Towards improving vocabulary for the first year students at the faculty of english, hanoi open university

All of the learners in general and the first-year students at the FOE, HOU in particular always have to face up with many difficulties when they start learning English as a second langua

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY

TOWARDS IMPROVING VOCABULARY FOR THE YEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH,

FIRST-HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Supervisor : Le Thi Vy, M.A

Student : Do Thu Huong

Date of birth : 28.02.1994

Course : K19A03 (2012-2016)

Hanoi – 2016

CODE: 15

I wish also to express my great thanks to the lecturers of the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University who have provided me with not only knowledge but also the study condition as well as their useful advice, their concerns and supports during the time I am studying here My gratitude also goes to the class K19A02, for their continuing supports and sharing their ideas with me both as classmates and friends for the wonderful time we had in Hanoi Open University

I also would like to extend my thanks to the 100 first-year students of the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for their aid in implementing the survey

Finally yet importantly, I am indebted to my family especially my mother who have had no knowledge of English but their helps, supports and encouragements to my English study are uncountable If there had not been great help from the above people, the study could not have been fulfilled For which I am truly grateful

Hanoi, 15 April, 2016

Do Thu Huong

Graduation Paper

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and purposes of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Research questions 3

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 An overview of vocabulary 5

1.1 Definitions of vocabulary 5

1.2 Classification of vocabulary 6

1.2.1.The meaning 6

1.2.2.The function 8

1.2.3.The concept of morphemes 9

1.3 The importance of vocabulary 10

2 Vocabulary study 12

2.1 Meaning 12

2.2 Form 12

2.3 Collocation 13

2.4 Word formation 14

Graduation Paper

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)

2.5 Grammar 16

3 Summary 16

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 18

1 Methodology 18

1.1 Subjects 18

1.2 Survey questionnaires 18

2 Findings 19

2.1 Data collection and analysis 19

2.2 Findings 26

2.3 Summary 27

CHAPTER III: SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY AT THE FOE, HOU 28

1 Reading the materials 28

2 Guessing words from context 29

3 Making it personal 32

4 Using Stick notes or Flash cards 33

5 Making friends with the dictionary 35

6 Taking advantages of mass media 36

7 Studying and Reviewing regularly 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 42

Graduation Paper

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

HOU : Hanoi Open University

FOE : Faculty of English

Etc : Et cetera

Et al : Et alia

Q : Question

Table 2: Students’ problems in English vocabulary learning (Question 5)

Table 3: Students’ understanding of English vocabulary learning (Question 6) Table 4: Students’ common ways in English vocabulary learning (Question 7, 8) Table 5: Students’ expectation to teachers (Question 9)

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 1

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Each country in the world has their own language, custom and culture But nowadays, the development of the society and economy makes chances to all nations co-operate to each other Thus, they have to use a common language to communicate – English English is becoming very popular and important because it is used widely in many fields of life such as technology, tourism business, education, health, science especially foreign trade and so on…

To be specific, in Vietnam – a developing country with the open door-policy,

it is now a great demand to learn English for the process of assimilating and promoting into regional and international economy Therefore, English is also considered the most important foreign language in Vietnam and taught as a compulsory subject at almost every school Moreover, English is taught at all levels of education from kindergartens, elementary schools, junior and senior high schools to colleges and universities

Everyone has to experience new words first if they want to learn a language The more words you know, the more knowledge you will be able to understand Thus, vocabulary is a useful key and plays an important role in learning English However, it is not easy work because English is very varied and complex All of the learners in general and the first-year students at the FOE, HOU in particular always have to face up with many difficulties when they start learning English as a second language, namely vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in which vocabulary is the hardest issue In fact, a word may have more than one meaning and more than one part of speech; therefore, students cannot avoid forgetting vocabulary in the process of studying English

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 2

For example, the word “increase” may be a noun and a verb also Besides, some words with different spelling and meaning have the same pronunciation such as “sun” and “son”

In this graduation paper, the author would like to carry out a study on how first-year students at the FOE, HOU are learning English vocabulary in order

to find out their current situation of studying vocabulary and then to suggest them some effective solutions to deal with their problems in learning as well as improve their English vocabulary With all the above reasons, the author

decided to choose the research title “Towards improving vocabulary for the

first-year students at the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University” to help the mentioned students as well as others enrich their English vocabulary

2 Aims and purposes of the study

The graduation paper is about to help the first-year students at the FOE, HOU make progress in studying vocabulary and improve their own vocabulary as well as to prepare for their basic knowledge of vocabulary with higher requirement for the next levels by suggesting some common useful ways To

summarize the above, the study is aimed at:

- Covering background knowledge of vocabulary

- Giving a brief overview of how first-year students at the FOE, HOU study vocabulary

- Finding out difficulties that first-year students are facing in learning English vocabulary

- Suggesting some useful techniques to learn English vocabulary

Hopefully, the students will be interested in studying English especially English vocabulary and get better results in this subject

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3 Scope of the study

The study limits itself to the investigation of the difficulties in learning English vocabulary of the first-year students at the FOE, HOU and the solutions are also provided to help them learn English vocabulary more easily and effectively

4 Research questions

- What are the vocabulary and its importance?

- What is the real situation of learning English vocabulary for the year students at the FOE, HOU?

first What are the main difficulties experienced by the first-year students at the FOE, HOU in the process of learning English vocabulary?

- What are some recommendations for the first-year students to improve their vocabulary?

5 Methods of the study

To complete this graduation paper, some methods have been applied: investigative method, descriptive method and theoretical method All of the considerations and theories given in this study are based largely on publication The statistics are collected from the survey questionnaires of the first-year students at the FOE, HOU The results of this survey will be analyzed to clarify the current situation and then recommend some effective solutions

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 4

Part A is the Introduction This part is the academic routines required for a graduation paper, namely rationale, aims and objectives, scope, research questions, methods and design of the study

Part B is the Development, including three chapters:

Chapter I is the Literature Review This chapter provides theoretical background of English vocabulary such as definitions and classification based

on some different aspects, etc

Chapter II is The Study It is the main part of the study, which represents the current situation of the first year students at FOE, HOU in learning English vocabulary as well as the findings and analysis based on data collected from the survey questionnaires

Chapter III presents some suggestions for improving the first - year students’ vocabulary at the FOE, HOU In this chapter, some effective ways to improve English vocabulary of the first year students to help them study better are illustrated

The last part is the conclusion This part summarizes the whole study mentioned in the previous parts It is followed by the questionnaires and the references used during the study

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter mentions the theoretical background of English vocabulary such

as definitions, classification based on some aspects (meaning, function, morphemes) In addition, the author also addresses some issues what need to

be studied when coming across a new item like its grammar, form, formation, collocation and meaning Beside, the author analyzes the importance of vocabulary in English learning and its role to students’ future so that students can have good awareness of learning English vocabulary and put more efforts

in this process

1 An overview of vocabulary

1.1 Definitions of vocabulary

The term “vocabulary” appears to be a very simple concept but in fact, it is

extremely difficult to give an exact definition of vocabulary Basing on different criteria, many linguists define vocabulary in different ways

According to Ur (1996), vocabulary can be defined roughly “as the words we

teach in the foreign language However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound of two or three words or multi-word idioms ” “It is in words that sound and meanings inter-lock to allow us to

communicate with one another and it is words that we range together to make sentences, conversations and discourses of all kinds” (Mackey, 1971) Lewis and Hill (1985) also share Ur’s idea that considers a vocabulary item more than one word They also mention a temptation to think that the core of

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learning foreign language was to use words for old things However, in fact, it

is more complicated than that

According to Wood (1981), vocabulary or lexicon refers to information stored

in memory concerning the pronunciation and meanings of words Vocabulary

is also defined basing on phonological criterion It is said that words are listed

in dictionaries that they are separated in writing by spaces and that they may

be separated in speech by pause (Nation, 1994)

Besides, Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Hoc (2002) consider their following

definition of vocabulary as “logical” According to them, when the term

“vocabulary” of a language is mentioned, it should be mentioned as consisting

of all the words, compounds and idioms used to transmit information on both

“oral and written communication”

In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language possesses, including a single word, two or three word items expressing a single idea and multi-word idioms whose meaning cannot be deduced from the analysis of the component words Vocabulary can be defined as the words we teach in the foreign language and a useful convention is to cover all such cases

by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words” It can be seen that a

“vocabulary” item can be more than one word Therefore, it is necessary not to

make confusion between vocabulary item and word

1.2 Classification of vocabulary

1.2.1 The meaning

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A word can possess two kinds of meaning: lexical meaning and grammatical meaning Therefore, vocabulary can be divided into notional and functional words

1.2.1.1 Notional words (lexical words)

Notional words are words with clear lexical meaning They are objects, actions, qualities, etc and they have meaning in themselves Notional words from a great number of each speaker’s vocabulary

Example: a book, a house, a pen, a desk, etc

In short, a notional word is “the realization of concept or emotion”

1.2.1.2 Functional words (Grammatical words)

Functional words are those whose meaning is grammatical and they have meaning in relation to the other words with which they are used Functional words are particles, articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions, etc, for example: at, on, and, because

Although the lexical words are different from grammatical words, there is no clear-cut dividing line between the two types of word In teaching vocabulary,

“the teacher should not spend too much time teaching functional words but

simply tell the learners how to use the words grammatically It is important that lexical and grammatical meanings do not exist separately but always go together to make up the meaning of a word The teacher; therefore, bears in mind these characteristic of words when they teach vocabulary It means that

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the teachers should teach learners the use of functional words within the framework of a sentences pattern” (Wood, 1981)

1.2.2 The function

In sentence, a word has many different functions “English words can be

classified basing on functions as different parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition” (Gaims & Redman, 1986) Each part of speech has to follow particular grammar rules so that when learning English words we have to be aware of the importance of the parts of speech of that word in sentence

For example:

- Noun: a table, a cat, a girl

- Verb: to see, to catch, to walk

- Adjective: tall, huge, tiny

Apart from the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of new words, learners need to know how these words function in sentence A word can have many functions in the sentence For example, with the word ‘foreigner’, some learners may make sentence like this: “He is a foreigner teacher” In that case, the teacher would need to clarify that ‘foreigner’ is a noun and its adjective is

‘foreign’ Also, the students need to remember that a word can have more than one grammatical function

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1.2.3 The concept of morphemes

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit or part of a word Words are

made up from free and bound morphemes “According to the concept of

morphemes, we can classify words into three kinds: simple words, derived words and compound words” (Bauer, 2002)

1.2.3.1 Simple words

According to Bauer (2002), a simple word consists of one morpheme only and cannot be broken down into smallest meaningful unit For example: boy, dog, cake, pen, etc Most simple words are root to make up compound words or complex words in a language

1.2.3.2 Derived words

A derived word is “a word that consists of a root and one or more derivational

morphemes” (Bauer, 2002) For example: interesting, employment, successful, worker and so on

1.2.3.3 Compound words

“Compound word is one that has at least two roots, with or without derivation

morphemes” (Bauer, 2002) For instance: post office, car park, greeting card, etc

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English has many compound words Some of these are written as one word Other compounds are hyphenated, for example: kind-hearted, house-keeper and so on Still other like family car, shoes store, is written as two words

Bauer (2002) also states that compounds can function in a sentence as separate lexical units due to their integrity, semantic unity, etc Compounds are easily confused with free words However, basing on the phonological criterion, we can distinguish between compounds and free word groups Most compounds have a heavy stress on the first element, for example: ‘greenhouse’,

‘whitewash’ Free word groups have stresses on both elements and the second element, for instance: ‘interesting’ film, ‘high’ building, etc

Thus, when learning compounds words, the students should find clear examples with accurate stress to understand deeply

1.3 The importance of vocabulary

Of many components of one language, vocabulary has been commonly accepted to be the most important language one Commenting on the role of

vocabulary, Wilkins (1972), a famous British linguist says: “without grammar,

very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed” People consider vocabulary the key to mastering English knowledge With the lack of vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate with other people confidently Moreover, it is hard to express ideas and explain something necessary Therefore, on a personal level, a good vocabulary is important in sharpening one’s perception and thought that to become fully conscious, must

be formulated in words

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A good vocabulary is important not only for more precision in thought but also

in one’s daily affairs, the action one must perform both on and off the job in ordinary living

Vocabulary plays an important role in combining four basis English skills such

as listening, speaking, reading and writing “Comprehension improves when

you know what the words mean” and “Words are the currency of communication A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication – listening, speaking, reading and writing” (Alexander, 2006) When having a multiform vocabulary, it is extremely advantageous to develop four above skills If the students lack of necessary vocabulary, it will be difficult to express any ideas to others Therefore, their speaking skill cannot make any progress Moreover, sometimes it makes confusion among people and leads to many inconvenient situations Additionally, if it is supposed that the freshmen have a poor vocabulary, how can they write a lively and excellent essay or a normal paragraph? Truly, it requires a great number of vocabularies Normally, the students also can get information from reading books If books are in Vietnamese certainly there are not any problems However, these books are written in English and denoted in English style If they do not have a good dictionary, it will take them lots of time to understand The students have to understand what they have learned to use vocabulary in each situation effectively Frequently reading comprehensions, and thus retention, is faulty because of a learner’s less than adequate vocabulary Moreover, it is easy to have misunderstanding in the process of exchanging information Only when having a great number of vocabulary, the students can make a progress in developing the above four skills In communication, it is a decisive factor to make them talk with others actively and understand each other quickly With a

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poor vocabulary, the free flow of ideas and pen is blocked and dribbled out; with a good vocabulary, it will be helped to flow and be unimpeded

2 Vocabulary study

2.1 Meaning

According to Ur (2012), the first thing to realize about vocabulary items is that they frequently have more than one meaning, so when the students learn a new word, they should decipher its meaning in the context in which it is used Another fact about meaning is that sometimes words have meaning in relation

to other words Thus, the students need to know the meaning of “animal” word

to describe anyone of a number of other things, for example: elephant, peacock, penguin, dragonfly, etc “Animal” has a general meaning whereas

“elephant” is more specific We understand the meaning of the word like

“good” in the context of word like “bad” Words have opposites (antonyms) and they also have other words with similar meaning (synonyms), for example: “bad” and “evil” Even in that example, however, one thing is clear: words seldom have absolute synonyms although context may take them synonyms on particular occasions As far as meaning goes, then, the students need to know about meaning in context as well as sense relations

2.2 Form

“Each English word has its spelling and pronunciation which are the first

things presented when we learn new words Therefore, the learners have to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling) They are fairly obvious characteristics and one or the other will be perceived by the learners when encountering the item for the first time.” (To Thu Huong, et al, 2008)

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a Spelling

Spelling is the writing of word or words with all necessary letters and

diacritics present in an accepted standard order, “the conventions which

determine how the graphemes of a writing system are used to write a language” (Coulmas, 1996) It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of language Most spellings attempt to approximate a transcribing of the sounds of the language into alphabetic letter: however, completely phonetic spellings are often the exception, due to drifts in

pronunciations over time and irregular spellings adopted common usage

b Pronunciation

Pronunciation plays an important part in making listeners understand what we are speaking about Therefore, it is extremely important in the process of learning English vocabulary However, it is not easy to pronounce an English vocabulary to learn from dictionary, from daily conversations among different people, from news on internet, radio, television… The students should pay attention to the stress and intonation However, if they make too many mistakes in pronouncing English vocabulary, it may makes listeners confused and lead to a wrong information transmission

2.3 Collocation

“Collocation refers to the way words tend to co-occur with other words or

expressions” (Ur, 2012), for example: commit a crime, meet the demand, etc These combinations just sound ‘right’ to native English speakers, who use them all the time On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and

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just sound ‘wrong’ In English, some words have the same meaning but they

are different in collocation, for example: to do and to make Thus, it is very important to learn this When using the word to do, to make, the learners may note that both words mean to perform but they can distinguished by the word they collocate with We usually say to do the washing not to make the washing

or to make the phone call not to do the phone call

Learning collocation is very significant because collocations make our language become more natural and more easily understood In addition, they also help us have alternative and richer ways of expressing ourselves and our brain remembers then use language in chunks or blocks rather as single word Thus, when learning new words, the students need to concern about collocations

2.4 Word formation

Word formation is the process of building new words from material already existing in the language according to certain root and grammar rule and formulate; therefore, word formation is very important for learners to enrich their vocabulary and use them correctly

“There are three main form of word formation in English, graded according to

their productive degree: affixation, compounding and conversation” (To Thu Huong, et al, 2008) Besides, there are shortening, back derivation (back formation), sound imitation, sound and stress interchange

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Affixation consists of prefixes and suffixes Prefixes are added to the root (the stem) Prefixes rarely form new parts of speech They are divided into negative prefixes, prefixes of time and space, prefixes of reversal and repetition, for example: unhappy, repeat, supermarket On the other hand, suffixes modify the lexical meaning of stem and transfer words to different parts of speech Suffixes include four groups:

• Noun suffixes: teacher, kindness, partnership, etc

• Adjective suffixes: cloudy, careful, homeless, etc

• Verb suffixes: strengthen, shorten, signify, etc

• Adverb suffixes: carefully, hardly, nicely, etc

Compound is defined as stems consisting of more than one root For example: beside, black market, waste paper basket According to word class and syntactic relationship between the roots, we can classify compound into:

• Compound noun: any root + noun For example : text-book, air chair

• Compound verb: any root + verb For example : dry-clean, house-keep

• Compound adjective: any root (except verb) + adjective For example : south-west, earth-bound

• Compound adverb: adverb + adverb For example : through-out

Conversion is the formation of a new word in a different part of speech without adding any element Conversion is also called “functional change” or

“zero derivation” For example, lecture – to lecture, hand – to hand Conversation most often involves a change from one word class to another The major kinds of conversation are noun – verb (bottle – to bottle), verb –

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noun (to go –a go), adjective – noun (rich – the rich) and adjective – verb (better – to better)

2.5 Grammar

The grammar of a new item will need to be studied if this is not obviously

covered by general grammatical rules Ur (2012) says: “An item may have an

unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical contexts (for example, the past tense of irregular verbs) or may have some particular ways of connecting with other words in sentences (for example, the verbs which take –

ing forms after them rather than the to-infinitive)”; therefore, it is important to

know this information at the same as we study the base form When studying a new verb, for example, we might give also its past form, if this is irregular (buy – bought), and we might note if it is transitive or intransitive Similarly, when studying a noun, we may wish to present its plural form, if irregular (mouse – mice), or draw learners’ attention to the fact that is has no plural at all (happiness, information) We may present verbs such as “want” and

“enjoy” together with the verb form that follows them (want to, enjoy), or adjective or verbs together with their following prepositions (interesting in, accuse somebody of)

3 Summary

In chapter I, the author helps students understand more specifically about theoretical background of English vocabulary Some different definitions are addressed in this part In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language possesses, including a single word, two or three-word items expressing a single idea and multi-word idioms whose meaning cannot

be deduced from the analysis of the component words Furthermore, the author

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 17

also gives students the classification of vocabulary based on several aspects such as the meaning (notional words, functional words), the function (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition) and the concept of morphemes (simple words, derived words, compound words) This part is very helpful for the first-year students because it will help them build a background of knowledge about the vocabulary Besides, the vocabulary’s importance is also represented to aid students have well awareness of vocabulary studying What is more, some issues which need to be studied in vocabulary learning are analyzed as well In English vocabulary learning process, students are forced to learn the meaning

of word and the way how to pronounce it in right way as well as the spelling of word In addition, students need to study about word collocations in order to use them in right situations Partly, its grammar and formation are also important to students to get better result in vocabulary learning To sum up, the first-year students should spend much time reading vocabulary’s theories to understand deeply about “word” and doing test regularly in order to enrich their vocabulary which is very useful in the future

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CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

In this chapter, the researcher introduces the reality of learning English vocabulary of the first-year students at FOE, HOU The researcher also deals with the survey questionnaires which are given to the students to collect the data and make an analysis After having deep understanding about students and their learning English vocabulary situation, some suggestions for improving English vocabulary will be addressed

is not only their favorite subject but also essential to their future jobs

1.2 Survey questionnaires

In order to serve the purpose of the study, the author has designed survey questionnaires for students There are 9 questions for 100 first-year students at FOE, HOU Questions 1, 2, 3, 4 relate to students’ opinion and their attitude to English vocabulary learning; question 5 to find out students’ difficulties in

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learning English vocabulary Question 6 mentions the understanding of year students in vocabulary learning In order to know the ways which students are using to learn English vocabulary, question 7 and 8 are given in the questionnaire Question 9 is designed to clarify the first-year students’ expectations toward their teachers’ teaching vocabulary techniques

first-2 Findings

2.1 Data collection and analysis

Table 1: Students’ opinion and attitudes toward learning vocabulary (Question 1, 2, 3, 4)

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According to question 2, the percentage of the student sometimes learning vocabulary outside classroom is 72% Since, it can be easily realized that students are concerned about vocabulary learning but they spend not much time practicing Besides, the students who often learn English vocabulary and those who always learn vocabulary share the same percentage, 12% Another surprising finding is that the percentage of the student never learning vocabulary is 4% It means that almost of all students are concerned about the significance of English vocabulary learning but not many of them are eager to learn it outside the classroom

As for question 3, only a few of students feel learning English vocabulary head-aching (5%) while it is one fifth of students feel it boring Fortunately, 75% of them think that learning English vocabulary is interesting From the figures, it can be seen easily that most of the students are interested in learning English vocabulary

Question 4 shows the effectiveness of the 100 first-year students at FOE, HOU 24% of them believe that their vocabulary learning is very good and they are very happy with their vocabulary learning Meanwhile, 76% of the first-year students do not think that their vocabulary learning is very effective These figures show that the majority of students are facing many difficulties when learning English vocabulary because of the lack of the effective methods