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 LANGUAGESAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES---* * TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG *---A STUDY ON THE ENT*---AILMENT OF MERONYMY

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGESAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

-* * TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG

* -A STUDY ON THE ENT* -AILMENT OF MERONYMY IN 10-YE* -AR-OLDVIETNAMESE CHILDREN’S ENGLISH SPEAKING: A CASE OF THE

CHILDREN IN AN ENGLISH CENTRE

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

TRUNG TÂM TIẾNG ANH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: EnglishCode: 6014.0111Supervisor: 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 andInternational 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 infulfilling this study I would also like to thank my family for the support theyprovided me through my entire life and especially this hard time of preparation forgraduation

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamesechildren’s English speaking The data was taken from the observation of 33Vietnamese students at the age of ten and 3 native teachers.

The results show two types of the entailment of meronymy in children’sEnglish 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 firstone is more popular to cause the entailment of meronymy

Moreover, the study also indicates how teachers responded to children’sentailments of meronymy and goes to the conclusion that most of time teachersignored these or sometimes just gave very simple feedback when what children saidwas 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 FREQUENCYOF 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

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 withthe greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15) There havebeen different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is one ofthem When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with otherlexical items, the theory of lexical semantics is met This approach posits twodifferent, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to thephysical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference.While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding between thelinguistic elements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations

Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands ofphilosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second languageeducators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists,psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involvewords, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature thatapproaches 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 onegeneral part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make sometypes of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation abouttheir entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of meronymy inchildren’s English speaking; therefore; the analysis of these in general and in thecontext of Vietnam in particular is really necessary This study is a theoreticalapproach to some knowledge of meronymy in general and the

transitivity of meronymy in particular to clarify some entailment of meronymyconcerning transitivity of Vietnamese children.

2 Research questions

The study’s primary aim is to investigate the use of meronymy in Englishcommunication classes of 10-year-old students And then the researcher will try toanalyze the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking andinvestigate 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 oftransitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion ininformation retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail,etc Moreover, it is also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy inchildren’s English speaking Conversely, my study just emphasizes on one aspect ofmeronymy- 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:

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature review covers the

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 DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER 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 manylanguages and can be used appropriately in some contexts and not in others (Chaffin1992:255) Moreover, meronymy or part-whole relations turn out not to be simple,probably because there is no single meronymic relation but there are several differentones 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 relationderived from other relations, and sometimes ignores altogether The present chapter is

an attempt to present a complete picture, as much as possible, of meronymy inEnglish by adopting the appropriate model that best explicates its nature, morespecifically 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) Theterm meronymy is not part of the available traditional resources of semanticist.Perhaps this term was first used by Miller and Johnson- Laird (1976:242) whileWinston et al (1987) recommended another term “partonymy” Although it can benamed in different ways, the definition of meronymy is not new and it has long beenregarded as one of the constitutive principles in the organization of the vocabulary ofall languages

Meronymy is also defined as a structural sense/ semantic relation holdingbetween lexical items denoting parts (meronyms) and that denoting theircorresponding 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 relationscomprising 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 theother 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 meronymrelations 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 whichmeronymy is regarded as a relation between contextually construed meanings ormore 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 doesnot hold between construed classes of elements, but between specific individualsbelonging 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 ofconventional and contextual constraints

It seems that every part has its own story, and all the above-mentioned notionsare not false as each notion is valid to some extents It can be said that meronymy isthe 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 calledMeronomic 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 isdifficult to pin down here One aspect is usually called ontological type There’s noagreement on a basic ontology, but the sort of thing referred to by Jakendoff (1983),namely, THING, STATE, PROCESS, EVENT, TIME, PLACE, and so on seemsrelevant to parts” It means that the parts of a period of time should themselves beperiods of time; the parts of an event should be sub-events Meronymy is thesemantic relation existing between a lexical item denoting a part and an item denotingthe corresponding whole Therefore, the relationship among elements in Meronym isalso in the same general type If one element in a meronymy denotes a cohesivephysical 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 geographicalarea, all the others must do (hence Westminster Abbey is not a part of London); ifone item is abstract noun, the others must be as well (e.g “high” is impossible to be apart of “body”)

The rule of type consistency justifies the existence of numerous limitedmeronomies, instead of a single one, with universe as its origin and at the lowerbounds 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 ofconsistency illustrated by Croft & Cruse (2004:154) If a whole is divided intoseparable, spatially or perceptually cohesive parts, these will be referred to assegmental parts In such a division, items of a lexical hierarchy correspond to real-lifeobjects 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 aconstant principle of hierarchy and avoid mixing them Thus a plant must be eitherdivided into segmental parts, such as root, stem, leaves (further divisible into a leafstalk or petiole, and a blade or lamina), flower, etc., or into systemic parts, such as thevascular tissue (mainly xylem and phloem), stele or vascular cylinder, cortex, stemcambium, epidermis, endodermis, photosynthetic tissue, and other specializedcellular 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’sface

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 thanothers: e.g an engine can be easily taken from a car Other parts, such as the tip ofthe 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 totheir wholes: e.g the handle is for grasping and opening and closing the door, thewheels are for the car to move smoothly, etc

3 Types

Meronymy also divided into different kinds Cruse (1986) distinguished twosubtypes of Meronymy: necessary Meronyms (ear-body) and optional Meronyms(beard-face) to show some object were the direct parts of the whole, while some wereattached parts Additionally, Chaffin & Herrmann (1987) explored the relationelements and suggested six types of Meronymy Winston et al (1987) considered thefunction, 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

Relation ElementsRelation Example Functional Homeomerous Separable

Component/ handle-cup

-Integral Object punchline-joke

Member/ tree- forest

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 bythe values of three relation elements that summarize characteristic properties of therelations 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, andwhether the part and whole are separable or not Functional parts are restricted, bytheir 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 otherwhich supports their functional role with respect to the whole However, they aredissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong and cannot bephysically 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 houseIntegral objects always display some types of certain organizations orstructures Their components are also patterned and often have particular structuraland functional connection with one another and to the wholes that they belong to Thespecific characteristics of integral wholes are defined by these structural relationshipsand it is not able to randomly arrange their components- components

but must put them into a certain patterned organization within the wholes which theycomprise.

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, butthey cannot be splitted from collection

A tree is part of forest A juror is part of a jury Thisship is part of a fleet

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

Collection whose members are determined by social connection are generallyreferred as “group” This relationship is often expressed by the phrase “a/the memberof” For example:

Vietnam is the member of Asian

China is a member of WTO

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 ofcourse, 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 thearithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

3.4 Stuff- Object

Stuff- Object is the only type of meronymic relation that has none of threerelation elements that summarize characteristic properties of relation Stuffs are notpart by virtue of any functional contribution to the whole, the parts are nothomeomerous and the part and the whole are not separable This type is most oftenexpressed 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 asingle 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 glassThe stuff- object type is different from the component- object type based onthe popular argument standard The component is the answer for the question “Whatare 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 acomponent 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 anobject without altering its identity, whereas the stuff of which a thing is made can notbecause the lettuce is possible to be removed from a salad, it is not a stuff, it is acomponent.

3.5 Feature- Activity

Features are in a special spatial/ temporal position with respect to each otherthat supports their functional role with respect to the activity However, features aredissimilar to each other and to the whole activity to which they belong to and featurescannot be physically disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they areconnected

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 thusfar, sentences of the type “X has Y” and similar locutions can not be used to revealthe feature- activity relation, such as;

Shopping has payingStudying has testAdolescence has dating

3.6 Place- Area

The last type of meronymy is the relation between areas and special places andlocations 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-placerelation is homogeneous; every place within an area is relatively similar to everyother and to the whole area Nevertheless, different from portions of masses, placescannot 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 Thevariation is captured by the three elements that were used in Table 1 to summarize thedifferences between the types of meronymy The connection of part to whole differsdepending on whether the part is functional, homogeneous, and separable In thispaper, 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 humandevelopment, hence undoubtedly attracts much scientific attention Following arethree central theoretical positions: the behaviorist, the innatist, and the interactionistviews on language acquisition

The behaviorist position: Behaviorists believes that children learn language

through imitation and habit formation According to them, the quality and quantity ofthe Language input to which the child is exposed have an influence on the child’slanguage development processes which include imitation and practice This viewoffers a partial understanding of how children learn simple aspects of language.However, the behaviorists failed to give a rational explanation for the more complexgrammatical 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 systemsuccessfully because children are often exposed to the language environment filled

with confusing information or even insufficient language source Parental correctionsare inconsistent with a focus on meaning Therefore, he claims that children have aninnate ability called a language acquisition device at first or later on UniversalGrammar to derive the rules of a language system themselves other than their mereimitation, 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 withuniversal grammar, they just have to learn how the principles work in their mothertongue and in foreign languages that they are learning (Chomsky 1981) Chomsky’sideas are supported by biological studies and the critical period hypothesis whichsuggests that the language acquisition in particular and biological functions in generalonly 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 developmentcommonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the VygotskyCircle At the core of Vygotsky’s theory (also known as Cultural-Historical theory) isthe idea that child development is the result of interactions between children and theirsocial environment These interactions involve people—parents and teachers,playmates and schoolmates, brothers and sisters Vygotsky felt social learningprecedes development He states, "Every function in the child's cultural developmentappears 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 problemindependently According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in this zone

Three points of view mentioned above have explained a different aspect ofchildren’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 explainsthe way how children can relate form and meaning, how they interact, and how theyuse language properly.

Of all these points of view, the social development theory has been adopted toshed light for the study Unlike other approaches, this emphasizes the role of socialinteraction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults,reinforcement and feedback in language acquisition These are the base and the lightfor the research when investigating children’s use during communication with eachother Specifically, it asserts that much of a child's linguistic growth stems frommodeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very frequentlyprovide 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 offeedback definitions Littlewood (1981) and Lewis (2002) both equaled feedbackwith telling learners about their progress and showing them their errors in order toguide 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 abouthis or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving thisperformance.” It is clearly seen that these two definitions treated this terms under abroad point of view since they just indicated that learners are the ones to receivefeedback 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 intoconsiderable concern The second thing is the distinction between feedback andcriticism 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 viceverse.” (p.12) Supporting Robert (2003)’s idea, Bound (2000) pointed out significantdifference between feedback and criticism Whereas, “A good feedback is givenwithout personal judgment or opinion, given based on the facts, always neutral andobjective, 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 tosomeone in order for him/ her to improve him/ herself, criticism is given for thenegative purpose and in improper way In the nutshell, feedback provision can beamong peers or between teachers and students; however, feedback concerned in thisstudy 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 generaltypes that are shown in this following chart:

to correct their and measure it make them

forward in the learning process

Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)

Another way of classifying feedback that is shown in the graph below is found

in Crane’s study (2006)

Feedback Types

response by

designed to comparison

with common

explanatory

Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006)

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

Positive vs Negative/ Corrective feedback

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

Direct/explicit vs Indirect/ implicit feedback

In Bitchener et al (2005), it was stated that direct or explicit feedback meansthat teachers identifies an error and provides the correct form, while indirect or

17

In Long (1996), verbal feedback which is presented in a form that is spoken orcapable 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 likefacial expressions For example, question mark can be shown in both teacher’s faceand voice.

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 verbal feedback whereas the later (“go” with rising tone) is oral Simply put,feedback which can be called oral must be in utterances

non-Basically, there are no distinctive differences among those types of feedback.However, to see clearly how teachers give feedback in this thesis, the researcher willuse the viewpoint of Crane as the working classification which seems to be moredetailed

III RELATED STUDIES 1 Meronymy

Historically, part-whole or meronymy relations have played an important role

in linguistic, philosophy and psychology mainly because a clear understanding ofpart- whole relations requires a deep interaction of logic, semantics and pragmatics asthey provide tools needed for our understanding of the world The part-whole relationhas been considered a fundamental ontological relation since the atomists Plato,Aristotle and the Scholastics They are the first to give a systematic characterization

of parts and wholes However, most of the investigations of part-whole relations havebeen made since the beginning of the 20th century

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

standard extensional view and proposed a more adequate account that offers anaxiomatic 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 apart 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 merelogical sum (for any number of objects there exists a whole that consists exactly ofthose 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, homogeneousand separable) to further classify these types This classification was used in thearticle of Morton E Winston, Roger Chaffin (Trenton State College) and DouglasHerrmann (Hamilton College) in Cognitive Science number 11 in 1987 Theyexplained the ordinary English-speakers’ use of the term “part of” and its cognates.Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion relations Thistaxonomy is then used to explain cases of opponent intransitivity in metrologicalsyllogisms, and standard form syllogisms whose premises express different inclusionrelations The data suggest that intransitivity arises due to equivocations betweendifferent types of semantic relations

Recently, meronymy has got more attention when there have been moreresearches 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 eighteenlanguages, belonging to eleven families, all of which were found in the geo- politicalareas 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 takenfrom Arabic to test hypotheses concerning the nature of meronymy in English.

The previous studies are good reference to see the nature of meronymy andmeronymy in different languages However, in these researches, the data was nottaken from real conversations but just examples related to meronymy were analyzed

In this study, the researcher would like to investigate meronymy and its transitivity inreal life, especially in Vietnam but not on theory

2 Language acquisition

The early studies of classroom language shared a number of commonassumptions, drawn from work in sociolinguistics For example, sociolinguists holdthat differences in oral communication reflect social variables, such as gender,ethnicity, social class, and age When children enter school, their mode of oralcommunication has been influenced by these factors; they also already work within acommunication 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 duringschooling and into adulthood (Scott, 1995)

Continuity between language use in school and at home is also an issue inchildren’s development of classroom communicative competence Most of theresearch on emergent literacy has been conducted with children from print-richhomes that identify with the dominant, school-oriented culture, where parent-childinteractions provide experiences similar to classroom interactions Through theseexperiences, children are motivated to learn about literacy events, functions, artifacts,forms (e.g., sound and letter names), and conventions before they learn to read andwrite (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 typicallyinvolves 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 allstudents know the rules of the game, and some have difficulty learning how toparticipate appropriately These children may also have less experience with a variety

of literacy functions and forms Since participation in school activities (such asreading aloud, question-and-answer exchanges with teachers, or evaluation ofdiscourse contributions) determines access to learning, educational failure may resultfor students who lack or have difficulty acquiring classroom communicativecompetence

Other difficulties may result from differences in communicative patternsamong students and teachers who come from different cultural backgrounds Duringthe past decade, as waves of immigration altered classroom demographics and specialeducation programs received greater emphasis, diversity among learners hasdominated 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 anddialect use for cognitive and linguistic problems, teachers and other educationprofessionals need to pool their expertise The research suggests that students’

development as competent learners and communicators requires that educatorsunderstand discourse and dialect differences and the social and cultural practices thatchildren 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 andoperated by a group of students who graduated from English specialized class ofHanoi Amsterdam High School and spent time learning, training and graduated withMaster degrees in European countries Based on the knowledge and experiencegained from studying, researching and teaching at Hanoi Amsterdam and a number ofuniversities specializing in foreign languages in Vietnam as well as in many othercountries in the world and working for multi-national corporations in the field ofeducation, the founders of Amslink wish to develop the idea of creating a friendlyand 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 iswished to equip the students with best skill sets to prepare for their futureinternational academic, especially Grammar to provide students with thecomprehensive and in-depth knowledge about English Proficiency in Grammar skillwould provide the students a strong base for applying other communicative skills,especially when the students do not have a ready environment to practice theirlanguage skill on a daily basis In the courses, students are exposed to a variety ofgrammatical structures, thousands of vocabulary words in context

However, there is a very important and unique point that makes the courses ofthe center completely different from most of secondary schools and centers in Hanoi

It is the combination of Grammar classes with Communicative classes that willprovide students a strong base for mastering English for academic purposes and towork in high standard international environment

2 The students’ learning conditions

All the students in this study are studying at schools in Hanoi According tothe National Foreign Languages 2020 Project presentation of Dr Nguyen Ngoc Hung

at Vietnam Engineering Education Conference, the main method that Vietnameseteachers at school often use to teach students is the Grammar-Translation one and theobjective of the education programs is good results in the English exams, which arealmost always in the form of written tests In addition, Dr Nguyen Ngoc Hung alsopresented that students have to learn in very large crowded classes (45/50 students/class) in limited time and this is not a favorable condition for learning a foreignlanguage like English Besides, in most Vietnamese schools, students are notprovided with modern learning facilities that are very helpful for teaching andlearning English such as videos, tapes and so on The shortage of these facilitiesmuch reduces the effectiveness of the learning process

After school, the children go to Amslink to have extra English lessons.Amslink’s classrooms are equipped with the vivid visual media to support teachers

in organizing activities such as computer, internet, headphone, projector, flashcard,books, and air-conditioner In addition, the classes are very colorful, vivid andinspiring, which helps the students feel convenient and interested in studying.Especially, the size of the classes here is ideal for practicing speaking: only 3- 12students in each class

Moreover, during time studying at Amslink, the teacher and students have agood chance to talk to or listen to native speakers of English and they have time tolive, work and study in a native English environment Most of the teachers inAmslink are well aware of the important role of the ability to communicate in Englishand the teachers have done much to improve the method of teaching communicatingand help the students to overcome the difficulties

II PARTICIPANTS

This study investigates discussion in English classroom in three classes ofVietnamese learners at the age of ten (5A, 5C and 5F) for 8 months Class 5A has