case study on vocabulary teaching at Quang Oai upper-secondary school, Hanoi = Điển cứu về việc dạy từ vựng tại trường THPT Quảng Oai, Hà Nội

iii ABSTRACT: The present qualitative case study is aimed at finding out the perceptions of vocabulary teaching held by a group of upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai u

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ABSTRACT:

The present qualitative case study is aimed at finding out the perceptions of vocabulary teaching held by a group of upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-secondary school in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices The study was conducted from February through May of the 2010 - 2011 academic year, and the data were analyzed qualitatively The study involves 8 teachers of English working with their teaching experience ranging from 1 to 31 years 8 pre-observation interviews, 16 observations and 8 post-observation interviews were conducted to seek the answers for the following research questions 1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching? 2) What do they think of the opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching in their school? 3) To what extent do their self-reports of vocabulary teaching diverge from their actual classroom teaching? 4) What are the common vocabulary exercises they use in the classroom?

The overall findings of the survey show that the majority of respondents have understanding about the significance of vocabulary in English acquisition and English teaching, but that there exist some negative views on implementing the techniques in vocabulary teaching with regard

to its classroom practice Additionally, some useful implications are proposed based on research findings in order to help teachers to construct and implement techniques in vocabulary teaching more effectively

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ABSTRACT: iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS: iv

TRANSCRIP CONVENTION viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: ix

LIST OF TABLES: x

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for choosing the topic: 1

2 Aims and Objectives of the study: 1

3 Scope of the study: 2

4 Method of the study: 2

5 Design of the study: 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT: 4

Chapter I: Literature review: 4

1.1 What is vocabulary?: 4

1.2 Roles of vocabulary in second language acquisition: 5

1.3 What is Involved in Teaching Vocabulary: 6

1.4 Challenges in vocabulary teaching: 7

1.5 Approaches to vocabulary teaching: 8

1.5.1.The Grammar Translation Method: 8

1.5.2 The Reading Approach: 9

1.5.3 The Reform Movement: 9

1.5.4 The Direct Method: 9

1.5.5.The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching: 10

1.5.6 The Audio-lingual Method 10

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1.5.10 Content-based Instruction: 13

1.6 Techniques in presenting new vocabulary: 13

1.7 Vocabulary learning strategies: 13

1.7.1 Guessing meaning from context 14

1.7.2 Vocabulary notebooks and word cards 15

1.7.3 Learners' first language and dictionary use 15

1.8 Previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom: 16

CHAPTER II THE STUDY 18

2.1 Rationale of using a case study approach: 18

2.2.The case: 19

2.3 Participants: 20

2.4 Instruments: 20

2.4.1.The Interview: 21

Pre-observation interview: 21

Post-observation Interview: 22

2.4.2 Classroom Observation: 22

2.5 Data collection and data analysis procedures: 22

2.5.1 Data collection procedures: 22

2.5.2 Data analysis procedures: 24

CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 25

3.1 Findings: 25

3.1.1 Teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary 25

Vocabulary is instrumental to language acquisition: 25

Vocabulary as foundation of communication skills: 26

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3.1.3 Teachers’ perceptions of the constraints on vocabulary teaching: 28

Time constraints: 28

Students’ vocabulary deficiency: 28

Teachers’ limited knowledge of vocabulary teaching 29

3.1.4 Teachers’ self-reports of their vocabulary techniques: 29

Use of translation: 30

Use of visual aids and realia: 30

Use of synonyms or antonyms: 31

Integration of vocabulary into skills lessons: 32

3.1.5 Consistency and inconsistency between teachers’ self-reports and actual practice regarding vocabulary teaching: 33

Consistency: 33

Use of translation: 33

Use of visual aids and realia: 34

Use of synonyms: 36

Integration of vocabulary into skills lessons: 37

Inconsistency: 38

3.1.6 Common classroom vocabulary activities: 38

3.2 Discussion: 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

1 Summary of main findings: 40

2 Implications: 40

3 Suggestions for further studies: 41

3.1 Limitations: 41

3.2 Suggestions for further studies 42

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APPENDIX B: PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW SCHEDULE II APPENDIX C: SAMPLE OF PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW III APPENDIX D: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SCHEDULE VII APPENDIX E: SAMPLE OF LESSON OBSERVATION: IX APPENDIX F: SAMPLE OF POST-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW: XI

Italics: translation of original speech in vernacular

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CLT Communicative Language Teaching

EFL English as a foreign language

ELL English language learner

ESL English as a second language

L1 First language

MOET Ministry of Education and Training

OHP Overhead Projector

QOUS Quang Oai upper-secondary school

VLS Vocabulary learning strategy

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PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale of the study:

As one of the fundamental building blocks of language, vocabulary knowledge plays a prominent role in foreign language learning In other words, vocabulary is the basis for communication, reading, and writing Therefore, an effective approach to vocabulary is always one of the great concerns of every language teacher The reason is that learning vocabulary is really challenging requiring many cognitive processes, and teachers have to make sure that the students understand the word and its meaning as well as how to use the word accurately and appropriately

At supper-secondary schools in Vietnam, with a short duration of 3 periods (135 minutes) per week for all language skills and language focus, vocabulary instruction has been paid less attention than it should have been Students have to learn so many new words every week, and by the time they learn the new words in the new lesson they have forgotten most of the words they have learned in previous lessons Consequently, word retention has always been a difficult problem for the students

As an English teacher, I found out that one of the major reasons for which the students were not successful users of English is their vocabulary deficiency This motivates the researcher to conduct this study in an attempt to find out how vocabulary is taught and learned

in one particular upper secondary school in Hanoi

2 Aims and Objectives of the study:

The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of vocabulary teaching held by the upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-secondary school (QOUS)

in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices

The objectives of the study are:

a) to understand teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching

as well as their perceived opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching b) to investigate their teaching approach to vocabulary in the classroom and the extent to which their self-reported teaching approach diverges their actual classroom teaching

In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives, I decided to carry out a qualitative case study, which is aimed at seeking answers to the following research questions: 1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching? 2) What do they think of the opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching in their school?

3) To what extent do their self-reports of vocabulary teaching diverge from their actual classroom teaching?

4) What are the common vocabulary activities they use in the classroom?

3 Scope of the study:

The study is confined to the investigation of the teachers’ perceptions related to vocabulary teaching as well as the way they taught vocabulary in the classroom within the context of one particular upper secondary school I therefore had no intention of generalizing the findings Rather, I wanted to identify the space where improvements in vocabulary teaching can be improved so as to make a small contribution to the effort to make English language teaching in the researched upper secondary school more effective

4 Method of the study:

This study is designed as a single qualitative case study and uses a combination of various methods to achieve its objectives such as pre-observation interviews, observations, and post-observation interviews

The case here is an upper secondary school on the outskirts of Hanoi Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations

First, pre-observation interviews were conducted The obtained data help to investigate teachers’ attitudes towards English vocabulary teaching in Quang Oai Upper-Secondary Schools in Hanoi, the opportunities as well as constraints

After that, classroom observations were conducted to find out how effectively the teachers taught English vocabulary

Finally, I carried out post-observation interviews to gain understanding of teachers’ reasoning for their classroom practices

5 Design of the study:

There are three main parts in my thesis:

Part A is the Introduction presenting the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, research

questions, methods and design of the study

Part B, the Development, includes three chapters:

Chapter I is the Literature Review, which reviews theoretical issues related to the definitions,

roles of vocabulary in English language acquisitions, techniques in vocabulary teaching as well as previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom

Chapter II is the study which is composed of some smaller parts: rationale for choosing the

case study, the settings (the case), the participants, the instruments and research procedures of the study

Chapter III is the analysis and discussion of the findings through an analysis of the data

collected by means of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews

Part C is the Conclusion In this Chapter, major findings of the study will be briefly

summarized to answer the research questions Also, the limitations of the study and suggestions for the future researches will be presented in this chapter

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature on vocabulary teaching It begins with definitions and relevant knowledge around vocabulary teaching, followed by the significance of vocabulary in language acquisition as well as the challenges of vocabulary teaching and a review of related studies in the same field

b) a sum or stock of words employed by a language group individual or work or in a field of knowledge

c) a list or collection of terms or codes available for use

This definition is echoed by Hatch and Brown (1995) Ur (1996) elaborates further and she uses the term ‘vocabulary item’ to refer to ‘word’ This is because, she argues, a vocabulary item can be either a single world or a multi-word phrase According to her,

“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language However,

a new item of vocabulary may be more than just a single word: for example, post office, and in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “word” which is made up of two

mother-or three wmother-ords but express a single idea” (p 60)

Similarly, Lewis, an advocate of the lexical approach to second language teaching, views vocabulary either as individual words or as full sentences, which he terms as

‘institutionalized utterances, that “convey fixed social or pragmatic meaning within a given community” (Lewis, 1993: 89).

1.2 Roles of Vocabulary in Second Language Acquisition:

“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”

David Wilkins, linguist

This is how linguist David Wilkin sums up the importance of vocabulary learning It’s known to most L2 learners that acquisition of vocabulary is a fundamental and important component in the course of their learning McCarthy (1990: viii) emphasizes that:

"No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way"

(McCarthy 1990: viii)

A good repertoire of vocabulary is essential for ESL/ EFL learner, especially for those who learn English for specific purposes or those who expect to become expert users of English As a result, the teaching and learning vocabulary, although it is only one sub-goal of

a range of goals that is important in ELL, plays a key role in the overall structure of language teaching program because of its basic function in language components Huckin and Block (1993: 154) show that L2 readers may rely heavily on vocabulary knowledge and that a lack of vocabulary knowledge is the largest obstacles for L2 readers to overcome If someone has adequate vocabulary, he/ she will feel more confident in communicating with others as well as expressing his/her opinions in both oral and written forms

According to Meara (1995), central to learning to communicate in the target language are vocabulary and lexical units No amount of grammatical or other type of linguistics knowledge can be employed in communication or discourse without the mediation of vocabulary Folse (2004: 3) claims that

“The lack of grammar knowledge can limit conversation; lack of vocabulary knowledge can stop conversation”

Learners can express themselves with poor grammar However, it is always a challenge

to get the message across in a foreign language (Wallace, 1982), and because of this communication in foreign language is constrained considerably to those with limited vocabulary

1.3 What is Involved in Teaching Vocabulary?

Basic to the teaching of vocabulary is the question of what it is to know a word It is widely believed that people learn words receptively first and later achieve productive knowledge (Schmitt, 2000) Schmitt (1995: 86) presents a list of the word knowledge types that native speakers typically possess: 1 a word’s spoken form, 2 a word’s written form, 3 a word’s part of speech, derivative forms, and grammatical patterns, 4 a word’s collocations, 5 how frequently a word is used in a language, 6 the many stylistic constrains which determine

if a word is appropriate in a given context, 7 a word’s conceptual meaning, 8 a word’s semantic network of associations Schmitt (1995: 87) pictures the development of the overall knowledge of a word in the following way: After the initial exposure, a learner may have an idea of one of the word’s possible meanings, along with an impression of its form As the learner repeatedly comes into contact with and uses the word, understanding of the word’s form and meaning are strengthened, while other word knowledge aspects are generally added This may continue until the learner finally controls the collocational and stylistic aspects These final two kinds of word knowledge may well be the last to be controlled, since they seem to require a great deal of exposure to a language, and arguably, only a minority of L2 learners ever achieves native-like competence of these two aspects

In a similar vein, Ur (1996: 60-63) argues that the following aspects of a new vocabulary item must be taught to the students: 1- form: pronunciation and spelling, 2- grammar: if it is regular or irregular, transitive or intransitive, its plural and singular forms etc., 3- collocation, 4- aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation, appropriateness, 5- meaning relationships: synonyms, antonyms, co- hyponyms, super-ordinates, translation, 6- word formation: if it can be broken down to its components Schmitt (2000: 37-39) believes that vocabulary teaching should be determined by two major considerations: 1- learners' needs and 2- the usefulness of the vocabulary items In order to account for these two factors the

relevant corpus is determined on the basis of the students' needs and then the traditional perspective that high frequency words should be the first and main consideration in vocabulary teaching

1.4 Challenges in Vocabulary Teaching:

Since a good knowledge of vocabulary has a great effect on the learners’ improvement

of other aspects of language such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking, and writing, due attention should be paid to choosing and implementing appropriate vocabulary teaching/learning techniques in language classes However, in general, teaching vocabulary is not easy, clearly more than just presenting new words (Harmer, 1993: 159)

It shows that the students’ vocabulary mastery is poor According to Aganes (2008), the causes of the problem might be that: 1) the material is not interesting; 2) the limited time and the equipment; 3) the technique of delivering materials is neither suitable nor interesting Because of the problems, students got difficulties in learning vocabulary

Aganes (2008) also points out that there are many challenges that students are encountered with while learning vocabulary Firstly, they get difficulties in pronouncing words correctly Pronouncing the word correctly is an important part in teaching vocabulary because incorrect pronunciation will influence the meaning of the words Moreover, by pronouncing the words correctly, it can help the students remember the word longer and identify it more readily when they hear or see it Thus, in introducing new words, the teacher should pronounce every new word correctly and carefully, and then repeat it in chorus by the class or by individual student In fact, the students still get difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly

Secondly, the students get difficulties in remembering and grasping the meaning of the words often appears when they do the exercises They cannot do the exercise perfectly Most

of them fill the wrong answers That mistake is caused by translation method in teaching vocabulary The problem gets worse when the teacher teaches vocabulary mostly through translation at the beginning of the lesson or translation of the material containing new words

or glossaries at the end An overreliance on translation, the teacher may ignore other strategies

to present new words such as using the self-defining context, definition in the target language,

opposites, pictures, and dramatization as a number ways to put across the meaning of a new word to a class

Thirdly, the students’ attention and motivation in learning vocabulary are decreasing The students do not pay attention to the teacher’s explanation They are also easy to get bored

in having the lesson It can be seen from the responses in doing some exercises and practices

In the literature, it seems that the problems in the teaching and learning vocabulary tend to be related to teacher factors These factors are:

1) the teacher only gives a little time to practice in pronouncing the words correctly, whereas

a little time to practice cannot create accurate pronunciation, especially for the beginners; 2) the technique of the teaching vocabulary that the teacher uses seems ineffective for the students It does not give the students great motivation to learn In other words, students are passive in learning vocabulary

1.5 Approaches to Vocabulary Teaching:

There are many different methods, approaches, techniques as well as strategies to vocabulary teaching In the early decades of the 20th century, vocabulary teaching and research were respectable The Grammar Translation Method and the Reading Approach were the leading language teaching methodologies at that time Both of these approaches involved a great deal of direct vocabulary teaching and learning (Murcia, 1991: 296)

1.5.1 The Grammar Translation Method:

The Grammar Translation Method aimed to provide the students with a detailed literary vocabulary which is learned through long lists of translated items and a bilingual dictionary and practiced through sentence translation with little opportunity to try out pronunciation (Rivers, 1981: 28-30) Murcia and Prator (1979: 3) listed major characteristics

of Grammar translation:

1) Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language

2) Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words

3) Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given

4) Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of words

5) Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early

6) Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis

7) Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language onto the mother tongue

8) Little or no attention is given to pronunciation

1.5 2 The Reading Approach:

The reading approach attached more importance to vocabulary than grammatical skills The vocabulary of the early readings was strictly controlled Since the acquisition of vocabulary was regarded more prominent than the mastery of grammatical skills, expanding vocabulary as fast as possible was of great importance (Murcia and Prator, 1979: 3)

1.5 3 The Reform Movement:

The reform movement, which was set up as a reaction to the Grammar Translation Method, stressed the primacy of spoken language and the presentation of the written word only after the spoken form had been provided It was emphasized that new vocabulary should only be met in sentences and meaningful contexts (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 10)

1.5 4 The Direct Method:

The Direct Method, which grew out of the Reform Movement, made emphasis on interaction for language acquisition and acquiring an acceptable pronunciation from the beginning It introduced vocabulary through classroom objects, mime, drawings and explanations (Rivers, 1981: 32-33)

1.5.5 The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching:

These were British structuralism approaches to language teaching developed between the 1930’s and the 1960’s (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 39) In the Oral Approach, grammar and vocabulary was carefully chosen and graded This ultimately led to the Vocabulary Control Movement and West’s ‘A General Service List of English Words’ 1953, which had a permanent effect on the grading of vocabulary (Schmitt 2000: 15; Zimmerman, 1997: 9)

In Situational Language Teaching, the meaning of words was not to be given via explanation

in either the mother tongue or the target language but was to be induced from the way the form

was used in a situation The learner was expected to deduce the meaning of a particular vocabulary item from the situation in which it was presented The meaning of new words was not conveyed through translation It was made clear visually with objects, pictures, action and mime (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 36-38)

1.5.6 The Audio-lingual Method:

The Audio-lingual Method was shaped after the Second World War when the need for foreign language speakers was better appreciated In this method, the amount of vocabulary presented was kept low (Thornbury, 2002: 14) and was chosen for its simplicity (Schmitt, 2000: 13) It was assumed that when grammatical fluency was present, exposure to the foreign language itself lead to vocabulary development (Coady, 1993: 4) It was also stressed that knowing too much vocabulary would cause students to have a false sense of security (Zimmerman, 1997: 11).

The characteristics of Audio-lingual Method may be summed up in the following list

(adapted from Murica and Prator, 1979):

1) New material is presented in dialog form

2) There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases, and over learning

3) Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time

4) Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills

5) There is little or no grammatical explanation: grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive explanation

6) Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context

7) There is much use of tapes, language labs and visual aids

8) Great importance is attached to pronunciation

9) Very little use of the mother tongue by teacher is permitted

10) Successful responses are immediately reinforced

11) There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances

12) There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content

1.5 7 The Cognitive Approach:

The Cognitive Approach, which emerged as a reaction against the defects of the Audio-lingual Approach and its behavioristic features at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, took as its theoretical base the Transformational-Generative Grammar of Chomsky (Stern, 1991: 169) In this approach, the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary was crucial for successful second language use Students could not use the structures and functions during the act of communication without having sufficient amount of vocabulary In a cognitive class, the language teacher had to move from competence to performance To put it another way, he was expected to follow the presentation, practice and the application stages To teach the meanings

of the lexical items, techniques like contextualization, demonstrations, drawings, real objects, flashcards, OHP, etc were used to a great extent Moreover, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, collocations, cognates and semantic fields, etc were also utilized by language teachers (Senel, 2002: 161)

1.5 8 The Communicative Language Teaching

The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach is a renowned British Approach to language teaching the emergence of which dates back to the mid-1960s Especially, British applied linguists like Henry Widdowson, Halliday, Brumfit, Johnson, and Wilkins leaded to this communicative movement, advocating that communicative proficiency and functions of language should be emphasized over the mastery of structures (Duman, 1997: 22) Concepts like context, use, effective communication, communicative function, comprehensible pronunciation, etc were given importance in this approach Senel (2002: 243) emphasized that new words were not presented in isolation, but in the context of a complete sentence, and in a meaningful situation This way, the words acquired meaning when they appeared with a particular definition in a determined context Moreover, Thornbury (2002:14) stated that course books began to incorporate communicative activities specifically targeting vocabulary since the meaning-giving role of lexis was recognized in this approach For the sake of simplicity and directness, Brown (2000: 266-267) offered four interconnected characteristics as a definition of CLT

1) Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence

2) Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatics authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes Organizational language forms are not the central focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learners to accomplish those purpose

3) Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order

to keep learners meaningful engaged in language use

4) In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts

1.5 9 The Lexical Approach

The Lexical Approach was developed by Lewis in 1993 This approach stresses the importance of vocabulary as being basic to communication It is claimed that if learners do not recognize the meaning of keywords, they will be unable to participate in the conversation, even if they know the morphology and the syntax of the foreign language However, Lewis states that the Lexical Approach is not simply a shift of emphasis from grammar to vocabulary teaching since ‘language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks.’ (Lewis, 1997: 7) Hence, lexical Approach emphasizes language as prefabricated chunks that the learner can take and use to promote fluency: collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, catchphrases, sayings, sentence frames, social formulae and discourse markers being the most significant chunks for the foreign language learner (Thornby, 2002: 115) This approach has influenced course books and dictionaries It is simply due to this reason that many course books and dictionaries incorporate collocational exercises and information in our times

1.5 10 Content-based Instruction:

In recent years, Content-based Instruction has gained popularity in foreign language learning and teaching This approach has been utilized in immersion programs, teaching languages for specific purposes, and for teaching all levels of proficiency In this approach, vocabulary is completely contextualized and courses which have carefully designed the scope and the spiraling sequence of the content manage to recycle both the content and the

associated vocabulary Many language programs also choose content to conform to the knowledge students already possess and texts may either be authentic or specially written (Stryker and Leaver, 1997: 291)

1.6 Techniques in Presenting New Vocabulary:

After the teacher chooses what items to teach, he or she should follow certain guidelines In my opinion, this includes teaching the vocabulary "in spoken form first" to prevent students from pronouncing the words in the form they are written, placing the new items in context, and revising them

A number of techniques can be adapted to present new vocabulary items Some techniques are more popular and more often used than others Also it is up to the teacher which techniques he or she decides to use but always the effectiveness of teaching should be considered

In teaching vocabulary, teachers of English mainly focus on explaining the meaning, presenting the form as well as the use of a new word Nation, Paul (2005) suggested different techniques that teachers of English can implement in their teaching vocabulary

Firstly, teachers quickly give the meaning of the word by (a) using an L1 translation, (b) using a known L2 synonym or a simple definition in the L2, (c) showing an object or picture, (d) giving quick demonstration, (e) drawing a simple picture or diagram, (f) breaking the word into parts and giving the meaning of the parts and the whole word (the word part strategy), (g) giving several example sentences with the word in context to show the meaning, (h) commenting on the underlying meaning of the word and other referents

Secondly, teachers can draw attention to the form of the word by (a) showing how the spelling of the word is like the spelling of known words, (b) giving the stress pattern of the word and its pronunciation, (c) showing the prefix, stem and suffix that make up the word, (d) getting the learners to repeat the pronunciation of the word, (e) writing the word on the board, (f) pointing out any spelling irregularity in the word

Finally, the use of the word can be explained by (a) quickly showing the grammatical pattern the word fits into (countable/uncountable, transitive/intransitive, etc), (b) giving a few similar collocates, (c) mentioning any restrictions on the use of the word (formal, colloquial,

impolite, only used in the United States, only used with children, old fashioned, technical, infrequent), (d) giving a well known opposite, or a well known word describing the group or lexical set it fits into

1.7 Vocabulary Learning Strategies:

Vocabulary learning strategy (VLS) is an approach which facilitates vocabulary learning and has attracted considerable attention It is a movement away from teaching - oriented approach toward one that is interested in seeing how actions of learners might affect their acquisition of vocabulary (Schmitt, 2002) Strategies can help learners both in discovering the meaning of a word and consolidating it and are specially needed when they are encouraged to learn independently (Celce-Murcia, 2001)

1.7.1 Guessing Meaning from Context:

One of the strategies commonly used is guessing word meaning from context or inferring from context It involves learners systematically drawing on the available clues to work out the unknown words' meaning (Richards and Renandya, 2002) Richards and Renandya believe that in order to use it correctly students' confidence in guessing from context must be raised and they must be made sensitive to the clues available

Schmitt and McCarthy (2005), however, believe that a number of potential problems are associated with it First of all learning words through guessing is very slow and students usually have a limited amount of time to learn the words they need Secondly, it is "an error-prone process" and students, specially low –level ones, are often frustrated with it Finally, guessing from context does not necessarily result in long-term retention

1.7.2 Vocabulary Notebooks and Word Cards:

Setting up vocabulary notebooks is a memory aid which helps the students to visualize the network of relationship between new and familiar words (Murcia, 2001) Nation (2001) believes that students become excited about the progress they make and one way to make them excited and motivated about the progress they make is to raise their awareness of how their knowledge of vocabulary is improving through effective use of vocabulary notebooks Students can choose a loose-leaf ring binder and record the new word on the front of each page together with other information such as pronunciation, derivatives and collocations The

meaning and/or translation is recorded on the reverse side of the page Each time they see or hear it, they can add more information like its stylistic aspects and sentences illustrating its use To review the new words, they must first look at the front page and try to recall the recorded information on the reverse side (Ledburry, 2007)

Learning from word cards, on the other hand, is another useful strategy which increases vocabulary size quickly (Nation, 2001: 302-315) Nation, however, argues that the effectiveness of word cards is heavily dependent on the way they are used He introduces some techniques in order to increase their efficiency These are: 1) put the words on one side and the meaning on the other to encourage recall 2) do not put the words to each other that belong to the same lexical set, or are near synonyms or opposites, or are formally similar 3) keep changing the order of the cards in the pack and put difficult words near the beginning 4)

at early stages see the word and try to recall the meaning , later turn over the pack ,look at the meaning and try to remember the word 5) put the words in phrases or sentences or with some collocates 6) say the words aloud or to yourself Silent repetition is not very efficient

1.7.3 Learners' First Language and Dictionary Use:

A strategy which is commonly reported in the literature to be used by learners is the use of first language in learning second or foreign language words Nation (2001: 304) mentions that research shows learning are facilitated if the meaning is in the learner's first language The reason, according to him, is that first language meaning has already rich associations for the learner and experiment shows that both short-term and long-term retention are superior with L1 glosses One criticism which is leveled against the use of first language in vocabulary learning is that students may think "there is a one-to-one correspondence between words in the second language and words in the first language" Learners, therefore, need to be made aware that this is not so by drawing their attention to the underlying meanings of words

In this connection, Richards and Renandya (2002) favor bilingualized dictionaries Bilingualized dictionaries do the job of both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries by providing L2 definitions and examples as well as L1 synonyms One advantage is that they can be used by all types of learners Folse (2004) believes that this type of dictionary is user-friendly and provides appealing information to a wide variety of learners

Other useful techniques which are cited in the literature to improve vocabulary learning are: to integrate new words with the old, to provide a number of encounters with a word, to promote a deep level of processing and facilitate imaging and concreteness (verbal and non-verbal links like diagrams, pictures etc.), to arrange the words in units and stages and use a variety of techniques (Schmitt and Mc Carthy, 2005)

1.8 Previous Studies on Vocabulary Teaching in The Classroom:

There are a growing number of studies looking at what teachers do about vocabulary in classrooms The results of the study conducted by Gu and Johnson (1996) showed that the

most used strategies were: guessing from the context, using dictionary, paying attention to a word formation, and using the newly learned word in sentences seemed to be useful to the learners Nevertheless, Schmitt's (1995) study showed that the most used strategies were: bilingual dictionary, asking teacher for a paraphrase, and analyzing pictures/gestures

Mehrpour (2008), in A Comparison of the Effects of Two Vocabulary Teaching Techniques, compares the impact of different instructional vocabulary techniques on a low-

proficiency group of fifty Iranian learners of English as a foreign language Mehrpour concludes that rote-memorization of word-lists can work better than sentence-making practice, for Iranian learners of English at low levels of proficiency Traditional techniques of vocabulary learning such as rote learning are sometimes considered outdated and inappropriate even for low–level learners

In contrast to these studies, Mason (2004) and Pigada and Schmitt (2006) attempted to

find out whether language skills such as reading and listening to stories enhance vocabulary acquisition Both studies suggest that hearing stories lead in vocabulary development and also, vocabulary acquisition is possible from extensive reading than previous studies have suggested

Finally, a study conducted by Yoshi and Flaitz (2002) showed that annotations with

text and picture enhanced vocabulary acquisition

Summary:

In this chapter, I have reviewed the literature related to vocabulary teaching As it is indicated

in this literature review, there are a wide variety of classroom techniques of vocabulary teaching However, the effect of each teaching technique varies from context to context This

is understandable because language learning is affected by a large number of learner variables, teacher variables and contextual variables In the next chapter, I will present the present study

CHAPTER II THE STUDY

The first section of this chapter will present the rationale for the use of case study approach Then information about the case including the bounded context and participants is provided The chapter concludes with a discussion of the instrument of data collection as well as the procedure of data collection

2.1 Rationale of Using A Case Study Approach:

A case study refers to the collection and presentation of detailed information about a particular participant or small group, frequently including the accounts of subjects themselves

A form of qualitative descriptive research, the case study looks intensely at an individual or small participant pool, drawing conclusions only about that participant or group and only in that specific context

Case study is known as a triangulated research strategy Snow and Anderson (cited in Feagin, Orum, & Sjoberg, 1991) asserts that triangulation can occur with data, investigators, theories, and even methodologies

In essence, Sandra Lee McKay (2006: 71) defines a case study as:

“a single instance of some bounded systems, which can range from one individual to a class, a school, or an entire community”

When carrying out the study, I chose case study as the method for some reasons First,

a case study approach allows me to collect data from multiple methods i.e interviews, document review, and observation Second, a case study provides much more detailed information than what is available through other methods, such as surveys (Nealem , Thapa, , and Boyce (2006:3)) Hitchcock and Hughes (1995) maintain that a case study (1) is concerned with a rich and vivid description of events relevant to the case; (2) provides a chronological narrative of events relevant to the case and (3) the researcher is integrally involved in the case

2.2 The Case:

The present study was conducted at a state upper-secondary school, which is located in

an economically developing district, 50 km north of the centre of Hanoi city Agriculture was the dominant local economy, and the majority of the population was farmers However, the district was one of the popular tourist destinations in North Vietnam The school was established in 1961 At the time when the study was carried out, the school had a total student body of 1890, who were aged between 16 and 18 They were grouped in three grades of 10,

11, and 12 like in any upper-secondary school in Vietnam

Admission was decided through an entrance examination administered by the Municipal Department of Education and Training Prior to their upper-secondary education, these students had learnt English as a compulsory subject at lower-secondary school for four years Some even started to learn English at the primary school Despite this long period of learning English, an overwhelming majority of them was pre-intermediate students (some were just elementary students) in terms of English proficiency Although they lived in an area with many tourist attractions, their exposure to English was quite limited for two reasons First, tourists coming to this area were largely from within Vietnam, who naturally are not English speakers Second, even when there were English-speaking visitors, the students did not have the opportunity to use English with them because they were either at the school or on the farm helping their parents with the farm work while the visitors stayed there quite briefly Consequently, learning English to these students was just for passing the exams

The average class size is around 45 Each classroom is basically furnished with two rows of long desks, a blackboard Every 4 students shared one desk Between rows of desks was a narrow aisle for the teacher to move around

Like in other schools in Vietnam, in this school the textbooks are prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Training, and were pre-determined for all grades and school type nationwide from grade 10 to 12, with weekly class time of 135 minutes, split into three lessons

of 45 minutes each Each lesson is theme-based and skill-based, with adaptation of the two currently popular teaching approaches, task-based learning and communicative approach

Among 120 staff and teachers of all subjects, there were 9 English-language teachers working for the school The approach to English language teaching in the school can be

described as teacher-fronted with teachers playing the key role in the classroom, and being the main speakers throughout the lesson

2.3 Participants:

The 7 male and 1 female participants ranged from 23 to 54 years in age, with the majority in their 20s; the average age was 34 Their experience in teaching English varied from 1 to 30 years, with an average of 11.25 years At the time of the study, eight participants were teaching in rural upper-secondary school All of the participants held a B.A degree from different universities in Vietnam (see Table 2 1)

Participant

Sex

Age

Teaching experience (No of years)

Qualification Male Female

Table 2.1: Background of participants 2.4 Instruments:

Stake (1995) and Yin (1994) identify at least six sources of evidence in case studies The following is not an ordered list, but reflects the research of both Yin (1994) and Stake (1995):

The data gathered can include interview data, narrative accounts, classroom observations, verbal reports, and written documents (Sandra Lee McKay, 2006)

For the purpose of this study, a combination of two different methods was used for data collection, namely interview (pre-observation and post-observation interviews) and observation

2.4.1 The Interview:

Interviews are a research tool in which a researcher asks questions of participants; interviews are often audio or video-taped for later transcription and analysis Winston Tellis (1997) affirmed that interviews are one of the most important sources of case study information The interview may take one of several forms: open-ended, focused, or structured

In an open-ended interview, the researcher could ask for the informant's opinion on events or facts In a focused interview, the respondent is interviewed for only a short time, and the questions asked could have come from the case study protocol The structured interview is particularly useful in studies of neighborhoods where a formal survey is required

Oppenheim (1992: 81) suggests that interviews have a higher response rate than questionnaires because respondents become more involved and, hence, motivated; they enable more to be said about the research than is usually mentioned in a covering letter to a questionnaire, and they are better than questionnaires for handling more difficult and open-ended questions For these advantages, the researcher chose interview as an instrument to get data for her study

Pre-observation interview:

Before observing teachers, I conducted short informal interviews with the teachers In fact these were more like informal conversations The purpose of these informal interviews was to elicit the teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary; the opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching and the techniques that the teachers often apply in vocabulary teaching. While interviewing the participants, the researcher recorded all that

could be recalled of the interviewees’ responses

Post-observation Interview:

The aim of the post-observation interview was to find out the consistency and inconsistency between teachers’ self-reports and actual practice regarding vocabulary teaching

as well as the rationale of teachers’ actual behaviors in the classroom For this aim all observation interviews were unstructured

post-2.4.2 Classroom Observation:

This technique is useful for providing additional information about the topic being studied The reliability is enhanced when more than one observer is involved in the task Participant-observation makes the researcher into an active participant in the events being studied

Moyles (2002: 181) suggests that researchers need to record the physical and contextual settings of the observation, the participants, the time of the day of the observation, the layout of the settings (seating arrangements, arrangements of desks), the chronology of the events observed and any critical incidents that happened

In this study, I observed and took detailed notes of the key events that occurred in the classroom This included teacher questioning, student response, classroom discussion, and individual as well as whole-class participation Observations depicted the description of the participants, the arrangement of the classroom setting, the re-enactment of dialogue that occurred between teacher and students, and activities that occurred during the class

2.5 Data collection and data analysis procedures:

2.5.1 Data collection procedures:

The data collection procedures involved the following steps:

Before collecting data for the study, on February 10th I met all teachers of English of QOUS in order to ask for cooperation for my study It was so lucky for me to be given warm welcome by all teachers there

The interviews were conducted before and after the classroom observation if the teacher were having an interval waiting for their next periods Otherwise, the researcher had to wait until they had free time later in the day or made phone calls after school Each interview lasted around 15 to 30 minutes The pre-observation interview consists of two parts The first

is about the participants’ own background and the second deals with the respondents’ attitudes toward vocabulary teaching The language of the interview was Vietnamese to ensure mutual understanding between the teacher and myself as an interviewee Therefore, the participants fully articulate their views without being constrained by the use of English or it helped them to

avoid getting confused in understanding the English interviewing questions and giving answers to the asked questions All the interviews were recorded so the researcher could transcribe them in detail then They were then translated and analyzed by the researchers to uncover the emerging themes (see the interview guide in Appendix A, interview schedule in Appendix B, the sample of full transcript of the interview in Appendix C and the sample of post-observation interview in Appendix F)

A semi-structured interview was conducted in Vietnamese with each of the eight teachers They were based on the following key questions:

1) How important, in your opinion, is vocabulary to students’ English learning?

2) What are the opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary in your school?

3) What are the techniques that you often use to teach vocabulary? Why do you use those techniques?

4) Beside those techniques, do you think there are other techniques? What for example? 5) Do you often separate vocabulary from language skills lessons or do you integrate it in those lessons?

6) What are activities you often use to help students remember and use vocabulary effectively?

Parallel with the interviews, the researcher observed all eight teachers (for the observation schedule, see Appendix B).The researcher informed participants of her visits to their lessons in advance Classroom observations were conducted for 2 lessons for each teacher in the second term of 2010-2011 school-year, 16 lessons altogether for 8 teachers Due

to the large class size, the lessons were not video or audio-recorded Instead of this, the researcher took extensive field notes of all the observed events in the classroom in the most possible naturally detailed manner to determine the teaching styles of a single case as well as issues related to teachers’ rationale underlying their actual vocabulary teaching in the class room

After observing the teachers teach vocabulary in their classes, the researcher interviewed the observed teachers to find out the reasons for their actual teaching behavior (see Appendix D) As a result, I asked them some more questions:

1) What was your purpose in using those techniques in vocabulary teaching?

2) Do you think those techniques were effective?

3) If you teach the same lesson again, will you use the same vocabulary techniques, will you use the same vocabulary techniques? Why or why not?

2.5.2 Data analysis procedures:

The procedures of collecting data took me nearly 3 months and about a month to analyze the data Data collected from the above different sources were categorized into i) teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary, ii) Teachers’ perceptions of the opportunities for vocabulary teaching; iii) Teachers’ perceptions of the constraints on vocabulary teaching; iv) Teachers’ self-reports of their vocabulary techniques; v) Common classroom vocabulary exercises and vi) Consistency and inconsistency between teachers’ self-reports and actual practice regarding vocabulary teaching

The data was categorized this way simply for seeking answers to the research questions raised for this study The data was then analyzed both descriptively and interpretively The qualitative data from classroom observation and the interviews were presented by quoting relevant responses from the respondents