The effect of contextualized vocabulary presentation on 10th form students’ English vocabulary acquisition. An action research at To Hieu High school, Hai Phong

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The research is aimed to explore the effectiveness of contextualized vocabulary presentation on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention.. Because

FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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ĐẶNG THỊ HƯƠNG

THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUALIZED VOCABULARY

VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AN ACTION RESEARCH

AT TO HIEU HIGH SCHOOL, HAI PHONG

ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TRONG NGỮ CẢNH TỚI VIỆC TIẾP THU TỪ VỰNG CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI

TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG TÔ HIỆU, HẢI PHÒNG

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60-14-10

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

……… ***………

ĐẶNG THỊ HƯƠNG

THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUALIZED VOCABULARY

VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AN ACTION RESEARCH

AT TO HIEU HIGH SCHOOL, HAI PHONG

ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TRONG NGỮ CẢNH TỚI VIỆC TIẾP THU TỪ VỰNG CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI

TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG TÔ HIỆU, HẢI PHÒNG

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60-14-10

Supervisor: Dr Lê Văn Canh

HA NOI- 2011

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Literature review

1.1 Definition of contextualized vocabulary presentation 5 1.2 A contextualized presentation to vocabulary acquisition 6 1.3 Previous studies on contextualized vocabulary presentation 8

1.9 Vocabulary in English textbook for 10th form non- English major students 18

Chapter 2: Methodology

Chapter 3: Data analysis and discussion

3.2.1 Students‟ opinions of the usefulness of contextualized vocabulary

3.2.4 Preference of contextualized vocabulary activities and exercises 30 3.2.5 The help of contextualized vocabulary presentation to word retention and

APPENDIX 1: English vocabulary test I

APPENDIX 2: The vocabulary items presented through minimal contexts Lesson 1 V

APPENDIX 5: The students‟ vocabulary performance in post-tests X

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND LIST OF TABLES

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

Table 1.2: Components of a theory of learning words from context

Table 2.1: Differences between Action Research and Formal Research 21

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

Considering the crucial role attributed to vocabulary learning in second or foreign language learning, one can implicitly understand the importance of vocabulary teaching as well In the past, vocabulary teaching and learning were often given little priority in second language programs, but recently there has been a renewed interest in the nature of vocabulary and its role in learning and teaching (Richards & Renandya, 2002: 255).A number of research studies have dealt with lexical problems, namely, problems which language learners face in vocabulary learning The research findings have revealed that lexical problems frequently interfere with communication As a matter of fact, communication breaks down when people do not use the right words (Allen, 1983:5)

It is also generally accepted that second or foreign language learners who possess good word power or knowledge of vocabulary are usually more successful language learners Simply put, people with large vocabularies are more proficient users of the target language than those with limited vocabularies In fact, there is usually a positive correlation between one‟s knowledge of vocabulary and his/her level of language proficiency (Luppescu & Day: 1993)

When teaching vocabulary to the 10th form students at To Hieu High school the author found out that word retention is a big problem to the students Students tend to forget words quickly Another problem is that they may remember words but they do not know how to use them appropriately It has often been suggested that learning vocabulary by using it in contexts should be employed as the main approach to improve vocabulary knowledge A number of researchers such as Gairns and Redman (1986) and Oxford and Crookall (1988) have suggested that to learn words in context is an effective vocabulary learning strategy

This has urged the researcher to carry out this action research, which is aimed at finding out how contextualized vocabulary presentation affects students‟ vocabulary acquisition

2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The research is aimed to explore the effectiveness of contextualized vocabulary presentation on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention By acquisition, I mean the students understand the meaning of the taught words and know how to use them appropriately Because one aspect of vocabulary acquisition is the students‟ ability to retrieve the words they have learned, the study is also aimed at measuring the impact of the contextualized vocabulary presentation on students‟ vocabulary retention

Specifically, the aims of the study are:

1) To examine the feasibility of presenting vocabulary in contexts to 10th graders in a particular high school

2) To measure the effectiveness of this vocabulary teaching technique on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary retention

Therefore, the study is to achieve the following objectives:

1) To experiment presenting vocabulary in contexts in order to measure its effectiveness on students‟ vocabulary acquisition

2) To examine the impact of presenting vocabulary in contexts on students‟ vocabulary retention

3 RESEARCH QUESTION

To achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, the following research question was proposed: “To what extent does contextualized vocabulary presentation affect students‟ vocabulary acquisition?”

4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Since the study is aimed at improving students‟ vocabulary acquisition through the application of a new vocabulary teaching technique, an action research designed is chosen for the study In this action research, a series of progress tests was used in order to measure

the impact or effectiveness of this vocabulary technique on students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention Moreover, a focus group interview was conducted to obtain more in-depth data about how students assessed their progress when applying guessing strategies and whether contextualized vocabulary presentation affected students‟ vocabulary retention and learning

5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study is limited to the examination of how presenting vocabulary in contexts affect one group of grade 10 students‟ vocabulary acquisition and retention No intention is made

to generalize the findings

6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The results of this action research will help the author to improve her approaches to vocabulary teaching Those results can also be helpful to other teachers in the school or in other schools which are similar to the school where this research was conducted

7 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The research consists of three main parts: Part A, Part B and Part C

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the research question, the method of study, the research procedure, the scope of the study, the significance of the study and the design of the study

Part B: Development consists of 3 chapters Chapter one reviews the literature relevant to

the study including the definition of context and a number of researches in which contextualized vocabulary presentation has been used to helps students make improvement

in their language study This chapter also presents some types of contextual clues used to

guess the meaning of unknown word and students‟ vocabulary learning strategies Chapter

two discusses the method used in the study It presents a thorough justification for the use

of action research and the research‟s components and program Chapter three presents the

findings and discussion of the study This part is apparently important because it justifies the effectiveness of the research

Part C: Conclusion provides summary of the findings, implication, refection as well as presents limitations and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Definition of contextualized vocabulary presentation:

From the perspective of human verbal communication, Hymes (1974) sees context as a limiter of the range of possible interpretations, and, on the other hand, a supporter of the intended interpretation Context can be seen as information and in turn, information is that which reduces uncertainly

Taking a discoursal perspective, Nation and Coady (1988) claim that “context is also referred to as morphological, syntactic and discourse information in a given test, which can

be classified and described in terms of general features.” (p 102)

In this study, context is defined as a particular linguistic environment where a particular word is used and interpreted semantically and pragmatically In other words, context is the information that determines the grammatically, semantically and pragmatically appropriate use of particular words

Defined as such, contexts play a very important role in the identification of words in text

A word used in different contexts may have different meaning so simply learning the definition of a word with out examples of where and when it occurs will not help learners

to fully understand its meaning If learners are not able to contextualize new words by connecting them to words and concepts they already know, the words will likely be less meaningful to them And then if meaning is not contextualized, it will be difficult for learners to memorize as well as to use new words appropriately

If context determines the use and the interpretation of words, presenting words out of context would be confusing to the students In other words, contextualized vocabulary presentation should be considered as one of effective vocabulary teaching technique The nature, the advantages and limitations of this technique will be reviewed in Section 1.2 below

1.2 A contextualized presentation to vocabulary acquisition

Herman, Anderson, Nagy, and Pearson (1987) used four different types of context in a study of incidental vocabulary learning They used a 1,230-word passage from a text and three edited versions with varying degrees of implicit and explicit clues about the target words Other contexts used in incidental learning of vocabulary experiments were a novel (Saragi et al., 1978), a graded reader (Horst et al., 1998), specially constructed paragraphs (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984), and narrative and expository texts of about 1,000 words (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985) Studies on learning from context have used single sentences (Dempster, 1987; Laufer & Shmueli, 1997), multiple sentences (Dempster, 1987), L2 sentences together with their L1 translations (Griffin, 1992), L1 sentences containing the L2 target vocabulary (Pickering, 1982), three sentences one of which was a definition (Gipe & Arnold, 1979), and L1 and L2 glossed passages (Laufer & Shmueli, 1997) The wide range of contexts may lead to misinterpretation of results Without a clear definition of context, it seems likely that results will continue to vary between studies Context may account for the contrasting results in the study by Rott (1999) and Hulstijn et

al (1996) In the Rott (1999:330) study, the texts were created with enough contextual clues for the learners to be able to infer the meaning of the target words Whereas, in the study by Hulstijn et al., the text was authentic, and the researchers had determined that it was “extremely difficult to infer the exact meaning” of the target words from the context Moreover, context may be one reason the number of repetitions needed to learn individual words varies In some sentences the meaning of an unknown word might be transparent but

in others it may be opaque Beck, McKeown, and McCaslin (1983) suggested that many contexts may be deceptive, leading learners to infer an incorrect meaning In studies that involve reading books, there may be too many encounters for researchers to take each context into account Unless context is taken into consideration, it may be difficult to make

an accurate assessment of incidental vocabulary learning This may be particularly true in L2 learning where the number and frequency of encounters with unknown words are likely

to be less than in L1 learning

In other studies, more generic strategies were taught to the students without specific algorithms For example, Buikema (Buikema & Graves, 1993), a high school teacher, developed a 5-day sequence of whole-class lessons teaching children to use context clues She began with word riddles and used a riddle metaphor to help her students derive words from context They found significant effects for the treatment on two measures of deriving words from context and on a measure of incidental learning using an Edgar Allen Poe short story followed by an unexpected vocabulary test Contextual variables can be labeled as mediating variables, which can be one or more than one of the following:

The number of occurrences of the unknown word

The variability of contexts in which multiple occurrences of the unknown words appear The density of unknown words

The importance of the unknown words to understanding the context in which it is embedded

The perceived helpfulness of the surrounding context in understanding the meaning of the unknown word

The concreteness of the unknown word and the surrounding context

The usefulness of knowledge in cue utilization

In addition, in learning vocabulary some internal contextual variables should be taken into account These can be called contextual clues They are contextual because they are part of the word, and they include:

Prefix cues

Stem cues

Suffix cues

Interactive cues (where two or three word parts convey information in combination)

Table 1.2: Components of a theory of learning words from context (from Sternberg and Powell, 1983)

Read (2000:54) shows that the Sternberg and Powell framework does not cover one category of clues that relate to the structure of the text as revealed in Ames (1966) Structure clues may be syntactic or discoursal On a syntactic level, readers need to identify the target word‟s part of speech and to search for grammatical cues At the discoursal level, readers can look for expressions of language functions such as definition, comparison, and contrast, cause and effect, question- answer and the main idea- details However, this contextual category is not related to this study, which focuses on contextualized vocabulary presentation

1.3 Previous studies on contextualized vocabulary presentation

Research findings about the success of students‟ guessing unknown words from context are inconclusive Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) provide a guessing task which learners had to answer in writing Their finding shows that learners frequently make wrong guesses Wrong guesses resulted from giving the incorrect meaning of a word that had several meanings, mistranslating an idiom, translating the individual morphemes of a word, and confusing the target word with one that looked or sounded similar Particularly, learners have been found to make guesses on some lessen basis, producing an inferred meaning that has little relation to the wider context of the text One point needs to be made here, that is the participants of the study have not been specifically trained to do lexical guessing Another study, conducted by Haastrup (1987, 1991), in which Danish secondary students

of English, in pairs or groups, worked together to guess the meaning of unknown words, thus producing introspective “think-aloud” accounts of their reasoning processes Haastrup analyzed the clues they used into three categories: interlingual, intralingual, and contextual Haastrup implied that many of the introspective accounts were incomplete or difficult to interpret; about half of the subjects were also interviewed individually as soon as they had completed the guessing task, in order to clarify what they had said

Liu and Nation (1985) were a more optimistic after they studied learners‟ ability to guess the meaning of nonsense words used to replace real world at regular intervals in written texts They conclude that success is determined by the relative density of unknown words Where there was only one nonsense word per twenty-five words, they were easier to guess

than when there was one every ten words Liu and Nation estimated that at least 85 percent of unknown words could be guessed by a class of learners working together to pool their relevant knowledge and skills

In addition, Xiaolong‟s (1988) research revealed that those learners who were good at word inference also retain the first-encounter contextual meaning of the contexts in which they were learnt The importance of context was also stressed by Honeyfield (1997), who argued that even with a functional vocabulary of the three thousand most frequently occurring items in English, learners will still not know around 20 percent of the items they encounter in an unsimplified text The problem confronting both teacher and learners is that no course can provide learners with anything like the vocabulary they will need to comprehend authentic texts He suggested that it is therefore of importance to equip students with strategies for inferring the meaning of unknown vocabulary from the context

in which it occurs rather than getting them to undertake the time-consuming task of memorizing long lists of words, or looking up unknown words in a dictionary which would make the reading process unbearably slow and tedious

Given the evidence that many learners lack the skill of inferring the meaning of unknown words correctly, there has been surprisingly little research on whether they can be successfully trained to apply it in their reading

1.4 Guessing or inferencing strategy

Guessing meaning of unknown words from context most commonly refers to inferring the meaning of a word from surrounding words in a written text In this thesis, the two terms are used interchangeably It is an active and deliberate process to acquire a meaning for a word in a text

“By reasoning from textual clues and prior knowledge, including language knowledge and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or human” (Rapaport, W.J., 2005)

Following are some definitions and ideas of guessing strategy defined by some researchers:

“Infering means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning

of unknown elements” (Grellet, F., 1981:14)

“Inferring involves creating a schema for the unknown word(s), based on world knowledge and previous experience, both of the world and texts In other words, inferring means drawing conclusions as to word meaning by following certain rational steps in the face of the evidence available.” (McCarthy, M., 1990:125)

For instance, a sentence is taken from an article about progress in East-West disarmament talks in a British newspaper like this: “There are a lot of nasty snags yet to overcome” When a learner is faced with it and does not know what “nasty snags” mean, the, apart from the general context (the article in this case), it is possible for him to infer that “snags”

is a countable noun, that they are something which can be “overcome”, and therefore, given the subject-matter, may mean something like “ obstacles”, “difficulties” or “ problems” If they are “problems”, then “nasty” is likely to mean something negative like

“small” or “minor” and so on Inferring in this way is an example of the “construction” of meaning by the reader when he/she activates schemata

Gairns and Redman (1986: 83) use the term “contextual guesswork” for the strategy of making use of context in which the word appears to derive an idea of its meaning or in some cases to guess from the word itself They claim that speakers of European and non- European languages alike can also make use of previous knowledge of English to guess the meaning of unknown words They give two examples:

(a) I overslept this morning

(b) My work varies from week to week

In the first example, the unknown word consists of parts which are already familiar and the learner might have met the prefix “over” in other words e.g., overtime This knowledge enables the learners to work out the meaning In the second example, with their knowledge

of the common noun “variety”, it is sufficient for the learner to reduce the meaning of

“varies” and understand the sentence

In support of the idea of inferring word meaning from context, Kruse (1979, cited in Nunan ( 1991:121) suggests introducing vocabulary items in such a way as to allow learners to guess the meanings from the context or illustrations:

1 Word elements such as prefixes, suffixes and roots

The ability to recognize component part of words, word families, and so on is probably the single most important vocabulary skill a student of reading in EFL can have It substantially reduces the number of completely new words he will encounter and increases his control of the English lexicon

2 Pictures, diagrams and charts

These clues, so obvious to the native speakers, must often be pointed out to the EFL student He may not connect the illustration with the item that is giving him difficulty He may also be unable to read charts and graphs in English

3 Clues of definition

The student must be taught to notice many types of highly useful definition clues Among these are:

a) Parentheses or footnotes, which are the most obvious definition clues The student can

be taught to recognize the physical characteristics of the clue

b) Synonyms and antonyms usually occur along with other clues: that is, is- clauses,

explanations in parentheses and so on

4 Inference clues from discourse, which are usually not confined to one sentence

a Example clues, where the meaning for the word can be inferred from an example, often

use physical clues such as i.e., e.g., and for example

b Summary clues: from the sum of the information in a sentence or paragraph, the student can understand the word

c Experience clues; the reader can get a meaning from a word by recalling a similar situation he has experienced and making the appropriate inference

5 General aids, which usually do not help the student with meaning, narrow the

possibilities These include the function of the word in question, i.e., noun, adjective, ect., and the subject being discussed

To conclude, acquiring vocabulary knowledge from context is a sophisticated strategy but

it plays a very important part in vocabulary development Thus, it has been widely promoted as it has been seen to fit in more comfortably with the communicative approach than any other

1.5 Types of contextual clues:

Clues help to infer meaning of new words from context It is impossible to infer the meaning of new words if the context does not offer enough clues Both teachers and students need to be aware of this Below are some types of clues suggested by Nation (1983)

1.5.1 Structural clues:

Structural clues help to find the kind of meaning of the new word They are uses to determine the type of grammatical category of the new word Structural clues are: morphology, antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms, definitions, restatement, reference words, alternatives, punctuation

Morphology

Learners can derive word meaning by looking at internal, morphological features like

suffixes, prefixes and root words

Antonyms

When seeing the next pair of words in parallel construction, the meaning of new word can

be assumed For example: “David was very outgoing as opposed to his older coy sister” In this case, coy must be not outgoing, so it means unsociable

Synonyms

The meaning of new word can be found in the same sentence using “be” and a synonym For example: “The view at the top of the mountain was surprising, it was incredible” In this case, the meaning of the new word is a synonym for “surprising”

Hyponyms

The relationship between an unfamiliar word and familiar one is that of general concept accompanied by a specific example (a hyponym) ) For example: “The room contained lots of furniture: chair, table, air-conditional.” In this case, all of the items are of the same category and furniture is used as a hyponym; it covers all of the other items which are listed

Definitions

Often the writer uses definitions to suggest the meanings of words in the text For instance: “Many animals live only by killing others and eating them They are called predatory animals” Basing on the suggestion, readers can infer that “predatory animals” are those which kill and eat other animals

Restatement

A writer may provide context clues by restating a term in easier language Commas,

dashes, or other punctuation can point to a restatement clue, along with expressions such as

that is, in other words, and or For instance: My father is a podiatrist, or foot doctor The

restatement clue, “or foot doctor,” shows the meaning of podiatrist

Reference words

Identifying the referents of pronouns may suggest a clue to the meaning of unknown word,

for example: “Malnutrition gave him the shallowest of chests thinnest of limbs It stunted

his growth.” Readers can guess the meaning of malnutrition by reading the effect of it to growth

Alternatives

Readers can understand the meaning of the new word by looking at an alternative For

instance: “Ichthyologists, or specialists in the study of fish, have contributed to

understanding of the past.” The word ichthyologist is a new word but readers can guess its meaning because it is explained by a familiar term “specialists in the study of fish”

Punctuation

Punctuation, quotation marks, dashes, parentheses or brackets, italics can help explain the

meaning of a word For example: Resentment (a feeling of bitterness and anger) is often

felt by people who are passed over for promotions

1.5.2 Inference clues

Inference clues need a higher level of analytical skill and practice than structural clues They force the readers to use rationale or reasoning skills in order to figure out the meaning of a new word Even though the word is not directly defined, the reader can logically reason out the meaning using the information provided in context Readers can use inference clues such as comparison and contrast, summary, cause and result, cohesion

to understand the meaning of new word

Comparison and contrast

Comparison clues are words and phrases that have the same or similar meaning as an

unfamiliar word Words and phrases such as like, as, and in the same way often signal

comparisons

Contrast clues are words and phrases that mean the opposite of an unfamiliar word Words

and phrases such as although, but, yet, however, except and on the other hand signal

contrasts In the sentence “The large dog seemed menacing, as if it were ready to bite me”, the word “as” signals the comparison between the clues, “ready to bite me,” and the meaning of menacing is “threatening.”

Summary

When summarizing, the information of the sentence or paragraph is sum up in a word or phrase Thanks to the familiar words of the whole sentence or paragraph, reader can understand the meaning of unknown word After summarizing the example below, reader can conclude that “perspiration” means the “wetness comes from the body and causes a bad smell.”

“Many products are sold to stop perspirations This wetness comes from our body

whenever we are too warm, or are afraid, and it usually doesn‟t smell very good.”

Cohesion

When reading a linear text, cohesion is maintained through a rich mesh of contextual clues The meaning of an unknown word can be indicated by other words in the same sentence or

in adjacent sentences because they regularly co-occur with the unfamiliar word It is called

“collocational cohesion” by Halliday and Hasan (1976:287)

In conclusion, to make effective guess, learners need to be trained to look for clues in context However, the contextual clues must be sufficient in order to make inferences to be possible and productive

1.6 Advantages and disadvantages of contextualized vocabulary presentation to vocabulary acquisition

Contextualized vocabulary presentation consists of some advantages In the first place, this technique allows learners to make intelligent guesses from meaningful context This way

of learning task is much more active, interesting, and challenging explanation of words Another advantage is that it gives input on the semantic properties and register of word taught It also gives the learners understanding of the usage and use of the word taught Nation (2001:232) maintains that “incidental learning via guessing from context is the most important of all sources of vocabulary learning” Over the past two decades, this strategy has been greatly promoted since it seems to “fit in more comfortably with the communicative approach than other, more discrete, Discovery Strategies” (Schmitt 1997:209) Context tends to be more interpreted as simply textual context

However, this way of learning also has disadvantages There is a real danger of misinterpretation, and if incorrect inferences are remembered, it may have a cumulative effect Students (and teachers in training) encouraged not to focus on unknown words but rather to focus on understanding Therefore, some other important sources of information should also be taken into account when guessing, such as knowledge of the subject being read, or knowledge of the conceptual structure of the topic Ironically, a learner must have

a large vocabulary to be able to guess the meaning of unknown words from surrounding context clues successfully This puts lower proficiency students with less vocabulary at a distinct disadvantage

In a seminal study, Hulstijn (1992) concludes that using natural context to guess word meanings is a very complex and error-prone process for L2 learners He found that while learners are more likely to remember the form and meaning of a word when they have inferred its meaning by themselves than when the meaning has been given to them, the same learners are more likely to infer an incorrect meaning of an unknown L2 word in an L2 text when no cue has been given to its meaning

1.7 Activities and exercises for presenting and practicing words in context

Nation (2003) suggests introducing some activities and exercises for presenting and practicing words in context which allow learners to infer the meaning of unknown words such as: guessing from context and learning the meaning of unknown words from examples In these exercises, have students follow very explicit instruction for them to

- copy the sentence where the word is

- underline the word that they do not know the meaning of

- explain in at least five sentences what strategies in the text guide them to the approximate meaning of the word

- give the meaning

- check the dictionary to see if their approximate meaning is close or not

- do this exercise with groups, pairs, and individuals

Exercises of this type are aimed at raising students‟ awareness of how the words are used

In this action research, some types of context clues such as punctuation, antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms, definitions, restatement, and reference words were distributed and used to help SS to infer the meaning of new words

1.8 The roles of vocabulary knowledge in guessing meaning of the unknown words

Many researchers consider vocabulary knowledge to be an important variable that affects reading comprehension in both first and second language learning (Alderson, 2000; Joshi, 2005; Qian, 2002; Ricketts et al., 2007) A limited vocabulary size, as well as a lack of sufficient knowledge of word meanings, often hinders learners from understanding the meaning of the text Garcia (1991) finds that a lack of familiarity with vocabulary in the test passages and questions is a powerful factor affecting fifth and sixth grade Latino bilingual learners on a test of reading comprehension

Qian (1999, 2002; Qian & Schedl, 2004) also studies the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension in academic settings Breadth of vocabulary knowledge refers to the size of vocabulary that a person knows and depth of vocabulary knowledge relates to how well the person knows a word The two factors play

an important role for second language learners because learners are more likely to come across words in which they are not familiar

Qian (2002: 518) also emphasizes the important roles of vocabulary knowledge in guessing meaning of the unknown words that : “having a larger vocabulary gives the learner a larger database from which to guess the meaning of the unknown words or behavior of newly learned words, having deeper vocabulary knowledge will very likely improve the results of the guessing work”

1.9 Vocabulary in English textbook for 10 th form non- English major students

In the text book which is currently in use for grade 10 students, vocabulary is taught and practiced via both materials for language skills development and in its own right in the Language focus section Thus, vocabulary is both taught in meaningful contexts and further consolidated in form-focused exercises

In the Reading section, vocabulary is taught through activities such as matching definitions with words, gap-fill, finding antonyms and synonyms, and translation In the Language focus section, vocabulary is practiced most frequently via gap-fill and word formation exercises Among the different aspects of vocabulary teaching, emphasis seems to be placed on denotational meaning rather than connotational meaning, and word building rather than collocations

The book also seems to give due attention to teaching vocabulary strategies via activities which focus on developing skills in dealing with unknown words and using dictionaries Unfortunately, however, many of these activities are not properly designed; thus they are

unlikely to achieve their purposes

1.10 Summary

In this chapter, an overview of approaches to contextualized vocabulary presentation, a

summary of previous studies on guessing strategy, advantages and disadvantages of

contextualized vocabulary presentation to vocabulary acquisition, activities and exercises for presenting and practicing words in context, the roles of vocabulary knowledge in guessing meaning of the unknown words and vocabulary in English textbook for 10th form non- English major students have been presented To infer the meaning of an unknown word, the reader has to collect a number of clues from the text A theoretical framework has been prepared for investigation in the next chapter

CHAPTER II: METHODOLODY 2.1 Rationale for the use of an action research

Mills (2003:4) defines action research as “any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates how they teach and how their students learn The information is gathered with the goal of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in generals, and improving student outcomes.” According to Kemmis and MC Taggart (1988), there are three characteristics of an action research, they are: “carried out by practitioners”, “collaborative”, and “aimed at changing things”

Action research is very beneficial to the teaching and learning process, it helps to promote personal and professional growth, to improve practice to enhance student learning, and to advance the teaching profession (Johnson, 1995) The teacher would solve his problem on his own or in collaboration with other teachers if he was trained to conduct action research Anders (1988), Curtis (1988), and Tsui (1993) gave three reasons why a teacher needed action research:

- To solve own problems in a scientific process and improve own practice

- To adapt theory ( findings of conventional research) to practice ( own problems)

- To share the results of action research with other teachers

Moreover, action research is also for teacher professional development The teacher will become a better teacher because he knows how to find out and solve his problems in teaching scientifically on his own

In fact, action research has a lot of advantages in comparison with other types of research, which is summarized in Table 2 bellow:

Topic Formal research Action research

Training needed by

researcher

Extensive On own or with consultation

Goals of research Knowledge that is

Problems or goals currently faced

Procedure for literature

frame

Looser procedures, change during study; quick time frame; control through triangulation

Measurement procedures Evaluate and pretest

measures

Convenient measures or standardized tests Data analysis Statistical tests; qualitative

techniques

Focus on practical, not statistical significance; present raw data

Application of results Emphasis on theoretical

significance

Emphasis on practical significance

Table 2.1: Differences between Action Research and Formal Research

From http://mypage.iu.edu/~gmetteta/Classroom_Action_Research.html#Differences

2.2 Action Research Procedure

A typical action research needs to go from one step to another Eileen Ferrance (2000) suggested an action research cycle as follows:

As can be seen from this cycle, to carry out an action research, first of all, the researcher must identify the problem The second step is to collect and organize data Then the data is interpreted to find out the problem After that the researcher has to design a plan of action

to make change and to study that change Then he/ she will evaluate its effects to justify whether the invention worked or not If it has not been effective, the researcher would have

to consider another method so as to improve the situation

According to Nunan (1992), there are seven steps of action research:

- Step 1: Initiation (Identify the problem)

- Step 2: Preliminary Investigation (Collect data through a variety of means)

- Step 3: Hypothesis (Develop research question)

- Step 4: Intervention (Devise strategies and innovation to be implemented)

- Step 5: Evaluation (Collect data again and analyze it to work out the findings)

- Step 6: Dissemination (Report the result by running workshop or issuing a paper)

- Step 7: Follow- up (Find alternative methods to solve the same problem)

Finding that action research is the best choice for the purpose of improving the students‟ vocabulary acquisition, I decided to carry out an action research

First of all, thanks to action research, the teacher can have a thorough look and investigation on the vocabulary acquisition problems of students on a daily basic Besides, the teacher is able to work out a detailed analysis on the students‟ performance during the progress of the research It helps the teacher design a detailed program which is most suitable to the class and brings benefits to students

Secondly, in this action research, the data is taken from every student and treated individually so the teacher can see students‟ progress easily She will be able to get the most up-to-date information and make sensible changes if necessary to the research while applying it to meet the demand of the students Teacher can spend more time on practicing contextualized vocabulary presentation and paying more attention when giving feedback to students Performance of students is collected weekly, and any potential problems can be solved in time

In short, the action research design is the most practical and feasible for the researcher, all above factors considered The research followed the seven-step procedure suggested by Nunan (1992)

2.3 Background of the study

2.3.1 Participants

The participants of the research were students from grade 10C3 at To Hieu high school, Hai Phong I am also an English teacher of this school Naturally, they became ideal samples for the research I ensure the variety of the students‟ background, which varies from one to another as the group was chosen by chance with the method of cluster sampling This also enables for a wider range of application to other classes, which, to some extend, shorten the limitation of an action research

Nevertheless, as the research was conducted during the first semester of school- year, there were some problems relating to the consistency of the participants Some students in the experimental group moved to other classes so they could not attend the research any more

In turn, some newcomers became members of the experimental group as a result of the redistribution of the students in the school In addition, some students were absent from some tests due to their personal business These students could not be proper participation

of the research program due to the lack of participation in the very initial steps of it and their performance should not be treated as a trusted source of information

Taken every factor into consideration so as to minimize the risk of invalidity and to ensure that every single participant was treated under the same conditions of the research, I reached the final number of 36 students whose performance would be appropriate data provider for the research They were the one who participated thoroughly in the research from beginning to the end In order not to make other students feel excluded, I still let them participate in the research program However, their performance was not counted on to yield any comments or interpretation of the research

Further observation, investigation and talks with students revealed more information about them Most of the participants are at the age of 16 Nearly half of them are male and more than a half of them are female All of them are from countryside Students have been learning English since they were in grade 6 at secondary school so they had already acquired a certain level in L2 in order to be able to read a second language and infer meaning of particular words from the main context They were willing to take part in this research

2.3.2 Data collection instruments

2.3.2.1 Tests

Tests are often used to check students‟ vocabulary ability and knowledge in language acquisition study The instrumentation used in this study included a general test of language proficiency; a post test- only model was used to measure whether students change over time due to a treatment The posttest was a vocabulary test prepared carefully

by the researcher In the vocabulary test, there is a multiple- choice test with the four