Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students

I have to admit that at the beginning I doubted about anyacquisition for young learners and many arguments seemed cogent to me.During the time I began to realize chances and occasions th

A INTRODUCTION

1 REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

The thesis teaching vocabulary to young learners deals with the need of ateacher to know his or her learners and to understand their needs and problems.Other issue mentioned in the thesis is the question of motivation and includingfun and games into the teaching process The last issue the thesis deals with isthe usage of different methods and approaches for teaching young learners

“Why? What is it good for? Is it good for them at all? Do they really need it? Is

it not only a useless worry? Why do we have to make them learn somethingmore than what they really need and have to? How much hope shall we place init?”

These are the most frequent questions I have been thinking about I havediscussed them with many pupils, teachers and parents Reactions and opinionswere, of course, different I have been teaching English for many years at aprimary school I have to admit that at the beginning I doubted about anyacquisition for young learners and many arguments seemed cogent to me.During the time I began to realize chances and occasions that English languagecan offer to children and I started to be a big fan of teaching English to younglearners

I ran against a lot of troubles that I would like to share in my final thesisand also I would like to share some ideas for teaching vocabulary to younglearners At the beginning during the discussions with my colleagues we foundout that some kind of conception was needed, next we pointed out that therewere missing good textbooks or materials, also didactic aids and methodologybooks Frequent complain of many teachers is that it is extremely difficult toteach children that seem to lack the basic talent for learning languages.Therefore I would like to refer to the possibilities which teaching a foreignlanguage to young learners brings

The aim of this work is to show several ways that can be used for teachingvocabulary to young learners I would like to show why and how teachingvocabulary to young learners can be more efficient

I divided my thesis into the theoretical and the practical part – thepractical part follows the theoretical part In the theoretical part I will introducethe aim of this thesis, then I will try to describe who is a young learner In thenext chapter I will focus on what is vocabulary and how it is learned and also theways how vocabulary can be presented

In the second part of my thesis I would like to present my system of workand also different methods I use while teaching I will enclose some materialsand games that I use in 9 my lessons In conclusion I will briefly summarize mythesis After that follows the list of sources - books (used literature) which I usedfor my thesis and the appendices where I included some materials and exerciseswith the keys

After exploring and accumulating the experiences from colleagues, I havesome experiences in teaching reading comprehension and achieved quiteeffective results The students are more interested in learning English and moreconfident in doing their reading exercises This improves that my methods areright With the passion and the love for teaching English, I have studied and

developed the research: "Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students "

2 THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH

- The research applies the methods of teaching vocabulary to involvestudents in learning English well

- Creating the language circumstance to communicate in English andpromote students to actively participate in communicative activities; offeringsome solutions and methods for teaching vocabulary

- Exchanging and sharing some experiences in teaching vocabulary forprimary students

3 RESEARCH TASKS

- Systematizing some theoretical issues about the procedures andactivities in teaching vocabulary in English Primary program according to thecommunicative approach

- Exploring the present situation of teaching vocabulary at Primary Schooland suggesting some techniques in teaching vocabulary to develop skills forprimary students, helping them be more confident to communicate in English

4 RESEARCH TIME AND LOCATION

Research Time : School Year 2014-2015

Research Location: Dong Ninh Primary School

Research Object: " Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students "

The respondents of the research: With this research I focused on theprimary student, especially the students of class 4

B CONTENT

1 RATIONALE

1.1 Young learner - who is a young learner?

A young learner – who is he or she? This term covers a wide age range,this can be anybody from the age of three to the age of eighteen There is a bigdifference between what a –three-year-old child can do and what a child offifteen can do We should consider their development too Some childrendevelop faster, others need more time Teaching young learners requires theknowledge of knowing all the development differences Understanding thesedifferences can help me as a teacher to develop methods and a system of workthat I will use in the process of teaching Of course, it is not possible to say thatevery child of six will know this and that But it is possible to pick out somecharacteristics which I as a teacher should know and should be aware of

I have decided to focus on young learners – age group 7-11 I have chosenthis age group because I like working with young learners From my ownpersonal experience I have to admit that learners at this age are grateful whensomeone invests time in them The results are seen quite easily and of courseteachers demand this kind of satisfaction These children still want to learnsomething new When they know it, they are happy to present it and they feelmore important I remember a girl - 5th grades - who was able to

“communicate” with a native speaker Her joy was the best reward for me

It is generally known that the Czech system officially allows children tostart learning a foreign language in the 4th grade In the Czech Republic childrenhave started learning a foreign language in the 4th grade so far However,according to the new school curricula, which are starting to be adopted fromSeptember 2006, the children will start a year earlier and in some schools theforeign language will be introduced from the 1st grade In the 7th grade theywill have to start learning a second foreign language In my opinion, the soonerthey start the better for them Their brain and memory is ready for learning andmost of them can learn quite well There have been many disputes anddiscussions over this I think these debates will be run over and over becausenobody is able to say the exact time for beginning to learn foreign languages.From my personal experience, I achieved quite good results with kindergartenchildren so I do not see any problems for older learners I think if very younglearners are able to achieve good results, I think the older ones can do it too

I would like to point out some characteristics about this age group:

- They are happy when they can play

- They love to share their experiences, they love when people payattention to them and their talking

- They are able to talk about what they are doing

- They use imagination a lot

- They can think, argue, discuss and they are able to interact with bothchildren and adults They are able to concentrate for certain time

- They understand situations and through situations – they use severalsenses

- They are able to use language skills not even realizing them

- They do not realize what fact is and what fiction is sometimes

- They want to learn and are happy when they learn something, then theyhave to share it with somebody and they are proud that they learnt something,they can show off a little bit

- Often they “teach” each other

- They love to be praised for what they have done and learnt, this is veryimportant fact to keep their motivation

- Very often they pretend they understand everything and they knoweverything

Halliwell states that:

- Young children are already very good at interpreting meaning withoutnecessarily understanding the individual words

- Already have great skill in using limited language creatively

- Frequently learn indirectly rather than directly

- Take great pleasure in creating fun in what they do

- Their imagination is ready

- “above all take great delight in talking” (Halliwell, 1992, p 3)

I do agree with Halliwell and her observations My observations are thesame as hers These examples of characteristics I have mentioned above aregreat hints how to teach young learners and what kind of methods we shoulduse It is very important to choose the right way of teaching for these littlechildren The teacher definitely has to be very sensitive to the children’s needsand has to prepare the lessons well We should avoid a stereotype, the 12lessons have to be creative and lively Otherwise this could have really badconsequences for the learners´ further improvement in the language

1.2 Vocabulary

1.2.1 What is vocabulary?

“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreignlanguage However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than just a singleword: for example, post office, and mother-in-law, which are made up of two orthree words but express a single idea A useful convention is to cover all suchcases by talking about vocabulary „ items “rather than „words“ (Ur, 2003, p 60)

All languages consist of words Languages emerge first as words, bothhistorically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and anysubsequent languages Moreover, vocabulary is still widening Even in ournative language we are continually learning new words and meanings of oldwords For example, Czech word pošta This used to mean just the post office orsimple letters but nowadays it also means emails Some words can be entirelynew to us We come across completely new words that are made up according tonew technologies and according to the needs of real life For example, a verb toGoogle is used frequently a lot Learners of a second language experiencesomething similar Thornbury states that they can be confronted by words thatare totally unfamiliar, or being used in ways that for them are novel and possiblyobscure To find the right word to fit the meaning can be very frustrating,especially if the store of words is limited

To summarize this, the learner while learning the vocabulary of a secondlanguage can come across several challenges:

- “making the correct connections, when understanding the secondlanguage, between the form and meaning of words

- When producing language, using the correct form of a word for themeaning intended ( i.e nose not noise)

To meet these challenges the learner needs to:

- Acquire a critical mass of words for use in both understanding andproducing the language

- Remember words over time, be able to recall them readily 14

- Develop strategies for coping with gaps in word knowledge, includingcoping with unknown words, or unfamiliar uses of known words

- Have to take responsibility themselves for vocabulary expansion”(Thornbury, 2002, p 31)

1.2.2 How are words learned?

“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing nothing nothing can be conveyed.”

David Wilkins, linguist

To know a word is one thing but we have to pause on the fact how thisknowledge is acquired Thinking about little children who learn to speak, thenthey always start with words used for labeling, so that the concept, for example,

of a cat has a name cat But of course not every animal is a cat The child needs

to learn how far to extend the concept of a cat “In other words, acquiring avocabulary requires not only labeling but also categorizing skills.” (Thornbury,

2002, p 18) The child has to realize that these common words like cat can bereplaced by super ordinate terms like animals And to this category also belongsother animals, not just cats Thornbury states that the children have to developsome kind of network building – constructing some complex idea Than duringthis process they will realize there also exist words like synonyms, homonymsetc

There are many different methods and approaches how to teach a foreignlanguage, including vocabulary I will mention just some of them that can beused for teaching young learners

- To help the learners understand it is important to visualize the item andget the pupils to repeat or use the item actively One good way of doing this is tolet them see or perhaps touch the vocabulary item, for instance a house We need

to let them repeat it in different ways and they should be given a chance to listen

to the teacher talking about it

- A little bit of shocking method is the direct method or the directapproach The mother tongue is never used, there are no translations Only targetlanguage is used in the classrooms and only complete sentences are used.Culture is considered an important aspect

- Suggestopedia is a very successful method in helping learners tomemorize words This method stimulates the learner’s brain by music whilelearning but nowadays teachers seem to be leaving this method

- What really works especially for young learners is the Total PhysicalResponse method - TPR Very many children are nowadays very hyper andphysically active 16 and to concentrate for a long time can be very difficult for

them Using this method, games, changing topics and using a variety ofactivities is very appreciated by them This method is used a lot by teachers.

- Communicative Language Approach (Teaching) – CLT – stresses themeaning of a language in context Communicative competence is highlydeveloped here and learners are encouraged to communicate

1.2.3 Which words and what should be taught?

The significant point in teaching vocabulary is the selection of words we

as teachers want to teach It is quite easy to teach concrete words at lower leveland then become more abstract Thus, we need to consider the frequency too.There is a choice for us; we can decide which words to teach on the basis offrequency, how often the words are used by the speaker of the language.Especially with young learners words that they are familiar with and they canstick to them should be taught Very often words are taught according to themesand topics Nowadays all the course books are organized into themes and theyprovide vocabulary according to it If there is a theme “Animals”, then we canexpect words like naming animals, also where they live, what they eat etc.Words that have quite specific meaning should be avoided with young learners

Ur states the learners need to be taught the form of the word, thengrammar, collocations, meaning and word formation

In the form pronunciation and spelling should be mentioned “The learnerhas to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like(its spelling).” (Ur, 1996, p 60) The grammar of a new item also needs to betaught Again, depending what level the learners are they should be taught tofollow some grammatical rules For example when teaching nouns, we wouldlike to present their plural forms, also regular and irregular (girl-girls, mouse-mice) When teaching verbs, maybe we would like to present their past forms,especially if the verb is irregular (forget-forgot)

Word formation – using prefixes and suffixes, using hyphenated wordsetc is too difficult for young learners

To summarize this, firstly I think that knowing the word andunderstanding its meaning go hand in hand Secondly, it is easier to rememberconcrete words like a chair or a dog than abstract words Young learners oftenput words together with what they can see, hear or with what they can touch.But as said above they also need to know other aspects of the words they learn

In my opinion, it is important to teach them all these aspects Of course, we willnot teach them, for example the irregular plural form right away, but they need

to know it I think that if we keep repeating the plural form “mice”, after sometime most of them will not say “mouses”

2 THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE PROBLEM

For many years, teaching vocabulary was viewed as a mastery of theseskills Vocabulary followed what the study called mentioning, practicing, andassessing procedure where teachers mentioned a specific skill that students were

to apply, had students practice the skill by completing workbook pages, then

assessed them to find out if they could use the skill correctly Instruction didlittle to help students learn how or when to use the skills, nor was is everestablished that this particular set of skills enabled comprehension.

A significant base of research, developed over many years, is available toinform educators about effective approaches to teaching children to read.However, research on applying the methods of teaching vocabulary for primarystudents is in its infancy This reflects the fact that many teachers in Vietnamare faced with the challenge of teaching children to listen and speak in Englishwhen the students have a heritage language that is not English and they are notyet proficient in English Making this a more critical issue, several researchessuggest that teachers are not receiving adequate professional development ineffective strategies to teach vocabulary for students In order to make best use ofthe information presented in this research, many teachers might want to considerthe following set of questions together in preparation for making decisions aboutteaching vocabulary for primary students

Analysis of my school’s performance in teaching and learning vocabulary

in recent years showed that students normally forget vocabulary after learningthem It was a situation that was of concern and motivated a thoroughexamination of the school’s approach to the teaching of vocabulary

Our school is a public primary school in Dong Son province It is a largeschool with around …… students, ranging from 6 to 10 years old There arethree to four classes in most year levels, meaning that collaboration amongteachers is extremely important to ensure consistency in learning programs.After several years of teaching the book Tieng Anh 3,4,5, I found that most ofthe students do not like learning vocabulary They often forget vocabulary afterthe lesson

* The quality survey and students’ classification:

Based on the present situation of students in grade 4 the level of allstudents is acquired after a few weeks of the school year with the methods ofteaching vocabulary I had 40 minutes to test students in grade 4 to survey andclassify the students The following chart will show the result:

Grade The numbers

of students

Excellent(A)

Good(B)

Fair(C)

Poor(D)

Fail(F)

3 THE SOLUSION

According to the present situation in English classes at my school.Learning vocabulary is so difficult for all grades from 3 to 5 To improve thissituation, I would like to present some techniques for teaching vocabulary and

elicit the strategies of teaching vocabulary for primary students which I have

researched and applied quite successfully at my school

- The level of the pupils – beginners, intermediate etc

- Their familiarity with the words – have they come across these words orare they completely new?

- words difficulty – are the words abstract, are they easily pronounced,can we find similar words in the learner’s native language etc.?

- can the words be easily demonstrated?

- shall we use realia or anything that the pupils can become familiar with?

- can pictures be used to elicit vocabulary?

After the teacher chooses what items to teach, he or she should followcertain guidelines In my opinion, this includes teaching the vocabulary "inspoken form first" to prevent students from pronouncing the words in the formthey are written, placing the new items in context, and revising them

A number of techniques can be adopted to present new vocabulary items.Some techniques are more popular and more often used than others Also it is up

to the teacher which techniques he or she decides to use but always theeffectiveness of teaching should be considered I think every teacher tends to useand prefers some technique that he or she finds interesting And of course thereare techniques that we as teachers try to avoid There are techniques that areparticularly appropriate for certain types of words – for example actions can beexplained through pantomime Another factor that is worth considering is theage of the learners Younger ones react quite well when we show them concreteillustrations, the older ones can manage pretty well abstract explanations or evendefinitions

The presentation of new vocabulary can be classified for exampleaccording to verbal and visual techniques Among visual techniques we can findpictures - flashcards, photographs and magazine pictures, wall charts, posters,blackboard drawings, word pictures, several realia 20 that teachers can hold up

or point to Mime, action and gestures can be used especially for explainingactions and times Learners can label pictures or objects or perform an action.Verbal techniques consist of using illustrative situations, descriptions, synonymsand antonyms, collocations, scales, and using various forms of definition: forexample, definition by demonstration (visual definition), definition byabstraction, contextual definitions, and definition by translation Explanation canbecome extremely difficult especially with beginner levels

Another way that can be used is translation This technique is not usedmuch recently, even though it is quick and easy but can be very discouraging forlearners They cannot interact with the words Words can be organized into sets,subclasses and subcategories often aided by visual presentation Translation isone of the traditional ways of explaining the meaning of words It could be done

by the teacher or with using a dictionary It has its advantages but alsodisadvantages Using this technique, learners can learn how to use dictionaries.Most of the young learners have never used a dictionary before so it is a need toteach them to use dictionaries first They have to be told there are two parts –English-Czech and Czech English Then they have to be told about thealphabetical order and about other things they can find there In my opinion it isgood to use both picture dictionaries and classical dictionaries where they findthe meaning with young learners Teachers can prepare quite interesting lessonwhere the learners learn how to use dictionaries

3.2 Be realistic

Nowadays, teachers can come across many language teaching ideas andtechniques There are many of them in circulation that it is quite easy to getcarried away We draw pictures, cut paper into small pieces, draw flashcards,make crosswords etc and we do it even at midnight We want to be flexible,creative, sensible, we want to praise the children as much as possible but on theother hand we want to be realistic and, very honestly, our expectations aresometimes very high And we hope it will be worthwhile But sometimessomething goes wrong Language classrooms are noisy; there are at least fifteenpupils – usually even more The classes with high number of students putexceptional demands on teacher’s preparation for the lesson and there isobviously a requirement of larger classrooms too Quite often the children arenot “angels” We encourage them to interact, be active, creative, independent.This of course leads to the fact the children will become silly and they willreally enjoy it There are teachers who would never do such activities again.And their lessons then turn to be boring “We need to be realistic in ourexpectations of ourselves and the learners It does not mean, for example, weshould reject the idea of pair work because our classes are big, or not very able,

or poorly motivated On the contrary, being realistic should mean taking realitiesinto account in such a way that good things can still happen.” (Halliwell, 1992, p19) After every lesson we should ask ourselves whether the lesson wasproductive or unproductive and we should go back to our objectives and aims

We should evaluate the lesson ourselves Or if we have an observer in thelesson, we should discuss it with him/her

3.2.1 Choosing activities

It is up to the teacher mostly to choose the right activity This is not easyand teachers should spend really quality time to think about this It needs to beconsidered well Some language activities can stir a class Thinking about thepositive way of the word “stir”, it means these activities will wake up the class,

warm them up Of course, there are activities that have the opposite effect Theymay seem to settle the pupils Before the lesson is planned, there should beconsidered what kind of activities should be chosen knowing the effect of them.Activities that can stir the class are, for example, oral work, games, andcompetitions Another aspect we should think about is activities which engagechildren’s minds and which keep them physically occupied

We should not forget context developing activities “If we are to help thelearners acquire independent second language lexicons, we need to highlight theimportance of the context in which the language naturally occurs Once the idea

of context playing a decisive role in the choice of language is firmly established,

we can begin to introduce varieties of the language used in different contexts.Many course books provide learners with plenty of opportunities to developtheir own context for the language presented, for example activities like “oddone out, filling-in exercises, dialogues” etc”

Another factor that teachers should bear in their minds is to keep thelessons simple We often try to make our lessons varied This is good but canlead to misunderstanding The lesson can be varied by doing lots of activities ondifferent topics But this can mean we may produce a lesson which is a disaster,too many activities and changing the activities all the time can destroy the lessonwell The children’s minds have to jump from one topic to another with notmuch time to let things sink in effectively We should realize some importantthings

- “We will not help the children to develop their capacity to concentrate

if we jump inconsequentially from one topic to the next

- There are ways of varying the oral work so that it is making differentdemands on the children and therefore feels different even when the topicremains the same.” (Halliwell, 1992, p 27)

Variation does not only mean changing the topics and materials but alsothe change of work we do Variation comes in the forms of activity as Halliwellstates Using different methods and ways of teaching should become a regularpart of our lessons We can reuse materials all the time, we can come up withnew things but always the activities should be simple in principle Then they cantransfer to different topics and situations “Because you use them regularly youwill quickly get to know the best way to set them up with your classes Becausethe classes know them, they will take to them easily when they appear Theycan become truly the core of your language teaching.” (Halliwell, 1992, p 38)

3.2.2 The role of fun and games in the lessons

“By ´fun and games´ I mean all those activities that we loosely think of asinvolving play and enjoyment Singing, clapping hands, chanting rhymes,solving puzzles, drawing, coloring, model-making, games.” (Rixon, 1995, p 33)

It is evident that young learners learn through play much easier and theyenjoy it more This is quite a natural way for them to learn They play and love

to play In playing together we can see elements of interaction and during