Importance of vocabulary in language learning and how to be taught at 10c4 and 10c6 thach thanh 2 high school

They moreover need to prepare goodtechniques and suitable material in order to gain the target of language teaching.This research is carried out with the hope of supplying a good materia

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Reasons to choose the theme

Nowadays, English is playing a very important role in the globle development.

Therefore, the teaching of English has been improved in method of

communicative

The importance of English is acknowledged by the Vietnamese government and

as a result of the English language programes are made compulsory beginning atall levels of education

Talking about the importance of vocabulary, the linguist David wilins arguedthat: “ without grmamar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can

be conveyed”, indeed, people need to use words in order to express themselves

in any language In my experience as a teacher, I noticed the fact that studentsusually find It difficult to speak english fluently The main reason for suchcommunication Problems is lack of vocabulary Students are often confrontedwith the problems of Forgeting the words immediately after the teacher haselicited their meaning or after They looked them in dictionary, and this alsocause of the lack of vocabulary

As an English teacher I know the importance of English with my students, so

I always try to find out the best methods in teaching English for them In ourschool system, English is both different and characteristic subject It makesstudents curious and passionate However, it also creates a lot of difficulties andmisunderstandings As a result, students sometimes feel discouraged In thissituation, teacher has a very important role to transfer the passion and theenjoyment to students

When teaching English at high school, specially teaching the 10th grade atThach Thanh 2 high school, I see that most of my students like learning English.They also try their best to learn it in all skills and language focus but they seemindifferent to other skills Learning vocabulary is a very important part oflearning a language The more words you know, the more you will be able tounderstand what you hear and read and the better you will be able to say whatyou want to speak or writing Proficiency in English depends on the knowledge

of its vocabulary possessed by the second and and foreign language learners andeven the native speakers Students with a low vocabulary knowledge show weakacademic performance in different courses related to language skills such as:speaking, listening, reading and writing

It is enthusiasm and career passion that motivate me to write this experienceinnovation with aims to share some of my opinions on topic related to teachingvocabulary for grade - 10 students as well as to help both my colleagues and mystudents partically remove the difficultly when teaching related lesson For thisreason, i decide to choose the theme : “IMPORTANCE OF VOCABULARY IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND HOW TO BE TAUGHT AT 10C4 AND 10 C6 THACH THANH 2 HIGH SCHOOL”.

2 Purposes of the research.

The main purposes of the research are: to offer some solutions with the hope of

- Helping students understand the meaning of new words

- Helping students enrich and practice a wide range of vocabulary

- Helping students improve reading comprehesion

- Helping students know how to express themselves in writing

- Bolstering students’ ability to grasp ideas and think more logically

- Providing reference materials for teachers or students who intend to master thelanguage of English or want to make their English more natural and more fluent

3 Methods of the research.

To make my solutions effectively, I have used some following methods :

Firstly, I always get advices from my colleagues through co-working

Secondly, I usually study, create and use new methods in teaching English such

as using images, pictures, posters, real objects, etc

Thirdly, I apply science and technology in teaching, use projecters, presentsfilms, video clips to make the lesson actively, to motivate the spirit of studyingbetween students

Lastly, I design some activities for students to discuss about the topic releated

to the lesson to enrich and enhance the vocabulary

4 Objective and Scope of the research.

I do the research to know about the fact of teaching and learning vocabulary

in Thach Thanh 2 high School more practically This study also investigateswhether the techniques can have positive effect on students or not Can themethods help my students enhance comprehension, locate unfamiliar words in

a story, use vocabulary in reading, speaking, listening and writing ?

The total participants were 85 students from the tenth grade 10 C6 and 10c4

of the school year: 2019- 2020 at Thach Thanh 2 high school , which is situated

in Thach Thanh, a mountainous district in Thanh Hoa province The majority ofthese students come from disadvantageous families with the under medium level

of living standard and learning condition as well Consequently, these students’motivation of studying is remarkable limited due to the burden of subsistence.Unfortunately, their English proficiency is almost either at the beginning level or

at A1 level although they have been learning English for more than four years,since they were sixth grade students

PART II: PROBLEM SOLVING

1 Theoretic basis of the problem

As mentioned, vocabulary is vital to communicate with others and

understanding what one is reading It appears in every skills of language

listening, speaking, reading and writing skill Many peope realize that their vocabulary is limited so they have difficulties in expressing ideas Enriching vocabulary is very important for the students who learn English as a foreign language That is why everybody who learn English or a certain language shouldknow the words Building a better vocabulary of English language is one of the most important things to do Adequate vocabulary is the basic need to manage

almost all the aspects of every life efficiently, while by educated vocabulary, one can gain confidence in in speaking publicly.

Having a good vocabulary to draw from can help students write more

effectively Students need to use more formal tone when writing not

conversational language and to do that Students need richer vocabulary to tap into those words that they used when speaking

Recent research indicates that teaching vocabulary may be problematic

because many teachers are not confident about the best practice in vocabularyteaching and at times do not know where to begin to form an instructionalemphasis on word learning (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008) Teaching words is acrucial aspect in learning a language as languages are based on words(Thornbury, 2002) It is almost impossible to learn a language without words;even communication between human beings is based on words Both teachersand students agree that acquisition of the vocabulary is a central factor inteaching a language (Walters, 2004) Teaching vocabulary is one of the mostdiscussed parts of teaching English as a foreign language When the teachingand learning process takes place, problems would appear to the teachers Theyhave problems of how to teach students in order to gain satisfying results Theteacher should prepare and find out the appropriatetechniques, which will beimplemented to the students A good teacher should prepare himself or herselfwith various and up-to-date techniques Teachers need to be able to master thematerial in order to be understood by students, and make them interested andhappy in the teaching and learning process in the classroom The teachers should

be concerned that teaching vocabulary is something new and different fromstudent’s native language They also have to take into account that teachingEnglish for young learners is different from adults The teachers have to knowthe characteristics of his/ her learners They moreover need to prepare goodtechniques and suitable material in order to gain the target of language teaching.This research is carried out with the hope of supplying a good material for bothteachers and students in their teaching and learning vocabulary

2 2 Practical basis of the problem

Thach Thanh 2 high school is one of the mountainous schools in Thanh Hoa province People mainly live on rice and sugar canes, the living standard is very low As a result, students have not had much good chance of studying and using English until recently Students (and even their teachers) do not have an English environment to practise There has not been an even class for group D or A1 because most of the students here take part in the others groups such as: A, B,

C Learning English here has not still been really important to students and people As common in other high schools in Vietnam, the students in this schoolhave to take English as a compulsory subject in the curriculum and study it threeperiods a week ( 1 period = 45 minutes), for 37 weeks a year, moreover,

English, Maths, literature are core subjects, which are compulsory in the

national examination at certain stages of school education system, Therefore, teachers have so much difficulty in teaching English

Working as a teacher for a long time, I myself understand the nature of theproblem and usually find it necessary to find out the ways to improve thesituation I try my best to do this research with a view to getting my students andother teachers to benefit from it by giving them more opportunities to practiseand to better their English In reality, most students find it difficult to learnEnglish As a result, they become passive and afraid to learn it Some otherstudents feel a little bored with English classes because they have to remembervocabularies or structures mechanically.

Applying methods of teaching vocabulary in English classes is an effectivesolution to motivate students, to make them interested in the lessons and to loveEnglish more

3 Solutions to the problem

Language is means of communication that is made up of sentence that conveysmeaning At school learning language means learning vocabulary It means thatvocabulary takes an important part in language in which vocabulary will make alanguage meaningful I see that when teaching vocabulary the teachers shouldfocus on

- The form: Teacher need to know whether if it is a verb/ a noun/ an

adjective / an adverb to be able to use it effectively

- How it is spelt: it mean the words should be clarified pronunciation beforebeing shown the written forms

- How it is pronounced: It is very crucial to use the phonemic script so thestudents can highlight the word stresses

- If it follows any unpredictable grammatical patterns For example men, child- childen, … )

(man How the word is related to others For example: synonym, antonyms,lexical sets

- Collocation or the way the words occur together

To help my students improve the ability of using vocabulary well, and taking deep investigation into this problem, I have found out some useful measures to deal with this problem

- For students who have low English vocabulary, school leaders or teachersneed to increase more periods out of the curriculum in school

- Teachers need more than an illustration which is accurate, concise and vividfor each

- Teachers try the best way to find out the most effective technique of

learning

vocabulary for learners on the reality of the problems: for example , teachersshould prepare which words should be taught, the words are used most oftenthroughout the text or the ones that are key to understand the main aspect ofthe text

- For homework, besides asking students to do exercises in textbooks,

teachers should have available amount of tests related to the topic

PART A: THEORY OF VOCABULARY

The theory of teaching and learning vocabulary is so complicated and it makesstudents confused To help my students gain benefits from the lesson Whenteaching vocabulary, I always consider the 4 following points:

- Definition of vocabulary

- Why teaching vocabulary is necessary?

- Why the students often forget vocabulary ?

- Techniques to teach vocabulary:

A Definition of vocabulary.

Vocabulary ( from the Latin for “ name” also called wordstock, lexicon, andlaxis ) refers to all words in a language that are understood by a particularperson or a group of people There are two main types of vocabulary: active andpassive An active vocabulary consists of the words we understand and use ineveryday speaking and writing Passive vocabulary is made of words that mayrecognize but do not generally use in the course of normal communicatinon. From the definitions above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is the totalnumber of words that are needed to communicate ideas and express the speakers'meaning That is the reason why it is important to learn vocabulary

B Why teaching vocabulary is necessary?

Vocabulary plays a fundamental role in teaching and learning a foreign

language It is the basic for the development of all other skills like reading

comprehension, listening comprehension, writing, spelling, pronunciation Vocabulary is the main

tool for students to use English effectively when he/ she is confronted with anative English speaker, when watching movie or when listening to a favouritesong in English, when reading a text or when writing a letter to a friend, studentsalways need to operate these words

C Why do students often forget vocabulary?

Students are taught hundreds of words but they do not remember them all.This is the biggest challenges that encounter teachers while teaching vocabulary.Teachers assume that once a word is taught, it has tobe learnt and remember aswell because they do not use the word immediately and sometimes because they

do not understand it correctly

From the reasons mentioned above, I have found out some useful techniques

in teaching vocabulary which will be presented as below

D What should the teachers do before teaching vocabulary.

1 Good preparation.

Before starting a new lesson, the teacher must have good preparation He/she should prepare a list of new words appearing in the reading that are neccesary toteach students in order to do well in the reading And he/ she should make theteaching learning vocabulary process clear and easy for students to remember.With good performmance of teaching vocabulary, students will be motivated forthe tasks in the next part: while-reading and post-reading that leads to a good

and successful lesson for both students and the teacher However, teachingvocabulary is not just conveying the meaning to the students and asking them tolearn those words by heart If the teachers believe that the words are worthexplaining and learning , then it is important that they should do this efficiently.Teachers should use different techniques and activities in teaching Englishvocabulary to motivate their students, enrich their vocabulary and enable them

to speak English properly as well as do the reading comprehension well

2 Choose the words to teach

Normally, a reading text always appears some new words, but it is not

neccesary to teach all of them and teach them in the same ways The teacher should choose words which need teaching Choosing words to teach, the teacher has to consider whether they are active or passive words

- Active words are words which students know and use in communicating or writing

- Passive words are words which students only know and understand when theyread a text

The ways to teach two forms of words are not the same Active words relate to

4 basic skills: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing The teacher, therefore,needs to spend more time presenting and practising, specially the ways to usewords To passive ones, however, students can only know and students don’tneed to spend much time using them, So the teacher should choose and decidewhich words are taught as active or passive ones To save much time, theteacher always endures what he/she will teaches – words students haven’tknown

To avoid teaching words which are unnecessary, the teacher should checkstudents’understanding by asking some questions or asking students to giveexamples with the new words And the teacher can ignore if the words aredifficult and strange and they are not related to the passage Teachers alsoshould encourage students to guess the meaning of new words if the words areimportant and easy in the passage.Teacher should mark the words he/she can askstudents to guess However, the teacher has to show students ways to guess themeaning of new words by reading words near new words carefully and checkaffixes This not only helps students to know more about the new words andtheir part of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs…by themselvesbut also encourages them to have good habit in reading in stead of stoppingreading to look up the dictionary

3 Choose the techniques to teach vocabulary

Learning a language is basically a matter of learning vocabulary of thatlanguage Not being able to find the words to express ourselves is the mostfrustrating experience in speaking another language English learners come fromdifficult cutures, languages, castes, religions they can not understandexplanation made in the target language Likewise, if the teachers teach bytranslating in their native language, which interfere with influency Teaching is

a challenging job therefore,

the teachers who teach vocabulary should use different teachniques for learnersmentioned as below.

3.1 Using pictures

Pictures as a part of visual aids are used as a technique in teaching Englishvocabulary Pictures used to explain the meaning of vocabulary items can beposters, postcards, flashcards, graphs, family photograph, maps or even boarddrawing… With easy words, students can immediately guess the words but withsome difficult ones, students have to imagine and make a connection from theimage to the words Anyway, pictures help motivate students and make them topay attention and take apart

Example for illustration: English 10: Unit 1- Reading – vocabulary

- Vocabulary: buffalo, field, harrow, peasant, do transplanting

- illustrative pictures:

This is the buffalo The peasant is harrowing

The farmers are doing transplanting in the field

- Vocabulary: Dolphin, Endangered species( unit 9- Undersea world)

Dolphin Endangered species

In this technique, teacher shows the pictures one by one and asks studentsquestions related to new words

Example the way the teachers show the words: buffalo, harrow, field

Teacher : what is this ?

Students: it is a ( buffalo, harrow, field)

Teacher: what does the word ( buffalo, harrow, field) mean?

Students give the answer to the meaning of the word buffalo ( harrow, field )

By looking at the pictures, students can easily find out the meanings of these words and phrases

Example for illustration: English 10: Unit 12- Reading – vocabulary

The teacher show the phrase: Lull baby to sleep

In this way teacher shows the picture and asks the question:

Teacher: what is the mother doing?

The students: She is lulling the baby to sleep.

3.2 Using realia

Example for illustration: English 10 Unit 5- Reading – vocabulary

- Vocabulary: + different parts of computer systems

- Realia: keyboard, mouse, speaker, CPU, floppy disks CD Roms, VDU (we canuse toy items instead of real items)

When teaching these words, teacher show students real objects and let themget the meanings of these words With real objects, students will find it easy tolearn vocabularies and they will be more interested in the lesson Teachers willhave probably realized by now that including realia into classroom involves agreat deal of preparation in some cases Is it really worth you time? The answer

is yes And your students’faces will be living proofs

3.3: Using body language

Example for illustration: English 10: Unit 4- Reading – special education

- Vocabulary: + raise both hands

+ open up fingers

+ close fingers

The teacher is raising both hands.

- Body language: Teacher use his/her actions or gestures to mine these words.

After each action, students will tell the meaning of the words the teacher hasmined

actions and gestures will be able to facilitate communication, understanding andparticipation Additionally, actions and gesture will make you appear to be amore charismatic teacher Putting yourself out there, fearlessly, demonstratesconfidence

Your students will therefore be more engaged and more likely to retain whatthey’re being taught in the classroom.

Using body language, actions or gestures is also a good way to motivate students

in studying especially in learning vocabulary because this technique can makethem not feel bored Students can have good memory about vocabulary because

it relates with part of human body Therefore, they can be easy to remember it

3.4. Drawing

Objects can either be drawn on the blackboard or drawn on flash cards Thelatter can be used again and again in different contexts if they are made withcards and covered in plastic They can help young learners easily understand andrealize the main points that they have learned in the classroom

Example: when teaching in unit 4- English 10 in part A( Reading) The teacher

can use chalks to draw some Maths symbols on the blackboard to help mentallyretarted students understand some new words in reading as below:

+ Add

- Subtract

: Divide

× Plus

3.5 Using spoken languages

With this technique, teacher can use definition forms, synonyms or antonyms

to show the meaning of new words

Example: In Unit 1 – Part A: Reading

When teaching the word “ peasant” or “ occupation “ teacher can use synonym

to help students know its meaning: farmers = peasants, occupation= job

Example: In Unit 10 – Part D: reading, writing

To introduce and show the meaning of the word “married”, teacher can useantonym: married ó single( part D- writing)

crowedó emty

3.6 Using prefixes, suffixes, root words

With many words in English, teacher can use prefixes or suffixes to show themeaning of new words By using this way, teacher can use some usual prefixes such as un-,il-, dis-, re-…or suffixes such as -able, -er, -or, -ty, -less… to teachdifferent parts of speech

Furthermore, teacher can use root words to teach vocabulary Try to usecommon roots with common words This way must be repeated and repeatedday by day Teacher ought to do it slowly and frequently Some common roots:trans (move, go) such as transport/ translate, pect (see): such as respect/ expect

Example: In unit 2 : school talk – Part A: Reading

Teacher uses prefixes : “in-” to teach students the word inconvenient

Teacher uses prefixes : “un-” to teach students the word uncrowed

Example : In unit 4: special education- Part A: Reading

Teacher uses suffixes “ tion” to make Noun from given verbs

Demonstrate ( v) → demonstration ( N)

Oppose ( V) → opposition ( N)

Example: in unit 4: Special education- Part A: listening

Teacher uses the root word “ photograph “ to teach vocabulary

photograph

- photographer ( N): the person who takes photograph

- photogenic ( Adj): looking attractive in photograph or on film

- photography ( N): The art or practice of taking and processing photographs

- photographic( A) : relating to or resembling photographs

3.7 Translating

With words which are too difficult to use one of the above techniques, teachercan give students their Vietnamese equivalents in meaning after introducingthem

Ex: In unit 13: films and cinema – the word “ sequence” = chuỗi

3.8 Gap - filling

In this kind of task, teacher prepares a list of sentences with a missing word ineach one The words for students to fill in are the ones the teachers has justtaught This activity can help students not only remember the words they have

learnt but also know how to use the words in specific situations

3.9 Matching

Matching is a widely used activity among 3 stages: pre-reading, while-readingand post-reading and it is quite easy to students There is a variety of tasks.Teachers can choose one that is suitable for their students and this also depends

on what the words are Follows are some samples of matching tasks for teachers

to choose:

- Matching the words with their definitions

- Matching the words with the right pictures

- Matching the words with their meanings

- Matching the words with synonyms

- Matching the words with antonyms.

Example: Match the words in column A with the meaning in column B( unit 9:

English 10- undersea world)

A B

1.Carnivores a.The variety of life in the world or in

a particular habitat or ecosystem

2 Biodiversity b A ship that can travel under water

parent or parents

4 Submarine d A large area of sea that is partly