the effects of lextutor in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading at dong thap community college

Aim of the study, research questions and hypotheses From the analysis of the above problem, the present research aims to investigate the educational value of the activities in dealing w

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

-

The effects of Lextutor in dealing with

vocabulary in intensive reading at Dong Thap

Community College

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by: TRAM THI NGOC HUONG

Supervisor Assoc Prof Dr NGUYEN THANH TUNG

Ho Chi Minh City, August, 2017

No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text

of the thesis

This thesis has not been submitted for any degree in any other tertiary institution

Ho Chi Minh City, 2017

TRAM THI NGOC HUONG

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thanh Tung, for his devotion, patient instruction, encouragement and enthusiastic guidance throughout the current research I am deeply indebted to him for his invaluable advice and comments from which I have learned many important things while doing the research I also wish to express my appreciation for his applied linguistics lectures which are very useful and inspiring me to do the research

Next, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the instructional staffs for the MTESOL course of the Graduate School at the Open University in Ho Chi Minh City They gave me profound knowledge and valuable advice from which I could develop theoretical and practical knowledge in the sphere of language teaching and learning

Then, I would like to give my special thanks to teachers and students at Dong Thap Community College, all of whom were very willing and enthusiastic to participate

in the research

I am also very thankful to my close friends, who enthusiastically encouraged me

to finish the research

Last but not least, I would like to express my deep gratefulness to my family, who were always by my side and gave me love and mental support to help me overcome difficulties to accomplish the research work

ABSTRACT

The most difficulty the students at Dong Thap Community College (DTCC) encounter in reading is their struggle to deal with English vocabulary The study thus investigates the feasibility and educational value of applying the Compleat Lexical Tutor (Cobb, 1997) into dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading at DTCC Seventy students from two classes at DTCC were selected as the control and experimental groups to participate in the research The data of the study were collected through the two instruments of a questionnaire and tests Test and questionnaire data were analyzed using an independent samples t-test and means respectively

Considering the research questions in the light of findings, the research indicates the positive benefits of the activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor The findings of the research indicate that the students made better improvement in vocabulary and reading comprehension They also expressed a positive attitude towards the activities with Lextutor

CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Statement of the problem 3

1.3 Aim of the study, research questions and hypotheses 4

1.4 Research significance 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Introduction of Lextutor 6

2.2 Introduction of the Web VP 8

2.3 The benefits of Lextutor 9

2.4 Procedure for applying the Web VP 12

2.5 Studies on the related topic 20

2.6 Chapter summary 22

CHAPTER 3 : METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Research Site 23

3.2 Research participants 23

3.2.1 Population 23

3.2.2 Sample 23

3.3 Research design and method of investigation 25

3.3.1 Research design 25

3.3.2 Method of investigation 26

3.4 Analytical Framework 33

3.4.1 Tests 34

3.4.2 Questionnaire 35

3.5 Reliability and validity of the instruments 36

3.5.2 Questionnaire 37

3.6 Chapter Summary 37

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION 38

4.1 Tests 38

4.1.1 Resemblance in the pre-test 38

4.1.2 Disparity in the post-test 42

4.1.3 The correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension 49

4.1.4 Summary of the results from the pre-tests and post-tests 50

4.2 Questionnaire 51

4.3 Chapter summary 59

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 60

5.1 Finding on the students’ improvement 60

5.1.1 Vocabulary 60

5.1.2 Reading comprehension 61

5.1.3 The correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension 62

5.2 Finding on students’ attitude towards the activities 63

5.3 Chapter summary 65

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 66

6.1 Main conclusions 66

6.2 Evaluation of the methodology 67

6.2.1 Strengths 67

6.2.2 Weaknesses 68

6.3 Recommendations for teachers and students 68

6.3.1 For teachers 68

6.3.2 For students 69

6.4 Suggestions for further research 70

6.5 Chapter summary 70

REFERENCES 71

APPENDIX 1: The vocabulary size test 76

APPENDIX 2: The pre-reading test 77

APPENDIX 3: The post-reading test 87

APPENDIX 4: The post-vocabulary test 95

APPENDIX 5: The questionnaire 99

APPENDIX 6: Text analysis by the Web VP in Lextutor 106

APPENDIX 7: Activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading 118

APPENDIX 8: Lesson plan for the control group 120

APPENDIX 9: Lesson plan for the experimental group 122

APPENDIX 10: Reading comprehension pre-test and post-test scores 125

APPENDIX 11: Vocabulary post-test scores 126

APPENDIX 12: Item total statistics of the reading comprehension pre-test 127

APPENDIX 13: Item total statistics of the reading comprehension post-test 128

APPENDIX 14: Item total statistics of the vocabulary post-test 129

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: What is involved in knowing a word 15

Table 2.2: Reasons for choosing a particular activity 19

Table 2.3: Explanation of reasons 20

Table 3.1: Personal information of the students 24

Table 3.2: List of reading texts 26

Table 3.3: Activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading 28

Table 3.4: Test score interpretation 31

Table 3.5: The questionnaire clusters 33

Table 4.1: Mean scores in the pre-test 39

Table 4.2: Independent-samples t-test in the pre-test 40

Table 4.3: Reliability statistics of the pre-test 40

Table 4.4: Test of normality in the pre-test scores 41

Table 4.5: Mean scores in the vocabulary achievement test 43

Table 4.6: Independent-sample t-test in the vocabulary achievement test 43

Table 4.7: Reliability statistics of the vocabulary achievement test 44

Table 4.8: Test of normality in the vocabulary achievement test scores 45

Table 4.9: Mean scores in the reading comprehension test 47

Table 4.10: Independent-sample t-test in the post-reading comprehension test 47

Table 4.11: Reliability statistics of the post-reading comprehension test 48

Table 4.12: Test of normality in the post-reading comprehension test scores 49

Table 4.13: The correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension in the control group 50

Table 4.14: The correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension in the experimental group 50

Table 4.15: Frequency, percentages and mean of students’ responses to the questionnaire 52

Table 4.16: Reliability statistics of the questionnaire 53

Table 4.17: Students’ attitude towards the usefulness of activities in dealing

with vocabulary 56

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: The entry page of Lextutor 6

Figure 2.2: The input of the text 12

Figure 2.3: Text analysis 1 13

Figure 2.4: Text analysis 2 13

Figure 4.1: Pre-reading test score distribution 38

Figure 4.2: Comparison of vocabulary achievement test scores 42

Figure 4.3: Post-reading comprehension test score distribution 46

Figure 4.4: Students’ interests in activities in dealing with vocabulary 54

Figure 4.5: Students’ preference in activities in dealing with vocabulary 54

Figure 4.6: Students’ pressure from activities in dealing with vocabulary 55

Figure 4.7: Students’ perceived competence from the activities 57

Figure 4.8: Students’ attitude towards the relationship between vocabulary and

reading comprehension 57

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces the background to the study, the statement of the problem, the research aim, the research questions, the research significance and the structure of the study

1.1 Background to the study

Reading is a “crucial building block” (Hedgcock & Ferris, 2009) and “one of the few avenues” (Grabe, 2009) which help learners be successful in an academic setting

In fact, of the four language skills – Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing – reading comprehension plays the most significant role which helps learners to achieve a fluent command of English as a foreign language (EFL) According to Carrel (1984), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly

in English as a second or a foreign language” (p 441) In specific, reading comprehension can be considered to be the most useful means that provides EFL learners with an appropriate input to improve their writing style and enhance their vocabulary, grammatical structures and language expressions which bring them opportunities to access all aspects of the target language

In EFL situations, reading plays such a significant role that it becomes essential for teachers of English to find an effective way to help their students learn English better Consequently, it becomes one of the most important language learning goals for many EFL students and thus it is given particular attention in almost all the EFL situations (Grabe, 1991, as cited in Kazemi, Hosseini, & Kohandani, 2013) For university students in Vietnam, reading English texts is the groundwork that helps them

be proficient in the target language and facilitates their study at higher education and their life-long learning (Do & Vo, 2015) Therefore, reading skill tends to be the priority among all the four skills in an English curriculum in Vietnam (Luu, 2011)

Despite its importance, reading is found to be a complex process in an English

as a second language (ESL) as well as EFL context and thus students find it challenging

to develop their fluent reading abilities in the target language (Carrel & Grabe, 2002)

In fact, despite its priority in the English curriculum in Vietnam, students usually face

difficulties in reading English (Luu, 2011) Vietnamese students believe that reading is one of the most difficulties they face in the English curriculum (Tran, 2016) Moreover, with his classroom observation and informal interviews with the teachers who teach reading at upper secondary schools, Hoang (2015) found that Vietnamese students were often afraid of dealing with a difficult reading task or reading text Similarly, with her informal interviews with the students at Dong Thap Community College (DTCC), the specific context of the current research, the researcher recognizes that they often feel scared of reading English because of its difficulties although reading is given special attention

One of the main reading comprehension problems Vietnamese students encounter is the struggle to deal with English vocabulary In fact, it is very difficult for them to read fluently because they cannot recognize almost every word in a text automatically as native English-speaking students Luu (2011) indicated that one of the main reasons for freshmen’s poor reading skill is their insufficient vocabulary Moreover, with the results of his survey related to the problems the students faced in reading lessons, Ho (2013) indicated that the most serious problem preventing Vietnamese students from comprehending what they read is their lack of vocabulary

DTCC students have the same problem in dealing with reading texts With the researcher’s experience in teaching reading comprehension to 18-22 year old students she believes that lack of vocabulary is a main reason for their poor reading performance Due to their limited vocabulary size, they cannot deal with vocabulary while reading and thus they usually stop reading at once whenever they see an unknown word Therefore, only when they are provided with an adequate vocabulary size to recognize the running words in the text quickly and correctly, will they read better (Carrel & Grabe, 2002) In other words, vocabulary instruction should be emphasized in the reading lessons

Vocabulary learning is paid a careful attention in the Four Corners intermediate course book by Richards and Bohlke (2011) which is used in the English curriculum at DTCC In each unit of the book, there are two lessons focusing on useful vocabulary for the topic of the unit However, the vocabulary instruction is separated from the reading lessons; therefore, it is not significantly helpful to students’ reading

Pre-comprehension Moreover, the students cannot memorize the vocabulary well because

of the same activities including labelling and categorization which take turns to appear continuously in each vocabulary lesson As a result, the researcher had to apply such techniques to pre-teach vocabulary to her students as using visual aids and tactile ways

in dealing with words’ forms, demonstrating or explaining the target words before conducting the reading lesson However, these practices are not a long-term solution to help her students widen their vocabulary to improve their reading comprehension

In order to promote their vocabulary learning, Nguyen (2014) highly appreciated teachers’ orientation in text selection and the application of a variety of activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading For the former consideration, the teachers should decide how reading texts are adapted or sequenced by analyzing the texts in terms of lexical frequency This way enables them to find out which words in a text the learners are not likely to know It means that they could decide which words in the text they could accept, which words need modifying or rejecting so as to be suitable for their students’ vocabulary size As a result, they could identify their target word lists and begin to profile the vocabulary for comprehensibility for their learners by this kind of text analysis

The Compleat Lexical Tutor (Lextutor) (Cobb, 1997) is considered to be the most appropriate to meet this requirement Therefore, Dang (2011) recommended using Lextutor as a very essential tool for teaching and learning vocabulary to improve reading comprehension For the second consideration, Nation’s (2004) activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading, kinds of deliberate vocabulary learning, should be highly appreciated Studies have suggested that direct vocabulary learning is more effective than incidental vocabulary learning One of the reasons for this is that deliberate learning is more focused and goal-directed than incidental learning (Nation

& Meara, 2013)

1.2 Statement of the problem

The situation of vocabulary and reading teaching at DTCC as mentioned above causes some constraints which impede students from accomplishment of expected vocabulary and reading ability They find it difficult to read because they lack vocabulary; however, vocabulary instruction is not emphasized in the reading lessons

As a consequence, their vocabulary size is not significantly increased and thus their reading comprehension is not improved after the course From this negative situation,

it is essential to change the pedagogical approach towards teaching vocabulary and reading to DTCC students so as to promote their reading comprehension In this case, the activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor are considered to be the most appropriate ones to overcome the above-mentioned

problem, i.e the struggle to deal with vocabulary in reading

1.3 Aim of the study, research questions and hypotheses

From the analysis of the above problem, the present research aims to investigate the educational value of the activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor on increasing the students’ vocabulary to improve their reading comprehension and explore their attitude towards the application in the context

of DTCC To achieve this aim, the study addresses two following research questions: 1) To what extent does the use of activities in dealing vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor help students:

1.1) enhance their vocabulary

1.2) improve their reading comprehension?

1.3) From 1.1 and 1.2 above, is there any correlation between students’

vocabulary and reading ability?

2) What are students’ attitudes towards the use of activities in dealing vocabulary

in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor?

In respect of relevant theoretical knowledge and research questions, the study was designed to test the following hypotheses:

1) There is a significant difference in scores of vocabulary and reading comprehension test between the students exposed to the activities in dealing vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor and those who were not exposed to these activities

1.1) The use of activities in dealing vocabulary in intensive reading with

Lextutor could help students enhance their vocabulary

1.2) The use of activities in dealing vocabulary in intensive reading with

Lextutor could help students improve their reading comprehension

1.3) Accordingly, there is a correlation between students’ vocabulary and

reading ability

2) The students have positive attitudes towards the activities in dealing vocabulary

in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor after being exposed to them

1.4 Research significance

The findings gained from the study offer valuable information contributing to the body of literature in terms of Lextutor in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading in an EFL context The value of this research is that if what the researcher is going to do is feasible, then a new teaching technique, dealing with vocabulary with the help of Lextutor, can be adapted by the teachers of English at DTCC to achieve the goal

to help students overcome their struggle to deal with vocabulary in reading, and thus their reading ability can be improved

1.5 Research structure

The study is organized in six chapters Chapter 1 problematizes the topic of the study by presenting background to the study, a statement of the problem, research aim and questions, and significance of the study Chapter 2 shapes the conceptual framework of the study by reviewing the relevant themes of Lextutor in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading including its definition, its application, its benefits to the achievement of vocabulary and reading comprehension and related studies Chapter

3 draws a research plan for the whole process of implementing the activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor involving research site, selection of the sample, research design and method of investigation, analytical framework, and the issues of validity and reliability Chapter 4 analyzes and interprets data collected from tests and a questionnaire Chapter 5 discusses the findings of the study which are analyzed and interpreted in Chapter 4 The discussion concentrates on the students’ improvement in vocabulary and reading as well as their attitude towards the Lextutor treatment Chapter 6 draws main conclusions of the study by satisfactorily answering the research questions posed in Chapter 1 It also presents an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and gives recommendations for teachers and students and suggestions for further research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter 1 affirmed that Lextutor is essential in doing research into the improvement of vocabulary and reading comprehension To know more about the proposed theory, it is absolutely necessary to shape a conceptual framework about it in Chapter 2 As such, this chapter specifically reviews the theoretical background related

to Lextutor including its definition, its application, its benefits to the achievement of vocabulary and reading comprehension and related studies

2.1 Introduction of Lextutor

Lextutor is a website, named The Compleat Lexical Tutor, with concordancer, vocabulary profiler, exercise maker, interactive exercises, and much more It is designed and developed by Tom Cobb of the University of Quebec at Montreal in 1997 The interface of this website can be seen in the following figure

Figure 2.1: The entry page of The Compleat Lexical Tutor

According to Cobb (1999), when learners encounter words in a variety of contexts they are able to retain and use them flexibly Similarly, Folse (2004) has the same view as Cobb (1999) when indicating that to help learners’ words move from short-term to long-term memory, providing them with multiple exposures to new words

is very important The Compleat Lexical Tutor website offers a vast range of resources for both teaching and learning vocabulary Below is the description of the site

According to Cobb (2004), there are three sections in The Compleat Lexical Tutor for Learners, Researchers and Teachers (Figure 2.1) Firstly, the Learners section aims at providing self-access learning opportunities for learners Using interactive tools

on the web site, they can test their vocabulary, explore their vocabulary levels, compare active and passive vocabulary, use new words, read and listen to a novel, and test their grammar with concordances

Secondly, the Research section is divided into seven sub-sections The first is Text tools, with tools for processing a text such as frequency list-makers, HTML-tag strippers (useful for rendering HTML files into text files for further analysis), corpus builders (for those who wish to create their own corpora), and a sentence extractor, which removes end punctuation from sentences in texts Besides, Range enables the researcher to locate words and phrases in different corpora Especially, the Web Vocabulary Profiler which is also called Vocab-Profile, and Concordance tools links to English and French concordancing programs Furthermore, Phrase Extractor enables one to analyze a text for repeated phrases of 2-5 words; and the Reaction-Time Experiment Builder is a tool used to test the speed of learners' word recognition At the same time, Vocab Stats is a collection of programs for researchers who wish to generate different types of statistical information about patterns of vocabulary in texts; indeed, it links to Richard Lowry's Concepts and Applications of Inferential Statistics at Vassar Finally, the Research Base contains links to a number of Cobb's research papers as well

as to other pieces of research and websites dealing with the topic of "list and based vocabulary learning." Among these, the Web Vocabulary Profiler and Concordance tools can be used with little difficulty for a range of purposes

frequency-Finally, the third section, Teachers, allows instructors to input material to create customized vocabulary practice materials for their students Among the offerings here are a Text-to-Speech (TTS) builder, three types of cloze builders, a Hypertext Builder, Multi-Concordance with Exercise Builder, Group Lex (a collaborative vocabulary exercise builder), and Dictator, a new addition to this section

Because the purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of Lextutor

in dealing with vocabulary, the researcher will look at the Web Vocabulary Profile (VP) tool which helps teachers break texts down by word frequencies in the language at large,

as opposed to in the text itself (Cobb, 2005)

2.2 Introduction of the Web VP

Cobb (2004) recommends the Web VP as an effective online tool which can help teachers and learners produce a lexical profile of any text and a simple way to modify that profile in order that learners and text are matched by using the word frequency lists effectively He claims that most of the English VP on Lextutor is based on Laufer and Nation’s Lexical Frequency Profiler According to Laufer and Nation (1995), the Lexical Frequency Profiler can be defined as the percentage of words which a learner uses at different levels of vocabulary frequencies Therefore, it is essential to know about vocabulary levels

Nation and Chung (2009) divide vocabulary into four levels of High-frequency words, Academic words, technical words and Low-frequency words High-frequency words make up a group of around 2,000 word families It is believed that the first 2,000 words of English cover between 80% and 90% of the running words in a text, depending

on the type of text Coxhead’s (2000) provides a list of 570 word families that are very common across a wide range of academic disciplines It covers around 10% of the running words in an academic text, around 4% of the running words in newspapers, and less than 2% of the running words in novels Technical words are very closely associated with a specialist area Chung and Nation (2004) found that technical words occupy around 30% of the running words in an anatomy text, and around 20% of the words in an applied linguistics text

Based on the theory on vocabulary levels, Laufer and Nation (1995) indicate that there are two Lexical Frequency Profiler (LFP) types of measures for less proficient learners and advanced learners With their experience, less proficient students are less likely to use rare vocabulary than the advanced ones Therefore, the main distinction for less proficient learners should be between the first most frequent words, the second

1000, and any other vocabulary; on the other hand, the finer distinction should be made

at higher list of the basic vocabulary for more advanced learners

As the result, Laufer and Nation (1995) suggest that the profile can look at the total number of word types of the second 1,000 most frequent words, the academic vocabulary and the less frequent words which are not in the first 1,000 most frequent words and not in any of the above two lists The three categories of second 1,000, the academic vocabulary, and words not in any lists will constitute the 100 per cent of the count The entire calculation is done by a computer program which compares vocabulary lists to see what words in the text are and are not in the lists and to see what percentages of the items in the text are covered by the lists The Web VP in Lextutor can do that calculation Indeed, the VP package consists of the program itself and three accompanying word lists The program compares the words in a text with the words in the word lists It lists the words from the text in types and families according to the list they occur in It also provides frequency and coverage data

2.3 The benefits of Lextutor

Grabe (2009, pp 265-266) reviews lots of studies which prove a strong relationship between reading and vocabulary learning Thorndike’s study of reading (1973, as cited in Grabe, 2009) across 15 countries reports the correlation between reading and vocabulary Moreover, Stanovich (1986, 2000, as cited in Grabe, 2009, pp 265-266) finds out a reciprocal causal relationship between reading and vocabulary According to Grabe (2009, p 266), that is a reciprocal causal relationship because vocabulary growth can help learners improve their reading and the amount of reading can also help to increase vocabulary Carver (2000, 2003, as cited in Grabe, 2009, p 266) believes that vocabulary and reading comprehension can produce perfect relationship thanks to their very strong connections

2.3.1 Lextutor and vocabulary

Lextutor is believed to be the most essential tool in the vocabulary researcher’s toolbox with a number of really useful functions (Schmitt, 2013) Besides, Lextutor’ records reveal that many individual teachers and learners use Lextutor to design their own instructional materials Its records show that throughout the day and night users from all over the world log on Lextutor to run texts through the Web VP and experience other Lextutor’s features This finding proves Lextutor to be a popular and convenient tool for language teaching and learning Indeed, according to Cobb (2004), learners can

widen their vocabulary in English systematically thanks to Lextutor’s diagnostic vocabulary tests, and a corresponding set of vocabulary lists linked to concordance, dictionary, and quizzes These enable learners to explore the nuances of form, meaning, and collocation of the words on these lists Cobb (2007) also indicates that Lextutor is

a good place where learners can grow their vocabulary systematically, read texts with known proportions of unknown lexis chosen in accordance with existing knowledge and learning goals, and maximize the vocabulary learning opportunities such as recycling, re-contextualization and transfer with these texts through the use of Lextutor Moreover, Nation and Chung (2009) show that Computer-assisted learning can help learners learn vocabulary effectively They emphasize that many of its benefits to vocabulary learning involve Tom Cobb’s Lextutor Therefore, Lextutor is considered

to be a useful tool for innovation and research in vocabulary teaching and learning (Nation & Chung, 2009)

2.3.2 The benefits of the Web VP on vocabulary and reading comprehension

The Web VP in Lextutor is very beneficial in helping teachers determine how much and what vocabulary students need to read a text successfully First, in order to facilitate their process of reading, teachers should know how much vocabulary students need to be able to deal with a text According to Krashen (1982), a primary condition for second language acquisition is that a written text should be comprehensible or should be made to be comprehensible Therefore, selecting a suitable input text plays

a very important role Accordingly, Nation (2006) suggests that

An important issue in studies of how much vocabulary is needed to read a text

or listen to a movie is what amount of text coverage is needed for adequate comprehension to be likely to occur Putting it another way, how much unknown vocabulary can be tolerated in a text before it interferes with comprehension? (p 61)

In fact, Laufer (1989), Lui and Nation (1985) and Hu and Nation (2000) show that only when L2 students have 95 percent to 98 percent of the running words in the given text, can they manage to achieve their reading goals Nation and Chung (2009) explain that “there should not be more than one unknown word in every 50 running

words” (p 543) These results, which again emphasize the importance of vocabulary

in reading comprehension, are also true in an EFL setting In order to read general English texts effectively, EFL students should have a vocabulary size of 3000 word families (Laufer, 1989), or even 5000 word families which can help them achieve about

98 percent coverage of tokens (Hirsh & Nation, 1992) It is obvious that if EFL students’ vocabulary level is lower than 95 percent, they cannot deal with the unknown running words in the target texts and thus their reading comprehension will be unsuccessful

Second, what vocabulary students should learn to read successfully is what teachers need to know According to Nation (2003), the most useful vocabulary that every English language learner needs is the most frequent 1,000 word families of English In fact, from the frequency-based theory, it is clear that if a learner knows all

10 words from a 1,000 word corpus list, then he or she is likely to know all of the words

in the list Besides, the words a learner knows are most likely the highest frequency words For example, if a learner knows 2,000 words, we assume that it is the 2,000 highest frequency English words that they know As a result, we can find out which words in a text the learners are not likely to know Those words are lower frequency than the number they already know Besides, the theory of vocabulary acquisition indicates that one mechanism of learning is related to natural frequency It means that words that are of higher frequency in natural use will be learnt before lower frequency words Therefore, it is important to analyze a text in terms of the lexical frequency because research into vocabulary size and coverage has shown that the most common words in the language account for most texts (Buckmaster, 2015)

Besides, according to Carroll, Davies and Richman (1971), the most common two thousand words cover 81.3% of text Moreover, Lui and Nation (1985) recommend that guessing word meaning from a context is only useful when the person already knows about 95% of the words of a text In order to reach this level of knowledge, students would have to learn another 10.500 words; however, it is impossible for them

to do that Consequently, one of the alternatives is VP, which can help analyze texts to determine their suitability for particular learners or to indicate how they should be adapted or sequenced to be suitable for learners (Nation and Chung, 2009)

The assumptions behind the results mentioned above indicate that teachers should profile the written texts to select target vocabulary for intensive reading and grade texts for extensive reading In specific, if a learner already knows 95-98% of the vocabulary in a text, they are likely to comprehend it Therefore, this ensures that the 2-5% of the new vocabulary plus other aspects of language competence are learnable and the learners’ reading should be successful The Web VP in Lextutor is thus beneficial for teaching vocabulary and reading comprehension

2.4 Procedure for applying the Web VP

2.4.1 Text analysis with the Web VP in Lextutor

In order to profile the written texts to select the target vocabulary for intensive reading, the teacher first inputs the text into the Web VP on Lextutor

Figure 2.2: The input of the text

According to Cobb (2004), the Classic analysis on VP analyses a text in terms

of which words and how many words are in the first 1000 most frequent words in English [K-1]; the second most frequent 1000 words [K2] and the Academic word list (AWL)

As can be seen in Figure 2.4, K1 words are in blue and make up 83.8% of the text K2 are in green and make up a further 7.87% AWL words, in yellow, are just over 0.93% and off-list words in red account for the remainder – almost 7.41%

Figure 2.3: Text analysis 1

Figure 2.4: Text analysis 2

In the case of intensive reading, this view and analysis will give teachers an idea

of the level of difficulty of a text and the density of ‘difficult’ words As such, the Web

VP in Lextutor can help teachers to decide which words they can accept and which words need modifying or rejecting after profiling the written texts to select the target vocabulary for intensive reading with the help of the Web VP in Lextutor In other words, the teachers can identify their target word list and begin to profile the vocabulary for comprehensibility for their students Figure 2.4 shows that the percentage of K1 is less than 95-98%; therefore, students cannot comprehend the reading text clearly in this case (Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer, 1989; Lui & Nation, 1985)

Therefore, the researcher needs to apply necessary activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading to make sure that her students will know 95-98% of vocabulary in the text This ensures that they can understand the text completely

2.4.2 Dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading

It is necessary for students to participate in activities in dealing with vocabulary Gairns and Redman (1986) stress the importance of these activities in the classroom They asserts that the activities offer students opportunities to memorize the words effectively, and thus their long-term memory of words will be facilitated Nation (2004) suggests some useful activities of dealing vocabulary in intensive reading, which support students’ words’ long-term memory

A vocabulary training program can lead to gains in comprehension Following instruction, subjects process individual word meanings more accurately and more rapidly Improvements in comprehension follow, because construction of passage meaning is made easier because individual word meanings are understood (p 520)

As such, pre-teaching unknown words helps students understand the words’ meaning before reading a text; therefore, it helps them overcome the struggle to deal with vocabulary in reading

Table 2.1: What is involved in knowing a word

P

What does the word sound like?

How is the word pronounced?

P

What does the word look like?

How is the word written and spelled?

P

What parts are recognizable in this word? What word parts are needed to express the meaning?

Meaning Form and meaning R

P

What meaning does this word form signal? What word form can be used to express this meaning?

Concept and referents R

P

What is included in the concept?

What items can the concepts refer to?

In what patterns does the word occur?

In what patterns must we use this word?

(Nation, 2001, as cited in Nation, 2004)

In column three, R = receptive knowledge, P = productive knowledge

Nation (2004) suggests that in order to get positive effects on vocabulary learning and text comprehension, teachers should spend some time on some aspects of

what is involved in knowing a word (Table 2.1) Firstly, they should give some attention

to some aspects of form such as pronunciation, spelling or word parts Ur (1996) points out that each of these items will be perceived by students when they encounter these items for the first time Secondly, teachers’ pre-teaching should focus on some aspects

of a word’s meaning such as its form and meaning, its concepts and referents, and its associations Thirdly, teachers should focus on how the word is used such as focusing

on its grammatical functions, its collocations, and its constraints on use (that is register, style, frequency and so on) Nation (2001) points that the use of a word in particular grammatical functions can cause changes of the word’s meaning Moreover, Ur (1996) indicates that collocations play a very important role in comprehending a text accurately

Besides, Nation (2004) suggests that in the pre-teaching phase, in order to save time, teachers should only focus on high frequencies words (around 2,000 high frequencies words in English) and those that are important for the message of the text Indeed, Harmer (1991) asserts that “the words which are most commonly used are the ones we should teach first” (p 154)

2.4.2.2 Simplifying

According to Nation (2004), the simplification plays a very important role in case the texts contain so many unknown words or unknown words that may not be useful for learners in the future In these cases, teachers should simplify the text before giving it to learners by replacing some of the unknown words with known synonyms or removing a part of the text Nation (2004) suggests that the simplification should be used with low frequency words because it takes away learners’ chances to meet particular vocabulary items He also indicates that when learners know high frequency words, they need to learn the low frequency words; however, they should not be taught deliberately

2.4.2.3 Adding a glossary

Nation (2004) considers glossary to be words with a brief L1 or L2 meaning It means that a glossary contains some unknown words which are listed with their meaning given in the L1 or the L2 If teachers need to use glossary to help words to be learned, then they should use a glossary including high frequency words If they do not

want to deal with words, then they can use a glossary which can itself help learners deal with words In this case, the glossary should focus on the low frequency words This kind of glossary is very useful in extensive reading while it is better to use simplification

in intensive reading

2.4.2.4 Putting words in an exercise after the text

Putting words in a vocabulary exercise after the text help students memorize the words more effectively Scrivener (1994) suggests several useful exercises of vocabulary practice such as picture-word matching, word-meaning matching, collocations, synonyms, antonym, categorization, and sentence completion Similarly, Nation (2004) indicates that some unknown words are likely put in cloze, word building

or other types of exercises after the text such as meaning matching, word part analysis,

or collocation activities, and so on in order to deal with vocabulary These activities, which require more elaborated and deep semantic processing, help students retrieve words from memory better (Craik & Tulving, 2004)

Especially, Nation (2004) emphasizes that these exercises are best suited to high frequency words because it takes lots of time to make and to do Moreover, such activities should focus on the knowledge of the word that the text includes In other words, teachers should select words that are important to comprehend the target text (Beck, Mc Keown & Kucan, 2002; Biemiller & Slonim, 2001; Nation, 2001)

2.4.2.5 Quickly giving the meaning

Using this way, the teacher quickly gives L1 translation or L2 explanation of the meaning of a word to learners According to Elly (1989, as cited in Nation, 2004), quickly giving the meaning helps to increase the effectiveness of vocabulary learning

by about 40% Nation (2004) reemphasizes the positive effects of this way when he indicates that quickly giving the meaning can satisfy learners without interrupting the reading too much He also finds that this way is most suitable for dealing with low frequency words which bring important messages from the text to learners

2.4.2.6 Do nothing about the words

Nation (2004) points that for low frequency words that are not useful for the text, the teacher could pass over the word without saying anything about it

2.4.2.7 Helping learners use the contexts to guess the meaning of the word

According to Nation (2004), the teacher can guide the learner through guessing strategies to work out the meaning of a word Nation (2001) argues that “because of the large number of low frequency words and because of their infrequent occurrence and narrow range, it is best to teach learners strategies for dealing with these words rather than to teach the words themselves” (p 159) Indeed, it is impossible for EFL students

to know all the words of English because of the huge amounts of vocabulary Therefore,

in order to become good language learners, they should be willing and accurate in guessing meaning of the unknown words based on the context (Rubin, 1975)

Because of its effectiveness, Nation (2004) concludes that it is deserved for learners to spend any time learning, perfecting it and keeping practicing it day by day until they are fluent and skilled in its use Besides, he also finds that in order to help learners practice guessing strategies, it is useful to focus this way on low frequency words

2.4.2.8 Helping the learners use a dictionary

Marckwardt (1973) argues that “dictionaries often supply information about the language not found elsewhere” (p 369) This emphasizes the importance of a dictionary

in learning vocabulary Indeed, there is some useful information about words which learners can find out in almost all the dictionaries They include meaning, spelling, and pronunciation, as well as grammar, usage, synonym discrimination, and application of derivative affixes of words (Zhang, 2011) Besides, Liu (2001) asserts that when they use a dictionary, better students not only learn the words they originally started to look

up, but they also learn related words there.

Therefore,Nation (2004) considers using a dictionary as one of the useful ways

of vocabulary learning Learners are taught to use the dictionary to look up and learn about a word In terms of high frequency words or technical words, this way brings learners two benefits of helping learners develop a useful strategy and giving attention

to useful words In terms of low frequency words, this way can help learners develop their skills in using the strategy Especially, this way could usefully associate with guessing the word from the context in order to confirm the guess

2.4.2.9 Using word parts to help a word be remembered

In order to help learners to easily remember a word, teachers can use word parts

by breaking the word into prefix, stem and suffix (Nation, 2004) This way is useful because it relates the broken parts’ meaning to the word’s meaning Teachers can use this vocabulary learning strategy for both high and low frequency words However, this way is a little risky for guessing the meaning of unknown words and is more useful for words that contain useful word parts

2.4.2.10 Spending time on explaining a word

Nation (2004) points out that this way is equivalent to pre-teaching vocabulary; however, it is not done before the reading but during the reading of the text Using this way, teachers should focus on three aspects of what it means to know a word Specifically, teacher interrupts the reading to spend time explaining the meaning of a word and aspects of its form, meaning and use

2.4.2.11 Reasons for choosing a particular activity of dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading

It is important for teachers to know which activities in dealing with vocabulary are suitable for the words that they are going to teach Nation (2004) finds some main reasons for choosing a particular activity of dealing with vocabulary in intensive

reading

Table 2.2: Reasons for choosing a particular activity

1, 2, 3 4, 5 6, 7, 8 Pre-teach

Replace it in the text before giving it to the learners

Put it in a glossary a) to teach vocabulary

b) to make the text more self-contained

Put it in an exercise after the text

Quickly give the meaning

Do nothing about it

Help the learners use context to guess

Help the learners use a dictionary

Break it into parts and explain

Spend time looking at its range of meanings and collocations

Table 2.3: Explanation of reasons

(Nation, 2001, as cited in Nation, 2004)

Tables 2.2 and 2.3 indicate the particular activities in dealing with vocabulary and reasons for choosing them For example, teachers should pre-teach words that are

of high frequency or important for the message of the text Besides, they can ask their students to use a context to guess meaning of the target word if it is easy to do so For low frequency words, teachers should replace them in the text before giving them to the learners

2.5 Studies on the related topic

The theoretical background related to Lextutor proves it to be one of the most essential online tool for teaching and learning vocabulary and reading comprehension Its benefits on language teaching and learning attract some researchers to explore or experience on its effectiveness Some of the related studies will be mentioned below

Cobb (2007) uses Lextutor to find out whether extensive reading can give ESL students enough vocabulary to read In his research, he uses some tools available in Lextutor such as the Web VP, Range, Text Lex Compare, Hypertext and Group Lex to answer the question The analyses indicate that extensive reading cannot be a sufficient source of vocabulary knowledge for almost all ESL students First, the corpus analysis shows that words out of the second 1000 most frequent are unlikely to be encountered

in natural reading Second, lexical profile analysis indicates that the number of unknown words in natural reading is unfamiliar with both the lexical level and learning capacity

of most students Third, text comparison analysis further shows that the rate of new vocabulary introduction in a text designed for native speakers is far more than most

Reasons

1 It is a high frequency word or will occur in other texts

2 It is a useful technical word

3 It is a low frequency word

4 It is important for the message of the text

5 It is not important for the message of the text

6 It has useful parts

7 It is easy to guess from context

8 It is like a first language word

ESL students will be able to deal with However, the problems can be solved with the help of computer because its ability to reorganize and link texts, and the online programs

in it can enhance the provision of vocabulary input that is available to the learner

Neill, Kirkness and Gossman (2010) do a research study evaluating the reading and vocabulary demands in five texts used in a first-year undergraduate paper in hospitality management at a multicultural university in New Zealand The students and teaching materials are considered to be two research perspectives The length of time that students have studied their English language reading abilities and how this may impact a student’s evaluation of selected texts are investigated from a student perspective For the second perspective, vocabulary frequency is examined by using the Web VP The findings from the second perspective indicate that the Web VP can be beneficial for text selection as well as provide a foundation of knowledge for lecturers

to design reading materials

Dang (2011) recognizes that Vietnamese EFL teachers do not make full use of the computers in their language teaching although the government has highly appreciated the benefits of this electronic machine on EFL teaching and learning As a result, the researcher decides to do a research study which aims at exploring Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) for teaching EFL in Vietnam in order to help teachers of EFL select appropriate CALL programs for their teaching In this research,

he selects options based on the availability of resources, the teachers' and learners' computer proficiency levels, and the Vietnamese institutional context Besides, the recommended options are based on his personal experience as a CALL learner and user, and a one-month observation of CALL applications in a classroom at Minnesota State University, Mankato One of the suggestions for using CALL in teaching EFL for Vietnamese students is that Lextutor is an effective tool for vocabulary teaching and learning; therefore, Vietnamese teachers of EFL should apply Lextutor in their teaching and learning of vocabulary

The results of the previous studies related to Lextutor indicate that it can be used

as a useful tool for teaching and learning vocabulary to improve reading comprehension Although it has been paid special attention in the world and it has been experienced throughout day and night by thousands of users from all over the world, the case of

research about text analysis through the Web VP in conjunction with applying activities

in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading is still scarce in Vietnam Moreover, there have been no research studies related to the students’ attitude towards the effectiveness of Lextutor up to the present To fill this gap, the current study to be conducted with college students aims at investigating the effects of the activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading with the help of Lextutor on students’ vocabulary and reading ability as well as the students’ attitudes towards the activities through which the researcher can recognize their attitudes towards the effectiveness of Lextutor

The chapter has provided a critical and relevant literature overview of different aspects of Lextutor in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading which, when taken together, can serve as a theoretical framework used to conduct this study Therefore, it

is considered as a guideline for a firm theoretical foundation which helps explore and prove the effectiveness of Lextutor in dealing with vocabulary on enhancing the students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension and their attitudes towards this instructional method in the following chapters The vital issues presented above include its definition, its application, its benefits to the achievement of vocabulary and reading comprehension and related studies from which a research gap is isolated as the reasons for the current study

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

Based on the theoretical framework in the previous chapter, this chapter justifies the research methodology used in the study It includes the research site, participants, research design, method of investigation, and analytical framework It also deals with the issues of reliability and validity

3.2 Research participants

3.2.1 Population

The population of the study came from nine full-time classes with a total number

of 531 students At DTCC, students learn English as a compulsory subject They have

to complete two 60-hour courses of general English, namely 1st English course which

is conducted in the first semester and 2nd English course which is taught in the second semester of the first year After they finish these two courses, they are allowed to take

a 60-hour course of English for specific purposes The course book used for general English course is Four Corners – Pre-intermediate – by Richards and Bohlke (2011) This study was conducted after the students had finished their first course of general

English

3.2.2 Sample

In the context of DTCC, it was infeasible to select the sample randomly because

of the two following reasons First, it might cause confusion to the organization of the classes in the educational institution Second, the researcher did not have the authority

to choose her own classes to teach As a result, she decided to use a convenience sample,

or, to put it another way, a nonrandom sample which was chosen from those to whom she had an easy access (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007) to select the sample for the study

The participants in this study came from two classes which the researcher was assigned to teach at the beginning of the semester They all came from the Faculty of Technologies in the academic course of 2016-2019 They were all non-English major students whose major was food technology Their scores of a test of vocabulary size and a pre-test in reading comprehension were measured to select the sample Seventy students, 35 from each class, who had relatively the same scores in these tests were selected to attend the treatment They participated in this study when they started their second English course The participants had relatively the same scores in these tests This proved that the students selected had the same level of vocabulary size and reading ability Thirty-five of them were then randomly selected as the experimental group and the control group Both groups were taught by the researcher To avoid the students’ confusion, she did not tell them about this sample selection

Personal information of the participant students is summarized and presented in the following table

Table 3.1: Personal information of the control and experimental group students

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

Groups Characteristics

same: 12 males and 23 females in the control group as compared to 13 males and 22 females in the experimental group Similarly, the participants of both groups have relatively the same age range: 30 students at the age of 19-20 and 5 students at 21-22 in the control group as compared to 31 students at the age of 19-20 and 4 students at 21-

22 in the experimental group Besides, all the students in the two groups spent the same amount of time of nine years learning English To conclude, both control and experimental groups have relatively similar personal information of gender, age, and

years of learning English

3.3 Research design and method of investigation

The experimental method is the only method of research that can truly test hypotheses concerning cause-and-effect relationships It represents the most valid approach to the solution of educational problems, both practical and theoretical, and to the advancement of education as a science (p 298)

In addition to the pre-experimental one, the experimental design consists of two basic types which are true experiment and quasi-experiment In a true experiment, participants are randomly assigned to either the treatment or the control group Mackey and Gass (2005) point out that participants in a particular population has an equal and independent opportunity to be selected in a truly experimental design; by contrast, they are not assigned randomly in a quasi-experiment

Because the researcher did not have the authority to choose her own classes to teach, this study applied the convenient sampling without random assignment of the students into the two groups Therefore, it was designed as a quasi-experimental design

3.3.2.1.1 Teaching materials

In the current research, the teaching materials used for both the control and experimental groups were the collection of short reading texts in the Four Corners Pre-intermediate course book by Richards and Bohlke (2011), including 6 reading passages from Unit 7 to Unit 12 They are presented in Table 3.2 below

Table 3.2: List of reading texts taught for the control and experimental group

6 “Students Raise Money

for Baseball Team”

Article 12 Dreams for

VP section of Lextutor and then she clicked SUBMIT_ window (For the text analysis, see Appendix 6) After that, it showed how many words the text contained from the following four frequency levels: (1) the list of the most frequent 1000 word families, (2) the second 1000, (3) the Academic Word List, and (4) words that did not appear on

the other lists The output helped the researcher identify the level of difficulty of the reading passage so that she would know what vocabulary should be taught In all the selected texts, the percentage of K1 is less than 95-98%; therefore, the students could not comprehend the reading text clearly (Laufer, 1989); Lui & Nation, 1985; Hu & Nation, 2000) As a result, the researcher needed to apply necessary activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading to make sure that they could know 95-98% of vocabulary in the text This ensured that they could understand the text completely (See Appendix 6 for text analysis.)

3.3.2.1.3 Lesson plans

The total time to conduct the study was 16 weeks Both control and experimental groups received the same amount of instruction time a week Every group had 2 classes including 3 fifty-five-minute periods for each class

The lesson plans used to teach the reading texts for both control and experimental groups focused on the format of “Pre-, While-, and Post-reading” Each lesson started

by introducing the topic of the reading and using the discussion questions to activate the students’ background knowledge Then, the researcher pre-taught vocabulary At the while-reading stage, she went over the instructions of the reading activities and had her students do them and then went over the answers At the post-reading stage, she modeled the post-reading activities and had them discuss the topic and do the activities

in pairs or groups (For the lesson plan for the control group, see Appendix 8.)

The difference between the teaching for the control and experimental groups were in the pre-reading and while-reading stages Specifically, based on the output of a

reading passage from Lextutor, the researcher could decide the target words and then

she applied Nation’s activities (2004) to deal with those words in order to help them read the text without interruption (For a sample of the activities in dealing with vocabulary, see Appendix 7.)

In each treatment lesson, the researcher first chose some words to pre-teach, and then put some in vocabulary exercises to practice after the text, asked the participants

to guess word’s meaning from the context or use dictionary in while-reading and she also asked them to skip unimportantly difficult words In each lesson, she spent about

20 minutes on these activities Because the participants’ vocabulary size were all at K2,

the words were emphasized in blue and some words in green which students already learned before are unnecessary to teach They could be reviewed Therefore, the researcher chose words in yellow from the academic list and some words in green to pre-teach Nation (2001) pointed that academic words are important because they are common to most academic texts Off-list words are not the key words which help students to understand the text; therefore, they could be skipped The researcher would explain them later if she had enough time The activities applied in the experiment were summarized below in Table 3 3

Table 3.3: Activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading

Texts

Activities in dealing with vocabulary in intensive reading

teaching

Pre-Guessing the meaning

Dictionary Practicing

exercises

Quickly giving the meaning

Skipping unimportantly difficult words

Explaining the words during the reading

3.3.2.2 Tests

As the study mainly aimed at exploring the improvement of the students’ vocabulary, reading comprehension as well as the relationship between them, tests were used in this study In language teaching, “a well-constructed classroom test will provide the students with an opportunity to show their ability to perform certain tasks in the language” and they can be able to learn from their weaknesses emerging from the results

of the test (Heaton et al., 1975, p 7) In a research study, the test is a powerful instrument for the researcher to collect the numerical data for the research (Cohen et al., 2007, p 414) For these benefits, tests were used in the current research as one of the data collection instruments

3.3.2.2.1 The vocabulary size test

To select the students who had the same level of vocabulary size to participate

in the current study, the researcher applied an online vocabulary size test which was taken from Lextutor as a pre-test It is a new version of Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test (1990) developed by Nation and Beglar (2007) Regarding its benefits, Nation (2001) states that “the test is designed to be quick to take, easy to mark and easy to interpret” (p 21)

The test is designed as a proficiency measure of total vocabulary size for students

of English as a second or foreign language It consists of 140 items with 10 items from each of fourteen 1,000 word levels based on a frequency count of word families in the British National Corpus It has a four-item multiple-choice format The items are written

so that the vocabulary used in the four choices is higher frequency words than the tested word Each test word is put in a simple non-defining context Because each item in the test represents 100 word families (there are 10 items from each 1,000 word frequency level), the students’ score on the test is multiplied by 100 to get their total vocabulary size So if a student scores 68 out of 140 on the test, his/her total vocabulary size is 6,800 words (Nation & Le, 2011) (For the vocabulary size test, see Appendix 1.)

The test was conducted in Lab Room 3 and Lab Room 4 at DTCC in the morning

of 14th December, 2016 With the researcher’s experience, DTCC students prefer working in the morning; therefore, all the tests in this research were conducted in the morning of the day Then, all the student participants were informed about the time, the direction to access the test in Lextutor, the format of the test, and how to do the test so that they could have psychological and academic preparation 102 students from the two classes which were assigned to the researcher attended the test In each Lab Room, there are 60 computers which were carefully checked by an information technology teacher at the college to make sure that they would work on the day before the test time

On the day of testing, four teachers of English at the college were invited to supervise