A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking. A case of the children in an English centre

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ---* * *--- TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG A STUDY ON THE ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

-* * * -

TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG

A STUDY ON THE ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY IN 10-YEAR- OLD VIETNAMESE CHILDREN’S ENGLISH SPEAKING: A CASE

OF THE CHILDREN IN AN ENGLISH CENTRE

(NGHIÊN CỨU SỰ KÉO THEO CỦA QUAN HỆ BỘ PHẬN- TOÀN PHẦN TRONG CÁCH NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA TRẺ EM VIỆT NAM 10 TUỔI: NGHIÊN CỨU TRÊN ĐỐI TƯỢNG HỌC SINH CỦA MỘT TRUNG TÂM

TIẾNG ANH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Code: 6014.0111 Supervisor: Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha

HANOI, 2015

CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking A case of the children in an English centre” is my own study in the fulfillment of the

requirement for the Degree of Master at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Hanoi, 2015

Tran Lan Huong

I also wish to thank the manager, the students and teachers at Amslink Centre, whose knowledge, experience, and supports directed me through my study

A very special thank goes out to my friends, without whose support, motivation and encouragement I would not have such patience and determination in fulfilling this study I would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life and especially this hard time of preparation for graduation

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking The data was taken from the observation

of 33 Vietnamese students at the age of ten and 3 native teachers

The results show two types of the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking: the first is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation

of meronymy and the second is the lack of one of properties of meronymy The first one is more popular to cause the entailment of meronymy

Moreover, the study also indicates how teachers responded to children’s entailments of meronymy and goes to the conclusion that most of time teachers ignored these or sometimes just gave very simple feedback when what children said was too unreasonable

TABLE OF CONTENT

CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES vi

PART A INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Research questions 2

3 Scope of the research 2

4 Organization of the thesis 2

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW 4

I MERONYMY 4

1 Definition of meronymy 4

2 Characteristics of meronymy 6

2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Meronymy 6

2.2 Properties of Meronymy 7

3 Types 8

3.1 Component – integral 9

3.2 Member – collection 10

3.3 Portion- Mass 10

3.4 Stuff- Object 11

3.5 Feature- Activity 12

3.6 Place- Area 12

II CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 13

1 Language acquisition 13

2 Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking 15

2.1 The definitions of feedback 15

2.2 Types of feedback 16

III RELATED STUDIES 18

1 Meronymy………

2 Children language acquisition………

CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23

I THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 23

1 Teaching methodology 23

2 The students’ learning conditions 23

II PARTICIPANTS 24

III METHODOLOGY 25

1 Instrument 25

2 Data analysis methods 26

CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 28

I THE FREQUENCY OF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY 29

1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy 29

1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy 29

1.2 Non-meronymic relations 33

1.2.1 Attribution 33

1.2.2 Topological inclusion 34

1.2.3 Possession/ Ownership 35

2 The lack of properties of meronymy- Motivation 36

II TEACHERS’ FEEDBACK 38

1 The frequency of teachers’ feedback to entailment of meronymy 38

2 Types of feedback 39

PART C CONCLUSION 42

1 Recapitulation 42

2 Limitation 43

3 Suggestion for further study 43

REFERENCES 45

APPENDIX 1 OBSERVATION DATA 48

APPENDIX 2 STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK

CENTRE 54

LIST OF TABLES

1 Table 1: Six types of meronymic relation with relation elements …… 8

LIST OF FIGURES

1 Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)……… 16

2 Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006) ……… 17

3 Figure 3: The frequency of entailment of meronymy ……… 26

4 Figure 4: The teachers’ reaction to the students’ use ……… 36

LIST OF PICTURES

1 Picture 1: Classroom’s view ……… .50

2 Picture 2: Classroom’s equipments ……… 50

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Linguistics, the scientific study of language, is of all “the social sciences with the greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15) There have been different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is one of them When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with other lexical items, the theory of lexical semantics is met This approach posits two different, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to the physical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding between the linguistic elements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations

Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands of philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second language educators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involve words, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature that approaches the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives Still, the core semantic relation of every knowledge organization system is hierarchy There are two kinds of hierarchic relations that should be distinguished: hyponymy (is-a relation) and meronymy (part-of relation)

In the way meronymy is currently applied in real life, especially by children, different kinds of meronymy are sometimes misleadingly summed up into one general part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make some types of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation about their entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking; therefore; the analysis of these in general and in the context of Vietnam in particular is really necessary This study is a theoretical approach to some knowledge of meronymy in general and the

transitivity of meronymy in particular to clarify some entailment of meronymy concerning transitivity of Vietnamese children

2 Research questions

The study’s primary aim is to investigate the use of meronymy in English communication classes of 10-year-old students And then the researcher will try to analyze the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking and investigate how teachers responded to children’s use of meronymy

This final goal is specified in the following research questions:

1 What are the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese 10-year-old children’s English speaking?

2 How do teachers respond to students’ entailment of meronymy?

3 Scope of the research

Due to the limited time and knowledge, it will be not wise to cover all aspects of meronymy like its relationship with other semantic relations, the benefits

of transitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion

in information retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail, etc Moreover, it is also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy

in children’s English speaking Conversely, my study just emphasizes on one aspect

of meronymy- transitivity and some outstanding use related to this aspect of meronymy of 10- year- old children

4 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of three parts:

Part A – Introduction comes to the general introduction including the

rational, and the purposes of the present study

Part B – Development: this part comprises of three chapters:

overview of the literature in which relevant theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning meronymy It reviews the research

background and discusses the characteristics of meronymy, and then the transitivity of meronymy

 Chapter 2 – Research Method continues with the research method including

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

 Chapter 3 – Findings and Discussion demonstrates the findings

accompanied by data analysis and discussion

Part C – Conclusion recapitulates the major findings of the study and then it

discusses the limitations of the present study and puts forward some suggestions for the further study on meronymy

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW

I MERONYMY

An interesting and crucial type of semantic relation, expressed in language,

“is the relation between the parts of things and the wholes which they comprise”

(Winston et al 1987:417) This semantic relation has been lexicalized in many languages and can be used appropriately in some contexts and not in others (Chaffin 1992:255) Moreover, meronymy or part-whole relations turn out not to be simple, probably because there is no single meronymic relation but there are several different ones and each having their own semantic properties instead

The nature of meronymy has been, and still, particularly controversial Sometimes it is treated as fundamental, sometimes it is treated as a complex relation derived from other relations, and sometimes ignores altogether The present chapter

is an attempt to present a complete picture, as much as possible, of meronymy in English by adopting the appropriate model that best explicates its nature, more specifically the transitive nature of meronymy

1 Definition of meronymy

In terms of etymology, the term meronymy stems from the Greek “mero” which means “part” (The Oxford University Dictionary Illustrated, 1968: 1237) The term meronymy is not part of the available traditional resources of semanticist Perhaps this term was first used by Miller and Johnson- Laird (1976:242) while Winston et al (1987) recommended another term “partonymy” Although it can be named in different ways, the definition of meronymy is not new and it has long been regarded as one of the constitutive principles in the organization of the vocabulary of all languages

Meronymy is also defined as a structural sense/ semantic relation holding between lexical items denoting parts (meronyms) and that denoting their corresponding wholes (holonyms) Many linguistics supported this mentioned

notion of meronymy such as Lyons (1977: 311-314), Eikmeyer& Reiser (1981: 134), Halliday (1985: 312), Grains & Redman (1986:29), Sa’eed (1997:70), Kearns (2000:131-133), Finch (2000: 169), Murphy (2003: 218) Cruse (1979, 1986, 2000)

also defended the same conception “(X) is a meronymy of (Y) if and only if sentences of the form A (Y) has (X)s/ an (X) and An (X) is a part of (Y) are normal when the noun phrases interpreted generically” However, with this definition,

Cruse digged up deeply extracting test-frames to pin down a cohesive core group of relations comprising an ideal, or central meronymic relation which is too restricted The two- part test leaks two different frames The first one relates to irrelevant pairs while the other excludes relevant ones This contrast is compromised by the

solution offered by Cruse in the following frame: “The parts of a (Y) includes the (X)/(X)s, the (Z)/ (Z)s…”

As for Winston et all (1987), they demonstrated that it can express meronym relations using the word part or its derivation, including any of the following test- frames: (X) is a part of (Y), (Y) is partly (X), (X)s are parts of (Y)s, and so on

Croft & Cruse (2004) took the “construal and constraints” approach in which meronymy is regarded as a relation between contextually construed meanings or more precisely, by pre-meanings created by boundary construal This approach

presents the following characterization of meronymy, “ If A is a meronym of B in a particular context then any member of the extension of A either maps onto a specific member of the extension of B of which it is construed as a part, or it stands potentially in a intrinsically construed relation of part to some actual or potential member of B” (Croft & Cruse, 2004: 160) From the viewpoint of this approach, the

problem with meronymy originates from the fact that the part- whole relation does not hold between construed classes of elements, but between specific individuals belonging to those classes Furthermore, in the case of meronymy, unlike hyponymy, a part-whole relation between two entities is itself a construal, subject to

a range of conventional and contextual constraints

It seems that every part has its own story, and all the above-mentioned notions are not false as each notion is valid to some extents It can be said that meronymy is the lexical relation between a lexical item denoting a part and that

denoting the corresponding whole This will be considered as the working definition for this study Meronymy reflects the result of division of analysis of an entry into

parts or components in that the relation between the whole and its component is called Meronomic relation

2 Characteristics of meronymy

2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Meronymy

In order to construct a well-built meronymy, the principle of type consistency of Croft & Cruse (2004: 153) should be counted: “The relevant notion

of type is difficult to pin down here One aspect is usually called ontological type There’s no agreement on a basic ontology, but the sort of thing referred to by Jakendoff (1983), namely, THING, STATE, PROCESS, EVENT, TIME, PLACE, and so on seems relevant to parts” It means that the parts of a period of time should themselves be periods of time; the parts of an event should be sub-events Meronymy is the semantic relation existing between a lexical item denoting a part and an item denoting the corresponding whole Therefore, the relationship among elements in Meronym is also in the same general type If one element in a meronymy denotes a cohesive physical object, then the other items in the set must too For instance, “weight” of a “body” does not figure among its parts In addition,

if one item refers to geographical area, all the others must do (hence Westminster Abbey is not a part of London); if one item is abstract noun, the others must be as well (e.g “high” is impossible to be a part of “body”)

The rule of type consistency justifies the existence of numerous limited meronomies, instead of a single one, with universe as its origin and at the lower bounds some sort of subatomic particle or particles This phenomenon is also linked

to boundary demarcation of ultimate wholes & part

The division of parts into segmental and systemic is another dimension of consistency illustrated by Croft & Cruse (2004:154) If a whole is divided into separable, spatially or perceptually cohesive parts, these will be referred to as segmental parts In such a division, items of a lexical hierarchy correspond to real-life objects which stand in a relation of segmental parts to the whole An alternative

approach is a division into systemic parts, which “have a greater functional unity, a greater consistency of internal constitution, but they are spatially inter- penetrating” (Cruse, 1986) Divisions of this kind are not so easily perceptually

accessible, but they are as valid as the former type Every good taxonomic hierarchy must keep a constant principle of hierarchy and avoid mixing them Thus a plant must be either divided into segmental parts, such as root, stem, leaves (further divisible into a leaf stalk or petiole, and a blade or lamina), flower, etc., or into systemic parts, such as the vascular tissue (mainly xylem and phloem), stele or vascular cylinder, cortex, stem cambium, epidermis, endodermis, photosynthetic tissue, and other specialized cellular systems

2.2 Properties of Meronymy

Cruse stated in his book (2000) that there are four properties of Meronymy Necessity: some parts are necessary for the wholes and some are optional: e.g an engine is a necessary part of a car; a moustache is an optional part of a male’s face

Integrality: some parts are more integral to their wholes than others: e.g handle as part of a door & the hand as part of an arm

Discreteness: some parts are more easily divided from their sister parts than others: e.g an engine can be easily taken from a car Other parts, such as the tip of the tongue, the lobe of the ear are less clearly separated A more discrete a part is, the more prototypical the meronyms is

Motivation: parts have an identifiable function of their own with respect to their wholes: e.g the handle is for grasping and opening and closing the door, the wheels are for the car to move smoothly, etc

3 Types

Meronymy also divided into different kinds Cruse (1986) distinguished two subtypes of Meronymy: necessary Meronyms (ear-body) and optional Meronyms (beard-face) to show some object were the direct parts of the whole, while some were attached parts Additionally, Chaffin & Herrmann (1987) explored the relation elements and suggested six types of Meronymy Winston et al (1987) considered the function, homeomeria and separability to interpret the types of meronymy relation, which is shown in the following table

Table 1: Six types of meronymic relation with relation elements

Note: Functional (+)/ Nonfunctional (-): Parts are/are not in a specific spatial/temporal position with respect to each other which supports their functional role with respect to the whole

Homeomerous (+)/ Nonhomeomerous (-): Parts are similar/dissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong

Separable (+)/ Inseparable (-): Parts can/cannot be physically disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected

The differences among the six types of meronymic relations are indicated by the values of three relation elements that summarize characteristic properties of the relations Meronymic relations differ in three main ways: whether the relation of part

to the whole is functional or not, whether the parts are homeomerous or not, and whether the part and whole are separable or not Functional parts are restricted, by their function, in their spatial or temporal location

3.1 Component – integral

This is the relation between the components and the objects they belong to The components are in a specific spatial/temporal position with respect to each other which supports their functional role with respect to the whole However, they are dissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong and cannot be physically disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected

For example:

 The brake is a part of a car

 The cupboard is a part of the kitchen

 The roof is a part of a house

Integral objects always display some types of certain organizations or structures Their components are also patterned and often have particular structural and functional connection with one another and to the wholes that they belong to The specific characteristics of integral wholes are defined by these structural relationships and it is not able to randomly arrange their components- components

but must put them into a certain patterned organization within the wholes which they comprise

3.2 Member – collection

Member- collection type corresponds the membership in a collection Members are parts that do not play any functional part with regard to their whole, but they cannot be splitted from collection

 A tree is part of forest

 A juror is part of a jury

 This ship is part of a fleet

Membership in a collection is not similar to componenthood because it does not require a specific function or structural arrangement of member performance in relation to each other and to their whole

Collection whose members are determined by social connection are generally referred as “group” This relationship is often expressed by the phrase

“a/the member of” For example:

 Vietnam is the member of Asian

 China is a member of WTO

“homeomerous” It means that they have parts which are similar to each other and

to the whole which they belong to while components and members can be different from each other and dissimilar to the wholes which they comprise For example,

 This slice is a part of the pie

 A yard is a part of a mile

 He gave me a part of his orange

As can be seen from the example, every portion is the orange is “orange” and

is the same as each other part and to the whole orange while a window is also a part

of the house, however, it is not similar to the other components of the house and of course, not like the house

Because the portions of masses are flexible, means of standard measures can

be used to divided and apportion masses such as inches, ounces, gallons, hours and

so on As Behr et al., 1986 note, the portion- mass relation thus forms the basis for the arithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

3.4 Stuff- Object

Stuff- Object is the only type of meronymic relation that has none of three relation elements that summarize characteristic properties of relation Stuffs are not part by virtue of any functional contribution to the whole, the parts are not homeomerous and the part and the whole are not separable This type is most often expressed using the “is partly” frame, as in;

 The bike is partly steel

 The table is partly wood

 The cake is partly eggs

This frame is expresses the idea that a particular type of substance constitutes

a portion of the total stuff of which something is made When something is made of

a single stuff, “is partly” cannot be used Instead, the relation must be expressed by

“made of” as in;

 The lens is made of glass

 The lens is partly glass

The stuff- object type is different from the component- object type based on the popular argument standard The component is the answer for the question

“What are its parts?” while the stuff is used to answer the question “What is it made of?” However, in some cases, it is not easy to distinguish stuffs from components, especially when the object is a homogeneous mixture, for example, salad Is lettuce

a component or one of the stuffs of the salad? The values of three-relation element

can be helpful in these cases The components can be physically separated from an object without altering its identity, whereas the stuff of which a thing is made can not because the lettuce is possible to be removed from a salad, it is not a stuff, it is a component

3.5 Feature- Activity

Features are in a special spatial/ temporal position with respect to each other that supports their functional role with respect to the activity However, features are dissimilar to each other and to the whole activity to which they belong to and features cannot be physically disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected

The existence of this fifth type of meronymic relation is indicated by the use of

“part” to designate the features or phrases of activities and processes, for example;

 Paying is part of shopping

 Test is part of studying

 Dating is part of adolescence

Cruse( 1986: 160- 165) determines that unlike the types of meronymy discussed thus far, sentences of the type “X has Y” and similar locutions can not be used to reveal the feature- activity relation, such as;

 Shopping has paying

 Studying has test

 Adolescence has dating

3.6 Place- Area

The last type of meronymy is the relation between areas and special places and locations within them, for instance;

 Hanoi is a part of Vietnam

 An oasis is a part of a desert

 The baseline is part of a tennis court

Parts in this type are not in a special spatial/ temporal position with respect to each other that supports their functional role with respect to the whole like the

member of collection In addition, similar to the portion- mass relation, the area- place relation is homogeneous; every place within an area is relatively similar to every other and to the whole area Nevertheless, different from portions of masses, places cannot be set apart from the areas of which they are a part

In general, each relationship differs from the other basic types of meronymy, though it does give one kind of answer to the question “What are its parts?” because

of the nature of the variation of the connection between a whole and its parts The variation is captured by the three elements that were used in Table 1 to summarize the differences between the types of meronymy The connection of part to whole differs depending on whether the part is functional, homogeneous, and separable In this paper, the Winston classification is used as a criterion for building the training corpus

to provide a wide coverage of such subtypes of part-whole relations

II CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1 Language acquisition

Language learning is one of the most fascinating aspects of human development, hence undoubtedly attracts much scientific attention Following are three central theoretical positions: the behaviorist, the innatist, and the interactionist views on language acquisition

The behaviorist position: Behaviorists believes that children learn language

through imitation and habit formation According to them, the quality and quantity

of the Language input to which the child is exposed have an influence on the child’s language development processes which include imitation and practice This view offers a partial understanding of how children learn simple aspects of language However, the behaviorists failed to give a rational explanation for the more complex grammatical structures

The innatist position: Noam Chomsky views the ability to learn language as

an innate one He claims “children are biologically programmed for language” According to Chomsky, imitation and practice cannot build up language system successfully because children are often exposed to the language environment filled

with confusing information or even insufficient language source Parental corrections are inconsistent with a focus on meaning Therefore, he claims that children have an innate ability called a language acquisition device at first or later

on Universal Grammar to derive the rules of a language system themselves other than their mere imitation, practice, and reinforcement Universal Grammar is considered to consist of a set of principles which are common to all languages If the children are born with universal grammar, they just have to learn how the principles work in their mother tongue and in foreign languages that they are learning (Chomsky 1981) Chomsky’s ideas are supported by biological studies and the critical period hypothesis which suggests that the language acquisition in particular and biological functions in general only works perfectly only when it is timely stimulated in a certain period

Vygotsky’s social development theory: Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet

psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle At the core of Vygotsky’s theory (also known as Cultural-Historical theory)

is the idea that child development is the result of interactions between children and their social environment These interactions involve people—parents and teachers, playmates and schoolmates, brothers and sisters Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development He states, "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)"

Vygotsky also posited a concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, which is the distance between a student's ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/ or with peer collaboration and the student's ability solving the problem independently According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in this zone

Three points of view mentioned above have explained a different aspect of children’s language development in turn: the first one explains the routine aspects,

the second deals with the acquisition of complex grammar, and the last one explains the way how children can relate form and meaning, how they interact, and how they use language properly

Of all these points of view, the social development theory has been adopted

to shed light for the study Unlike other approaches, this emphasizes the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults, reinforcement and feedback in language acquisition These are the base and the light for the research when investigating children’s use during communication with each other Specifically, it asserts that much of a child's linguistic growth stems from modeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very frequently provide instructive correction

2 Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking

2.1 The definitions of feedback

In the context of teaching and learning languages, there are a large number of feedback definitions Littlewood (1981) and Lewis (2002) both equaled feedback with telling learners about their progress and showing them their errors in order to guide them to areas for improvement Different in words but similar in nature, Ur (1996, p.242) proposed, “Feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance.” It is clearly seen that these two definitions treated this terms under a broad point of view since they just indicated that learners are the ones to receive feedback without showing who are the ones to give it However, in Ferris (1999), feedback was viewed as “any response a teacher may give his or her students” (cited in Do, 2009, p.16)

Obviously, the point that all the above-mentioned definitions have in common is the purpose of providing feedback, i.e for learner’s improvement Accordingly, there are two matters loomed Firstly, question of quality of feedback comes into considerable concern The second thing is the distinction between feedback and criticism as Robert (2003) proposed in his study: “Feedback should only ever be used

as a basis for improvement It should not be mistaken for negative criticism and vice verse.” (p.12) Supporting Robert (2003)’s idea, Bound (2000) pointed out significant difference between feedback and criticism Whereas, “A good feedback is given without personal judgment or opinion, given based on the facts, always neutral and objective, constructive and focus on the future”, “criticism is personal, fault finding, very subjective, usually destructive, involve emotion, and past oriented” (p.7)

In another way, as opposed to feedback that is aimed to give sincere input to someone in order for him/ her to improve him/ herself, criticism is given for the negative purpose and in improper way In the nutshell, feedback provision can be among peers or between teachers and students; however, feedback concerned in this study is viewed in the notion of teaching-learning act between teachers and students 2.2 Types of feedback

So far, the researcher could find various ways of categorizing feedback types Firstly, from the viewpoint of Brookhart (1998), feedback falls into four general types that are shown in this following chart:

Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)

to correct their reasoning, and how to move forward in the learning process

Summarize students’

achievement and measure it with score or grade

Encourage and support students to make them feel good

Another way of classifying feedback that is shown in the graph below is found in Crane’s study (2006)

Apart from corrective and evaluate feedback shown clearly above, there are some other related names shown as the followings

Positive vs Negative/ Corrective feedback

As for Mc.Namara (1999) and Anyon (2001), positive feedback shows students that teachers are interested in what they say and at the same time encourage them In contrary, negative one expresses teachers’ displeasure, frustration or involves some kinds of punishment Corrective feedback, as it name tells, is used to correct students’ mistake

Direct/explicit vs Indirect/ implicit feedback

In Bitchener et al (2005), it was stated that direct or explicit feedback means that teachers identifies an error and provides the correct form, while indirect or implicit feedback refers to the situation when teachers point out an error without correct form provision

Verbal vs Non-verbal feedback

the correct

or desired response

Correct and include relevant information about the context of the correct response is labeled explanatory

Explain the source of the incorrect response by comparison with common use

Provide related information designed to enhance and extend the learner’s knowledge acquisition

Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006)

In Long (1996), verbal feedback which is presented in a form that is spoken

or capable of being spoken concerns not only phrases used but also tone of voice Accordingly, non-verbal feedback refers to the one made in silence with cues like facial expressions For example, question mark can be shown in both teacher’s face and voice

S: I go yesterday

T: (T turns face to the side a bit and frowns) go?

S: Oh Yes I went yesterday.(Adapted from Nguyen et al., 2003)

Clearly enough, the formal one (“turn face to the side a bit and frowns) is non-verbal feedback whereas the later (“go” with rising tone) is oral Simply put, feedback which can be called oral must be in utterances

Basically, there are no distinctive differences among those types of feedback However, to see clearly how teachers give feedback in this thesis, the researcher will use the viewpoint of Crane as the working classification which seems to be more detailed

III RELATED STUDIES

The logical/ philosophical studies of meronymy were concerned with formal theories of parts, wholes and their relation in the context of formal ontology This school of thought advocates a single, universal and transitive part-of relation used for modeling various domains such as time and space Simon (1986) criticized this

standard extensional view and proposed a more adequate account that offers an axiomatic representation of the part-of relation as a strict partial-ordering relation The axioms considered were: existence (if A is a part of B then both A and B exist), axymmetry (if A is a part of B then B is not a part of A), supplementary (if A is a part of B then B has a part C disjoint of A), and transitivity (if A is a part of B and

B is a part of C then A is a part of C) In 1991, Simon (1991) added two more axioms: extensionality (objects with the same parts are identical) and existence of mere logical sum (for any number of objects there exists a whole that consists exactly of those objects)

Linguistics researchers focused on different part-whole relations and their role as semantic primitives Winston, Chaffin and Hermann (1987) determined six types of part-whole relation and proposed three relation elements (functional, homogeneous and separable) to further classify these types This classification was used in the article of Morton E Winston, Roger Chaffin (Trenton State College) and Douglas Herrmann (Hamilton College) in Cognitive Science number 11 in

1987 They explained the ordinary English-speakers’ use of the term “part of” and its cognates Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion relations This taxonomy is then used to explain cases of opponent intransitivity in metrological syllogisms, and standard form syllogisms whose premises express different inclusion relations The data suggest that intransitivity arises due to equivocations between different types of semantic relations

Recently, meronymy has got more attention when there have been more researches related to meronymy in a specified language For example, in 2000, Harriet E Manelis Klein at Montclair State University wrote the article “Meronymy

or Part-whole relations on indigenous languages of lowland South America” in which he provided examples of how these part-whole relations were expressed in eighteen languages, belonging to eleven families, all of which were found in the geo- political areas of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru Dr Misbah M D Al-Sulaimaan & Amal Y Muhammed conducted the

research “Meronymy in Arabic- A semantic study” which dealt with data set taken from Arabic to test hypotheses concerning the nature of meronymy in English

The previous studies are good reference to see the nature of meronymy and meronymy in different languages However, in these researches, the data was not taken from real conversations but just examples related to meronymy were analyzed In this study, the researcher would like to investigate meronymy and its transitivity in real life, especially in Vietnam but not on theory

2 Language acquisition

The early studies of classroom language shared a number of common assumptions, drawn from work in sociolinguistics For example, sociolinguists hold that differences in oral communication reflect social variables, such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and age When children enter school, their mode of oral communication has been influenced by these factors; they also already work within

a communication system, which consists of language structure (sound structure, inflection, syntax), content (meaning), and use (purposes of communication, appropriate forms of communication) Knowledge about meaning, language functions (pragmatics), discourse genres, and more complex syntax continue to develop during schooling and into adulthood (Scott, 1995)

Continuity between language use in school and at home is also an issue in children’s development of classroom communicative competence Most of the research on emergent literacy has been conducted with children from print-rich homes that identify with the dominant, school-oriented culture, where parent-child interactions provide experiences similar to classroom interactions Through these experiences, children are motivated to learn about literacy events, functions, artifacts, forms (e.g., sound and letter names), and conventions before they learn to read and write (Morrow, 1993; van Kleeck, 1990, 1995, 1998; van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) And, just as formal schooling facilitates students’ acquisition of academic information, early parent-child communication typically involves information exchange (see, e.g., Cherry, 1979;

Ervin-Tripp, 1977)- though while teachers typically evaluate students’ responses, parents do not often do so (Cherry, 1978)

Thus, some children enter school knowing how to use language for a variety

of school-like purposes They have expectations about classrooms But not all students know the rules of the game, and some have difficulty learning how to participate appropriately These children may also have less experience with a variety of literacy functions and forms Since participation in school activities (such

as reading aloud, question-and-answer exchanges with teachers, or evaluation of discourse contributions) determines access to learning, educational failure may result for students who lack or have difficulty acquiring classroom communicative competence

Other difficulties may result from differences in communicative patterns among students and teachers who come from different cultural backgrounds During the past decade, as waves of immigration altered classroom demographics and special education programs received greater emphasis, diversity among learners has dominated sociolinguistic research in the United States Studies focused on

 Second-language (L2) acquisition and its impact on literacy learning (e.g., August & Hakuta, 1997 [online document], 1998 [online document]; Gutierrez-Clellen, 1998)

 African American dialect differences and effects of variations on reading, writing, and classroom participation (e.g., Delpit, 1988, 1992; Scott & Rogers, 1996; Seymour, Bland-Stewart, & Green, 1998; Seymour & Roeper, 1999; Tharp, 1994)

 Promoting literacy learning in children and youth with atypical language development, including L2 learners (e.g., Palincsar & Klenk, 1992, 1993; Palincsar, Parecki, & McPhail, 1995; Ruiz, 1995; Wallach & Butler, 1994)

To minimize the possibility of mistaking differences in discourse styles and dialect use for cognitive and linguistic problems, teachers and other education professionals need to pool their expertise The research suggests that students’

development as competent learners and communicators requires that educators understand discourse and dialect differences and the social and cultural practices that children from culturally and linguistically diverse groups bring to school

CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

I THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

The study was conducted at Amslink English centre which is founded and operated by a group of students who graduated from English specialized class of Hanoi Amsterdam High School and spent time learning, training and graduated with Master degrees in European countries Based on the knowledge and experience gained from studying, researching and teaching at Hanoi Amsterdam and a number

of universities specializing in foreign languages in Vietnam as well as in many other countries in the world and working for multi-national corporations in the field

of education, the founders of Amslink wish to develop the idea of creating a friendly and high quality English-teaching environment for Vietnamese kids and teenagers

1 Teaching methodology

The centre is providing both basic and intensive English courses with the aim

to improve Vietnamese students’ English proficiency in the most effective way It is wished to equip the students with best skill sets to prepare for their future international academic, especially Grammar to provide students with the comprehensive and in-depth knowledge about English Proficiency in Grammar skill would provide the students a strong base for applying other communicative skills, especially when the students do not have a ready environment to practice their language skill on a daily basis In the courses, students are exposed to a variety

of grammatical structures, thousands of vocabulary words in context

However, there is a very important and unique point that makes the courses

of the center completely different from most of secondary schools and centers in Hanoi It is the combination of Grammar classes with Communicative classes that will provide students a strong base for mastering English for academic purposes and

to work in high standard international environment

2 The students’ learning conditions