Teacher talk as a lexical input for incidental vocabulary acquisition of young adolescent learners in apollo english training center

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER TEACHER TALK AS A LEXICAL INPUT

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

TEACHER TALK AS A LEXICAL INPUT

FOR INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

OF YOUNG ADOLESCENT LEARNERS

IN APOLLO ENGLISH TRAINING CENTER

Supervisor: Trần Thị Hiếu Thủy Student: Hoàng Kim Ngọc

Course: QH2012.F1.E6

HÀ NỘI, 2016

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

LỜI NÓI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN NHƯ MỘT NGUỒN NGÔN NGỮ

HỖ TRỢ VIỆC HỌC TỪ VỰNG KHÔNG CHỦ ĐÍCH

CHO TRẺ VỊ THÀNH NIÊN TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ APOLLO

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Trần Thị Hiếu Thủy Sinh viên: Hoàng Kim Ngọc

Khóa: QH2012.F1.E6

HÀ NỘI – 2016

ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Hoàng Kim Ngọc, class: QH2012.F.1.E6, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited

in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Hoàng Kim Ngọc Hanoi, April 25th 2016

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In order to complete this research study, I owe profound indebtedness to many people for their invaluable help during the conduct of our research First and foremost, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Tran Thi Hieu Thuy for her all-round support and careful guidance on the construction of our study I also want to extend my thanks to Ms Nguyen Thi Dieu Ha for her critical comments in my progress report and Mr Nguyen Chi Duc for his thoughtful advises and consultancy that helped me get out of impasse

With no less sincerity, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude to Mr Simon Johansson as well as Apollo Van Quan English Training Center, who allowed me to record the teacher‟s lessons with supportive attitudes and was open for any possible criticism Their contributions are immeasurable and without their contribution, this paper could not be finished

Additionally, I also want to sincerely thank Ms Nguyen Phuong Nhung, a lecturer of Faculty of English language teacher education and all of my friends who have always encouraged and supported me during the time of conducting this research

Last but not least, all my heart is dedicated to my parents, who have been providing me every piece of care and support to complete this research

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ABSTRACT

Since foreign teachers have increasingly become popular in Vietnamese EFL classroom, the researcher is motivated to examine whether their talks can effectively cater incidental vocabulary acquisition This case study focuses on investigating the lexical profile of a teacher‟s speeches in Apollo English Training Center to measure the opportunities he provided for student to unintentionally learning new words The three criterion are: comprehensibility, repetitions and increasing intervals between exposures

After the process of recording and transcribing, a 20,000-word corpus is analyzed based on BNC-20 frequency lists in two online programs – VocabProfile and Range - available at Lextutor website From the retrieved data, the study concludes that the provided corpus does not strictly satisfy the comprehension criterion and the number of words potential for incidental learning is relatively small After the advantage and disadvantage of the researched teacher talk are uncovered, several recommendations to maximize the good impacts and minimize the undesired ones are proposed

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TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF FIGURES v

LIST OF TABLES v

ABBREVIATION LIST vi

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Significance of the study 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Organization 4

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1.1 Incidental vocabulary learning 6

1.1.1 Definition 6

1.1.2 Significance of incidental vocabulary learning 7

1.1.3 Limitation of incidental vocabulary learning 8

1.1.4 Sources for incidental vocabulary learning 9

1.1.4.1 Incidental vocabulary learning through reading 9

1.1.4.2 Incidental vocabulary learning through listening 9

1.1.5 Comprehension and repetition in incidental vocabulary learning 10

1.2 Teacher talk 12

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1.2.1 Definition 12

1.2.2 Role of teacher talk in vocabulary acquisition 13

1.2.3 Features of teacher talk 14

1.2.4 Types of teacher talk 14

1.3 Related studies about teacher talk as a lexical input for vocabulary learning 15

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Selection of subject 19

2.1.1 Research setting 19

2.1.2 Research participants 22

2.1.2.1 Teachers in Apollo Vietnam 22

2.1.2.2 Participant characteristics 22

2.2 Data collection methods and procedure 23

2.2.1 Data collection method 23

2.2.1.1 Justification of the use of classroom observation 23

2.2.1.2 Observation plan 24

2.2.2 Data collection procedure 24

2.3 Data analysis method and procedure 25

2.3.1 Data analysis method 25

2.3.1.1 British National Corpus 25

2.3.1.2 Vocabprofile 26

2.3.1.3 Range 27

2.3.2 Data Analysis Procedure 27

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 31

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3.1 Findings 31

3.1.1 Comprehensibility of teacher talk 31

3.1.2 Opportunities for learning new words from different types of teacher talk 34

3.1.3 Words repetitions 35

3.2 Discussion 37

3.3 Implications 39

PART 3: CONCLUSION 43

1 Summary of findings 43

2 Limitations of the study 44

3 Suggestions for further study 44

REFERENCE LIST 46

APPENDIX 60

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Distribution among types of teacher talk (%) 34

Figure 2 Unfamiliar types in three kinds of teacher talk 34

LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Lexical frequency profile of the teacher talk in each lesson 31

Table 2 Lexical frequency profile of the entire teacher talk corpus 33

Table 3 Numbers and percentages of encounters with unfamiliar families 35

Table 4 K2-K20 families used on two subsequent classes and again later 36

NESTs native English speaking teachers NNESTs non- native English speaking teachers

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

In an EFL country like Vietnam, the opportunities for children to be exposed to English language environments are relatively limited Among available sources, English classroom appears to be the most popular and easily accessed context because this subject has been compulsorily included in the curriculum since Grade 3 However, in traditional pedagogy where the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary are emphasized rather than communicative competence (Pham, 2005), listening materials are usually restricted within tapes, audios and text-based conversations while teacher talk is underestimated and underutilized As it often dominates the discourse with 90%-95% of classroom talk (Dat, 2007), teacher talk should be the most useful and friendly authentic source to help children absorb the language naturally, or in another word, incidentally In accordance with the growing popularity of Communicative Language Teaching in the country since the 1990s (Pham, 2005), it seems that the elimination of Vietnamese in ELT classroom is widely recommended Yet intensive studies on how English should

be manipulated in such a context to best support students‟ learning are still insufficient

A favourable solution to the shortage of qualified Vietnamese teachers for this way of teaching is to employ native teachers due to their innate language

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abilities (Nguyen, 2013) Furthermore, although the perception that native English speaking teachers (NESTs) are born better than non- native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in EFL context has been challenged (Canagarajah, 1999a, 1999b; Phillipson, 1992), an increasing number of Vietnamese learners are willing

to pay much money to study with NESTs (Nguyen, 2013) As a result of this demand, it is fashionable for English training centers to recruit foreigners as teachers, or even to raise the rate of those teachers up to 100% However, due to the limited number of qualified NESTs in Vietnam, they started to expand the employment to foreign teachers whose mother tongues are not English, for which Apollo is an obvious illustration Due to the fact that they are neither native speakers nor Vietnamese, whether those teachers truly support opportunities for incidental learning or not is still questioned

In spite of the obvious concern mentioned above, there has not been any study investigating on teacher talk as a source for incidental vocabulary acquisition in the context of Vietnam in general and language training centers in particular The need of confirming whether those NNESTs truly create a comprehensible but lexically rich environment for students‟ learning as well as which aspects of their talk that Vietnamese teachers can refer to when using English in their own classrooms urges the researcher to conduct this study

2 Aims of the study

The case study on one teacher of Apollo English training center focuses on examining the opportunities for incidental learning catered by teacher talk as a lexical input Specifically, the research will try to answer the following questions:

1 To what extent is the teacher talk comprehensible to learners?

2 Which particular type of teacher talk provides more opportunities for learning new words than others?

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3 How often are the unfamiliar words repeated? Did repetition occur at increasingly expanding intervals (regardless of whether or not this was planned)?

3 Significance of the study

Recently, teacher talk as a source for incidental vocabulary learning has been of interest to many researchers However, as far as the researcher has found, there is almost no research conducted in the classroom of young adolescents Furthermore, in the specific context of Vietnam, there is hardly any previous study thoroughly discussing teacher talk as a lexical input for language learners, let alone utilizing it for incidental vocabulary acquisition Therefore, this study is expected to fill in this gap by selectively applying the model of Horst‟s (2010) research to investigate in the context of young adolescents

From the findings of the study, suggestions for not only the researched teacher but also others, including both NESTs and NNESTs sharing the same teaching method, can be provided to appropriately shape their talks to fit the language ability of learners, as well as to improve the opportunities for vocabulary acquisition Additionally, the answer to the last research question can point out the part that needs to be paid close attention, which supports teachers to adjust their talk intensively and effectively Furthermore, with the participant of the study who

is a non-native speaker, Vietnamese teachers may find it more familiar and practical to reflect on their own teaching Another expected outcome of the study

is also to be a reference source for learners, parents and education administrators

to choose or train teachers for their pedagogical purposes

4 Scope of the study

As the focus of the study is on the lexical facet of the teacher talk, the researcher only uses computer programs to analyze the corpus provided by the teacher, especially on the aspect of comprehension and repetition Besides, while

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these talks are solely considered as the potential source catered by the teacher, the general effectiveness of students‟ vocabulary learning affected by other factors such as learners‟ attention, learners‟ learning strategies, teacher-learner interaction and so on will not be included in the scope of the study

In addition, the study excludes student speech because a student‟s response

is sometimes inaudible in the recorded tape, or group/paired activities likely mean that many students will be speaking at once The implication is that the study will only focus on teacher talk which plays key importance in the spoken input students will be exposed to but not all of it

Furthermore, there are many other kinds of audio input inside (tapes, clips, etc.) and outside (films, TV programs, etc.) the classroom However, due to the dominant role of teacher talk as discussed above, the researcher decides to choose it as the single main subject for the study

video-As a case study on one teacher in one class, the conclusion of the study may not be valid to be generalized to a broader class or apply to any other contexts It may be useful to serve as an intensive source of information to refer to or to provide hypothesis for further study

Chapter 2: Literature review

This provides elaboration of key definitions as well as the review on related studies

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Chapter 3: Methodology

This chapter issues the description of research participants, data collection method and data analysis method

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

In this chapter, research findings and implications are presented Besides, discussion on the comparison between the findings and reviewed literature is also drawn

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This chapter includes the summary of the research, the limitation of the study and suggestion for further research

Summary: The chapter has provided the rationale for the study by

stressing the demand for confirming whether the teacher talk of NNESTs truly creates various opportunities for vocabulary acquisition The framework of the research has also been identified with the three research questions and clearly defined scope The study’s elaborations have not only justified the major contents and structure of the study but will also play the role of main guidelines for the rest

of the paper

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PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

* * * * *

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter was constructed to set the theoretical background for the whole research, including the background and a number of studies related to the research topic Specifically, key terms would be defined and a brief review of the related studies would reveal the research gap and hence, justify the aims of the study

1.1 Incidental vocabulary learning

1.1.1 Definition

One of the earliest and most influential definitions of incidental learning is that of Marsick and Watkins (1990), in which it is explained in combination with informal learning and in contrast to formal learning These authors consider incidental learning a by-product of some other activities and it happens when people are not aware of it, which is identical to implicit learning (Marsick, Watkins, Callahan & Volpe, 2006) Sharing the same conception, Kerka (2000) briefly but explicitly defines incidental learning as “unintentional or unplanned learning that results from other activities” In light of these theories, incidental vocabulary learning can be understood as the lexis acquisition when the task objective is not to learn words

There are differences in distinguishing between incidental and intentional learning from the perspective of educationalists and psychologists In a wide range

of research, (Hulstijn, 2001; Schmidt, 1994; Shu, Anderson & Zhang, 1995) the labels lie in the question of whether students are told about their being tested afterwards or whether they engage in processing L2 lexicons with the intention to commit them to memory While the theoretical distinction is crystal clear in

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operational terms, there has been a decades-long debate among psychologists to jump into a conclusion for conceptual definitions The modern perspectives argue that it is uncritical and dangerous to declare that absolute incidental learning exists because subjects in incidental contexts cannot be proved not to have a motivation, self-instruction or “set” to learn (McGeoch, 1942, Postman, 1964) Thus, these researchers merely focus on the “functional relations between the instruction stimulus” and “measures of learning and retention”, in another word, the quality and frequency of the information processing activities

For methodological and pedagogical purposes, clarifying the label for learning approach is still necessary and recommended, but it is essential for researchers and educators to be aware that neither the test warning nor the learning intention controls the information acquisition In this study, with the focus on the teacher, the researcher bases the distinction on the vocabulary objectives of the lesson to determine whether the word is taught incidentally or intentionally It provides the research with a reliable scheme for such debatable concepts

1.1.2 Significance of incidental vocabulary learning

Huckin and Coady (1999), in their review of the concept, notice that “after decades of neglect, L2 vocabulary learning has become, in the past few year or so,

an object of considerable interest among researchers, teachers and material developers”, most of whom share the consensus that vocabulary learning predominantly occurs incidentally This argument is well-supported by Nation‟s (2001) work in which incidental acquisition is claimed to be accountable for the majority of vocabulary growth, whereas explicit instruction is inefficient and implausible for the enormous amount of vocabulary learners are required to achieve

Primarily basing its rationales on Krashen‟s (1982) comprehensible input hypothesis, incidental vocabulary acquisition satisfies the lexical component of his

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“i+1” theory ("i" demonstrates the current level of learners while "1" presents the targeted language knowledge which is a little more difficult than “i”) “It may be the case that if we supply enough comprehensible input, vocabulary acquisition will take care of itself” (Krashen, 1982, p 81) Specifically, this learning and teaching approach offers three main benefits over the intentional one, namely contextualization (rich sense of a word‟s use and meaning), pedagogical efficiency (vocabulary learning and other activities occur at the same time) and individualization (learner-based) (Huckin & Coady, 1999) “For long-term storage, the successful learner not only can analyze and rehearse the new word and its meanings, but also can elaborate the word-meaning complex and establish it within a suitable network of meaning” (Lawson & Hogben, 1996, p 104)

1.1.3 Limitation of incidental vocabulary learning

Huckin and Coady (1999) also summarize several limitations imposed by incidental learning such as being imprecise, time-consuming and crucially dependent on the input Besides, the comprehension of word meaning in context does not always successfully lead to the acquisition of word meaning, as being illustrated by Nation and Coady (1988):

the very redundancy or richness of information in a given context which enables a reader to guess an unknown word successfully could also predict that that same reader is less likely to learn the word because he or she was able to comprehend the text without knowing the word (p 101)

Furthermore, a body of research in the last 10 years has proved that incidental task does not necessarily lead to higher quality of information, and hence to better retention, than the intentional one (Hulstijn, 1992; Hulstijn & Trompetter, 1999; Mondria & Wit-de Boer, 1991; Paribakht & Wesche, 1996, 1997) The findings assert that with learners‟ attention oriented towards unfamiliar words and retention test, vocabulary acquisition will be remarkably enhanced Therefore, only exposing learners to listening and reading input will not be enough

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itself It is important that tasks are designed with a focus on vocabulary and with efficient learning strategies

1.1.4 Sources for incidental vocabulary learning

1.1.4.1 Incidental vocabulary learning through reading

Serving as a comprehensible input, reading has been proved to be a powerful tool for incidental vocabulary development Paribakht and Wesche (1997), in their study using reading for comprehension task, claim that although learners tend to ignore a majority of unfamiliar content words, they mostly use inference strategy for the words that they paid attention to It establishes an advantageous condition for incidental learning to take place provided that texts and tasks are appropriate The influence of reading to vocabulary acquisition is confirmed in the experimental research of Ponniah (2011) with the control group using dictionary to look for meanings The post-test results assert that learners who read for comprehension not only absorb the meaning of the words but also the grammar because they are able to use them in sentences, while the control group cannot Nagy and Herman (1987) even conclud that “incidental learning of words during reading may be the easiest and single most powerful means of promoting large-scale vocabulary growth” However, the study also reveals that the passages used in the tasks are manipulated so that difficult words are presented at least twice or in the comprehensible context, which is not popular in authentic texts Furthermore, it may be too simple to deduce that students only need to involve in reading while neglecting other kinds of input

1.1.4.2 Incidental vocabulary learning through listening

In comparison to written input, spoken one appears to be less advantageous

in developing vocabulary but more beneficial for retention In the research of Vidal (2011), both reading and listening are proved to lead to vocabulary knowledge gains but those from reading are significantly greater than those from listening Yet for the participants with high proficiency, listening might lead to

From the perspective of the teacher, investigating on spoken input, especially teacher talk, is more beneficial than written one Although authentic texts from extensive reading result in better vocabulary acquisition (Pigada & Schmitt, 2006), they tend to happen outside the classroom and primarily depends

on learners‟ autonomy Meanwhile, strictly under the teacher‟s control, teacher talk is an authentic, natural and compulsory input for students coming to class

1.1.5 Comprehension and repetition in incidental vocabulary learning Apart from the text itself, there are many other influential factors promoting incidental learning For instance, according to Schmidt (1993), this way of learning requires at least some degree of conscious attention Consequently, appropriate task demands can also result in significantly higher level of incidental vocabulary learning (Joe, 1995) In addition, using a variety of learning strategies also enhances the effectiveness of word acquisition However, the most basic and well-acknowledged features are comprehension and repetition, which will be discussed in detail due to the focus of this study on teacher talk as a lexical input

Based on the Input Hypothesis of Krashen (1982), the prerequisite of incidental learning should be efficient comprehensibility for learners to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words Some scholars, such as Meara, Lightbown and Halter (1997, 1998) or Tang (2011), appear to make the assumption that the more

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new words presented in the context, the lexically richer it is to provide opportunities for vocabulary learning Yet a majority of research reached the consensus that a minimum of 95% to 98% of known word coverage in a written text are required to meet the comprehension criterion of that learning approach (Laufer, 1989; Hsueh-Chao & Nation, 2000; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010) The result is replicated in other studies on film (Nation, 2006) and television (Webb & Rodgers, 2009) with criterion of 95% coverage Although running words from spoken input is normally more challenging for comprehension than written one as being discussed in the previous part of the review, the inputs from the research on film and television also include visual clues catering for guessing This facilitation of audio-visual input to comprehension is confirmed by Gruba (2004) in five ways: helping text type or genre recognition, stimulating macrostructure, giving rise to hypotheses, confirming and refining interpretations Putting these advantages under consideration, teacher talk can perfectly fit in the case with the visual support from the teacher‟s expression, posture, gesture and many kinds of visual aids However, there is still a big gap in incidental vocabulary learning from listening comprehension in classroom discourse, especially the lexical profile of teacher talk

Besides, it is convincingly proved that incidental vocabulary learning is proportional to the extent of exposure (Rott, 1999; Zahar, Cobb & Spada, 2001) The process is elaborated by Webb (2008) that “learners incidentally gain knowledge of words in small increments, building upon their previous gains through repeated encounters until a word is known, incidental vocabulary learning can be a relatively slow process when there are long gaps between encounters” Although repetition is a driving factor in this situation, there is unlikely a fix repetition criterion for vocabulary acquisition regarding the role of context and attention because the necessary number of encounters is considerably inconsistent among a set of studies (Webb, 2008) If the encounter oscillates among once to

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three times, there are hardly any improvements recorded (Hulstijn, Hollander & Greidanus, 1996, cited in Webb 2008) The efficient number of repetitions varies from six (Rott, 1999), eight (Horst, Cobb & Meara, 1998), ten (Saragi, Nation, & Meister, 1978), more than ten (Webb, 2007) and more than twenty (Waring & Takaki, 2003) With the variables of other factors like context, attention, target words, it is difficult to conclude a standard number of encounters needed to acquire a word Yet a range from 6 to 16 repetitions in a short period of time was presented by Zahar, Cobb and Spada (2001) in their literature review as the result

of previous studies on this aspect

Furthermore, in order to keep the newly perceived information in primary memory (short-term) and to move them into secondary memory (long-term), distributed practice with increasing intervals is essential (Allison, 2014; Kolich,

1991, cited in Daloglu, Baturay & Yildirim 2009) Similarly, based on his memory schedule, Pimsleur (1967) found out that the gap between the second revision and the subsequent revision of the word should increase for the best recall In light of previous studies, spaced revision and multiple encounters enhance vocabulary acquisition and retention Therefore, in his research, Horst (2010) regarded being used on two subsequent days and again in any days later as the criterion for increasing intervals between exposures of words

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learners differently from the way they address other kinds of classroom learners They make adjustments to both language form and language function in order to facilitate communication These adjustments are referred to as teacher talk” While the former definition only emphasizes on the functional features of teacher talk, the later one only mention the effort to adjust teacher‟s speech to match the situation, which is not always happen in classroom discourse

Since the subject of this study is teacher talk serving as lexical input for learners, the researched talk will include all the corpus offered by the teacher inside the classroom, as opposed to other settings (in the teachers‟ room, at home,

in the shop, etc.) From this way of conceptualization, the study can control all the possible input spoken by the teachers which may create opportunities for students

to learn new words

1.2.2 Role of teacher talk in vocabulary acquisition

Until comparatively recently, teacher talk was still recommended to be used sparingly because it was believed that too much teacher talking time limit students‟ opportunities to speak (Cullen, 1998) Although it is still correct in some situations, both quantity and quality of teacher talk should be taken into consideration Especially in Confucian-Heritage cultures like China (Tang, 2009;

Li, 1999) and Vietnam (Dat, 2007), where the traditional role of teacher is to transmit knowledge, teacher talk usually dominates classroom talk Consequently, teacher talk become vital, which is summarized by Tang (2011) into 4 points: (1) providing potentially valuable language input for acquisition, (2) being the principal source for lexical input, questions, nomination of topics and interaction pattern and (3) being unrealistic to be reduced as it is culturally inappropriate Sharing the same viewpoint, Nunan (1991) also argues:

Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition (…) In terms of

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acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source

of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive 1.2.3 Features of teacher talk

There are two main ways to code the feature of a teacher‟s speech suggested by Cullen (1998) The first one is the form of the talk, which is also called the formal features, including speed, pause, repetition and modifications The other is the functional features of language that teachers manipulate to organize and control classes, such as quantity and quality of talk, praises and questions

This study will involve in both aspects of teacher talk, with repetition as a formal feature and comprehension as a functional feature

1.2.4 Types of teacher talk

It was the purpose of the study that determines the approach to classify teacher talk To analyze the interaction between teachers and students, one of the most well-known frameworks is Flanders‟ (1970) Interactional Analysis Categories (FIAC), which divides the talk into indirect influence (clarify feelings constructively; praise or encourage; clarify, develop or make use of ideas suggested by students; ask questions) and direct influence (lecture; give directions; criticize) In 1975, Brown (cited in Yousefi & Koosha 2013) designed another framework called Brown Interaction Analysis System with only three types of teacher talk namely Teacher Lectures (describes, explains, narrates, directs), Teacher Question (question about content or procedure which people are intended

to answer) and Teacher Response (accept feelings, describe past and future feelings, praises, encourages, jokes, accepts or uses pupils‟ ideas, build upon pupil responses, uses of mild criticism) At first, it seems to be much simpler than both FIAC and Flint, but in fact, these categories sometimes overlap with each other

While these approaches of categorizing teacher talk primarily rely on the function aspect which requires in-depth analyzing the classroom discourse to decide the nature of the situation, Horts (2010) simply divides the talk into five sections: text-based input, text-based discussion, language focus speech, classroom and activity management and anecdote This classification appears to be mainly based on the sequences of class routine rather than the behavior of the teacher, which strongly supports the study‟s purpose to explore available opportunities for vocabulary learning in different types of input so that adjustments can be effectively made In addition, thanks to not breaking the concept into trivial pieces, Horsts helps the process of classifying patterns and analyzing statistics be less confusing and burdensome with more remarkable results for comparison and discussion Therefore, the researcher decides to adopt Horst‟s (2010) classification for the study on the lexical profile of teacher talk

1.3 Related studies about teacher talk as a lexical input for vocabulary learning

Only a few research, which will be the focal point of this part, investigate lexical profile of teacher talk as an opportunity for incidental vocabulary learning Most of them are limited in a relatively small scope and none of them provides efficient evidence whether teacher talk is effectively beneficial to incidental vocabulary acquisition or not

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In the research of Meara, Lightbown and Halter (1997), classroom transcript from a primary school ESL program in Quebec is analyzed to enquire into opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning The most important finding

of this work is a ratio of 2.75 “unusual words” per 500 words, which is equal to 50 usual words per day Since it can be considered a fairly rich exposure to a potentially learnable vocabulary source, the authors noted that teacher talk presents a considerable amount of language input which may benefit students‟ vocabulary acquisition

With the same setting, in the study conducted one year later (Lightbown, Meara & Halter, 1998), they expand the data scale to audio-lingual classrooms for children and communicative classrooms for adults After comparing the number and distribution of lemmas between teachers, they realize that notably more low-frequency lemmas are used by intensive communicative elementary setting teachers than the others, while the number of repeated words is markedly similar among teachers In the light of those studies, Horst (2009) decides to deeply investigate repeated items in the same setting with the same methodology He concludes that around 20 unknown word families a day might be feasible for attaining through teacher talk

Desiring for even more intense findings, Horst (2010) conducts a case study

on one adult classroom through one full term which is equal to 36 hours of teacher‟s speech Besides the result that 96% of the word spoken are comprehensible, he also found that the number of encounters to unusual words varies among different types of teacher talk, among which language-focused talk has the highest rate of off-list families The important implication from this methodological innovation is that teacher talk is not homogenous during a lesson Meanwhile, only 245 out of 949 word families are likely repeated enough for students to learn, which is inadequate to students‟ needs

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Another study on teacher‟s oral utterances in primary school EFL class is undertaken by Donzelli (2007) who states that the measured amount of vocabulary exposure is satisfactory which exceeds that in class texts Additionally, the test scores on words repeated over 10 times are remarkably higher than less repeated ones These statistics infer that teacher talk not only provides noticing but also supports retention

On the contrary, Tang‟s (2011) methodology reflects less effectiveness of non-native classroom discourse on vocabulary learning She measures lexical richness of teacher talk by two criteria: variety of lexical input (type-token ratio) and frequency levels of lexical input (frequency of basic 2,000 words appearing), from which she concludes that “the classroom did not seem to provide a lot of opportunities for an „i+1‟ condition” However, her definition of adequate input is not clarified so it is unconvincingly to deny the richness in the examined teacher‟s speech

To take those studies into account, the findings and implications about opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning catered by teacher talk remains controversial Furthermore, emphasis is laid on the exposure to new words as a potential learning source, while comprehensible extent of the spoken input is mainly ignored, except for Horst‟s (2010) case study Last but not least, it is also obvious to notice that there has no research either takes place in adolescent classrooms or investigates the comprehensible and repetitive nature of non-native teacher‟s corpus, let alone in the context of Vietnam This gap is expected to be bridged in the study on teacher talk as a lexical input for adolescent learners‟ in Apollo English center

Summary: By reviewing many significant works that related to this study’s

topic, the chapter has provided the theoretical background for the whole paper through careful elaboration on many angels of the two key terms: incidental

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vocabulary acquisition and teacher talk The review of a number of studies in this chapter indicated a research gap that the study would pursue to bridge

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researchers present the methodology employed in this research The selection of subject including research setting, participant is provided, followed by the data collection method, data collection procedure, data analysis method and data analysis procedure

in teaching children

In Apollo Junior, the fundamental teaching methodology is Learning English Through Subjects (LETS) It does not consider English as an independent subject but a tool to discover other fields of knowledge such as Math, Science, Art and so on As being claimed by Apollo, not only does LETS method provide children an excellent environment for effective English learning, but it also supports and reminds them of their basic knowledge in main school subject Although this method has not officially appeared in any published study,

it seems to share the same techniques with content-based instruction (CBI) The benefits of CBI are well-argued by an extensive body of research from a number

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of fields, which Grabe and Stoller (1997) conclude in seven rationales summarized

in the following points:

1 In content-based classrooms, students are exposed to a considerable amount of language while learning content which should be comprehensible, linked to their immediate prior learning and relevant to their needs

2 CBI supports contextualized learning Students are taught useful language that is embedded within relevant discourse context rather than as isolated language fragments and have many opportunities to attend

to language, to use language, and to negotiate content through language in natural discourse contexts

3 Student in CBI classes have increased opportunities to use the content knowledge and expertise that they bring to class

4 CBI itself promises to generate increased motivation among students

5 CBI supports cooperative learning, apprenticeship learning, experimental learning, and project-based learning

6 CBI allows greater flexibility and adaptability to be built into the curriculum and activity sequences

7 CBI lends itselt to student-centered classroom activities

LETS also utilizes many other modern and trusted methods and approaches such as Total Physical Response, Communicative Language Teaching Approach and Heads-up Approach with the goal to stimulate learners‟ proactiveness, to enhance their memory abilities and to motivate them to communicate naturally It

is regarded as “the most effective method of Learning English for children from 16” by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training in 2014 (Apollo Vietnam, 2015) However, this new method may cause difficulties for the teacher when teaching inter-disciplinarily Also, or the integration of different subjects may be

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lexically challenging to students As discussed above, if there the proportion of known word coverage is not enough, incidental vocabulary learning is discouraged

The main materials used for young adolescents are the English Explorer series including a student book, a workbook, a teacher‟s book and a software program Teachers in Apollo are also free to find other sources of activities and worksheets on the internet Furthermore, apart from a normal white board, the classroom is equipped with an Intelligent White Board (IWB) It has a big touch screen, a speaker, an installed book‟s software and is connected to the Internet

The researched class was Kid Plus 1C, which is equivalent to High Beginner level, CEFR A1 or Flyers (Apollo English Junior, 2016) There were 18 students from 13 to 15 years old Their English abilities were considered consistent with the level of the class thanks to the placement test The chosen textbook was English Explorer Level 1 With the duration of 36 hours, the course had 2 lessons per week on Wednesday and Friday evening; each lesson lasted for 1 hour and a half including 5 minutes break Permitted by the center and the teacher, the study was conducted in one month (9 lessons), from lesson 13 to lesson 21 in which Unit 7 and 8 was taught

For students of CEFR A1 level, the measurement of their vocabulary size has not been exactly concluded While the result from Beacco‟s study (cited in Françoise Kusseling & Wilfried Decoo 2009) is 1,000 words, Meara and Milton (2003, cited in Françoise Kusseling & Wilfried Decoo 2009) estimate a number of less than 1,500 words Regarding that they are going to take Cambridge English Flyers test right after the research finishes, the researcher decides to rely on the required vocabulary list of three Cambridge English: Young Learners tests Specifically, their vocabulary size is assumed to be around 1,000 words, which

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approximately is the summation of the amount of vocabulary of Starters, that of Movers and half of that of Flyers (University of Cambridge, n.d.)

2.1.2 Research participants

2.1.2.1 Teachers in Apollo Vietnam

Apollo Vietnam guarantees that they only employ teachers satisfying the following characteristics:

- Being foreigners

- Having Bachelor degree

- Having certification to teach English to non-native speakers (for example CELTA, TEFL or DELTA)

- Having certification to teach English to children (for example TKT Cambridge)

- Be experienced in teaching English

2.1.2.2 Participant characteristics

The researched teacher is a 26-year-old Sweden male named Simon Johansson (name changed to ensure respondent confidentiality) Although his mother tongue is not English, he still can be considered native-equivalent Firstly, all of his education was in English He studied the International Baccalaureate Program at high school in Sweden, and then got a B.A degree in United Kingdom with one year exchange to Iowa State University, USA Besides, according to EF English Proficiency Index 2015 (Education First, 2015), Swedish people have the highest English proficiency in the world Therefore, his English proficiency undeniably satisfies the requirement of English teaching

As presented in Mr Johansson‟s CV, his background is mainly on the field

of business His bachelor degree was in International Business, and his previous jobs were fundraising, sales and administrative duties However, he has

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experiences in teaching English He received a TEFL Certification in Czech Republic in 2014 after 110 hours of training and 10 hours of student teaching Since then, he has been teaching English for 1.5 years including 3 months in Czech Republic and 1 year 3 months in Vietnam for Apollo Among that time, he has been teaching children for 1 year

In conclusion, he satisfies the criteria of Apollo Vietnam for English teacher However, due to his business background and his short of experience in teaching children, his lessons might not always be suitable for kids of a certain level

2.2 Data collection methods and procedure

2.2.1 Data collection method

2.2.1.1 Justification of the use of classroom observation

Since all the research questions require qualitative analysis, a structured observation instrument is recommended Compared to survey and interview, observation stresses its focus on what really happened in the classroom which is not influenced by participants‟ opinions Therefore, the consistency and accuracy of the result can be improved Furthermore, although less structured methods can be valuable in discovering new things that could not have been anticipated at the start of a study, well-structured methods produces data that is reliable and is often comparable with other studies with the same instruments (Phellas, Bloch & Seale, 2011)

well-Regarding the research problem about teacher talk, recording and transcribing are chosen as instruments Without the presence of the researcher in the classroom, collected data is supposed to be authentic and reliable because the pressure on participants is reduced and the context is kept original (Wilson, 1977) Besides, to collect data, the researcher piloted both videotaping and sound-

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recording Considering that the study‟s focus is not on interaction patterns but on

the corpus of teacher talk, the sound recorder is chosen because it better caters for

transcribing with high-quality sound

2.2.1.2 Observation plan

With the permission of the teacher and the center, teacher talk will be

recorded continuously in the researched class during one month, which is equal to

8 lessons or 12 hours in total Before each lesson, the researcher gives the teacher

a small recorder that has already been turned on The teacher puts it on his chest

pocket so that the recorder can be kept near his mouth and the quality of sound is

not affected when he moves around the class After the lesson, the researcher will

retrieve the recorder then copy the file to the computer As the teacher is aware of

the recorder‟s presence, the researcher plans to record one more lesson right

before the analyzed 8 lessons so that the teacher gets used to the situation The

teacher is not told about the purpose of this pre-study recording and the recorded

file will later be eliminated

2.2.2 Data collection procedure

The collection procedure for data from recording consists of three main

steps which are presented in the diagram below:

 Step 1: Piloting

To check the quality of the sound from camera and sound recorder, the researcher records a random lesson of the same teacher in the same

course as those in the official study Obviously, the sound from the sound

recorder is louder and clearer than that from the camera With the sound

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recorder, the researcher can transcribe every single word As a result, the researcher decides to use the recorder for latter steps

 Step 2: Preparation The researcher carefully checks the schedule to know the exact class time, then double check with the teacher to guarantee that he will be in charge of the class for the whole research duration The researcher fully charges the recorder before coming to the center

 Step 3: Recording The researcher comes to the center 15 minutes earlier than the class time Before each lesson, the researcher turns on the recorder then give it to the teacher Staying in the center until the end of the lesson, the researcher retrieves the recorder, brings back home and copies the file to her personal laptop

2.3 Data analysis method and procedure

2.3.1 Data analysis method

2.3.1.1 British National Corpus

British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of 4000 written (90%) and spoken (10%) samples from a wide range of sources Electronically stored, BNC is designed to “reflect the widest possible variety of users and uses of the language” (Aston & Burnard, 1998) According to Lou Burnard (2007):

The BNC was originally created by an academic-industrial consortium whose original members were:

 Oxford University Press

 Longman Group Ltd

 Chambers Harrap

 Oxford University Computing Services

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 Unit for Computer Research on the English Language (Lancaster University)

 British Library Research and Development Department

Creation of the corpus was funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry and the Science and Engineering Research Council under grant number IED4/1/2184 (1991-1994), within the DTI/SERC Joint Framework for Information Technology Additional funding was provided by the British Library and the British Academy

Maintenance, distribution, and development of the corpus have been carried out at Oxford University Computing Services There have been three major revisions of the corpus:

in text) but also types (different words) and families to see how many words and proportion of words in the imported text appear in each frequency level The result

is presented in the form of table

As noted by the Cobb (2016) in the website Vocabprofile:

In the output text, punctuation is eliminated; all figures (1, 20, etc.) are replaced by the word number; contractions are replaced by constituent words (won't => will not); type-token ratio is calculated using these modified constituents; and in the 1k sub-analysis content + function words may sum to less than total (depending on user treatment of proper nouns as

a 1,000-level family Similarly, names of students in the class is regarded as

familiar because they have studied together for months, but some other proper names such as Korea, Christian, and Saturday occurring in the corpus are

categorized according to their frequency on the BNC lists

As the vocabulary size of students is approximately 1,000 words, it is assumed that words categorized as K1 are known words, while K2-K20 and off-list words tend to be unfamiliar to the researched class

2.3.2 Data Analysis Procedure

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 Step 1: Transcribing

After the recording step, all the files are transcribed to produce a corpus for

lexical analysis Since the primary purpose of the research is to examine the

teacher talk, other kinds of listening input like tapes, student talk are excluded

from the corpus Each file is transcribed within the recording day so that if there is

any unclear or inaudible word, the researcher can ask the teacher right away

 Step 2: Categorizing texts and color coding:

Texts from the transcriptions are classified into 5 groups: text-based input,

language focused speech, classroom and activity management, text-based

discussion and anecdotes (Horts, 2010) Each of 5 types of teacher talk is coded

with a bold color: red, orange, blue, green and violet respectively Apart from

audible inputs, the researcher is supported with lesson materials sent from the

teacher and videos from the surveillance camera inside the classroom In case of

confusion in categorizing, the researcher will ask and confirm with the teacher

 Step 3: Importing data into computer software to analyze

- Vocabprofile

To answer the first question about the comprehensibility of teacher talk, the

researcher accesses to the website http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/comp/, then import

the transcription of each lesson to the program

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To answer the second question about the comprehensibility of each type of teacher talk, the researcher looks for the coded color to group the same type into a file, which is later imported to the program

The researcher presents the result in Excel with tables and figures

- Range

To answer the third question about word repetition with increasing intervals, the researcher imports all the transcripts (each of them is from one lesson) to the program From the exported results about word repetition, the researcher uses Excel to exclude K1 words (known words) and sort the words according to their number of exposures The findings are presented in tables and figures

 Step 4: Finding out the answer for research question

- First question: If 95%-98% coverage of the corpus is among the vocabulary size of learners (1,000 words), teacher talk can strongly cater for incidental vocabulary learning

- Second question: The researcher compares the known word coverage of each type of teacher talk The type with the most number of unfamiliar words is considered most potential for vocabulary learning

- Third question: If each unfamiliar word is encountered more than 6 times in the whole corpus, it is likely to be learned and remembered by learners If those words are encountered on two subsequent days and again later, they satisfy the condition of distribution learning

Summary: In this chapter, the researcher’s purpose is to justify the

methodology of the study Observation – audio recording was employed as the instrument for data collections The two programs VocabProfile and Range in

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Lextutor website were used in the data analysis procedure The results are going

to be presented in the next chapter

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, all the collected data will be analyzed and discussed to answer each research question respectively Table, charts and graphs are utilized for evidence and elaboration Apart from the results from research instruments, this chapter also draws a comparison and the findings of related studies, especially the study of Horst (2010) from which this study was inspired

3.1 Findings

3.1.1 Comprehensibility of teacher talk

The extent to which Simon‟s teacher talk is regarded as comprehensible for his students is clearly presented in Table 1 The first row shows the number

labeled for each lesson according to the order of recording The K1 row presents the proportion of speech among the BNC 1,000 most frequent English word

families, while the K2-K20 row is the data for the rest of BNC 20,000 families The last “off-list” row reflects the presence of words in the talk that are not on any

of the 20 BNC frequency lists Since the vocabulary size of students in this Kid Plus 1C class is approximately 1,000 words, they are expected to recognize the meaning of words in K1 lists As discussed above, if the percentage of K1 words

is among 95%-98%, teacher talk can strongly cater for students‟ incidental

vocabulary learning

K1 words (%) 94.8 96.53 93.16 94.08 94.71 93.58 98.81 91.81 94.63 K2-K20 words

(%) 4.00 2.57 6.39 5.92 4.72 5.58 1.19 7.39 4.63 Off-list (%) 1.4 0.9 0.45 1.21 0.57 0.84 0 0.8 0.74

Table 1 Lexical frequency profile of the teacher talk in each lesson