequently, now teaching and learning English are paid much more attention byboth learners and teachers However, this seems to be far from satisfactory becauseforeign learners in general and the Vietnamese learners in particular must face up tomany difficulties in specific fields of English like grammar, pronunciations,vocabulary, etc

International linguists state that it is impossible and unaffordable to have athoughtful look into human brain to examine how it processes language Instead,linguists build hypotheses to verify their appropriate working One of ways which theyuse is grammar Grammar is considered as a science and often called “science oflanguage” or “science of how to use words” According to Domínguez (1991), one ofthe biggest goals of linguistic science is “the determination of the rank of morphology

in the grammar of a particular language and in universal grammar” Then linguists inthe world focus on smaller unit in English and create theories of word-formation.Word formation is firmly confirmed as the most important divisions in the linguisticfield However, many EFL learners under-estimate the importance of morphologicalawareness as well as word- formation processes The result of this negative attitude isslow vocabulary development According to August et al (2005) ELLs whoexperience slow vocabulary development are less able to comprehend text at gradelevel The situation can become worse when learners may be at risk of beingdiagnosed as learning disabled Learners can fall into the consensus that the reason

comes from their poor ability In fact, it is from their limitation to English vocabularyand comprehension.

In Vietnam, current grammar and vocabulary teaching is paid more and moreattention, but only about quantity, not quality It means that students are encouraged tobuild up the large numbers of English words, but mostly unsystematically, say, bylearning by heart ,word by word rather than getting to know the derivation of each

word When learning a new word, for example “nervous”, students only know that word as a single unit, yet many of them do not know “nervous” is derived from

“nerve” Thus, this learning style as commented by International linguistic researchers

is unsustainable

All matters above are strong motivations for the author to choose the topic

“Difficulties of word-formation encountered by first-year students at ULIS” for

the Bachelor’s thesis The study attempts to investigate problems that first-yearstudents at ULIS often face up to From the findings, pedagogical recommendationwill be provided The author completes this research with the hope that it can become

a useful document for English learners in general and first-year students at ULIS inparticular to partly deal with problems of word-formation

1.2 Aims and Research questions

First of all, the study attempts to examine the importance of word-formation inEnglish learning process as perceived by first-year students at ULIS The biggest aim

of thesis is to figure out the difficulties in word-formation which these students areoften challenged Personally, this thesis is expectation for teachers and learners atULIS to improve the quality of word-formation learning and teaching then raisestudents’ morphological awareness Lastly, with positive results, the author hopes thatthe study can give helpful implications to students, teachers and educators as well

To clarify these initial targets, the paper answers the following questions:

1) What is the role of word-formation in English learning as perceived by year students at ULIS?

first-2) What are the difficulties related to word-formation that first-year students atULIS encounter in their learning process?

3) What are implications to first-year students at ULIS to solve their problem instudying word-formation?

4) What are implications to teachers to help student overcome drawbacks onlearning word-formation?

1.3 Significance of the study

Overall, the research could be considerably a helpful assistance, an availablesource for teachers, course administrators and researchers of related topics

As for teachers at ULIS, the study is conducted with the hope to raise teachers’awareness in grammar and vocabulary teaching Once completed, the paper isexpected to give conclusion of the common mistakes of word-formation whichstudents often make Based on the findings of the research, several pedagogicalimplications will be provided and teachers can adapt them to their teaching and helplearners overcome difficulties in word-formation

Furthermore, to ULIS students in general and first- year students in particular,after being aware of possible problems related to word-formation, they will buildcarefully learning strategies and have appropriate studying plans Then, according torecommendations for students, they can also improve their learning process and adaptthese advices to their plans

Lastly, this research can be considered as a useful reference for further studies

on the relevant topics Collected data are able to be a valuable source for educators as

well as book editors to make changes with text books in schools and to enhance theefficiency of vocabulary teaching

1.4 Scope of the study

Word-formation processes, as defined by Quirk and Greenbeaum in “Auniversity grammar of English” (2008), consist of eight processes However, withinthe framework of the graduation thesis, this study concentrates on investigating word-formation which is defined Plag (2002) in the book “Word formation in English”:

“The study of the ways in which new complex words are built on the basis of otherwords or morphemes”, or in other words, the thesis mainly focuses on affixation,compounding, and conversion

Furthermore, the author specifically aims at investigating problems related toword-formation process which first-year students at ULIS often encounter The reasonfor the author to choose first- year students as target participants of the thesis is that atbeginning year in university, students must deal with many difficulties belonging tolearning Most of them find hard to keep up with the higher programs in comparisonwith pre- intermediate curricula in high school The cause of this limitation comesfrom many aspects such as unfamiliar skills, lexical awareness, morphologicalawareness, etc However, first- year is the most important time for students to preparenecessary study skills as well as basic language knowledge for four years at university.Wishing to help first- year students overcome difficulties of beginning stage, theauthor decides to choose one of biggest drawbacks of first-year students; it is- wordformation (belongs to morphological awareness) with the hope that it can partly helpthem to be aware of root of obstacles then build up suitable techniques of morphology

1.5 Organization

This thesis contains five chapters:

Chapter 1 (introduction) provides the research’s rationale, aims, significanceand organization.

Chapter 2 (Literature review) presents the theoretical background of the studywhich includes discussion of key concepts and related studies

Chapter 3 (Methodology) describes the research setting, participants,instruments of data collection and procedures of collecting and analyzing data

Chapter 4 (Finding and discussion) analyzes collected data and providesrecommendations to students and teachers

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) summarizes main points of the study and presentlimitation as well as some suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the author will survey theoretical background, studies andscientific research as well which are related to forming word process The chapterconsists of four main parts The first part presents basic concepts which are considered

in terms of definition, types and general features Concepts are reported here are wordand morpheme In the second part, the author introduces main types of word formation– affixation, conversion, compounding as well as other processes which are dividedaccording to the view of Quirk and Greenbeaum in “A university grammar of English”(2008) The third being explores the role of word formation in English learningprocess The last part is the focus of the most common difficulties of morphologicalawareness perceived by EFL learners

an essential instrument for communicative purpose

As a natural reaction, people tend to think of word as a unit in written system.For example, orthographic theory in which word is call an orthographic lexicon,defines word as an interrupted string or letter preceded by blank space and followed by

a blank space or punctuation mark (Plag, 2002)

Whereas, Plag (2002) fought the idea of orthographic theory that a word doesnot simply depend on fancies of individual writers or the arbitrariness of English

spelling system He defines word on the basis of four factors: sound structure, internal integrity, meaning and sentence structure In accordance with sound structure, Ingo

Plag calls the way that a word built is phonological way Accordingly, in terms ofphonological method, word is crucial for existence and distribution of stress.Considering integrity criterion, it is affirmed that word is an indivisible unit into which

no intervening material may be inserted However, questions about modification ofword are raised and seem to be conflict to the previous idea As responded by Plag,when modification element is added to a word, it must be placed at the edge of word.Although at first stage, internal integrity seems to be a good definition and easily

applied, there are many cases in which internal integrity is violated such as sons – in – law This is the reason for Plag to continue with the third criterion – meaning In other

words, it is the way which a word is defined semantically In this part, based onsemantic theory, word is pointed out with function of expressing unified semanticconcept The last criterion is consistent with sentence structure or syntactical structure

In relation to syntactically-oriented criterion, the word is considered as the smallestelement in sentence and called “syntactic atom”

In conclusion, from standpoints above, it is obviously not easy at all to decidewhether a string of sounds or a letter is a word or not It is not too difficult to findsome words that violate what linguists define However, it is undeniable that fourcriteria: sound structure (phonologically), internal integrity, meaning (semantically)and sentence structure (syntactically) appear to be useful for a sufficient definition ofword

2.1.2 Definition and types of morpheme

2.1.2.1 Definition of morpheme

Contrary to word, morpheme receives similar ideas of how to define from mostlinguists Morpheme is conceived as the smallest linguistic unit with a meaning ofgrammatical function Plag (2002) introduces the definition of morpheme that thesmallest meaningful units decomposed from complex word are morphemes Sharingthe same point of view, Sorbi (2010) also conceives of morpheme as “the smallest unit

in language to which a meaning may be assigned” Generalizing similarities of viewsabove, the author would like to draw a conclusion that morpheme is a minimal unitwhich contains meaning of grammatical analysis

2.1.2.2 Types of morpheme

In most cases, without any confliction, linguists divide morpheme into twobasic kinds They are free morphemes (or independent morphemes) and boundmorpheme (or dependent morphemes) Zapata (2007) introduces definition of freemorphemes (independent morphemes) that they arise alone as words and have

meaning with a grammatical function, for example, clock, sick, etc while bound

morphemes (dependent morphemes) occur as part of word Zapata asserts that thesemorphemes can get distinct meanings when they are attached with another morpheme

Morpheme system can be subdivided into smaller branches in terms of functionand semantic meaning Firstly, in relation to function, morphemes are subdivided into

derivational morphemes, inflectional morphemes and “cranberry morphemes”.

Morphemes which change lexical meaning of the word belong to derivationalcategorization Morphemes that serve a purely grammatical function and createdifferent forms of the same words are inflectional morphemes As for cranberrymorphemes, they are asserted with no constant associated meaning, for example,

permit, commit and submit Secondly, regarding semantics, there are two types of

morphemes: content morphemes and function morphemes As the term suggests, theyare linguistic units that hold semantic content with grammatical function whilefunction morphemes express grammatical relationship between words in sentence

To summarize, studying word-formation has the familiar meaning with dealingmorphologically with complex words (Plag, 2002) In this thesis, the author willsurvey and analyze, after all, how “movement” such as adding, removing or changingposition of morphemes can create changes to word.

be referred that stems sometimes can be roots such fish or place but in some cases, roots would go with one or more derivations, for example, comfortable, uncomfortable In other words, stems are words without inflectional morphemes

2.2.1.2 Types of affixation

Two authors Quirk and Greenbeaum (2008) divide affixes into two kinds:prefixes and suffixes To base on position of affixes, Quirk and Greenbeaum surveywhether they can change meaning and word class or not then come to definition ofeach kind of affixation

With respect to prefixes, it is asserted that they are added to the beginning andchange the meaning of a word Conversely, suffixes are put to the end of a word andalso can create different meanings for words While prefixes normally change

meanings of words, suffixes can change both meanings and parts of speech Quirk andGreenbeaum continuously subdivide prefixes into smaller subsidiary branches:

negative prefixes, preservative (or private) prefixes, pejorative prefixes, prefixes of degree or size, prefixes of attitude, prefixes of location, prefixes of time and order, prefixes of number and other prefixes

In accordance with suffixes, they are subdivided into nine small types:

1 Noun → noun suffixes (e.g., book booklet)

2 Nouns/ adjective → noun/ adjective suffixes (e.g., social socialist)

3 Verb → noun suffixes (e.g., drive driver)

4 Adjective →noun suffix (e.g., sad sadness)

5 Noun/adjective→ verb suffixes (e.g., industrial industrialize)

6 Nouns  adjective suffixes (e.g., person personal)

7 Some adjective suffixes common on borrowed and neo-classical words(e.g., sensitive, criminal)

8 Other adjective suffixes (e.g., changeable)

9 Adverb suffixes (e.g., happily)

2.2.2 Conversion

2.2.2.1 Definition of conversion

It is a common knowledge that affixation is not the only way to create a derivedword but there are various ways to make changes in words, one of them is conversion.According to Plag (2002), conversion is defined that it is the derivation of a new wordwithout any overt marking

E.g.: 1 - the bottle to bottle

2 - to call a call

3 - better to better

4 - poor the poor

With the same view, Quirk and Greenbeaum (2008) describe English conversion

as derivational process in which an item changes words-class without an affix Withdefinitions of linguists as well as given examples above we can come up with anappropriate definition for conversion:

It is a process in which a new word is produced not by adding any affix or changing its form but using this word in new function Conversion is sometime known with other names such as functional shift or zero- derivation.

2.2.2.2 Types of conversion

Most linguists recognize two popular branches of this word-formation process:conversion to noun (from verbs, adjectives, closed-class words, affixes and phrases)and conversion to verb (from noun and adjectives) Zapata (2007) continues tosubdivide conversion into one more category which is conversion to adjective fromnoun

Eg.: 1 Conversion to noun

 From closed-class words

buts, downs, how, ifs, a must, ups, why, etc

calm, calm down, dirty, dry, empty, humble, lower, narrow, sober up, etc.

Eg.: 3 Conversion to adjective from noun

cotton, nylon, reproduction (furniture), wool, Worcester (porcelain), etc

English conversion process is presented in “A university grammar of English”

by Quirk and Greenbeaum with minor categories: change of secondary word class tonouns, verbs and adjectives, for example, an uncountable noun converted into a

countable (e.g.: two coffees), an intransitive verb converted into a transitive verb (e.g.: run), a non gradable adjective converted into gradable adjective, etc.

Besides major and minor classification above, English conversion process is

mentioned with an extra case: sound and stress interchange which is called

“approximate conversion” In some cases, instead of being converted completely,

conversion is appropriately changed It can be referred that a word is not only changinggrammatical function, but also following the alteration of pronunciation or spelling

E.g.: Noun  Verb

breath /breθ/ breathe /bri:ð/

bath /bɑ:θ/ or / bæθ/ θ/ bathe /beð/

glass /glœs/ (or /glɑ:s/) glaze /gleiz/

 Shift of stress

When two-syllable (or three- syllable) verbs are turned into nouns, the primarystress is sometimes shifted from the second to the first syllable The noun and verbform do not always have the same semantic range (application, uses, meanings orsenses) (Zapata, 2007)

E.g.: decrease (n) /ˈdiːkriːs/ decrease (v) /dɪˈkriːs/

extract (n) /ˈɛkstrakt/ extract (v) /ɪkˈstrakt, ɛk-/

import (n) /ˈɪmpɔːt/ import (v) /ɪmˈpɔːt/

2.2.3 Compounding

2.2.3.1 Definition of compounding

As state by Norquist (2006), in linguistics, the process that two words combine

to make a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective) is called compounding

Compounds can be in form of one word (teapot), or two hyphenated words threatening), or two separate words (football stadium) Elements of compounding

(life-words can be roots (e.g.: astro-, bio-, photo-, etc.), (life-words (e.g.: park commissioner), or group of words (e.g.: over- the fence- gossip) (Plag, 2002).

To sum up, until now compounding has been one of the most controversial type

of word-formation in terms of linguistic analysis, the author has desire to slightly draw

a conclusion of compounding:

It is a process combining two or more elements Each element can be a root, a word or a phrase However, we need to note that these elements always belong to two members: non-head and head.

2.2.3.2 Types of compounding

Forming a compound word is not simply combining two words (or bases)together Actually, in English not all words from all word-classes can go with eachother freely Thus, the invention of compounds always attracts attention of linguistsbecause it is considered as one of the most productive ways to enrich vocabulary inevery single English dictionary

Quirk and Greenbeaum (2008) in A university grammar of English divide

compounding words in terms of their part of speech Thus, there are three main types

of compounds: noun compounds, adjective compounds and verb compounds

Besides, there are numerous classifying types such as in terms of meaning(Idiomatic and Non- idiomatic compounds), in terms of structure (Neutral compounds,Morphological compounds and Syntactic compounds), in terms of componentialrelationship (Coordinative and Subordinate compounds) and in terms of the relation ofcompound as a whole to its members (Endocentric and Exocentric compound), etc

2.2.4 Reduplication

Reduplication is a very important process of word formation in most languagesincluding English but there is a general consensus that reduplicative words in English

have been widely ignored However, many scientific studies indicate that the usage ofreduplication is much more widespread than we expect.

Quirk and Greenbeaum (2008) describe feature of reduplicative words that theyhave two or more elements which are either identical or only slightly different It isalso mentioned that most reduplicative words are highly informal or familiar, andmany of them derive from nursery The usage of reduplicative is often to imitate

sounds, (e.g., rat-a-tat (knocking on door), tick-tack (of a clock), ha-ha (of laughter), bow-wow (of dog)), to suggest alternating movement (e.g., see saw, flip-flop, Ping- Pong), to disparage by suggesting instability, nonsense, insincerity, vacillation, etc., (e.g., higgledy-piggledy, hocus-pocus, wishy-washy, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, willy- nilly) and to intensify (e.g teeny-weeny, tip-top) (Zapata, 2007, p.7)

Being considered as a special kind of compound, reduplicative words have thesame stress rule as compound English reduplicative compounds generally have

primary stress on the first constituent, for example, goody- goody, chit-chat, Pong, tip-top, etc However, it is patent that exceptional cases still exist such as pooh-

Ping-pooh, harum-scarum, willy- nilly, etc

2.2.5 Clipping

Clipping refers to process in which lexeme is shortened but still remains themeaning and part of speech In clipping process, only style of words changes Quirkand Greenbeaum (2008) define clipping that it represents the subtraction of one ormore syllables from word In the other words, clipping can be seen as a wordshortening process This shortening can occur at the beginning of the word, the end ofthe word (more commonly) and at both ends of the word (rarely)

The domination of clipping is nouns then adjectives, verbs, adverbs (rarely),preposition, even interjections and conjunctions (more rarely)

Zapata (2007) presents other characteristic of clipped forms which is tone of

informality reflected in their spelling such as showbiz (for show business), ‘cause (for

because), etc Sometimes, to suit the pronunciation of the original word, the spelling of

word is altered, for example, mike for microphone, Mike for Michael, veg for vegetable, bike for bicycle, etc However, the tone of informality will usually

disappear when they become well established in the language and acknowledged by

most of community such as taxi, bus, plane, stereo, etc.

2.2.6 Blends

Quirk and Greenbeaum (2008) simplify blends that they have at least one of theelements which is fragmentary in comparison with its corresponding uncompoundedword In short, blending is a process in which combining the beginning of one wordand the end of another will create a new word

E.g.: Bash = bang + smash

Motorcade = motor + cavalcade

Clash= clack + crash

According to Quirk and Greenbeaum, blends have a short life, are informal andsome of them have become more or less fully accepted in language However,blending is obviously one of the most productive ways embraced in English word-formation process

2.2.7 Acronyms

In addition, Quirk and Sidney (2008) define acronyms that they are formedfrom the initial letters (or lager part) of words Acronyms are freely produced,particularly for names of organizations

According to Quirk (2008), in English, there are two types of acronyms whichare classified based on how acronyms are pronounced The first type is acronyms

which are pronounced as a word, for example, NASA (National Aero- nautics and Space Administration), UNESCO (= United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).

Acronyms of this type are often derived from phrasal names Many of them belong tothe jargon of particular occupations, organizations or fields of study (e.g.: scientific,administrative, and political) To people who do not work in, study or familiarize withthese fields, acronyms seem to be completely meaningless However, some acronymsoccur so frequently that people use them without the slightest idea of what the words

stand for such as laser The second type is acronyms which are pronounced as sequences of letters, for example, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), VIP (very important person), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations), etc Today, in British

English, there is a trend of writing acronyms without periods between components.Each constituent letter usually represents a full word or constituent in the compound,

or just a part of a word, as in the following examples, TB (= tuberculosis), TV (= television), c/o (in care of) Sometimes, some acronyms are given a quasi-phonetic written form, for example, Emcee for M.C (= Master of Ceremonies), Deejay for DJ (= disc jockey), etc (Zapata, 2007, p.8).

2.2.8 Back- formation

While affixation process forms a word by adding an affix (e.g kingdom from

‘king’ and ‘dom’, outermost from ‘outer’ and ‘most’, friendship from “friend’ and

‘ship’, etc.), back-formation is essentially reverse Quirk defines back formation that it

is the process in which new words are produced by removing an affixation fromexisting word In most cases, back formation adapts an existing word with deletion of

a suffix (e.g edit from editor, enthuse from enthusiasm, execute from execution, etc.)

We can see from examples above, this word- form process generally involves turningone part of speech to another For example, to form a verb form a noun, back

formation is created by dropping “tion” or “ion” from existing noun or adding “e” at the end such as orate from oration.

2.3 Role of word formation in teaching and learning English

As stated by Daulton (2009), learning word building pattern is extremely usefulfor learners to greatly expand their vocabularies In detail, in case of affixes, according

to Nagy and Anderson (1984), 21.9 percent of words in a given text are inflections,and 12.8 percent consists of derivations (cited Daulton, 2009, p 217) Thus, lack ofword formation knowledge can lead to serious problems of learning

Regarding the lexical size of derived words in English, Daulton (2009) pointsout that while head words are limited, items derived from them are totally not EFLbeginners at low level tend to believe that they are dealing with small and simple task

of English vocabulary In fact, the real task they must face up to is large andincalculable Nation & Waring, (1997) (cited in Daulton, 2009), confirms that alimited number of high-frequency words are around from 2000 to 3000 words whichprovides learners coverage of most words in most given texts Speaking differently, iflearners can generalize knowledge within these English word families, then buildinglexicon of high-frequency English will provide them with greater vocabulary size.Vice versa, if learners largely fail to utilize word forming processes, their knowledgeacquisition is limited

As mentioned above, vocabulary is considered as a vital stage of students’knowledge achieving process Vocabulary is valuable in building general languagecompetence One way perceived widely to enlarge vocabulary is understanding andapplication of derivational morphology For example, as for affixation, when a word is

broken into single bits and if learners know the meaning of these bits such as: un, im, less, etc., they can guess the meaning without dictionaries Correspondingly, when

learners can understand how these bits are placed together, they have acquiredknowledge of word formation

Furthermore, to some special fields in English which are called ESP, wordformation is a very necessary part for students to acquire vocabulary knowledge(Emadin Masoud and Moghadam, 2011) Teaching language of ESP can be effective ifteachers intend to give learners an opportunity to gain the fundamentals of words andfrom there they can build words that they need As stated by EmadinMasoud andMoghadam (2011), language of ESP texts is often based on Latin and Greek roots.Therefore, time in class must be used for building basic knowledge of how a word isformed Besides, word- formation should be thought as a complementary course alongwith ESP

To sum up, word formation is considered as a primary foundation for languageacquisition However, learners especially EFL students, must be challenged by anumber of serious problems related to derivational morphology These difficulties arepresented by various linguistic researchers and will be reported in the next part

2.4 Common EFL learners’ perceived difficulties in morphological awareness

Morphological awareness refers to the awareness of and access to the meaningand morpheme structure- a part of word (Nurhemida, 2007) Morphology is theknowledge of derivational morphology and inflectional morphology In a broadersense, morphological awareness can be perceived as the manipulation of morphemes

As a result, morphological awareness has strict relevance to the matter in hand.Problems that English learners in general and EFL learners in particular confront withmorphological awareness lead to difficulties of word- formation

Generally, there are many factors that cause difficulties for students when theyacquire morphological awareness Due to the limited scale of this thesis, the author

focuses on several elements which are carefully investigated from variety of linguists’works.

To begin with, according to Pin (2001), one of obstacles that EFL learners areoften challenged when they study vocabulary is the complexity of word- formation,which causes the reduce of memorization ability A large number of learners,especially beginners, fail to have a longer maintenance of vocabulary Thus frustrationand timidity occur when students try to utilize the limited vocabulary knowledge toone of contemporary skills of English like listening, speaking, reading, writing, andtranslating For example, to reading comprehension, Geier (2010) states that poorreaders tend to carry weaker morphological awareness skills Morphologicalawareness has significant impacts on reading skill of ELLs Students who have greatermorphological awareness skills are likely to be better at reading unknown and complexwords compared to students who are less morphologically aware, even aftercontrolling for reading ability (2003, cited Geier, 2010)

Secondly, English is not free of inconsistency in the area of morphology Thereare ambiguities which usually causes learners’ problems (Babalola & Akande 2002, p.250) Many linguists, whose studies with reference to English as a second language orforeign language, have denoted the close link between morphological awareness andspelling It is indicated that students are prevented from morphological awarenessbecause of phonological changes in root morphemes when adding derivation and

inflexion morphemes For example, in oral English, the word “arrive” has form of noun “arrival” or the verb “decide” has form of noun “decision” As for written

language, the main reason for drawback of morphological awareness comes from

unclear edges among morphemes, for example, bake and baking, heavy and heavier

(Griva and Anastasiou, 2009)

Concerning to two kinds of morphemes: bound and free morphemes, FatemehBehjat and Firooz Sadighi (2011) cite that phonologically stable morphemes are

simple to conceive than those which are pronounced in different way (Hatch, 1983).Affixes which have semantic functions are acquired sooner than those which only havegrammatical function

E.g.: Analyze the word boys in terms of morphological and semantic structure:

Morphological structure: “boy” = “boy” + “s”

Semantic structure: “boys” = [-adult; + male; +human ] + “s” = plural

According to DeKeyser (2005), there are three factors that lead to grammaticaldifficulties of students They are problems of meaning, problems of form, andproblems of form-meaning mapping It is stated that meaning expressed through agrammatical form can become an obstacle to learn due to novelty, abstractness, or both

of them Shiu (2011) cites ideas of Dekeyser that the form itself can also cause ofdifficulty for learners who use L2 morphological features The reason comes from thenumber of choices that learners must pick out to express meanings and put morphemesand allomorphs in the right place Shiu also confirms that this theory is particularlytrue for richly inflected languages like English In addition, it can be referred from thepoints of view above that grammatical word form may be difficult to learn if itcontains non-essential communicative meaning, its use is optional, and its formmeaning relationship is ambiguous In detail, one meaning can be expressed by

multiple forms, e.g., prefix “trans” is able to be perceived as “across” like in

“transatlantic” or as “to a changed state” in “transform” Besides, one form has multiple meanings, for example, there are several suffixes such as: “tion”, “er”, “ity”,

etc to change a verb to a noun

According to Batia and Laufer (1988), most difficulties, which EFL students arenormally challenged, are the result of complicated combination between root andaffixes In detail, many pairs and groups of words have an identical root but different

affixes and each of word has a different meaning, for example, comprehensible and comprehensive, imaginative and imaginary, exhausted and exhaustive, etc In most

cases, beginners at pre- intermediate level get familiar with only one meaning.Furthermore, even if learners come up with two form meanings, it is hard for them todistinguish which is which In addition, Batia and Laufer also point out a falseinterpretation that the use of morphology may be often helpful when words look as if

they were analyzable however , in fact, they are not, for example, outgrow= grow outside and infallible= in+ fall+ ible Word producing is the same Adding up familiar morphemes will not always result in correct word such as prefix “over” in “overcome” has different meaning in comparison with “over” in “overfly” The former means

finding solution to pass through problems while the latter is act of flying through aplace like city, country, etc

Linguists in the world prove that acronym is a special case of word formation It

is a kind of abbreviation, which is freely formed and chiefly used for names oforganizations There are no particular difficulties of students surveyed because many

of these words belong to the special occupations, organizations or fields of study Topeople who do not familiarize with them, these acronyms are meaningless Someacronyms have such frequent appearance that people often use them without theslightest idea of what the words stand Because of this characteristic, when buildingproficiency test (Appendix) to investigate students’ skill and awareness of derivationalmorphology, the author do not test acronyms

To conclude, according to Akande (2005) the factors causing difficulties ofword formation are named: the inconsistency in the morphological rules of English,overgeneralization of rules, misapplication of rules and the interference of thesubjects’ mother tongue on English (cited in Behjat & Sadighi, 2011)

Summary

The theoretical background for the paper with the careful elaboration on the basic concepts: ‘word and morphemes’, ‘word formation processes’, ‘role of word

formation in teaching and learning English’ and ‘common perceived difficulties of students’ has been presented in this chapter They are the key factors for the author to choose research method which will be reported in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Selection of subjects

3.1.1 Setting of study

The study was taken at University of Language and International Studies(ULIS), a member of Vietnam National University, Hanoi Located in Pham VanDong Street, Hanoi, the school is one of the biggest universities in Vietnam thatprovides the best education and training of languages and research The school offersboth undergraduate and graduate degrees in pedagogy and linguistics of Arabian,English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish andThai ULIS is evaluated as a prestigious research university in languages, linguistics,international studies and social sciences and humanities The most important mission

of ULIS is to contribute to the national development through the pursuit of excellence

in education, research, and the provision of quality services relevant to socialdemands Criterion of ULIS is to particularly value creativity, dynamics, honesty,responsibility, and capability to work and gain success in a multicultural andcompetitive globalizing world (Cited from website: http://ulis.vnu.edu.vn)

Students of ULIS are also said to be superior to others in international languages,however, not all first- year students are accepted by the school with high scores forEnglish subject in University Entrance Examination Educated and trained at ULIS,

students are required to achieve academic knowledge which is adapted in skills:listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation, etc It can be difficult forfreshmen because some of these skills are unfamiliar for them in high schoolsespecially when these are needed to be approached with academic methods.

3.1.2 Participants

The target population of the study is first-year students at FELTE (in ELTprogram) of ULIS, who are attending school year 2011-2012 Both the pilot study andthe real study were conducted when participants were at the end of the secondsemester in 2012

First- year mainstream students at FELTE attend two different programs: ELTprogram and Double- major Program In principle, students from two programs arereceived the equivalent content of the course However, in two skills: speaking andwriting, content of each program includes some important differences As for Double-major program, in these two subjects, teachers focus on encouraging students to dealwith business situation Conversely, spotlight of ELT program is general and academicknowledge This is the main reason for the author to choose first- year students in ELTprogram as target participants Students belonging to ELT program, are received moreuniversal programs than others Thus, their perception to particular fields such as

vocabulary, word- form, etc is much more common This distinction makes the

collected data and results more persuasive

The table below describes the differences in each program

Course objectives Speaking By the end of the second semester,

first- year students’ ability mustmeet B1 level

By the end of the secondsemester, first- year students’ability must meet B1 level

Double- major students shouldacquire adequate knowledge andskills to participate in familiarbusiness situation.

Writing Students are required to be familiar

with and conduct free writing essay

belonging to different genres of

writing, i.e description, narration,

summary, report, etc on a range of

familiar subjects and topics

Students are required to befamiliar with a variety ofbusiness- related matters andwrite pieces of businesscorrespondence, i.e businessletters, internal companycommunication, business reports

or proposals, etc

Materials Speaking 1 Kay, S., Jones, V & Kerr, P.

(2002) Inside out-

Pre-Intermediate (Student’s book).

Oxford: Macmillan Education

2 Lecturers and tutors in Division

1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and

edited) Speaking and pronunciation

focus Hanoi: VNU Press, 2006.

1 Cotton, D., David, F & Kent,

S (2005) Market Leader intermediate New edition) (Student’s Book) PearsonEducation Limited

(Pre-2 Mascull, B (2002) Business

Vocabulary in Use Cambridge

University Press

Writing Lecturers and tutors in Division a,

ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited)

Writing Focus VNU Press, 2009.

Barnard R & Meehan A (2005)

Writing for the real world 2, An introduction to business writing.

Oxford University Press

Listening Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited).

Listening Focus VNU Press, 2006.

Reading Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited)

(2009) Reading focus VNU Press

Table 1: ELT program and Double - major program for first- year students at English Division 1, FELTE, ULIS- VNU (cited in Nguyen,2011, p 38).

Sixty first- year students of total 175 students at English division 1, FELTEwere randomly chosen as participants for the study All of them were selected based

on their average scores in English subject ranking from five to ten in the tenth- pointgrading system

For the careful participant understanding, in the first part of questionnaire, theauthor spent five questions on general information These questions helped the author

to estimate students’ English level based on the average scores in English subject.Besides, the author could perceive background and condition for English learning ofstudents which can affect significantly their performance at school

3.2 Data collection instrument

To collect sufficiently reliable and valid data for the study, the researcher usedquestionnaires as the main research instrument In this part, reasons for choosingquestionnaire, questionnaire format and content will be presented by the researcher

3.2.1 Reasons for choosing questionnaires

Questionnaire is defined as “a set of questions for gathering information fromindividuals” We can administer questionnaires by mail, telephone, face-to-faceinterviews, with handouts, or electronic instruments such as e-mail or web-based

questionnaires (Cited in, Anon., 2008) In this thesis, the researcher used handouts

because they were easy to collect, analyze and save time as well as money

There are several reasons for the author’s choice of questionnaire The firstbeing is that questionnaires enable the researcher to collect data in field setting.Collected data are more amenable to quantification than discursive data such as free-form field notes, participant observers’ journals and the transcripts of oral language

Questionnaire is evaluated by researchers in the world as the best choice for gatheringdata about knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors In this thesis, the mostimportant questions of research are perceiving student’s attitude and their knowledge

to word- formation Questionnaires were very helpful for author to collect uniqueinformation such as attitudes or knowledge Secondly, it is said that well- constructedquestionnaires can help researchers to save time, cost and effort because processing thedata can also be fast and relatively straightforward, especially by using some moderncomputer software Moreover, the cost of using questionnaires in research is relativelyinexpensive for the researchers When author must face up to problem of limitedsources, but data from a large number of participants are needed, questionnaires arevery useful In addition, questionnaires are versatile so they can be applied for variousparticipants in variety of situations and topics This characteristic of questionnairesassists researchers to generalize the common trends of participants The responses,then, are gathered in a standardized way; thus questionnaires are more objectivecompared to interviews Besides, one of conditions required in doing research is thenecessity of protecting the privacy of participants Questionnaires are beneficial inmaintaining participants’ privacy because participants’ responses could be anonymous

or confidential With these outstanding advantages, questionnaires are considered as arelatively popular means of collecting data which are used in the large number ofresearch projects (Nguyen, Pham and Luong, 2010) The author, hence, decided tochoose questionnaires as the main instrument for data collection

3.2.2 Questionnaire format and content

First, questionnaire was built based on the theoretical framework of literaturereview which concentrated on investigating the students’ perception of word-formation Then with contributive and valuable comments of supervisor, thequestionnaire was revised and the final version was printed Twenty- two first- yearstudents were chosen randomly and asked to freely give comments and feedback on

mistakes related to ambiguity level as well as wording of questionnaire Afterreceiving suggestions, the author revised questionnaires one more time and at lastsurvey with sixty students at ULIS, English 1 division, FELTE.

The questionnaire consists of four main parts

The first part was used for discovering general information of participants.Background information (gender, learning English conditions), scores of Englishsubject in the Joint College Entrance Examination were brought up The aim of thispart was to help the author acquire thorough participant understanding

The second part with six questions aims to explore attitude of students to formation The author utilized this part to investigate frequency of learning, practicingand achieving derived words of students

word-The rests of questionnaires include two parts: students’ perceived difficulties(part three) and proficiency test (part four) Both of them were used to find outproblems of students when they must deal with word- formation They investigatedstudents’ recognition of eight word-formation processes and their ability to solvefamiliar cases as well as new cases of derived words

In the questionnaire, the Likert- type scale from 1 to 5, multiple choicequestions and matching questions were fully employed

Likert-type scale was used to explore students’ attitude and perceiveddifficulties As stated by Bertram (n.d.), Likert- type scale is:

“A psychometric response scale primarily used in questionnaires to obtain participant’s preferences or degree of agreement with a statement or set of statements Likert scales are a non‐comparative scaling technique and are unidimensional (only measure a single trait) in nature Respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a given statement by way of an ordinal scale (P 2).”