The Impact of Repetition and Recycling on Grade 11 Students’ Vocabulary Retention in Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh High School

The Impact of Repetition and Recycling on Grade 11 Students‟ Vocabulary Retention in Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh High School Phùng Thị Lam Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS.. Chuyên ngà

The Impact of Repetition and Recycling on Grade 11 Students‟ Vocabulary Retention in

Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh High School

Phùng Thị Lam

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Teaching Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10

Người hướng dẫn: DO BA QUY, MEd

Năm bảo vệ: 2011

Abstract: Recently, vocabulary has been a prominent concern of many applied linguistic

theorists and researchers in the field of teaching and learning English When it comes to studying vocabulary, the greatest challenge is likely retaining the words Researchers and teachers now have been drawn to the concern of how to make students enhance vocabulary retention for communicative value This minor thesis investigates the impact

of application a wide range of repetitive and recycling-focused activities on 11th grade students‟ retention in Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh high school This study was conducted by quasi-experimental method with 84 participants in the two randomly assigned groups The experiment lasted for 6 weeks, during which the students were led through the reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus in a normal way The students in the experimental group, however, were involved in a variety of additionally cooperative activities in lessons while there no vocabulary focused activities were employed in the control group The data were collected by means of T-test, questionnaires and observation The results showed that the repetition and recycling worked on the experimental group and the experimental group also gave positive feedback on the treatment For better application, however, more attention should be paid to the class size, students‟ level of proficiency and their preferred techniques of memorizing words In addition, the study suggests pedagogical implications and recommendations for further studies

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Từ vựng; Phương pháp giảng dạy

Content

PART A – INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Vocabulary is central to language and is of great significance to language students Words are “the building blocks of a language since they label objects, actions, ideas without which people cannot convey the intended meaning”(Lotfi Ghazal) Given its importance to learning,

vocabulary has been a prominent concern of many theorists and researchers in the field Accordingly, numerous types of approaches, techniques, exercises and practice have been introduced into the field to teach vocabulary (Hatch & Brown, 1995)

When it comes to studying vocabulary, however, the greatest challenge is likely retaining the words Researchers and teachers now have been drawn to the concern of how to make students enhance vocabulary retention for communicative value Studies have shown that practising things makes us better in learning a language and develops automaticity In other words, language learning proceeds gradually through repeated exposure and practice The course book English 11 (published by Educational Press), however, does not deal with it sufficiently

Being an EFL teacher in a high school in Ba Ria – Vung Tau, I recognize the fact that many students now suffer from considerable difficulties in retaining previously encountered English words They struggle to maintain retention But not many of them are capable of it This matter

of fact leads to their poor production both in speaking and writing Furthermore, there is another fact that we have to face, that is most of students now have active social lives, families, studies with lots of compulsory subjects, sports and generally other things which make them really occupied – not just one of English That leaves me with the responsibility to do revision lessons, review vocabulary and make sure they know what have been taught The idea of a study on how

to enrich students‟ vocabulary retention of mine emerges in that situation

Currently working with 11th graders in addition to continual working with them in four recent years makes me designate them A wide range of designed activities were carried out (mostly at the beginning of the classes) when teaching two classes named 11A3 and 11A5 at Long Hai – Phuoc tinh high school And the results supported my hypothesis that teachers can create repetitive and recycling-focused activities to help students improve their vocabulary retention

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at proving that repetitive and recycling focused activities can help 11th grade students to retain words better These students are non-English major ones and have three classes

of English a week There exists a fact that they cannot retrieve the words which they have learnt

in previous lessons for communication when needed In other words, they soon forget words they have just acquired The main aim of this study therefore is to investigate the impact of repetition and recycling on vocabulary learning and retention, or to put it differently, the extent to which short tailored activities helps to retain vocabulary for the students at Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh High school and provide some pedagogical implications

3 Scope of the study

There are enormous activities as tools of enhancing vocabulary retention available on the internet that you can approach with a mouse click Most of them are easy to be applied and tested In the current study, I set the limit of investigating possibly – applied activities that can be carried out at beginning or in the middle of 45-minute periods in such large-sized classes at Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh High school, vung Tau The activities were related to first three units (which equal to 18 lessons) of the course book English 11 introduced by Educational Press only because with the timeframe of 6 weeks it is supposed to be infeasible to conduct a research study on a larger scale which can produce very convincing results

4 Research hypotheses and questions

In order to achieve the above purposes, the study was designed to test the following hypotheses:

 Null hypothesis: The students who take part in the experiment get the same

result measured in the post-test and have the same improvement in their vocabulary retention as

those who do not

 Alternative hypothesis: Students who frequently deal with repetitive and

recycling activities will perform better overall in the post test and have some improvement in

their skills in comparison with those who do not have extra vocabulary-oriented activities

So as to draw the conclusion on the hypothesis, the study is to get the answers to the

following questions: (1) To what extent do EFL teachers encourage repetition and recycling

vocabulary among their students? (2) What is the effectiveness of using repetitive and recycling focused activities on enhancing 11 th - graders’ vocabulary retention? (3) What are the students’ attitudes towards using activities in teaching and learning vocabulary?

5 Method of the study

The first method applied in this study is a quasi-experimental design which involves the three components of experiments according to Selinger and Shohamy (1989): the population (the 11th grade students at Long Hai – Phuoc Tinh high school, Ba ria Vung tau), the treatment (repetitive and recycling focused activities), and the measurement of the treatment (T-test)

In addition, questionnaires were delivered to teachers who currently teach other 11th grades to investigate how they have dealt with vocabulary teaching, especially the ways they encourage repetition and recycling vocabulary among students Another questionnaire was delivered to the subjects before treatment to get to know their own strategies of memorizing vocabulary The third questionnaire was delivered to the subjects after treatment as a supporting tool to obtain students‟ attitude towards the technique applied What is more, observation was

also employed during the teaching time to recognize the participation of students in the control group and the experimental group

6 Organization of the study

This thesis is organized around three parts:

Part A is the introduction which presents the rationale for the research topic, aims of study, scope

of study, research hypotheses and questions, and method of the study

Part B is the development which consists of three chapters Chapter one reviews scholarly

theoretical background to teaching and learning vocabulary in a second language including factors which affect vocabulary acquisition process This chapter also reviews some meaningful activities which are initiated by different researchers Chapter two deals with the methodology of this research in terms of the setting of the study, sampling participants, instruments and procedure of data collection Chapter three devotes to the account of the study in terms of data analysis and findings interpreted from the results of the T-test and questionnaires

Part C is the conclusion which discusses the major findings and limitations of the research, then

suggests teaching implications and proposes some suggestions for further research

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