The effectiveness of presenting and practising new vocabulary through minimal context for second-year non English major students sat Vietnam University of Commerce

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---o0o--- HOÀNG THU BA THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-o0o -

HOÀNG THU BA

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTISING NEW VOCABULARY THROUGH MINIMAL CONTEXT

FOR SECOND - YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

HIỆU QUẢ GIỚI THIỆU VÀ LUYỆN TẬP TỪ VỰNG MỚI

QUA NGỮ CẢNH TỐI THIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THƯƠNG MẠI

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60.14.10

MA course: 19

HANOI – 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-o0o -

HOÀNG THU BA

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTISING NEW VOCABULARY THROUGH MINIMAL CONTEXT FOR SECOND YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

HIỆU QUẢ GIỚI THIỆU VÀ LUYỆN TẬP TỪ VỰNG MỚI

QUA NGỮ CẢNH TỐI THIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THƯƠNG MẠI

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

MA course: 19 Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh

HANOI – 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE 1

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY 1

3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 2

4 METHOD OF THE STUDY 3

5 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS 3

DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 4 1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1.1 Context and minimal context 4

1.1.2 Vocabulary 6

1.2 OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN CONTEXT 7

1.2.1 Vocabulary implicit learning and explicit teaching 7

1.2.2 Vocabulary teaching procedure 9

1.2.2.1 Vocabulary selection 9

1.2.2.2 Vocabulary presentation 10

1.2.2.3 Vocabulary practice 12

1.3 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRESENTING VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT AND MINIMAL CONTEXT 12

1.4 PREVIOUS STUDIES 15

1.5 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY 16

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18

2.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 18

2.2 PARTICIPANTS 18

2.3 RESEARCH DESIGN 19

2.3.1 Identifying initial problem 20

2.3.2 Materials 22

2.3.2.1 New vocabulary 22

2.3.2.2 Minimal context 22

2.3.3 Data collection methods 23

2.3.3.1 Pre-test/ posttest 23

2.3.3.2 Observation 24

2.3.3.3 Questionnaire 25

2.3.4 Data collection procedure 25

2.3.5 Data analysis methods 27

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28

3.1 STUDENTS‟ IMPROVEMENT IN ACQUISITION OF THE TARGET VOCABULARY 28

3.2 STUDENTS‟ MOTIVATION IN NEW VOCABULARY ACQUISITION 30 3.2.1 Data from the Observation 31

3.2.2 Data from the students‟ questionnaire 33

3.3 DISCUSSION 35

CONCLUSION 38

1 SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 38

2 PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 39

3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 40

4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 40

REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as a foreign language

ELT English Language Teaching

MCQs Multiple Choice questions

VUC Vietnam University of Commerce

SPSS Statistical Product and Service Solutions

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Plan of the intervention

Table 3.1 Means and Standard Deviations of the scores of the pretest and post test Table 3.2 Correlations of the pretest and posttest

Table 3.3 Paired Sample T-Test

Table 3.4 Students‟ interest and benefits in the intervention

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The frequency of adapting vocabulary teaching techniques

Figure 3.1 Scores of the pretest and posttest

Figure 3.2 Class motivation during the lessons

Figure 3.3 Students‟ motivation in guessing new vocabulary in minimal context

Figure 3.4 Students‟ motivation in vocabulary practice activities

INTRODUCTION

1 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE

Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of language learning and language use (Laufer 1997; Bromley, 2007) It is a principle contributor to comprehension, fluency and achievement Moreover, lack of command in vocabulary becomes the cause of communication breakdown (Balochowicz & Fisher, 2000; Nagy

& Scott, 2000) Therefore, it is of great importance for teaching and learning vocabulary

Meanwhile, in the real context in many English classes at Vietnam University of Commerce, where teachers have devoted much time to vocabulary teaching, applied a lot of different methods like glosses, translation, pictures, etc., the results have been disappointing A large number of students do not know and remember what word to use, they never feel encouraged when frequently encountering unfamiliar and less familiar words, much less do they have the passion and courage to use them in daily social conversations and exchanges in an appropriate way Thus, there needs a question

of the effective ways to promote understanding and use of vocabulary Quite a few of linguistics researchers (e.g Nation, 1982; Nation & Coady, 1988), have suggested that new words can be best learnt when presented in context and when their meaning must

be inferred from context by learners themselves

From this suggestion and above initial problems, the author decided to develop

an action research on the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in

minimal context for second-year students at Vietnam University of Commerce

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

This was an action research whose purpose was to investigate the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context for the second-year non

English major students at Vietnam University of Commerce (VUC) Specifically, it addressed the following research questions:

a How much do presentation and practice using minimal contexts improve learners' acquisition of the target vocabulary?

b Do presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context have any effect on students’ motivation in learning of the words?

Pedagogically, the findings and comments of this study were believed to be relevant to improve the teaching English to students at VUC The study would help teachers to motivate their English classroom so that their students can develop their language skills

3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study was conducted on 40 second-year non English majors at the University of Commerce They were taught during two weeks (five contacts) of the intervention

The study covered the vocabulary items from course book including collocations, nouns Grammatical aspect of the vocabulary was beyond the scope of this study The study only focuses on vocabulary meaning recognition Therefore, the productive aspect of the vocabulary was ignored during the study

Linguistic context and situational context in terms of background knowledge presented in one sentence were used in this study When the participants encountered the single - context sentence, they used their prior knowledge as a comprehension process approach As a result, the participants should have schemata in order to make sense of the minimal context

4 METHOD OF THE STUDY

An action research was applied in this minor thesis to find out students‟ achievement and interest in learning vocabulary after new vocabulary items were

taught in minimal context

In order to collect sufficient and relevant data for the study, three research techniques were employed:

- using a pre-test and post-test to evaluate the teaching and learning results

- observing classes to find out how students participate in the intervention

- Conducting a survey questionnaire to investigate how much students are interested in the intervention

5 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

The study consists of three parts: Introduction, development and conclusion

The Introduction presents the rationale, aims, scope and method of the study

The development includes three chapters

Chapter One covers an in-depth review of the literature in which relevant

theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning teaching vocabulary

in context and minimal context

Chapter Two continues with the research method including the participants of

the study, the methods and procedures of data collection and data analysis

Chapter Three demonstrates the findings accompanied by data analysis and

discussion

The Conclusion ends the report with the summary of the findings, pedagogical

implications, limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies

DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter gives an overview of the literature related to the present study In the chapter, definitions of key terms and selected theoretical background such as context, minimal context, vocabulary are presented Then the review of the areas relevant to the research questions, namely vocabulary teaching techniques, presenting and practicing new vocabulary in context and minimal context is also provided

1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1.1 Context and minimal context

In the study of language and discourse, the concept of “context” is notoriously vague and ambiguous As a result, a number of researchers have attempted to define context in the framework of vocabulary learning

According to New Oxford American Dictionary (2010), context is defined as (1) The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed Or (2) the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning Crystal (1991:78) defines that context is a general term in linguistics and phonetics

to refer to specific parts of an utterance (or text) near or adjacent to a unit (e.g., a sound, word) which is the focus of attention The occurrence of a unit is partly or wholly determined by its context, which is specified in terms of the unit‟s relations Blackburn (1984) offers a similar definition: “In linguistics, context is the parts of an utterance surrounding a unit and which may affect both its meaning and its grammatical contribution.”(p.80) However, he is quick to add that context also refers

to the “wider situation, either of the speaker or of the surroundings, that may play a part in determining the significance of a saying.”(p.80)

Following the previous studies, Nguyen Hoa (2000) states context consists of two components: the linguistic context (cotext) and the situational or extralinguistic context In that definition, cotext refers to the text surrounding a message This includes the textual elements that occur before and/or after a word, a phrase or even a longer utterance or a text The cotext often helps in understanding the particular meaning of the word, phrase, etc And situational context concerns the physical context

in which a message is conveyed It includes the type of communicative event, the topic, the purpose of the event, the setting, the participants and the relationships between them, and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event (Nunan, 1999) It is the broader social situation in which a linguistic item is used

On the whole, it is widely agreed that context has two aspects which are co-text (linguistic context) and situational context

Although linguistic context in language learning and teaching has been extensively discussed in the literature, not much has been said about the effectiveness both context types in language teaching and learning

Due to the small scale of the study, the author decided to use the term “minimal context” in the study, defined as co-text in a length of one sentence and non-linguistic context covering a minimal scope of the background knowledge of the participants in the communicative event

Regarding the term “minimal context”, Laufer and Shmueli (1997) are among the few researchers have used the term which is just defined as one meaningful sentence Recently, Webb (2007) has used the term “single-context sentence” in the study on the effect of a single-context sentence on vocabulary learning, of which he examined vocabulary learning in five dimensions: orthography, meaning and form, syntagmatic associations, paradigmatic associations, and grammatical functions In the two earlier studies, minimal context is just limited in the co-text type The findings of

these studies yielded not much benefit for a seeming reason of the limited context into co-text

There are some examples below illustrating the minimal context used to teach the word “tsunami”:

 Example 1:Non-linguisitc context

Japanese people were killed because of the tsunami on the March 11 th ,

1.1.2 Vocabulary

In foreign language teaching, it is crucial to know words, because every grammatical structure, every expression consists of them They play a very important role in communication

What is vocabulary? According to Thornbury (2000:1), vocabulary means (1) all the words that a person knows or uses; (2) all the words in a particular language; (3) all the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject; (4) a list

of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a foreign language Nash and Snowling (2006) describe vocabulary as “the knowledge of words and their

meanings” (p 336) While Sheehan (2002) states vocabulary is “the ability to understand and use words to acquire and convey meaning”

Generally, it is a wide agreement on vocabulary as a powerful carrier of meaning Besides, to know vocabulary of a topic, learners need have knowledge of that It is possible for a reader to know all the words in the passage and still not make any sense of it if he has no prior knowledge of the topic Thus, “word meanings are not just unrelated bits of information, but are part of a larger knowledge structures” (Stahl, 1999)

In short, for the purpose of the study, vocabulary is word meaning and its relation with background knowledge

1.2 OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN CONTEXT

1.2.1 Vocabulary implicit learning and explicit teaching

Recently, numerous studies have placed on much effort in discovering vocabulary acquisition and instruction, including implicit incidental learning, explicit teaching and independent learning strategies Of these research, some suggest accompanying implicit leaning with explicit teaching vocabulary be much beneficial

For the naturalistic approach to language teaching, implicit incidental vocabulary is favored, which emphasizes guessing the meaning from context and using monolingual dictionaries, whereas defining and translating lexical items are to be avoided For that, the meaning of a new word is acquired totally unconsciously as a result of abstraction from repeated exposures in a range of activated contexts This strong implicit position is usually identified with Krashen (1989) whose Input Hypothesis assumes that vocabulary acquisition takes place so long as there is comprehensible input as the essential environmental ingredient

However, many arguments report the ineffectiveness for focusing solely on

implicit learning coming from a number of potential problems associated with inferring words from context First, acquiring vocabulary mainly through guessing words in context is likely to be a very slow error-prone process Second, students, especially those with low-level proficiency, are often frustrated with this approach and it is difficult to undo the possible damage done by incorrect guessing (Sokmen, 1997) Third, even when students are trained to use flexible reading strategies to guess words

in context, their comprehension may still be low due to insufficient vocabulary knowledge Besides, guessing from context does not necessarily result in long-term retention Some studies have shown that students who were just doing extensive reading made smaller increases in word acquisition than those who read and completed accompanying vocabulary exercises Furthermore, putting too much emphasis on inference skills when teaching vocabulary belies the fact that individual learners have different strategies and styles of acquiring unfamiliar vocabulary Students with a large vocabulary are not necessarily good at inferring, they may use other means (Sokmen, 1997) As Coady (1997:226) and Schmidt (2000) investigate that the implicit learning

is still very limited and is not widely available to students around the world

Apparently, from the above-mentioned arguments, vocabulary acquisition cannot rely on implicit learning but needs to be controlled For contemporary approach

to vocabulary teaching, it is worthwhile to add explicit vocabulary instruction to implicit vocabulary learning An explicit vocabulary instruction whose learning hypothesis holds that a certain amount of consciousness must be involved in vocabulary acquisition, from the learner noticing novel vocabulary, selectively attending to and using a variety of strategies to trying to infer its meaning from the context (Gass,1999; Schmidt, 1990) may not only enhance the efficiency of implicit learning, but may also have an effect on students' learning strategies, and overall interest and motivation in learning words Schmidt (2000) confirms that in any well-structured vocabulary program there needs to be the proper mix of explicit teaching

and activities from which incidental learning can occur With rank beginners, it is probably necessary to explicitly teach all words until students have enough vocabulary

to start making use of the unknown words they meet in context

From the given discussion on vocabulary teaching instruction, the present study follows the current trend in teaching second language vocabulary which combines implicit learning and explicit teaching In details, for the students‟ language level, a planned vocabulary teaching which refers to deliberate, explicit and directed vocabulary teaching would be mainly used in the study It encompasses the use of teaching strategies such as ways in which teachers introduce and present the meaning and form of new words, encourage learners to review and practice, recycle, and evaluate the level of acquisition of vocabulary knowledge In the meantime, teachers

do not explicitly present target words but implicitly do by eliciting word meanings from given minimal context

1.2.2 Vocabulary teaching procedure

Teaching English vocabulary is an important area worthy effort and investigation Recently, methodologists and linguists emphasize and recommend teaching vocabulary because of its importance in language teaching Vocabulary is needed for expressing meaning and in using the receptive (listening and reading) and the productive (speaking and writing) skills Thornbury (2000) has his detail explanation on the vocabulary teaching stages and principles According to him, in order to have an effective vocabulary learning process, teaching vocabulary involves three stages: presenting, practicing and producing

1.2.2.1 Vocabulary selection

The first step in teaching vocabulary is to determine what words to teach They should be useful However, what is useful in one situation may be quite useless in another Therefore, the criteria given below depend on the particular teaching situation

Harmer (2001:154) provides the following general principles of vocabulary selection: the principle of frequency – words that are frequently used should be taught first, the principle of coverage – words that comprise more things and have no just one specific meaning are useful to be taught as first In addition to these principles, Gairns and Redman (1986:59) provide also cultural factors and the principle of need and level which are explained that learners have different lexical needs for different purposes, so

it helps motivate students to remember new words

It is crucial to consider the words to teach, however, in most English teaching programmes, the selection of useful words has already been done by the writer of the textbook

For the present study, a range of vocabulary items is selected in Vocabulary Section of the course book

1.2.2.2 Vocabulary presentation

The aim of the presentation stage is to establish the basic meaning and the correct form of the word in the learner‟s memory There are many ways to present the meaning of new items “Most of these are means which tend to be associated with more teacher-centered approach and consequently the items taught through these means are usually selected by the teacher rather than the learners” (Gairns & Redman, 1986:73) Regarding to presentation techniques, there are several ways to present new items, such as using translation, which is the most direct route to a word‟s meaning, illustrate meaning using pictures, mime or realia, appropriate to teach beginners; contextualizing, defining, giving synonyms, opposites and giving detailed descriptions which are suitable for advance learners Of these techniques, the majority of theorists favor placing vocabulary into a meaningful context Haycraft (1978) gives a simple and traditional blueprint, in which form is presented first, as follow:

a Whenever possible, teach the words in spoken form first, and only when students can pronounce them well, introduce the written form Otherwise, the students will always try and pronounce English words as if they were written in their own language,

b Try to present new words in context

c Revision is essential Blend words you have presented into later practice

Meanwhile, Thornbury (2000:75) recently proposes a number of options that ESL teachers should consider before presenting a set of words are the number of new words, sequence of presentation and means of presentation In detail, he states that (1) the number of words is constrained by factors such as word difficulty, but need not be limited to only a few words, (2) establishing the meaning of a new word first and then presenting its forms is a standard approach, (3) explaining meaning verbally is time-consuming but can be effective if explanations are kept clear and simple, (4) the spoken form can be highlighted through the giving of clear models, the use of phonemic scripts and repetition (5) by elicitation (Thornbury, 2000:30) it actively involves the learners in the lesson, maximizes speaking opportunities, keeps the learners alert and attentive, challenges better learners who might otherwise “turn off”

According to Višnja (2008), there are some frequent ways of presentation believed to involve learners‟ active participation although it is supposed that learners mostly receive linguistic facts passively when being taught preselected lexical items

Of them, there is presentation through context which is illustrated that “the teacher creates a situation in which he/ she clearly contextualizes the lexical item” Then learners guess the meaning on the basis of the cumulative effect of the sentences Moreover, to build a link between meaning and form, he states that learners need to be involved in the orthographic and phonological form of word, such as oral drill,

phonetic transcription and graphic presentation, etc Regarding the process of presentation of meaning and form, it is suggested presenting them in either order

For the current study, it investigates the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context which is a technique requiring the elicitation from the students, so the author would follow the meaning first presentation

In the present study, the author would follow the stages and the options suggested above to design the action plan of this study

VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT AND MINIMAL CONTEXT

There is a fair amount of literature on context effects and vocabulary teaching in context A number of ELT researchers have their different points of view on this issue

For one group, presenting vocabulary in context brings various advantages First, it is beneficial for lexical learning in context rather than in isolated forms such as word lists For example, Doye (1980, cited in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999, cited in Wang, 2005) suggested that new word should be presented in a semantically typical linguistic context which is useful to work out its meaning Beheydt (1987, cited

in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999, cited in Wang, 2005) further pointed out that thank

to the inherent polysemous versatility and context-dependent variation, the presence of new word in context is much advisable than that in isolation According to these statements, context makes words‟ meaning more salient with semantic or linguistic support Furthermore, the role of context represents not only morphological, syntactic,

or discourse information within the text, but also readers‟ background knowledge of the subject matter of a given text, or the general context (Nation & Coady, 1988; Scherfer, 1993; Parbakht & Weche, 1999)

Second, there are quite a few authors proving the process of inferring from context which has a good effect on vocabulary retention The literature review has been done by Nam (2010) He listed out a number of researchers such as Hulstijn (1992) who first confirmed the longer retention of target vocabulary items whose meanings were correctly inferred in context rather than explained by their synonyms, Joe (1995) who also supported that the retention of unfamiliar words in a text-based task that demanded a higher level of generativity; and recently Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) realizing that EFL students involved in a composition task could retain target words better than those engaged in a reading comprehension or fill-in task

Regarding the cognitive approach, Hulstijn (1992) demonstrated the viewpoint

of presenting vocabulary in context based on the two assumptions:

- When subjects have to infer or induce the solution of a problem, they will invest more mental effort than when they are given the solution to the problem

- Information that has been attained with more mental effort can later be better retrieved and recalled than information that has been attained with less mental effort

On the basis of these assumptions, one could construct a mental effort hypothesis, which predicts that the retention of an inferred word meaning will be higher than the retention of a given word meaning

Lastly, minimal contexts used to present new vocabulary items which are fun and related to students‟ knowledge, study and lives hopefully would create an effective teaching technique and involve the student participation

To some extent, it is better to present new words in context, however; other studies (e.g Laufer,1984; McKeown, 1985; Stip & Hulstijn, 1986; Stein, 1993) objected practically and pedagogically that context as an instructional method by itself

is considered to be ineffective and inefficient as a means of teaching new meanings It

is quoted that the context may appear quite helpful if one already knows what the word means, but it seldom supplies adequate information for a person who has no other knowledge about the meaning of the word Another disadvantage of context instruction

is that the inferring method has the inherent risk that learners will make wrong inferences and hence learn the wrong meaning Moreover, the inferring method only works well with learners who are at advanced level or have good problem-solving skills

Fortunately, many factors affecting learners‟ success in lexical inferencing studied have causes of the nature of the word and the text that contain the word (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Parry, 1993); the degree of textual information available

in the surrounding context (Dubin & Olshtain, 1993); the learner‟s ability to make use

of extra-textual cues (de Bot et al., 1997; Haastrup, 1991); the importance of the word

to comprehension of the text (Brown, 1993); the degree of cognitive and mental effort

involved in the task (Fraser, 1999; Joe, 1995); and the learner‟s attention to the details

in the text as well as his or her pre-conceptions about the possible meaning of the word (Frantzen, 2003) The factors discovered above are the valuable resource for designing the most appropriate minimal context to present new vocabulary

1.4 PREVIOUS STUDIES

Historically, there are a lot of studies on context use and effects on incidental vocabulary learning However, it is not much said about the effects of “minimal context” in vocabulary acquisition or effectiveness of deliberately presenting vocabulary in context or minimal context Only Laufer and Shmueli (1997), Webb (2007) and Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) are among the very few researchers studying this field

Laufer and Shmueli (1997) did a research in the relationship between memorization of new words (short-term and long-term) and four modes of vocabulary presentation and diverse languages of vocabulary glossing The four modes were words presented in (a) isolation, (b) in “minimal context” , (c) text context; and (d) in

“elaborated” text context, that is in the original text supplemented by clarifying phrases and sentences The result of the study revealed that words presented in lists and sentences were retained better than words presented in either type of texts This study was one of the first attempts to make distinction between vocabulary learning in a minimal context (where the target word appears in a single sample sentence) and in a text context

Another study that investigated the effect of a single-context sentence on vocabulary learning was Webb (2007), which compared two groups of learners who involving in learning words in glossed sentences and learning word-pairs task However, the result of this study did not yield much benefit Perhaps, it is due to he

examined vocabulary learning in five dimensions including orthography, meaning and form, syntagmatic, associations, paradigmatic associations and grammatical functions

Lastly, another research on the effect of three consecutive context sentences on EFL vocabulary learning by Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) proved the positive role for context sentences in vocabulary learning In that study, thirty-three Iranian EFL learners were asked to learn 20 challenging English words in two conditions They encountered half of the words in three consecutive sample sentences plus their Farsi equivalents and the other half merely with their Farsi equivalents devoid of any context sentences The results of both immediate and delayed post-tests revealed a positive role for context sentences in vocabulary learning It is proposed that successful vocabulary learning through context sentences could be attributed to the mixed effects of both context and frequency of occurrence

From these above overview, in any study of the effects of context, it would be worth investigating the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in context sentences in the specific condition of University of Commerce

1.5 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY

The above-mentioned discussion of related studies in the area concerning vocabulary teaching and learning by using minimal context, the minimal context, the teaching process serves to demonstrate how the present research could be fit into the existing literature

Firstly, a number of researches have just elaborated on the role of context in implicit teaching/ incidental learning vocabulary Meanwhile, there were merely a few investigations into the use of context in presenting new words in both implicit/ incidental and explicit/ intentional ways Therefore, the current study could play an important role in exploring this issue more thoroughly to enrich the literature

Secondly, among all the reviewed studies, only three by Laufer & Shmueli, 1997; Webb, 2007; Baleghizadeh & Shahry, 2011 were close to the present research Three of them examined the roles of minimal context in vocabulary acquisition and instruction For the small scale of the field research, it is essential for more study in teaching vocabulary in minimal context Moreover, not only did this study investigate the effects of minimal context on students‟ vocabulary learning but it also looked into the procedure of implementing the teaching technique which also created the frequency

of the encounter leaving more durable imprint on the minds of the learners (Baleghizadeh & Shahry, 2011) Therefore, the present study‟s inquiry was relevant and significant in the research field

Furthermore, all of the related studies simply based on the quantitative method Accordingly, in those investigations, there might be inevitably potential limitations of relying on a single approach Hence, the present study using both qualitative and quantitative data attempted to address this gap Moreover, the present research tried to discover the effect of the teaching techniques on students‟ motivation in vocabulary acquisition in the class which had not had studied previously

In addition, the subjects of the previous studies were learners at intermediate and advanced language levels who were exposed to new vocabulary in context Meanwhile, the present study tried to investigate the technique on students who were at low level of language

In general, with its own features in a different context, this research supported to bridge several existing gaps in the literature on vocabulary presentation and practice

through minimal context, and bring new perspective to the field

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides a description of the research implementation, including the participants of the study, the methods and procedures of data collection and data analysis accompanied by the researcher‟s justification

2.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The study was conducted at the University of Commerce training students in the field of commerce and economics Every year, a large number of high school pupils pass the university entrance examination to attend a 4 – year – training program which equips them with plenty of knowledge, skills and experience To meet the standard of higher education quality, the university provides six English courses in seven semesters

to students namely, English 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 For the basic and intermediate level, the first to third year students attend English 1.1 to 1.4 The fourth-year students attend English 1.5 and 1.6, which is English for specific purposes Regarding the course books used for English training program at VUC, the series of course book New Market Leader (elementary to intermediate level) are applied to English 1.1 to 1.4 New Market Leader is Business English course book designed by David Cotton, David Falvey, Simon Kent for businesspeople and students of business English It has been developed in association with the Financial Times, one of the leading sources of business information in the world Being aware of the importance

pre-of English, the university has been investing much in English study for their students

2.2 PARTICIPANTS

The participants of the study were 40 second-year students who are at the age of

20 (18 to 22 years old) and from suburban and rural areas Their English level was measured with the score range of English 1.1 in the previous semester from 5.5 to 7.0 (band 10) which is equivalent to 250-300 TOEIC score Because of studying basic economics before being exposed to English 1.2, these participants have already had

certain knowledge of basic economics, which was very advantageous for students to understand new words related to economic topics in English Besides, these participants were adults so they are notable for a number of special features (Harmer, 2001:40)

- These students can engage with abstract thought

- They have a whole range of life experiences to draw on

- They have expectations about the learning process, and may already have their own set patterns of learning

- Adults tend, on the whole, to be more disciplined than some teenagers, and crucially they are often prepared to struggle on despite boredom

- They come into classrooms with a rich range of experiences, which allow teachers to use a wide range of activities with them

- Unlike young children and teenagers, they often have a clear understanding of why they are learning and what they want to get out of it

The participants were classified according to the results of the English course‟s score in the previous semester The study started at the beginning of the third term Therefore, the participants had studied the New Market Leader – Elementary course book in the previous term

The researcher conducted the study herself at the E-commerce department

2.3 RESEARCH DESIGN

The study was aimed at improving the vocabulary teaching and learning at the University of Commerce by adapting a vocabulary teaching technique which new words were presented and practiced in minimal context Therefore, the author suggested using action research in the current study

Why is action research? Bassey (1998:93) describes “action research as an enquiry which is carried out in order to understand, to evaluate and then to change, in order to improve educational practice‟ Hopkins (2002: 41) maintains that „action research combines a substantive act with a research procedure; it is action disciplined

by enquiry, a personal attempt at understanding while engaged in a process of improvement and reform‟ From the definitions, Koshy (2005) summarizes the features

of action research, including:

Action research:

- involves researching your own practice – it is not about people out there;

- is emergent;

- is participatory;

- constructs theory from practice;

- is situation-based; can be useful in real problem-solving;

- deals with individuals or groups with a common purpose of improving practice;

- is about improvement;

- involves analysis,

- reflection and evaluation;

- facilitates changes through enquiry

2.3.1 Identifying initial problem

The initial problem refers to state of situation one wishes to change or to improve on (Elliot, 1991:72) In this study, the initial idea was thought that there would be an improvement on vocabulary knowledge by presenting and practicing target vocabulary in minimal context for the second-year students at the University of Commerce

Starting with the problem of students‟ low results in the previous semester which mainly examined the students‟ vocabulary and reading comprehension and

students‟ lack of vocabulary in expressing ideas in the English class (by observation of the class and discussion with other colleagues), the researcher decided to find more about the problem in vocabulary teaching and learning

The author conducted a questionnaire on common vocabulary teaching techniques among 40 teachers of English at Faculty of English, University of Commerce in order to be aware of what kinds of techniques they used to adopt, implying certain underlying reasons that results in distressing situation in teaching and learning English vocabulary

Figure 2.1: The frequency of adapting vocabulary teaching techniques

From the figure 2.1, a conclusion can be drawn from the responses to the questionnaire is that using translation was mostly employed among teachers In great contrast with these above high-frequency used techniques, teaching words in context or situations, definition, miming, or real things were almost neglected to some extent Only 15% of the teachers used the context in teaching vocabulary For the teacher who had used the context in teaching vocabulary, the author interviewed them to find out

how useful the technique was Of those teachers, three teachers responded that the technique was quite useful but another three revealed that their students were confused with guessing meaning from context And the students were not received much benefit much from the adaptation

Hence, from the preliminary, the author tried to discover and improve the process of presenting and practicing new vocabulary in minimal context The action plan in the form of improving vocabulary teaching and learning project was executed

in two weeks in the first semester of 2012 - 2013(five periods)

2.3.2.2 Minimal context

As Nunan (1989, cited in Sanderson, 1999:15) explains, the degree of the

difficulty of a text is affected by a number of factors These include the grammatical complexity of the text, the density of information, the degree of information recycling, the amount of low-frequency vocabulary, the explicitness of the information, the discourse structure, and whether or not information is presented in chronological order

In the meantime, the minimal context in the present study is in meaningful sentence which is not too challenging for students Moreover, the information used in the context is equivalent to the students‟ background knowledge, study and life

Therefore, it promises to create an authentic and interesting materials for students‟ motivation in vocabulary acquisition

2.3.3 Data collection methods

To address the research questions raised in the introduction, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were applied in order to reduce potential limitations of relying on a single approach and enhance confidence in the collected data as recommended by Nunan (1992) Quantitative method was favored because it could provide objective, quantifiable and generalized data (Bordens & Abbott, 1999) In the meantime, qualitative method was chosen for its “being close to their insider perspective” and “yielding real, rich and deep data” (Brown & Rodgers, 2002, p.103) Instead of simply answering how well, how much, and how accurately something is done, qualitative research would bring an in-depth and comprehensive understanding

of the phenomena (Bordern & Abbott, 1999) Hence, quantitative and qualitative methods could supplement each other (Firestone, 1987, as cited in Burnes, 1999)

The data were collected by three instruments, namely pretest and posttest, questionnaires, and observations This combination of various means of data collection established a triangulation to enhance data reliability and validity through multiple sources (Burns, 1994, as cited in Burnes, 1999) The data collection methods would be described in details below

2.3.3.1 Pre-test/ posttest

Baker (1989:3) shows that a test is a way of arriving at a meaningful decision Thus two major tests were constructed by the researcher to meet the aims of the current study which discovered the participants‟ achievement after the intervention The tests were drawn by the researcher to be answered by the second year non English major students at Vietnam University of Commerce

For the test validity and reliability, the pre-test and post-test were designed in

the form of Multiple choice Question (MCQs) Vocabulary test which was very popular for students at the Vietnam University of Commerce The students were familiar with the MCQs test in the previous semesters‟ examination According to Coombe Folse, & Hubley (2007), MCQs are one of the most common formats in professionally – developed language tests They are widely used to assess learning at the recall and comprehension levels MCQs take many forms but their basic structure is stem and response options, which include the key or correct answer and the distractors or incorrect responses The student must then identify the correct or best response choice Students construct meaning through dependence on the context clues that are provided

in the stem

For the test content, the author used test items from Test Master CD-ROM of New Market Leader – Pre-Intermediate, which were related to the unit themes: Careers, Selling online and Companies The test included 10 items selected from the three units of the intervention The vocabulary items consisted of three themes, namely: Careers, Selling Online and Companies The pretest and the post test were different in the vocabulary test items, however, these tested items were taken from the intervention

To find the degree of the students‟ achievement in each activity, from the test up to the post-test, the score of each students was calculated individually by using the following formula:

pre-The number of correct answer

teaching and learning process As it is believed that motivation is influenced by how interesting and relevant the learners perceive the activities and information or by a number of beliefs, values, interests and attitudes In this study, the observation sheet adapted from Nunan (1989) was used to assess overall class motivation generated by the studied technique of teaching vocabulary, as manifested by level of learner interest, enthusiasm, activity (effort/ intensity of application), concentration, and enjoyment during class (see Appendix) There were 7 items in observation sheet and each item was scored on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) 3 is an average mark for any one item The observation were taken after teacher‟s presenting new vocabulary in minimal context (phase 1) and during the students‟ practice time (phase 2)

2.3.3.3 Questionnaire

In this action research, the questionnaires were used at the start of the research

to collect baseline data on teachers and students‟ comment on vocabulary teaching techniques and at the end of the intervention to find out some additional information from students to support the data of the students‟ motivation For the follow-up questionnaire, it was used to support the primary data They were about:

1) The students‟ interest in the lessons during the action research

2) The advantages that the students gained after the intervention

2.3.4 Data collection procedure

In order to investigate the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary

in minimal context, an action research was applied to test the effectiveness of the vocabulary teaching technique

The intervention was implemented at Vietnam University of Commerce, in the first term of the 2012-2013 academic year for 2 weeks (from 13th August to 28thAugust) Before the intervention, twenty two new vocabulary items were selected from

the course book and twenty two minimal contexts containing the target words were designed according to the criteria explained in chapter 2

In the next step, a pre-test was given to the participants to determine students‟ word knowledge

The intervention was carried out in three periods (each period lasts 50 minutes)

In each lesson, the teacher would present five to eight target vocabulary items in minimal context, then involve them in the practice and production stages During the lesson, the teacher observed and used the observation sheet to find out students‟ participation

At the end of the intervention, a post test and a questionnaire were given to the participants The analysis of the post-test results was used to verify the first research question The questionnaire was to investigate the students‟ interest and motivation after vocabulary being taught through minimal context

The data was attained from the teaching and learning process One of the aims

of giving an evaluation was to know how far the students mastered the words given in this action research The analysis of each activity started from pre-test to post test, and the analysis of questionnaire and observation sheet

In terms of data obtained in the questionnaires, pretest and posttest scores they were condensed, quantified, analyzed and compared in the form of descriptive statics Then they were illustrated and systematized in charts and tables for clear description of the findings Besides, to compare the pretest and post test results as well as prove the success of the intervention, the author used SPSS software to calculate the paired sample t-test

Regarding the observation result, the observation of students‟ involvement and participation were analyzed, illustrated and described in charts

Lastly, all the data collected from the three instruments were grouped under

four main areas: students’ achievement, students’ motivation in learning new words

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents, compares, and contrasts the data from three different sources, namely pre test and post test, observation and questionnaires under three main areas These include students‟ achievement after the intervention, students‟ motivation in learning new vocabulary, which strictly correspond with the two research questions

3.1 STUDENTS’ IMPROVEMENT IN ACQUISITION OF THE TARGET

Figure 3.1 Results of the students’ pretest and posttest

To analyze the vocabulary test achievement, SPSS, and the paired-sample T test

of the pretest and posttest was used to obtain the results

Paired Samples Statistics

Mean N Std Deviation Std Error Mean Pair 1 pretest 15.75 40 11.068 1.750

Table 3.1 Means and Standard Deviations of the scores of the pretest and post test

The Table 3.1 reveals the means (M), number of cases (N), standard deviations (SD) and standard error of the means and the difference of the means of the two tests The mean of the pretest was found 15.57 which was much lower than that of the post test at 63.00 The standard deviations were 11.07 and 16.52 respectively

Paired Samples Correlations

N Correlation Sig

Pair 1 pretest & posttest 40 534 000

Table 3.2 Correlations of the pretest and posttest

Moreover, there was a moderate positive correlation (r = 534) and significance

value (p=.000) for the pretest and posttest which indicated that the students who did

well on the pre-test also did well on the post test

Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences

t df

Sig tailed) Mean Std Deviation

(2-Std Error Mean

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 pretest -

posttest -47.250 14.140 2.236 -51.772 -42.728 -21.134 39 .000

Table 3.3 Paired Sample T-Test

The table 3.3 shows clearly the results of comparing the mean scores of the pretest and post test The t value for the two variables was -21.13 and the significance value was 000 Meanwhile, the criterion for statistical significance at alpha is 05

As shown clearly in the above tables, the correlation coefficient (r = 534) is

relatively close to 1, and the significance level (p = 000) is very small (p < 05), so the

result indicates that the pretest and posttest were linearly correlated This means that the pretest and posttest were reliable and valid enough to test students‟ vocabulary

A paired sample t-test was conducted to compare the students‟ scores on the pretest and posttest after the treatment There were a significant difference in the score for the pretest (M= 15.75, SD=11.07) and the post test ( M=63.00, SD=16.52); t (40) =

-21.13, p = 000 (< 05) The finding implied that the students’ vocabulary knowledge

was improved after the treatment

However, there exited one student getting lower score in the post test than that

of the pretest That raised a question of any other effects on students‟ vocabulary retention during the teaching and learning process, which might have the result from inappropriate students‟ learning style, students‟ psychology and emotion in the test, etc.,

In short, the process of presenting and practicing new vocabulary brought about the improvement in students‟ word knowledge The students would have chance to figure out word meanings, then practice with them; as a result of the neatly process, students could remember/ recognize the new vocabulary, especially in context

3.2 STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN NEW VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

The second research question investigated the students‟ motivation in terms of students‟ attention, interest and involvement in the vocabulary acquisition when vocabulary was presented and practiced in minimal context The result would be illustrated by the data retrieved from class observation and the students‟ questionnaires

3.2.1 Data from the Observation

As stated earlier, the observation was completed at the end of each period The following discussions are for the mean scores of each period Figure 3.2 shows the overall class motivation collected by the observation sheets on three periods of the intervention The mean score of overall class motivation over three periods was 3.86 in the maximum score of 5.0

Figure 3.2 Class motivation during the lessons

Generally, overall class motivation was on increase in the three periods The mean score in period 1 was 3.86 out of a maximum possible of 5.0 indicated that the class was rather motivated as the whole But then, they were more and more motivated which was advocated by the increasing mean scores of 4.0 in the second period and 4.14 in the last period

Specifically, from the observation of the first phase, the observer recognized

the students’ involvement, interest, attention levels The above criteria are

clearly-illustrated as follows: