USING SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH ESP VOCABULARY TO FINAL-YEAR STUDENTS OF FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING AT HANOI TOURISM COLLEGE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ HẠNH USING SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH ESP VOCABULARY TO

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY

OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ HẠNH

USING SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH ESP VOCABULARY TO FINAL-YEAR STUDENTS OF FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING

AT HANOI TOURISM COLLEGE

(Sử dụng sơ đồ ngữ nghĩa để dạy từ vựng tiếng Anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên năm cuối, chuyên ngành tài chính và kế toán, trường Cao đẳng Du lịch

Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI – 2012

iv

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vii

List of tables vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research questions 3

5 Significance of the study 3

6 The method of the study 4

7 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 What is vocabulary? 6

1.2 The role of vocabulary in second language learning 6

1.3 What is involved in teaching L2 vocabulary 8

1.4 Challenges of L2 vocabulary learning 8

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1.5 The nature of ESP vocabulary 9

1.6 Challenges of ESP vocabulary learning 11

1.7 What should be taught in ESP vocabulary teaching 12

1.7.1 Word form 12

1.7.2 Word formation 12

1.7.3 Word relations 13

1.7.4 Collocation 14

1.8 Characteristics of financial & accounting English vocabulary 14

1.8.1 The morphological characteristics 14

1.8.2 The semantic characteristics 15

1.9 Vocabulary retention 16

1.10 Semantic mapping as a vocabulary instruction strategy 16

1.10.1 Definitions of semantic mapping 16

1.10.2 Procedures to construct a semantic map 17

1.10.3 Previous studies of the impact of semantic mapping on students‟ vocabulary learning 19

Benefits of semantic mapping 19

Limitations of semantic mapping 23

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 The context of the study 25

2.1.1 Research setting 25

2.1.2 Teaching materials 26

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2.2 Research participants 26

2.3 Data collection instruments 27

2.3.1 Tests 27

2.3.2 Questionnaire 28

2.4 Treatment procedures 29

2.5 Procedures of data collection 31

2.6 Data analysis 31

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Findings 32

3.1.1 The effectiveness of semantic mapping on students‟ word retention 32

3.1.2 Students perceptions of the benefits of semantic mapping to their word retention 34

3.2 Discussion 36

PART C: CONCLUSION 1 Summary of the study 38

2 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

GE: General English

ESP: English for specific purpose

HTC: Hanoi Tourism College

L2: The second language

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Students‟ test scores in three progress tests 33

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

their ESP vocabulary learning

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In recent years, the demand for learning English for specific purpose (ESP) has been spread nationwide Due to the social needs, ESP is taught in almost universities, colleges and vocational schools Most of English departments offer courses in ESP after General English (GE) during the basic years Hanoi Tourism College (HTC) is a typical example of the training institutions that combines ESP within its current English teaching situation in response to the demand for specific language learning target In Hanoi Tourism College, teachers are required to teach English to students from various fields such as Restaurant, Hotel, Travel agency, Tour guiding, Finance and accounting, and food production

One of the concerns about the ESP program at the College is how to help students learn the ESP vocabulary better This is really critical given the role of vocabulary in second language learning either for General Purposes or for Specific Purposes Many scholars have considered vocabulary acquisition as being fundamental and crucial component to any foreign language learners Wilkins (1972, p.11) emphasizes the importance of vocabulary as “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed” For ESP, Robinson (1991), pointed out that for many people, vocabulary, particularly specialist vocabulary (or terminology), is the key element of ESP

At HTC, despite teachers‟ efforts to try experimenting various vocabulary techniques, the result is far from satisfaction Students still have serious

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difficulties memorizing, recalling and using specialist vocabulary, i.e., vocabulary related to their field of finance and accounting The desire to help students address these difficulties motivate me to carry out this study, which is aimed at exploring the possibility of using the semantic mapping strategy to teach ESP vocabulary This teaching technique has not been used at HTC to the

best of my knowledge

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to explore the possibility of teaching ESP vocabulary through semantic mapping with reference to the students‟ attitudes

to, and opinions of, this instructional strategy as well as their retention of ESP vocabulary Because it is just a stepping stone to the extensive application of the semantic mapping strategy to teach ESP vocabulary, it is confined to two following objectives:

- To investigate students‟ perceived benefits of learning ESP vocabulary

through semantic mapping?

- To examine the impact of employing semantic mapping on students‟

ESP vocabulary retention

3 Scope of the study

Firstly, the study limits itself to the investigation of the students‟ perceptions of the usefulness of semantic mapping to their ESP vocabulary learning as well as their retention of ESP vocabulary as measured by the questionnaire responses and progress tests Secondly, this study is similar to a small-scale action research project in the sense that its primary purpose is to help

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the researcher to improve her teaching Therefore, the study was conducted with the final-year participant students of three year-training program who were real students in the researcher‟s class Finally, the study used the the textbook named

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

5 Significance of the study

Although semantic mapping has been researched extensively in the context of second language vocabulary learning, little research has been done in ESP Although this study focuses only on the students‟ perceived benefits of semantic mapping to their ESP vocabulary and the impact of this vocabulary technique on their ESP vocabulary retention, the findings of this study will shed more light on the possibility of using semantic mapping to teach ESP vocabulary These findings can also lay the foundation for a more extensive study on the impact of this vocabulary strategy upon students‟ ESP vocabulary acquisition in the context where ESP is taught as a minor subject

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6 Methods of the study

Since the purpose of the study is to test the impact of semantic mapping on students‟ ESP vocabulary aquisition, a quasi- experimental design is appropriate The study is quasi-experimental in two ways Firstly, no randomized sampling was used; instead an intact group of students were used in this study Second, the study design did not use the pretest-posttest design (Nunan, 1992) Instead, the impact of the treatment was measured through progress tests and a final test In addition to these tests, a student questionnaire was also employed

In order to obtain information for the two research questions stated in Section 4 above, two main instruments of data collection were used: the student questionnaire and the progress tests Because the first research question is to find out students perceptions of the treatment, the student questionnaire was designed and administered to the students at the end of the treatment to obtain their responses to the treatment Regarding to the second research question, two progress tests and a final test, which was administered at the end of the treatment, were used to measure the students‟ retention of the taught vocabulary under the influence of the treatment

7 Design of the study

The thesis is composed of three parts

Part A – the Introduction – introduces the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope, the research questions, the significance, the method, and the design of the study are presented

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Part B - the Development – consists of three chapters, and is the backbone

of the thesis Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework for the study This framework provides the guidelines for conducting this research and for the discussion of the data Chapter 2 provides the information about the context in which the study was conducted, the research participants, and the research procedures including experiment, the methods of data collection and data analysis The findings of the study are presented and discussed in Chapter 3

Part C: Conclusion -the major findings are summarised with reference to the research questions mentioned in section 4 of the Part A Also in this Part are the acknowledgement of the limitations of the study, the implications for teaching ESP vocabulary using the semantic mapping and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the literature on vocabulary teaching and learning, and the use of semantic mapping as a technique of teaching vocabulary will be reviewed The chapter starts with a definition of vocabulary and the importance of vocabulary in second or foreign language learning in general and in learning English for specific purposes (ESP) in particular Then, a review of what is involved in teaching foreign language vocabulary as well as the challenges of learning vocabulary will be presented This provides a background for the next sections which focus on the linguistic features distinctive of ESP vocabulary and what makes teaching and learning ESP vocabulary challenging In addition to

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these, some other basic issues related to ESP vocabulary teaching and learning are presented and discussed Finally, previous studies on using semantic mapping for teaching vocabulary are reviewed

1.1 What is vocabulary?

Up to now there are different definitions of vocabulary Each linguist gives his/her own definition of vocabulary depending on the different criteria that he/she considers the most important factors in terms of linguistics, semantics, lexicology, etc

Hornby (1995, p.1331) states that vocabulary is the total number of words which ( with rules of combining them) makes up a language Similarly, Ur (1996) defines vocabulary as “the words we teach in the foreign language” (p 60) She adds that a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound of two or three words or multi-word lexical units or idioms These multi-word lexical units are a challenge to foreign language learners because their meaning can not be deduced from an analysis of component words

Example of this vocabulary class are balance sheet, current account, write-off,

financial records, etc

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

of all the words that a language possesses It is not only simple words, but also complex and compound words, creating the meaningful units of language

1.2 The role of vocabulary in second language learning

It is commonly accepted that vocabulary is one of the fundamental elements of a language Pyles and Algeo (1970) states

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When we first think about language, we think first about words It is words that we arrange together to make sentences, conversations and discourses of all kinds (p.96)

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

No matter how well the students 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 (p 8)

It can be inferred that if the primary goal of foreign language learning is communication, vocabulary should be given special attention If the learner has a wide range of vocabulary with little grammar, he or she can not only make himself or herself understood but also understand the language easily On the contrary, if the learner‟s vocabulary is limited with much knowledge of grammar, he or she can find it very difficult to communicate or to understand the language Laufer (1998) is right in noting “ the most striking differences between foreign learners and native learners is in the quantity of words each group possesses” (p 225) Emphasizing the need to constantly expand the vocabulary, Thornbury (1997) advices foreign language learners that they should try to expand their vocabulary continuously because vocabulary acquisition is a never-ending process

In reality, vocabulary directly link to language skills as listening, speaking, reading and writing Therefore, a good vocabulary knowledge facilitates second language learners‟ comprehending the text they are reading or

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listening, enable learners to speak naturally and to write professionally Obviously, there is no way of making advance in second language without efforts to increase vocabulary

1.3 What is involved in teaching L2 vocabulary

According to Harmer (1991, p 158), to know the word involves knowing its:

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

antonyms, hyponyms)

Usage – collocations, idioms and metaphors, style and register

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

Because of this complexity of vocabulary knowledge, it is really challenging to teach and learn L2 vocabulary These challenges are discussed

in the following section

1.4 Challenges of L2 vocabulary learning

As mentioned above, vocabulary learning is a complex process According

to scholars (e.g Jensen, 1998; Sprenger,1999), one of the most difficulties that foreign language students is likely to be encountered is retaining words retrieving their meanings for communicative use This difficulty may be related

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

"network of associations" Therefore, in order to help learners to deal with this problem, foreign language teachers have to consider ways of deepening the associations and the semantic connections of the target vocabulary so as to

1.5 The nature of ESP vocabulary

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

in professional course in particular ESP vocabulary is classified into different categories: semi-technical vocabulary/ sub-technical vocabulary, and technical vocabulary or jargons

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

vocabulary Inman (cited in Kennedy & Bolitho, 1984, p.58) notes that technical vocabulary seems to be involved in almost 80 per cent of scientific texts that is a quite high occurrence These are “words that have one or more

sub-´general´ English meanings and which in technical contexts take on extended

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

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

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

scientific and technical texts” (p.57-58) This feature may lead to misunderstanding of the meaning of ESP words by those who neither have the relevant specialized knowledge nor sufficiently good English In addition, it often represents a problem for both the learner and the teacher who lack relevant knowledge of the field Consequently, it is the sub-technical lexis that teacher should give high priority when teaching ESP vocabulary

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Technical vocabulary: Unlike semi-technical vocabulary, technical

vocabulary are words “ recognizably specific to particular topic, field or discipline” (Nation 2001, p.198) Technical vocabulary is most obviously associated with specialized texts or discourse These words have their specific meanings and they seem to be very uncommon to the people who are not related

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

sub-divided into three smaller categories:

 Fully technical vocabulary

 Crypto technical vocabulary

 Lay-technical vocabulary Fully technical vocabulary comprises those words whose meaning is clearly technical They are specific to the field and not likely to be known in general language e.g: hypertension, obesity, hepatitis, … Crypto technical vocabulary consists of polysemous words like “transmitter” which could be said

to be „cryptic” in that they have a hidden technical meaning Lay-technical vocabulary comprises those terms which are obviously technical but are likely to

be known by the layperson

In summary, ESP vocabulary falls into two broad categories: technical and technical This means that in learning ESP, students have to cope with these two categories plus general vocabulary or non-technical vocabulary However, the semi-technical vocabulary tends to outnumber the technical vocabulary This is really a challenge to students whose English is limited These students are likely to misunderstand or get confused about the meaning of the words Thus, it is more difficult for them to retain words that they have been

semi-11

taught According to Nation (2001, p.187), “It is wise to direct vocabulary learning to more specialized areas when learners have master words of general

usefulness in English” (Nation, 2001, p.187) This seems that semantic mapping

can be an effective technique of ESP vocabulary teaching This technique allows teachers to elicit students‟ words of general usefulness before helping them to link these words with the ESP contexts through the process of semantic mapping The pros and cons of this vocabulary technique will be are discussed later in this chapter

1.6 Challenges of ESP vocabulary learning

The first thing to realize about ESP vocabulary items is that they frequently have more than one meaning which cause troubles for most learners The second is that ESP words are perceived as more complex than general words due to the fact that collocation is very frequent in ESP (Xhaferi, 2010, p 236) Compound nouns in ESP in terms of its form and meaning is the factor challenging students since longer words should be more difficult to learn and remember and their meanings are not simply deduced from their parts Trimble (1985, p.131, 163) points out that understanding and producing noun compounds makes problems for many non-native students Some examples of compounds given below will show that they themselves are the problems for anyone

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

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

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

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1.7 What should be taught in ESP vocabulary teaching

It is word form, meaning and use that should be focused on in ESP vocabulary teaching Consequently, Kennedy and Bolitho state that “the study of word formation and word relationships” (1984, p.59), or sense relations, constitutes the two important aspects of teaching ESP vocabulary Besides, Penny Ur (1996) added word form and collocation

1.7.1 Word form

Vocabulary cannot be taught or learnt in complete isolation from the rest

of linguistics components namely grammar, phonetics and phonology The learner has to know what the word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling) when learning vocabulary This can be particularly problematic for learners of English because there is often no clear relation between how a word is written and how it is pronounced It is very important to use the phonemic script in such cases so the students have clear written record of the pronunciation The teacher needs to make sure that these aspects are accurately presented and learnt

1.7.2 Word formation

Students should be taught the common prefixes and suffixes and how they work, For example, if learners know the meaning of "in", "de" and "il", or “able” this will help them guess the meaning of words such as "intangible",

"deregulation", and "illegal" or “ payable” However, students should be warned that in many common words the affixes no longer have obvious connection with their root meaning (for example: "consider" -> "considerable")

do activities involving synonyms (words with similar meaning), antonyms (words with opposite meaning), hyponyms (subordinates), co-hyponyms (co-ordinates) and hypernyms (super-ordinates) and collocations These activities can be included in vocabulary teaching strategies as diagrams, mind maps, word trees which group words by categories (building materials: stone, sand, wood),

by word families (to build, builder, building), by topic (at a building site) According to Gairns and Redman (1986) these strategies are considered the most effective and favorite strategies in ESP vocabulary teaching because

“organization is the key to memory, this is an important part of teaching your students how to be efficient learners” (p.100)

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1.7.4 Collocation

A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things Or in words of Firth (1957) “collocations of a given word are statements of the habitual or customary places of that word” (p.181) It refers to the restrictions on how words can be

used together in right contexts We can talk about “thick fog” and “dense fog” with the same meaning However, we cannot say “dense hair” instead of “thick

hair”

It seems that word form, word formation, word relations or collocation can

be taught through semantic mapping

1.8 Characteristics of financial and accounting English vocabulary

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

1.8.1.The morphological characteristics

Morphologically, English words of finance and accounting can be simple words, compound words, and phrases with either pre-modifiers and post-modifiers

Simple words: financial, accounting English vocabulary appears many

simple words such as „asset‟, „bear‟, „capital‟, „debit‟, „earnings‟

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

by Vinh Co and Kim Yen, collocations, especially, noun plus nouns and adjective plus nouns are one of the most characteristic features of financial and

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accounting English vocabulary The corpus of the collocations of compound nouns in „Longman Business Dictionary‟ given by these two authors shows that

the word „account‟ has 65 collocations; „asset‟ has 13 collocations; „balance‟ has

14 collocations and so on

Besides, some compounds consisting of verb + preposition also add to the

terminology of financial and accounting English such as „buy-back‟, „buy-in‟,

„take-out‟, „take-over‟, „turn-over‟, „write-down‟, „write-off‟ and so on

Phrases with premodifers or post-modifiers: Another common

characteristics in financial and accounting terminology is premodified and

postmodified noun phrases The long premodified noun phrases are as in „public

sector borrowing requirement‟, „accounts receivable turnover‟, etc., Besides

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

returns‟, „return on capital employed‟, „balance brought down‟, so on

1.8.2 The semantic characteristics

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

be classified broadly into two categories: (a) general words with specialized senses, and (b) words with highly specialized meaning, i.e., compounds whose meanings are not inferred by adding the meaning of components together

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

accounting text such as „asset‟, „balance‟, „capital‟, „earnings‟, „gain‟,

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

combining with other terms, usually give us a collocation pattern that may sound

but can not simply be inferred from the meaning of its parts such as “deposit

account”, “current account”, “demand account” etc

1.9 Vocabulary Retention

Retention is defined as "an ability to recall or recognize what has been learnt or experienced; memory" (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (1992, p.773) Although no definition of vocabulary retention has been found in literature review by the researcher, for purpose of her study, she can state that vocabulary retention is the storage of vocabulary in the memory, which becomes available for use when needed So retention of vocabulary is ability to recall words that have been learnt for communicative use

1.10 Semantic mapping as a vocabulary instruction strategy

1.10.1 Definitions of semantic mapping

Semantic mapping, a strategy popularly used in foreign language instruction, is up to now defined by many scholars and researchers

Semantic mapping is defined “ a visual representation of knowledge, a picture of conceptual relationship” (Antonacci, 1991, p.174) or “ a graphic arrangement showing the major ideas and relationships in text or among word meanings” (Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, & Berg, 1984, p 22) According to Stoller

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(1994), semantic mapping is a “ graphic display of information within categories related to central concepts” creating associative networks for words Sharing the points with Stoller, Johnson, Pittelman, and Heimlich (1986) notes that semantic mapping is a “ categorical structuring of information in graphic form” (p.779) It

is an individualized content approach in that students are required to relate new words to their own experiences and prior knowledge Defining in a simple way, semantic mapping is the building up of “ a diagrammatic maps showing the relationship between vocabulary suggested by teachers, suggested by learners and found in a reading text” (Nation 1990, p.129) In short, semantic mapping is the process of creating a graphic map, in which the new knowledge is integrated

in the old and words or concepts or ideas are represented in categories and semantic relationship among them is visually shown

1.10.2 Procedures to construct a semantic map

Semantic mapping may be presented in a variety of ways Johnson and Pearson (1984) cited in Gunning (1992, p.164) states that the procedures for presenting semantic mapping are as follows:

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

related to classroom work on a sheet of paper, the blackboard, or a transparent slide

2 Brainstorming activities: Encourage the students to think of as

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

3 Presentation of target words: Present target words unknown to

students

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

and have them label the categories

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

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

meanings of target words and can use them

Figure 1 Semantic map for the topic of „Olympics‟:

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

the teacher.)

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From “Semantic mapping” by D Johnson, S Pittelman and J Heimlich, 1986,

Reading Teacher, 39(8), p 778 Copyright 1986 by International Reading Association

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

vocabulary instruction incorporates activities as brainstorming, presenting target words, categorizing, labeling categories and reviewing words (concepts)

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

vocabulary learning

Benefits of semantic mapping:

Since vocabulary is acquired in all types of language activities, receptive and productive alike, it has to be taught in all types of lessons There is a variety

of approaches to teach vocabulary that teachers can employ, and the choice of particular vocabulary techniques depends on many factors such as the nature of the words to be taught, the objectives of the lesson, the students‟ needs, etc Therefore, each vocabulary technique has its own benefits and limitations What follows is a brief review of the benefits of one vocabulary technique, i.e., semantic mapping

According to Al Kufaishi (1988), with semantic mapping, words are presented explicitly in their relationship with other words, so students can

“acquire and retain words better” (p.42) This view is supported by Barcroft (2004), who argued that semantic mapping, which enables learners to discover conceptual relationships between vocabulary items and to integrate new words into words they learnt, helps learners “enhance word learning and the retention” (p.200) In Barcroft‟s words, in order for learning to occur, new information

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should be incorporated into what learners previously knows That is, the instruction should guide learners to recall or use words and ideas available to them in their word and concept repertoire to help them associate meaning with words they do not know In other words, integration in the context refers to the process in which students use their known words to acquire the unknown words Having the same point with Barcroft , Schmitt and Mc Carthy (1997) also advocates that the integration of new words into the old “ help individuals learn faster and recall better” (p.211) because it provides retrieval cues Mergel (1998) emphasizes that semantic mapping encourages deep processing of the information which leads to deeper learning and thus, longer retention of words

Ghazal (2007), in his empirical study, defines semantic mapping as a diagram that “ visually show how ideas fit together” (p.80) This strategy incorporates a variety of memory strategies like grouping, using imagery, associating and elaborating and it is important for “improving both memory and comprehension of new vocabulary items” ( Oxford, 1990, p.62) In his study he argued for the need to use semantic mapping in second language vocabulary teaching Findings of his study indicated that semantic mapping helped learners become aware of the relationships of words in a text so that they can understand the text better and establish “associative networks for words” Thus, semantic mapping not only mediates learners‟ comprehension of the text but also their acquisition and retention of words as well

Svenconis and Kerst (1995) reported their study which was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching through semantic mapping in

a hypertext or hypermedia environments Semantic mapping was evaluated in

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the context of those factors likely to influence its effectiveness: semantic structure ( tightly related or moderately related or loosely related groupings of words), instructional method, and word pronunciation or sounding They compared the results of two different vocabulary techniques: semantic mapping and word listing Findings showed that when words were taught without a focus

on pronunciation, both techniques showed no significant difference However, when teachers used semantic mapping with an emphasis on the word pronunciation, semantic mapping show its superiority They concluded that

“with the addition of the sound factor, semantic mapping did great mean scores and improve retention or recall of the second language vocabulary words” (p.50-51) These findings imply that semantic mapping alone is not effective In other words, the effectiveness of instructional techniques cannot be measured without considering other contextual factors The effectiveness of semantic mapping in enhancing vocabulary retention was also confirmed in the single- subject study by Susan and Mehrdad ( 2011) The result of their study showed that the learner‟s scores on the test with the session applied semantic mapping

as a technique of vocabulary presentation is much higher than his score on the test not related to semantic mapping They attributed the result to the fact that seeing the relationship among words through the map enabled learners to remember or retain words better However, in their study, Sasan and Mehrdad failed to measure when presenting semantically related words whether or not nature of words and the length of each set of words make any difference Another study implemented by Saeidi & Atmadi (2010) to examine the effect of semantic mapping to vocabulary learning across genders In their study, the experimental group received the semantic mapping in the pre-reading stage, but

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the control group did not receive this treatment The result of the study indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary learning Based on analyzed data, they came to conclusion that “semantic mapping technique can be used as an effective method for teaching vocabulary

in language classes” (p.60) As for the gender differences, no significant difference between males and females It can be suggested that semantic mapping can be used as an effective method for teaching vocabulary for both male and female One more significant study of the effectiveness of semantic mapping as a vocabulary instruction technique on intermediate foreign language learners is conducted by Abdollahzadeh and Amiri (2009) The study compared the effectiveness of employing semantic mapping versus traditional approaches

in vocabulary instruction to EFL learners with different perceptual modalities,

or different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic (movement oriented) and tactile ( touch-oriented)) The findings revealed that semantic mapping in comparison to the traditional approaches greatly enhanced vocabulary learning

of EFL learners Although visual learners slightly outperformed other types of learners on the post test, no significant differences were observed among intermediate learners with different perceptual modalities employed semantic mapping for vocabulary practice It can be seen that all mentioned types of learners gain approximately equal benefit from employing semantic mapping in vocabulary learning tasks

The review of the literature shows that semantic mapping has the following benefits to second language vocabulary learning First, it helps learners learn vocabulary more deeply because they can see how words are related to each other Learning vocabulary through semantic mapping is really an

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interactive process in which students have to recall the words they have stored in their memory in order to understand the new words Thus, semantic mapping is effective in that learners not only learn the new words but also integrate new words with the old in a visually-presented associative network for words This process promotes a deep level of semantic processing, leading to better understanding and retention of words Put differently, semantic mapping enables learners not only to obtain or understand the form, the meaning, the use, and the collocation of target words but also to help them recall known words, and retain the newly acquired words

Semantic mapping also offers students opportunities to use their previous lexical knowledge, so they feel more secure and become more involved in the learning process Therefore, semantic mapping can have the motivating value

Limitations of semantic mapping:

Despite its benefits, semantic mapping is just one of many vocabulary techniques And like other vocabulary techniques, it has its own limitations These are discussed subsequently

Stoller and Grabe (1993) warned that “the potential overuse of semantic mapping must be avoided in second language contexts where students may be easily overloaded” (p.34) For instance, when students are asked to think of words related to the key word or topic, they often generate too many new words

or less frequent words The overuse induces learning overload, especially for the students at lower language levels or for large classes Secondly, semantic mapping may lead to the interference among words Since semantic mapping functions to introduce words in a certain category, the words in the map are

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always semantically similar This causes interference among words or students‟ confusion Such an interference has been empirically supported For example, Tinkham (1993) and Waring (1997) in their empirical studies both confirmed the strong interference effect on the vocabulary learning Likewise, Erten and Tekin,(2008) indicated in their study that due to “cross-association and possible overloading in the short term memory” (p 408), vocabulary retention might be even hindered In a word, the potential lexical overload and interference effect that semantic possesses are apparent and may influence negatively the efficiency of vocabulary instruction Because of these inherent disadvantages, semantic mapping should be used with care To be more specific, semantic mapping should be used as one, but not the only one, classroom technique to present vocabulary Teachers should use other techniques through the consideration of factors mentioned earlier in this chapter

Chapter summary

This chapter reviewed the definitions, the role of vocabulary and challenges of learning L2 vocabulary in general and ESP vocabulary in particular, and what should be taught in ESP vocabulary teaching In addition, nature of ESP vocabulary, characteristics of finance and accounting English was also reviewed The other important section in this chapter was semantic mapping used as vocabulary instruction strategy in which definitions of, procedures of creating semantic maps, and previous studies of benefits and limitations of semantic mapping were mentioned in detail

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

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learn words Its limitations of which the greatest are interference among words and students‟ confusion due to lexical overload have been observed when it is overused

This literature review also shows that little research has been done regarding the use of semantic mapping in teaching ESP vocabulary This study

is an attempt to find out the extent to which semantic mapping helps to increase students‟ retention of ESP word, particularly words related to the area of finance and accounting

CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY

This chapter first provides information about the context of the study This

is followed by participants, then the presentation of research methods including the instruments used for the study and the methods of data analysis

2.1 The context of the study

2.1.1 Research setting

The study was carried out at Hanoi Tourism College (HTC), located in Hoang Quoc Viet street There are two levels of training at HTC college: 02 year- training program and 03 year-training program A variety of specialized training programs are given for students‟ choice as Hospitality Management, Restaurant Management, Food Production Management, Travel Operation Management, Tour guide, English for Tourism Management and Finance & Accounting for Tourism English is a compulsory subject for all kinds of students from different majors The English course is divided into two parts: General English (GE) taught in the first academic year and English for specific

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purpose (ESP) taught from the second year Normally, ESP course lasts two terms for 02 year-college students and three terms for 03 year-college students However, ESP course for 03 year- college students of finance and accounting takes only two terms, starting from the second term of the second year to the first term of the final

2.1.2 Teaching material

The teaching material used in the study is the textbook “ English for Finance and Accounting” compiled by the teachers of English in the faculty of Foreign Languages for Tourism of HTC, is composed of two parts and used for two terms- the whole ESP course Part one taught in the second term of the second year provides students with the simple specialized knowledge of finance and accounting related to business operations in tourist hotels Part two taught in the first term of the final year or the last term of ESP course aims at upgrading students‟ professional knowledge of finance and accounting major in English One of the main purpose of this part is providing students with amount of vocabulary and terms The course book contains 12 units which are arranged in the order of Vocabulary 1, Reading, Vocabulary 2, Listening, Practice, Speaking and Writing The ESP course lasts 120 periods (45 minutes each), of which 60 periods for the second year and the remaining for the first term of the final year

2.2 Research participants

The subjects in this study numbered 38 EFL final-year students of finance and accounting (28 females & 10 males) of the regular 03 year - training program from one class C7E3 which were taught by the researcher, at HTC college As other students of finance and accounting, they had taken entrance exams of

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group D (including 3 subjects: Math, literature and English), so most of them had experienced at least three years studying English at high school In addition, they had finished the GE course with the textbook Lifelines Pre-intermediate by Tom Hutchinson, which focuses on skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing In terms of ESP, they had learnt one term of English for Finance and Accounting in Tourism in the second year Furthermore, they had had specialized knowledge of finance and accounting in Vietnamese Although they had finished one term of English for Finance and Accounting in Tourism, their ESP were recognized by the teacher-researcher at low level This was reflected

by their marks in the ESP exam in the second year, in which many ESP lexical items were tested Most of them (65.7%) had mark 5 and 6; 13.2% got mark 7; only 2.7% achieved mark 8 Sadly,18.4% got marks under mark 5

2.3 Data collection instruments

This study used quantitative methods The instruments used in this study are 03 tests (two progress tests and one final achievement test), and a students‟ questionnaire Below is the detailed description of the instruments used for data collection in this study

2.3.1 Tests

As stated above, the goal of the study is measuring the student‟s word retention, which means that how long a word is retained in students‟ long-term memory A series of three tests were administered to students at a two-week interval and the target words in the previous test were included and tested again

in the subsequent tests but in different linguistic contexts Test items are also varied to include items such as gap-fill, matching (matching words to their

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definitions, matching words to their partners to make compound nouns), multiple-choice, and cloze items Emphases were placed on the formation of compound nouns, which is a prominent characteristics of English vocabulary in finance and accounting

A corpus of target words or lexical items that are extracted from the course book was developed and tested All the tests were designed in such a way that they were marked objectively Specifically, the multiple-choice format with three answer choices was used for all tests and they were piloted with two experienced colleagues with good knowledge of the subject before they were administered to the students This is to make sure that there were no ambiguities

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

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

the time of testing was the smallest (see Appendix 01)

2.3.2 Questionnaire

The aim of the questionnaire was to gain information about students‟ perceptions of the benefits of the treatment, i.e., the use of semantic mapping for vocabulary The questionnaire was developed with reference to the benefits of semantic mapping that were reported in the literature The questionnaire was administered at the end of the treatment, after the final test There are four items

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

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choosing either „yes‟, or „no‟ or „no idea‟ Since participants were the final-year students, questionnaire was designed in English However, to ensure that everything in the questionnaire is clear to them, the teacher-researcher orally

translated it into Vietnamese (see Appendix 02) Students‟ responses to the

questionnaire were analyzed with reference to the students‟ test scores in an attempt to establish initial relationship between students‟ perceptions of the treatment and their test scores

2.4 Treatment Procedures

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

a total number of 38 students in one intact group, i.e., the group the researcher was teaching Prior to the treatment, the teacher- researcher previewed 04 units

of the textbook which would be taught in the period of 06 weeks by looking at their topics to decide words to be taught, specifically words unfamiliar but potentially challenging to the students and words to which semantic mapping was applied , and to develop a corpus for test development Then the teacher- researcher found out overarching words i.e., core words which may have many

derivatives and be collocated with many other words (e.g tax: taxation, tax

exemption, tax payer, etc.) or words that can be categorical words to which many

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

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

identified and chosen for the treatment and for test development

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