Teachers' typical difficulties in teaching vocabulary to upper secondary school students of ethnic minority and suggestions for solution

thạc sỹ, luận văn, ngoại ngữ, tiếng anh, khóa luận, chuyên đề

Chapter I: introduction I.1 Rationale

Vietnam is a country that has a combination of 54 ethnic groups namely: Kinh,Tay, Thai, Muong, Dao, H'mong, Khmu, Lao, Khme etc In the past, all of these ethnicgroups took part in protecting and saving the nation together and now they are contributingtheir time and efforts to the nation construction However, in some parts of the countrywhere these ethnic minorities are living the standard of living is still bellow the wantedlevel In order to help them improve their living conditions a lot of things, especiallyinvestments in education and economy are needed

Dien Bien is a small, remote and mountainous province but there are 24 ethnicminorities living here At Dien Bien's Upper Secondary schools, most pupils belong todifferent ethnic minorities Each ethnic group has its own language, and Vietnamese istheir second, and at the same time, official language English is really their second foreignlanguage We think you can imagine the difficulties the pupils have to face and overcome

In secondary schools in Vietnam today, English is one of the compulsory subjects.Many suggested solutions have been put into practice to improve the teaching and learning

of English so far, but there still exist a lot of inappropriate things for ethnic Englishlearners

Vietnam is in the open-door period, moreover, from the November 2006, Vietnamhas become a member of WTO, and so, English is getting more and more essential toVietnamese people As for ethnic English learners in Dien Bien, English is also considered

to be an important subject, but because of poor conditions for teaching and learning,together with extremely weak basic common knowledge of the learners, difficulties seem

to multiply To facilitate the English learners in Dien Bien Upper - Secondary School, I

have chosen Teachers' Typical Difficulties in Teaching Vocabulary to Upper Secondary School Students of Ethnic Minority and Suggestions for Solution as the subject matter of

the study

I.2 Objectives of the study

1 Identify the teachers' typical difficulties in teaching English vocabulary to ethnicminority students at Upper - Secondary Schools in Dien Bien

2 Suggest some solutions to overcome the identified difficulties

I.3 Scope of the study

The study only concentrates on the teaching and learning English vocabulary fromtextbooks “Tiếng Anh 10”, “Tiếng Anh 11” (used in Upper - Secondary Schoolsthroughout Vietnam).

I.4 Method of the study

The study uses a combination of various methods to achieve its objectives such asdescriptive, comparative and statistical Various sources of data, including those obtainedfrom the students and teachers in the Upper – Secondary Schools in Dien Bien, werecollected

First, survey questionnaires were conducted Data obtained help to design the finalsurvey questionnaires to investigate teachers and students’ comments and attitudes towardsteaching and learning English vocabulary in Upper-Secondary Schools in Dien Bien aswell as their perceived challenges

After that, observing classes were organized to find out how effectively thestudents learn English vocabulary

Next, the researcher visited the students' families in order to get a deeperunderstanding about these students' real lives From this information, the author couldreinforce his understanding about this matter

Finally, the author interviewed the teachers who are teaching English in Upper Secondary Schools in Dien Bien and some ethnic students to get better insights into theresearch questions

-Chapter II: Literature review

II.1 Vocabulary and its significance in language teaching and learning

II.1.1 what is vocabulary?

Vocabulary is a matter which many linguists and language teachers have beenconcerned for a long time Nevertheless, to provide an exact definition of vocabulary is noteasy Below some definitions of vocabulary are introduced

Vocabulary is considered as the synonym of lexis and lexicon "They refer to the

total stock of words in a language" (from the Greek lexis, 'word', lexikos, 'of/for) (Jackson.

H, and Ze' Amvela E 2000: 11) From the definition, we can see that the centre of thelexis/vocabulary is word So the study of vocabulary can be understood as the study ofword Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings As Steven Stahl (2005)puts it, "vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a

definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world." (Stahl, S.A 2005)

In the Oxford Advanced learner's Dictionary, “vocabulary” is defined as all the words that a person knows or uses.

In general, it is possible to say that it is hard to give a precise definition of

vocabulary For the convenience of implementing the research the following definition is accepted: “Vocabulary can be defined as the words we teach in a foreign language A word

is a basic unit of a language denoting concepts, things, and phenomena in society.”

(Cynthia & Johnson, D)

II.1.2 Classification of vocabulary

Vocabulary can be classified differently according to different criteria basing onmorpheme, meaning, function, frequency or the use of word, etc

II.1.2.1.Vocabulary classified according to the concept of morpheme

Words can be divided into three kinds: simple, derived, and compound

- Simple word

A simple word consists of one morpheme only and cannot be broken down into

smaller meaningful unit like boy, dog, book…

- Derived word

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

morphemes For example: careful, worker, taxation…

- Compound word

A compound word is a word that consists of at least two roots with or without

derivational morphemes For example: schoolboy, electric fan, washing machine, man killer…

II.1.2.2 Vocabulary classified according to meanings

A word can possess two kinds of meaning: lexical and grammatical meanings.Vocabulary, therefore, can be divided into notional and functional 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… for example: at, on, and, because…

II.1.2.3 Vocabulary classified according to functions

In sentence, word has many different functions English words can be classifiedbasing on functions as different parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb,preposition and pronoun Each part of speech has to follow particular grammar rules sothat when learning English words we have to be aware of the importance of the parts ofspeech of that word in sentence

For example: Noun: a tree, a lake, a bird…

Verb: to look, to walk, to play…

Adjective: long, short, beautiful…

Apart from the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of new words, learners need to

know these words how function in sentences For example, with the word 'foreigner' some

learners may make sentence like this:

* "she's a foreigner student"

In that case, teacher would need to clarify that "foreigner" is a noun, and the adjective

of it is "foreign" Also, teacher needs to point out that a word can have more than one grammatical functions, for example, 'farm' can be a noun, a verb, an adjective (Paul

Davis: 2000: 64)

II.1.2.4 Vocabulary classified according to the frequency of use

To save time, and even more important to reduce possible stress caused by learning

by heart many new words each lesson, learners should be aware of words with highfrequency in use and those with low frequency

For example: Words used to denote daily activities or routines are often employed

Such as; to go, to work, to eat… (High frequency)

Many other words are only used in some specific situations such as the words

belong to some specific fields For instant: word processor, main board, wizard… (Low

frequency)

Active words refer to vocabulary that students have been taught or learnt – and

which they are expected to be able to use, for example: to do, attractive, under… Whilst

the passive words refer to words, which the students will recognize when they meet them

but which they will probably not be able to produce, such as, ISP, IP, URL… (Harmer, J:

1993: 159)

II.1.3 What should be taught in teaching vocabulary?

According to Jeremy Harmer, in teaching vocabulary, the teacher should payattention to the word meaning, word use, word formation and word grammar

II.1.3.1 Word meaning

The first thing to realize about vocabulary items is that they frequently have more

than one meaning The word 'book' for, example, obviously refers to something we use to

read from, but it can also mean a number of other things

When we come across a word, then, and try to decipher its meaning, we will have

to look at the context in which it is used In other words, students need to understand theimportance of meaning in context For example, if we see a person arguing at the ticket

office saying 'But I booked my tickets three weeks ago' we will obviously understand a meaning of the verb 'book' which is different from a policeman saying to his colleague 'We booked him for speeding.'

Sometimes words have meanings in relation to other words Thus, students need to

know the meaning of 'vegetable' as a word to describe any one of other things - e.g carrots, cabbages, potatoes, etc 'Vegetable' has a general meaning whereas 'carrots' is

more specific Words have the words with similar or opposite meanings (synonyms and

antonyms) - e.g good - bad, bad - evil As far as meaning goes, then, students need to

know about meaning in context and they need to know about sense relations (JeremyHarmer: 1993: 156)

II.1.3.2 Word use

The meaning of words can be changed, stretched or limited by how it is used andour students need to know about this factor

Word meaning is frequently stretched through the use of metaphor and idiom For

example, the word 'hiss' describes the noise that snakes make But we stretch its meaning

to describe the way people talk to each other ('Don't move or you're dead' he hissed).

Word meaning is also governed by collocation - that is which words go with each

other E.g strong wins, heavy rain, to do the home work It would not be normal to say heavy winds, strong rain or make homework

Students need to recognize metaphorical language use and they need to know howwords collocate They also need to understand what stylistic and topical contexts wordsand expressions occur in

II.1.3.3 Word formation

In English, different devices are used to form new words from existing ones Eachword-formation will result in the production of a specific type of word If the learnersknow how complex lexical items are made by the association of different constituentmorphemes, then they can also analyze any complex word into its various constituents

Inflectional affixes may be described as 'relational makers' that fit words for use insyntax It means that when the inflectional affixes added to a stems, that stem does not

change classes It only changes its distribution in the syntactic structure For example, dog

- dogs, cheap - cheaper, speak - spoke.

The inflections may show some variation in spelling and pronunciation so that

inflections often cause difficulties for learners E.g Japan → Japanese, child → children…

+ Derivational affixes

Derivation is a lexical process, which forms a new word out of an existing one with

the help of the addition of a derivational affix For example, free → freedom, depart → departure, hope → hopeful.

Derivational affixes can change the word class of the added item and establishwords as members of the various word classes There are two kinds of derivational affixes

in English: class changing and class maintaining

Class maintaining derivational affixes do not change the word class of the word but

change the meaning of the derivative, such as, child → childhood, malaria → malaria, agree → disagree, kind → kindly, green → greenish.

anti-Class changing derivational affixes often determine or govern the word lass of the

stem Such as, leak → leakage, accurate → accuracy, fright → frighten, season→ seasonal, consistent → consistently, home→homeward

+ Compounding

A compound often consists of more than one root, but different roots need notbelong to the same word class Compounds can be classified as follows:

- Noun compounds: (The second root must be a noun)

N+N (modifier - head): table-tennis, text-book, ash-tray.

V+N (verb - object): daredevil, pickpocket.

Adj+N (modifier-head): golden-fish, soft-cover.

Adv+V (not syntactic): after-thought, downgrade.

- Verb compounds: (The second root must be a verb)

N+V (objective-verb): baby-sit, brainwash, housekeep.

V+V (co-ordinate) dive-bomb, drop-kick.

Adj+V (not syntactic): Dry-clean, sweat-talk, whitewash.

Adv+V (modifier-head): over-do, under-estimate, downgrade.

- Adjective compounds: (The second root must be an adjective)

N+Adj (not syntactic): seasick, carsick, ox-eyed.

Adj+adj (co-ordinate): blue-green, mental-grey, southeast.

Adv+Adj (modifier-head): near-sighted, off-white.

Noun-Verb: to bottle, to dialogue.

Verb-Noun: a call, a guess.

Adjective-Verb: to better, to dirty, to empty.

Adjective-Noun: the poor, a double.

+ Blends

A blend is a new lexeme was built from parts of two or more words For example,

brunch (breakfast + lunch), motel (motorists’ hotel).

+ Shortenings

Shortening is a way of create new words from the long existing words For

example, lab, aeroplane, phone, flu, car, mob…

II.1.3.4 Word grammar

Just as words change according to their grammatical meaning, so the use of certain

words can trigger the use of certain grammatical patterns For example, we can say 'one student' or 'two students' but we cannot say 'two furnitures' This difference, then, has certain grammatical implications 'Student' can collocate with plural verbs whereas 'furniture' never can.

There are many other areas of grammatical behavior that students need to knowabout: what are phrasal verbs and how do they behave? How are adjectives ordered? Whatposition can adverbs be used in?

II.1.4 The role of vocabulary in language teaching and learning

Vocabulary has an important role in each language, because "words are the tools

we use to access our background knowledge, express ideas, and learn about new concepts"

(Texas Reading Initiative: 2000: 4) So that the first thing we do in learning a newlanguage is learning vocabulary of that language As a child, at first he/she learns hismother's words after that he makes a full phrases and sentences When a person comes to aforeign country, even his/her grammatical structure is not good but he has a certain amount

of vocabulary of that country’s language, he/she can communicate From the aboveevidence, we can say that teaching and learning vocabulary is very important to bothteachers and learners

According to Ron Forseth, Carol Forseth, (1995)," words are a good place to begin

a course in language teaching methodology Vocabulary words are simple enough to beginlearning on the first day of a class and they are powerful enough to encouragecommunication from the very beginning Words are small pieces of language, which carrybits of meaning Knowing many words does not guarantee a person will be able to speak alanguage, but not knowing enough words can prevent a person from effectively speaking

or understanding a language So, we must teach words from the very star" (Ron Forseth,Carol Forseth: 23)

Meara (1995) points out that knowing only 500 words is functionally useless.English learners with such a minimal vocabulary who try to process a text will encountertoo many unfamiliar words, and frequently these are precisely the words that convey themeaning of the text

"Vocabulary and lexical units are at the heart of learning and communication Noamount of grammatical or other type of linguistic knowledge can be employed incommunication or discourse without the mediation of vocabulary Indeed, vocabulary andlexical expressions can sustain a great deal of rudimentary communication without muchsupport from other aspects of the language system Understanding the nature andsignificance of vocabulary knowledge in a second language therefore needs to play a muchmore centre role in the knowledge base of the language teachers"

II.2 Traditional approaches and techniques used in the presentation of new vocabulary items

II.2.1 Visual techniques

Visuals

Visuals are the things such as flash cards, photographs, blackboard drawings, wallcharts and realia They are extensively used for conveying meaning and are particularly

useful for teaching concrete items of vocabulary such as food or furniture, and certainareas of vocabulary such as places, professions, descriptions of people, actions andactivities (such as sports and verbs of movements) They often lend them selves easily topractice activities involving students' interaction For example, a set of pictures illustratingsporting activities could be used as a mean of presenting items such as skiing, sailing,climbing, etc these visual aids can then be used as the basis for a guided pair workdialogue:

e.g Have you ever been skiing?

Yes, I went to Italy last year No, I haven’t Have you?

etc (Gairns, R & Redman, S: 73)

Gesture and mine

These are often used to supplement other ways of conveying meaning When

teaching an item such as 'to tremble', a teacher might build a situation to illustrate it,

making use of the blackboard and gesture to reinforce the concept

II.2.2 Verbal techniques

Use of illustrative situations (oral or written)

This is the most helpful when items become more abstract To ensure that studentsunderstand, teachers often make use of more than one situation or context to check that

learners have grasped the concept For example, consider the changes in the word “have”,

as it appears in the following sentences The word “have” can have meaning as “possess”,

“eat”, “do”, “get”…

I have three books (Tôi có ba quyển sách)

I am having lunch (Tôi đang ăn trưa)

They are having an argument (Họ đang tranh luận)

I have no doubt (Tôi không nghi ngờ gì cả)

He had a letter from her (Tôi nhận được thư của cô ấy)

Use of synonym, antonym and definition

Students will remember words better when they integrate the new words with theold ones This type of active processing occurs when teachers use synonyms and definition

to teach new vocabulary

E.g miserable = very sad

Examine means to think about, study or describe sb/sth carefully, especially in

order to understand them, form an opinion of them or make a decision about them Big - small, tall - short, empty - full

Scales

This technique is useful in teaching contrasting or related gradable items Adverbs

of frequency are one of the examples

I never/occasionally/sometimes/often/always go to the cinema on Sundays.

Explain of the type

To illustrate the meaning of superordinates such as 'furniture', 'vegetable', 'meat' and 'transport', it is common procedure to exemplify them e.g table, chair, bed and sofa are furniture Some of these can of course also be dealt with through visual aids.

II.2.3 Translation

Translation can be a very effective way of conveying meaning of new words, it cansave valuable time of the lesson and it can be a very quick way to dispose of low frequencyitems that may worry the students but do not warrant significant attention Some teacherssupport this method while some avoid using it, but to ethnic minority students, this methodseems to be the most effective one among the contemporary methods

E.g Sometimes/sʌmtaimz/(adv) thỉnh thoảng, đôi khi

Never/nevə/(adv) không bao giờ Teacher/ti:tʃə/(n) giáo viên Student/stju:dənt/ (n) học sinh

Chapter iii: research methodology III.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the research questions, subjects of the study, research methods andtechniques for the data collection will be presented

III.2 Research questions

1 What kinds of difficulties, do teachers in Upper Secondary Schools in Dien Bienoften meet in teaching vocabulary to ethnic minority students?

2 What are the most effective ways to teach vocabulary to these students?

III.3 subjects of the study

III.3.1 the students' background

The researcher chose 40 ethnic minority students in Upper-Secondary Schools inDien Bien for the subjects of this study They are both male and female students aged fromsixteen to eighteen All of them are minor ethnic people (the Thai) They have beenlearning English for at least four years in junior schools and their knowledge of Englishvocabulary is at an acceptable level

III.3.1.1 the students' living and learning condition

Most of the students in this study come from farmer families in the remote villages.They live quite far from schools (about 10 kms), so they always have to get up early andcycle to school in order to get to school on time Because of long distance from their house

to school, when they arrive at schools they are so tired that they cannot concentrate on theirlessons

In addition, after finishing school, they spend most their time helping their parents

do farming and house work, so they do not have time to do their homework Also, Theirparents are too busy to help them with their lessons Apart from that in their minds,schooling is their children's responsibility and teachers' charge, so they rarely pay attention

to their children’s schoolings or encourage them to learn hard

Moreover, the school's equipment is very poor, and out of date The tapes orcassette players are not available for teachers and students to use There are not any clubs

or organizations for students to improve or nourish their language skills

Besides, the classes are large (often 50 students in each class) so the teacherscannot control the classes effectively

III.3.1.2 the students' language competence

They are pure ethnic students, and Thai is their first language; they always use it ineveryday conversations and to communicate with their parents and other members of theircommunities They only use Vietnamese only at schools or at public places thus, so theyseem to have to learn two foreign languages at the same time! You are sure to imagine allsorts of difficulties those ethnic students have to overcome.

III.3.2 Teachers' background and their teaching conditions

Fifteen teachers were chosen for the study Three of them are at Tran Can School, 2

of them in Muong Luon School, 5 in Dien Bien District School, 2 in Dien Bien BoardingSchool, 3 in Thanh Chan School

Most of the English teachers in Upper-Secondary Schools in Dien Bien are fromother provinces, and most of them are Kinh people In their teaching, they meet manydifficulties and experience numerous culture shocks

We developed questionnaires to distribute to twenty English teachers in Dien BienUpper-secondary Schools; the teachers in this survey are both male and female aged from

24 to 42 and they have taught English from 1 to 24 years, most of them have to teach 6 to 8classes In these classes, the number of pupils who belong to minor ethnic groups are large,moreover, the teaching materials are not available for all of the students

III.4.The instruments

The study aims to find out teachers' difficulties in teaching English vocabulary tominor ethnic students, and ethnic students' difficulties in learning English vocabulary Inorder to have a deep understanding of this issue, the researcher distributes questionnaires

to teachers and students, after that he interviews some of them, visits some of the students'families and finally observes some English lessons

III.4.1 The questionnaire

At the beginning of January 2008, the author did a survey on this topic to develop

an appropriate survey instrument for this study The final questionnaire was administered

to 30 EFL teachers teaching at Dien Bien Upper-Secondary Schools at the end of January

2008 To ensure that the participants fully understood the questions, the researcherdistributed the questionnaires at tea break, so that they can ask for clarification if theyneed All 30 distributed questionnaires were fully answered and handed back Thequestionnaires consist of both open and open-ended questions so that the respondentscould give the answers freely

At the same time, questionnaires were distributed to 40 ethnic students In order tomake sure that, all the students fully understood the questions, the questionnaires werewritten in Vietnamese All of the distributed questionnaires were returned with answers.

III.4.2 The interview

Following the survey, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with all theparticipants to explore further the teachers' background, their understanding of Englishteaching in Dien Bien, and their difficulties in teaching vocabulary to ethnic students

The interviews with the teachers were conducted in English, even though theresearcher was aware that the poor command of English might limit the providedinformation, he made certain that they were able to express their ideas fully by preparingand sending a number of questions to them ahead of time (15 of them were chose forinterview)

While formulating the interview questions, the interviewer made sure that thequestions were clear, precise and motivating

The interviews with students were conducted in Vietnamese In order to get thefaithful information, the interviewees were encouraged to take part in the interviews

III.4.3 The students' family visiting

The author of this study also visited some of the students' families to get someinformation about their real lives The information got from these visits was used tostrengthening his findings

III.4.4 The class observation

In order to clarify the information from the questionnaires and interviews about thedifficulties that they are facing, the researcher observed some classes From theseobservations, the researcher got a deep understanding about teaching and learning Englishvocabulary to ethnic students at 10th and 11th forms in Dien Bien Upper-SecondarySchools

Chapter IV: Data analysis and discussion

Data analysis is not a simple description of the data collected but a process bywhich the researcher can bring interpretation to the data (Powney &Watts, 1987) In thefollowing parts, the researcher interprets the results from the feedback of thequestionnaires, interviews and observations In this process, the researcher identified andnoted recurrent themes and salient comments concerning the constraints that the EFLteachers at Upper-Secondary Schools in Dien Bien had encountered and might haveencountered in teaching vocabulary to ethnic minority students The study also mentionsthe ethnic students' constraints in learning English vocabulary

IV.1 Results and discussions from the questionnaires

IV.1.1 Results and discussions from questionnaire for teachers

The following questions from questionnaire will be considered to obtain data foranalysis and discussion

1 How many years have you been a teacher of English?

Among the 15 teachers, the numbers of teaching year is various (one yeas: 2teachers, two years: 1 teacher, three years: 2 teachers, four years: 1 teacher, five years: 2teachers, six years: 5 teachers, twelve years: 1 teacher, twenty years: 1 teacher It meansthat, their experiences in teaching are also different from each other Two of them are newteachers (they have been teachers only one year), the most experienced teacher is Ca VanHien (he has been a teacher of English for 24 years)

4 years

5 years

6 years

12 years

24 years

percent

Figure 1: Teachers’ teaching years

2 Which grade(s) are you teaching now?

Most of them answered that they have to teach two grades (both 10th form and 11th

form), but some of them only teach one grade The new teachers teach the grade 10 It iseasy to understand, because English is one of the important subjects in the Upper –Secondary School, so they are careful in their teacher’s assignment

3 Do you think vocabulary is important to your students?

It can be seen easily from the chart here, there is a high level of agreement aboutthe importance of vocabulary Most of teachers agree that it is important, however, thereexists a small number of teachers who do not think vocabulary plays important role inlearning a foreign language

Order Teachers' ideas about vocabulary Number of people Percent (%)

Table 1: Teachers’ ideas about the role of vocabulary

4 How well do you know about the ethnic students?

All of the teachers confirmed that they have taught ethnic students for at least ayear, so they know clearly about their students’ strengths and shortcomings

5 How do you compare between ethnic students and Kinh students?

Most of the teachers stated that, they are different from Kinh students, in terms oflearning and language competence At some other subjects, they are not different fromKinh students, but in learning a language, they show many weaknesses

6 How do you think about teaching vocabulary to ethnic students?

A Difficult B Not very difficult C Easy D Others

All of them admitted that teaching vocabulary to ethnic students is really difficult Order Degree of difficulties Number of people Percent (%)

Table 2: Teachers' ideas about teaching vocabulary to ethnic minority students

7 How much time do you spend on teaching vocabulary each lesson?

A major number of surveyed teachers are aware of the importance of vocabularyand they often spend about 20% of the lessons on teaching vocabulary Among the

interviewed teachers, only one of them spend 30% of the lesson teaching vocabulary, two

of them spend 25% of the lesson explaining vocabulary A large number of teachers (11)spend 20% of the lesson teaching vocabulary and the rest (1) spend between 10% and 15%

of the lesson teaching vocabulary

30% of the lesson 25% of the lesson 20% of the lesson

10 - 15% of the lesson

Figure 2: Teachers’ ideas about the percent of the lesson for vocabulary

8 Have you met culture shocks when you teach these students?

Most of them answered that they have met culture shock; only one of them did notmeet, because he is Thai

9 Do your students often have difficulties in understanding new words?

All of the teachers stated that their students sometimes can not understand themeaning of some new words even when they are explained carefully in Vietnamese This

is really a big problem to be solved soon

10 Why cannot they understand the meaning of new words even when being explainedexplain carefully in Vietnamese?

The answer is that ethnic students suffer a lack of fundamental knowledge and poorVietnamese

11 Have you ever visited their families?

Most of them said that they have visited their students' families (14 of them), onlyone of them has never done it We can say that the relationships between teachers andstudents here are very friendly; all of the teachers want to know about their students’ reallives

12 Did you come across these difficulties or do you think they might be difficulties inteaching vocabulary to ethnic students in Upper-Secondary Schools in Dien Bien? Such as,

large class, grammar based examinations, lack of teaching materials, students’ deficiency

of Vietnamese…

Through the answers which researcher got, he found that most of thecorrespondents answered “yes” So that he believed that, these are the common problems,which teachers in Dien Bien are facing and needed to be solved soon

IV.1.2 Results and discussions from Questionnaire for the students

1 How long have you learnt English?

In this question, the students are divided into two groups One group has studiedEnglish for five years (11th form students) and the other has studied for four years (10th

form students)

2 In your opinion, how do you think of learning English vocabulary?

As in the chart bellow, only one of them said it is easy, fifteen of them said it isvery difficult and the left said it is difficult

Order Degree of difficulty Number of people Percent (%)

Table 3: Students’ ideas about learning English vocabulary

3 Do you have time to learn English at home?

Most of them admitted that they do not have time to learn English vocabulary.They have to support their parents either with farming or with other kinds of housework.After all these troubles, they are so tired to learn any thing at all

4 Do you often meet difficulties in learning vocabulary?

The common answer is “yes” Sometimes they find hard understand meaning(s) ofnew words Other cases, even when the meaning is translated into Vietnamese, it is stilldifficult for them to comprehend

5 How do you think of your Vietnamese competence?

One hundred percent of the students admitted that their Vietnamese is very poor.They can understand very simple Vietnamese Their vocabulary is rather small Theycannot express complicated things in Vietnamese

6 Do you meet difficulties in pronouncing new vocabulary?

Among 40 students, only one of them chose “no”, ten of them chose “yes”, nine ofthem chose “some words”, and the left ones chose ‘a lot of words” We can see that theirpronunciation is also another matter added to their pile of difficulties.

A few

So many

Figure 3: Students’ opinions about English vocabulary pronunciation

7 In your opinion, do Kinh students have more advantages of learning English vocabularythan you do?

The answer is Kinh students learn new vocabulary much easier than the ethnicstudents And they believe if they have better conditions and education environment theiorschooling would be much improved

8 Do you think that English is important to your job in the future?

They know clearly that, English is very important to their jobs in the future, all ofthem chose the answer “yes’ But they still do not pay enough time on learning English,because of many factors that hinder them from doing so Firstly, they do not have time tolearn, secondly, some of them think they can learn it later when they have opportunity

9 Do your parents often encourage you to learn English?

As shown in the following figure, most of their parents do not care about theirchildren’s English vocabulary learning or English learning in general Only 5% (2 parents)answered “yes”, 25% (10 parents) answered “sometimes”, and 70% (28 parents) gaveanswers in “no”

No Yes Sometimes

Figure 4: Students’ parents’ attitudes to their English learning

10 How do you spend your time on learning English as compared with other subjects?

Only five of them spend their times on learning English, the left spend most theirtime on studying other subjects which are needed for their exams

11 Do you often meet the following difficulties?

1 Difficulties in pronunciation due to differences in written and spoken forms

2 Difficulties in remembering collocations and multi-word verbs

3 Many subjects to study

4 Inadequate equipment and opportunities for learning vocabulary well

Most of the students said that they lacked exposure to media namely, TV,Newspapers, Internet, etc Besides, they also suffer from poor teaching and learningfacilities such as; Projectors, cassette players, tapes, supplemental books so they meetmany difficulties in their learning

It is very hard for them to pronounce English words because there is differencebetween writing and pronouncing English words, they have to study many subjects at thesame time and their fundamental knowledge is still poor

IV.2 Results and discussion from the interview

Through the interviews, most of the teachers once again agreed that teachingvocabulary to ethnic minority pupils is a big problem because these pupils are not at thesame level of fundamental knowledge, such as, Vietnamese competence, Englishcompetence… Most of the teachers are Kinh people who come here from other provinces

so they do not know their students’ customs and traditions, that why they often experienceculture shocks

All of the interviewed teachers are aware of the importance of the vocabulary inlanguage teaching and learning, especially to ethnic minority students They are aware of

the fact that the first thing to do is to upgrade the students’ Vietnamese competence Afterthat, help the students to improve their English Through the interviews, I found thatteachers have made much effort to find out the solutions to solve their problems by visitingstudents’ families, or trying to discover Thai’s culture.

When I asked the students, they also give the same answers as their teachers’ Theysaid that some words in Vietnamese are very strange for them so they cannot understandvery well; another reason is that students do not have clear reasons for their learning; some

of them even do not know the reason for learning English In addition, they are lack of thebasic knowledge so when they learn English they meet many difficulties

IV.3 Results and discussion from the students' family visiting

From 1st of February to 15th February, the researcher visited some of the students'families All of the students live in remote villages (in Thai language "Ban"), most of theirparents are farmers or one of them is a farmer They live in a large family, in their families,there are at least three generations; their grand parents, their parents and themselves Theirlives are very hard; they have to help their parents do the farming or the housework Most

of them have four or five siblings They have no time to do their homework or review theirlessons

In their families, the infrastructures are very poor There are only some essentialthings, such as, tables, chairs, beds, pots and pans Some families possess a TV set or radioand, of course, they cannot imagine about a computer or Internet They do not have anyother reference books, except for syllabus books

IV.4 Results and discussion from the observation

During the periods from 15th of January to 25th of January 2008, the researcherobserved five classes in Dien Bien District Upper-Secondary Schools The teachers hadbeen asked for permission

The teachers’ techniques to teach vocabulary are poor and the materials are notavailable so that the teachers’ lectures are often boring They spend little time teachingvocabulary; In addition, the students are passive in learning and too reserved The classesare too large so the teachers cannot control the whole class; the school is located at themain street so it is very noisy Sometimes the street's activities distracted students' attentionfrom their lesson In the class, the equipment is too poor and in bad condition