Methods to teach vocabulary

Additionally, another question is raised, that is, whether students can be motivated with visual teaching aids, verbal aids, and combining different methods - According to old method on

I The organization of the study

The thesis consists of three parts

Part A: Introduction

In this chapter, we would present the rationale for choosing the area for studying, the aims of the study, the research questions and the hypotheses The organization is also included here to serve as an outline of the study

Part B: Contents

1 Types of vocabulary

2 Principles for teaching vocabulary

3 Steps for teaching vocabulary

4 Practice

Part C: Conclusion and recommendations

1 Result of study

2 Present resolution to problem and recommendation

II Study method

1 Methods

2 Study method and practice

3 Plus method

III Study purpose for

1 Students in class: 10, 11, 12

2 Book for class: 10, 11, 12

USING AIDS TO TEACH VOCABULARY

A INTRODUCTION

I Reason for choosing the subject

1 Importance of vocabulary

Since learning English is very popular in non-English speaking countries, developing modern assisted-learning tools that support effective English learning is a critical issue in the English - language education field Learning English involves memorization and practice of a large number of vocabulary words and numerous grammatical structures Vocabulary learning is a principal issue for English learning because vocabulary comprises the basic building blocks of English sentences Therefore, many studies have attempted to improve the efficiency and performance when learning English vocabulary With the accelerated growth in wireless and mobile technologies, mobile learning using mobile devices such as PDAs, tablet PCs, and cell phones has gradually become considered effective because it inherits all the advantages of e-learning and overcomes limitations of learning time and space that limit web-based learning systems Therefore, this study presents a personalized mobile English vocabulary learning system based on Item Response Theory and learning memory cycle, which recommends appropriate English vocabulary for learning according to individual learner vocabulary ability and memory cycle The proposed system has been successfully implemented on personal digital assistant (PDA) for personalized English vocabulary learning The experimental results indicated that the proposed system could obviously promote the learning performances and interests of learners due to effective and flexible learning mode for English vocabulary learning

2 Vocabulary in real high school

In real high school When introducing new vocabulary, the teacher just explains the meanings quickly with Vietnamese equivalents and asks the students to take notes Although this translation technique is time-saving, it is not effective at all The students may find it sheer torture to stuff their pitiful heads with meaningless words and rigid definitions

Since teaching method determines learners’ success in learning English, it should be updated so that every vocabulary lesson becomes more interesting and effective In fact, more teachers have lately begun to adapt visual techniques, verbal techniques and combine different techniques in presenting new vocabulary However, not many teachers have known how to make the best of this newly-employed technique Some teachers even belittle the importance of innovating teaching methodology and refuse to update or apply new techniques

to teach new words

While the traditional method is being criticized and discouraged, the new

method also demonstrates many shortcomings It is unquestionable that the new

teaching method makes a lesson more fun and lively to both the teacher and the students However, it can be very time-consuming There may be not much time left for the students to do the tasks in their textbooks and they will not remember

the main grammatical points “The lesson cannot be effective enough with the

new method if the load of knowledge is so overwhelming while the teacher cannot find a sensible way to arrange the time properly between revision and practice” (Anh, 2006)

Practically, the two techniques are co-existing and each has its own merits and defects What matters is whether visual aids – the new technique mentioned

in Anh (2006) are really beneficial to students’ vocabulary improvement as compared with translation technique Additionally, another question is raised, that is, whether students can be motivated with visual teaching aids, verbal aids, and combining different methods

- According to old method ( only translate new vocabulary) In reality teaching vocabulary gets the following results ( Unit 2 –personal experiences and Unit 7 world population period A : reading- class 11a1- Nguyen Thi Loi high school- Thanh Hoa province)

Mark

The number of

students

II Aims of the study

The present study aims at assessing the effectiveness of visual aids in improving students’ performance as compared with translation technique Equally important, the authors make an attempt to find out whether this approach positively contributes to creating a good motivation for students in learning vocabulary With the aims of the study, we try to seek the answers to the following questions:

1 Is there any difference in high school students’ performance when learning vocabulary with visual aids and when being taught with translation technique?

2 Are high school students motivated in vocabulary lessons that employ visual aids , and verbal method and combine different methods in teaching?

In accordance with the above research questions, two main hypotheses are made

by the researchers: (1) Teaching vocabulary with visual aids, verbal aids and combine different methods does positively enhance high school students’ performance as compared with translation technique; (2) High school students are highly motivated when visual aids, verbal methods and combine different methods are applied in vocabulary lessons

B CONTENT

I Types of vocabulary

1 Active and passive vocabulary

Vocabulary items can be classified into two types: active and passive vocabulary Active vocabulary is defined as “words which students will need to understand and also use themselves.” (Doff, 1988, p 19) 1 In teaching this type

of vocabulary, it is necessary that teachers spend time giving examples and asking questions to check students’ understanding Teachers also need to show the students the possible contexts where these words can occur so that students know how to use them appropriately and effectively Active vocabulary words are vital for the productive skills such as speaking and writing

On the other hand, passive vocabulary is characterized as “words which

we want students to understand (e.g when reading a text), but which they will not need to use themselves.” (Doff, 1988, p 19) 1 Therefore, teachers only present passive items quickly with simple examples or leave them for the students to guess from the context Passive vocabulary words are especially useful for receptive skills of reading and listening

By carefully picking out the important words to teach, teachers can improve students’ vocabulary learning ability and make students become more eager to learn new words

2 Concrete and abstract vocabulary

Vocabulary can also be classified into concrete and abstract types Concrete vocabulary represents “the entity that can be physically perceived

through the sense either in the form of objects or in the form of events” (Mallikarjun, 2002) In other words, people can see or touch the things In contrast, vocabulary items representing “the entity like love, soul, and fear can be called abstract vocabulary” (Mallikarjun, 2002) 7 This is because these concepts cannot be physically perceived People need to use their imagination to sense them mentally In other words, people can only feel or experience them but can not touch such concepts as real objects In terms

of teaching, due to the diverse features of concrete and abstract words, teachers have to apply various ways of teaching to present their meaning For concrete ones, teachers can show meaning visually such as using miming, realia, pictures, actions, gestures, facial expressions or objects Meanwhile, the meaning of abstract ones can be showed through examples, situations or translations Teachers have difficulty in explaining abstract words to students because they are not physically represented in teaching environment (Igbaria, n.d) “It is easier to remember concrete words like a chair and a dog than abstract words” (Přibilová, 2006, p 18) 10

3 Aspects of vocabulary

As mentioned above, learning vocabulary is a big challenge for students

in high school Students need a lot of guidance right from the very beginning Therefore, the teacher’s role in teaching vocabulary is very important In addition to selecting the essential vocabulary to teach, the teacher must know what aspects of lexis need to be taught in the classroom Vocabulary knowledge should include such aspects as the form of the word, its grammar, collocation, different aspects of meaning and the word formation (Ur 1996, as cited in Sussane Flohr, 2008) 2 Basic dimensions of a lexical item are presented as below

4 Form

The first important aspect that defines vocabulary is the form of words, consisting of pronunciation and spelling Pronunciation refers to the way a word

is spoken It includes word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking

“Pronunciation has been seen as the Cinderella of language teaching due to its complexity” (Kelly, 1969, as cited in Qian-Mei Zhang, 2009) 1 “It is believed that only few learners can ever attain native-like pronunciation in the foreign language, especially those who learn to speak a second language after puberty” (Lenneberg, 1967, as cited in Qian-Mei Zhang, 2009) 1 Generally, not every learner is capable of sounding like a native speaker, yet it is possible to develop correct pronunciation Bad pronunciation often confuses the listener and sometimes causes unexpected misunderstanding That is why it is crucial to teach students the right pronunciation so that they will not come up against any difficulties in expressing themselves

Spelling is another factor contributing to a learner’s language competence

As defined by Kress (2000), “spelling is knowing how to write words correctly”

(p 1) In fact, an English word is not always written exactly the way that people would expect from its pronunciation Students’ pronunciation is often confused

by the spelling of a word Hence, the solution is to introduce spoken form before written form so that students can learn to pronounce the word correctly first

5 Grammar

The next aspect that requires teacher attention is the grammar of

vocabulary As defined in the Oxford Advanced learner’s dictionary, grammar

is “the rules in language for changing the form of words and joining them into

sentences.” (Hornby , 2005) 8 Grammar knowledge of a word includes part of

speech, tense and word forms Mastering the basic rules of grammar enables learners to know where the word stands in a phrase, a clause or a sentence, and what form of the word to be used in different contexts For example, when teaching a noun, the teacher has to show its plural forms if any, i.e goose-geese, child-children, ox-oxen, etc Or when teaching verbs, the teacher should present their past forms Learners should be taught how to

build the past forms of a regular verb by adding “ed” at the end of the word or

of an irregular verb by memorizing the forms of each single verb as there is

no common rules for verbs of this type

6 Collocation

Why do people say “a handsome man” and “a beautiful woman” but not

“a beautiful man” and “a handsome woman”? This is a matter of word collocation “A collocation is a combination of two or more words which

frequently occur together” (O'Dell & McCarthy, 2008, p 6) 9 For instance, it’s

considered appropriate to talk of high mountains and tall trees, not tall mountains and high trees One can make a big or great mistake but cannot make

a large or wide mistake Indeed, collocation is an endless list that one cannot master overnight As a matter of fact, most English learners have very limited

‘collocational competence’, especially high-school students who are at an intermediate level or below They may know the meaning of individual words but do not know which words can go together as word partners Thus, a teacher should never forget to teach common and important collocations to the students This is part of vocabulary knowledge and cannot be ignored

7 Aspects of meaning

Understanding of vocabulary also involves knowledge of different aspects

of meaning Those aspects are denotation, connotation appropriateness and meaning relationships such as synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, co-hyponyms,

superordinates and translation (Ur, 2006, p.23) 2

According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, denotation is

“the actual object or idea to which the word refers” (Hornby, 2005) 8 Simply put, it is the literal meaning of the word that we can look up in the dictionary On the other hand, connotation is the association (emotional or otherwise) that the word evokes For example, the words house and home all have the same

denotation, that is, the place where one lives, but the connotation of each word is very different The denotation of house is just an actual building used for a particular purpose while home is associated with something cozy, loving and comfortable Sometimes students know what the word denotes but are not fully aware of its connotation, which causes failure in language use Therefore, the teacher should teach students both of these concepts so that they can make good use of the words they’ve learned

Appropriateness is another aspect of vocabulary that should be covered It concerns the matter of politeness and formality A learner has to know whether it

is suitable to use a certain word in a certain context For example, when talking

to a foreign stranger at the airport, it is more polite for a person to say “Would you mind telling me the time, please?” than to say “What’s the time?” This aspect is extremely complex, partly due to differences in culture What a teacher can do is to expose learners to a wide variety of language and contexts within which that language can be used In this way, learners do not acquire only the language itself but the actual use of the language as well

In addition to the aspects that have just been discussed above, there are areas of meaning relationships that a teacher should bear in mind when teaching vocabulary First, the teacher should be aware of the synonym and antonym of a word Synonyms are “items that mean the same, or nearly the same” (Ur, 2006, p.23) 2 For example, the synonyms of the word “sad” includes “unhappy”,

“gloomy”, “depressed” or “sorrowful” On the other hand, antonyms are “items that mean the opposite” (Ur, 2006, p.23) 2 For example, honest-dishonest, wealthy-poor, hopeful-hopeless are pairs of antonym Word meaning also includes such aspects as hyponyms, co-hyponyms and superordinates Hyponyms are “items that serve as specific examples of a general concept” (Ur,

2006, p.23) For example, scarlet, vermilion, carmine and crimson are all hyponyms of red In this case, scarlet, vermillion, carmine and crimson are

called co-hyponyms as these words share the same hyponym, namely “red”

Another term related to this area is superordinates which is “red” in this

case Specifically, superordinates are defined as “general concepts that cover specific items” (Ur, 2006, p.24) 2 Metaphorically, a superordinate term acts as

an “umbrella” term that includes within it the meaning of other words The last area to be mentioned is translations which are defined as “words or expressions

in the learners” mother tongue that are (more or less) equivalent in meaning to the item being taught” (Ur, 2006, p 24) 2 Some examples of translation can be: Moon Lady - chị Hằng, moon cake – bánh trung thu, etc

8 Word formation

The very last feature of vocabulary that need taking into consideration

is word formation This refers to how words are put together into the right order in a sentence “Teachers might also need to teach the component parts

of words and multi-words, particularly prefixes and suffixes, so that learners

can readily interpret words in context such as ‘disrespectful’, ‘ungrateful’,

‘mismatch’ (McDonough & Shaw, 2003, p 113) Knowing the meanings of suffixes and prefixes can help students widen their vocabulary This knowledge helps them to guess the meaning of some unfamiliar words and remember those words quite at ease

9 Procedure of teaching vocabulary

In order to have an effective vocabulary lesson, teachers should follow a step-by-step procedure There are 8 basic steps that are often mentioned in literature to be involved in this process (Doff, 1988, p.11, Flohr, 2010, p.5) 1 First of all, the teachers need to identify a list of words that needs presenting from the reading text that they intend to teach Both active and passive items should be selected As highlighted earlier in this chapter, the teachers have to be very careful when selecting words to teach In the book entitled “Literacy: Helping students construct meaning”, David, Nancy and Kathryn (2008) suggest some techniques that a teacher can use to decide on a to-teach-list First, the teacher has to review the text to identify the story line(s) or main idea Next, the teacher goes on starting to compile a list of words related to the story line(s) or main idea As for words that are adequately defined in the text and words that students can determine through the use of prefixes, suffixes, roots words or base words, teacher does need to conduct direct teaching Only words that are likely

to cause difficulty may require direct teaching ( Cooper & Kiger, 2008, p 255) 11

Actually, this is a key step because it influences other steps and determines the effectiveness of the lesson

After the word selection step, it is time to choose an appropriate technique

to show the meaning of the word There is no best technique, but the techniques chosen should “help students relate new knowledge to old knowledge, actively involve students in the process of learning, help students thoroughly learn words and support students in the process of learning to use their own strategies for independently inferring word meanings.” (Cooper & Kiger , 2008, p 259) 11

In other words, selecting a suitable technique to present a new word should serve as a good means to facilitate students in their vocabulary learning and enhance their language competence Some common techniques will be discussed later on in this section

The next step is saying the word aloud and writing it on the board “It is always important that the teacher pronounces the new word before he spells it or writes it on the board” (Flohr, 2010, p 5) This is because “the students should know how to pronounce and use the word in spoken language before they use it

in written language and write the whole texts using new words” (Flohr, 2010, p 5) Saying the word aloud is a useful technique as “information that is verbally rehearsed is much more likely to be remembered.” (Manning, 1991, p 181)

“Statistics indicate that students remember 20 percent of what they hear from the

external source, 70 percent of what they themselves repeat aloud, and 90 percent

if they speak aloud to themselves about a task as they are performing the task.” (Manning, 1991, p 181) 5 In addition, the board is also considered an essential tool in this step “Whenever a new word is introduced, it should be written down

on the board This will help the pupils to retain the visual image of the word” (Baruah, 1991, p 296) 5

Afterwards, the teacher should moves to the step of showing the form What matters here is that the teachers have to distinguish between active and passive items so as to present the form of a particular item in the right way As for active vocabulary, the teachers should give not only key transcription but also stress and word class However, if the presented word is passive, the teachers do not need to spend too much time showing its form Only key transcription and stress should be shown in this case

After both the meaning and form have been shown, it is time for the teacher to give examples in which the word is used When the word is placed somewhere amid a sentence, its affective meaning is clear and the word is more readily absorbed by the students The number of examples should be considered

as well As for a passive item, only one simple example should be given; however, if the item is active, it is advisable to introduce two or more model sentences so as to “provide the student with multiple exposures to the word in different contexts or settings” (Thompson & Vaughn, 2007, p 92) 4

Next, to ensure that the students have known the word clearly, the teacher should ask questions to check the students’ comprehension Or the teacher can give hints for the students to make their own sentences using the newly-learnt word Questions of this kind aims at 3 purposes: (1) to ensure students’ understanding of the word, (2) to show how the word is used in specific contexts, and (3) to let students practice other language (Doff, 1988, p 17) 1 Moreover, the teacher must bear in mind that “questions using a new word should be simple and requires only short answers” (Doff, 1988, p 17) 1

After presenting all the new words selected, the teacher conducts repetition of the word list and model sentences During this stage, the students are asked to repeat the words and examples first chorally and then individually

In the book entitled “Cognitive self-instruction for classroom processes”, Manning (1991) 3 describes the mechanisms by which a new word comes to and fixes in a student’s mind when that student speaks the word aloud by himself:

As the sound waves leave the mouth and return back into the ears, the cycle stimulates the memory capacity The word is spoken and received The brain is activated as the word is spoken and heard The spoken word semantically sets up associations of meanings as the word is stored for retrieval (p.181)

This mechanism indicates that repetition is essential in a vocabulary lesson as repeating new words and examples many times can help stick the words to the students’ mind

“Memory clearly plays a key role in vocabulary learning and the benefits

of revision and repetition have been clearly demonstrated in studies of vocabulary learning” (Schmitt & McCarthy, p.276) 6 And revision could be encouraged by means of consolidation activities Practically speaking, there are many ways of reviewing vocabulary Exercises of this kind may range from multiple choice, matching, gap-filling, network, translation to sentence completion or hidden words and more What matters here is whether the teacher

is clever enough to design meaningful activities to help the students effectively revise new items of vocabulary

In practice, there is no fixed procedure in teaching vocabulary The

eight-step procedure suggested above should not be regarded as the “right” or “ideal”

method that can be applied for all teachers and students The teachers, actually, can be flexible in their teaching process by adding or ignoring some steps

II Principles for teaching vocabulary

1 Showing the meaning visually

A Drawing- On the backboard the teacher can draw a picture of some

words that will quickly convey the meaning, for example, happy, sad, a map, a flower, an animal, preposition of location, ect

B Realia or real objects

Teacher can show the meaning of the words by using thing available in the classroom or anything that can be brought into the classroom, eg a hat, ties, food, toy or small objects from home These are not only for seeing, but also for holding and passing around

C.pictures

Using photographs, prints or painting, the teacher can communicate about many types of words, eg photographs from magazines, personal photographs of family members, ect