Tài liệu Towards improving vocabulary for the first year students at the faculty of english, hanoi open university

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY CODE: 15 FACULTY OF ENGLISH GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY TOWARDS IMPROVING VOCABULARY FOR THE FIRSTYEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY Supervisor Student Date of birth Course : Le Thi Vy, M.A : Do Thu Huong : 28.02.1994 : K19A03 (2012-2016) Hanoi – 2016 Graduation Paper DECLARATION Title: Towards improving vocabulary for the first year students at the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, 15 April, 2016 Student Signature Supervisor Signature Full name Full name Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) Graduation Paper ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Mrs Le Thi Vy, M.A – my supervisor. A person of varied skills and experiences in English teaching, she has eased my research through valuable suggestions, careful and detailed comments. Without her help, my thesis would not have been completed. I wish also to express my great thanks to the lecturers of the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University who have provided me with not only knowledge but also the study condition as well as their useful advice, their concerns and supports during the time I am studying here. My gratitude also goes to the class K19A02, for their continuing supports and sharing their ideas with me both as classmates and friends for the wonderful time we had in Hanoi Open University. I also would like to extend my thanks to the 100 first-year students of the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for their aid in implementing the survey. Finally yet importantly, I am indebted to my family especially my mother who have had no knowledge of English but their helps, supports and encouragements to my English study are uncountable. If there had not been great help from the above people, the study could not have been fulfilled. For which I am truly grateful. Hanoi, 15 April, 2016 Do Thu Huong Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) Graduation Paper TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES PART A: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1 1. Rationale .................................................................................................... 1 2. Aims and purposes of the study .................................................................. 2 3. Scope of the study ...................................................................................... 3 4. Research questions ..................................................................................... 3 5. Methods of the study .................................................................................. 3 6. Design of the study..................................................................................... 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................ 5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................... 5 1. An overview of vocabulary ...................................................................... 5 1.1. Definitions of vocabulary .............................................................................................5 1.2. Classification of vocabulary........................................................................................6 1.2.1.The meaning .......................................................................................................................6 1.2.2.The function........................................................................................................................8 1.2.3.The concept of morphemes...........................................................................................9 1.3. The importance of vocabulary .................................................................................10 2. Vocabulary study.................................................................................... 12 2.1. Meaning .............................................................................................................................12 2.2. Form ....................................................................................................................................12 2.3. Collocation ........................................................................................................................13 2.4. Word formation...............................................................................................................14 Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) Graduation Paper 2.5. Grammar............................................................................................................................16 3. Summary................................................................................................. 16 CHAPTER II: THE STUDY ..................................................................... 18 1. Methodology ........................................................................................... 18 1.1. Subjects ...............................................................................................................................18 1.2. Survey questionnaires ..................................................................................................18 2. Findings................................................................................................... 19 2.1. Data collection and analysis .....................................................................................19 2.2. Findings .............................................................................................................................26 2.3. Summary ............................................................................................................................27 CHAPTER III: SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY AT THE FOE, HOU ...... 28 1. Reading the materials .............................................................................. 28 2. Guessing words from context .................................................................. 29 3. Making it personal................................................................................... 32 4. Using Stick notes or Flash cards ............................................................. 33 5. Making friends with the dictionary ......................................................... 35 6. Taking advantages of mass media ........................................................... 36 7. Studying and Reviewing regularly .......................................................... 39 PART C: CONCLUSION .......................................................................... 42 Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) Graduation Paper LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HOU : Hanoi Open University FOE : Faculty of English Etc : Et cetera Et al : Et alia Q : Question Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) Graduation Paper LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ opinions and attitudes toward learning English vocabulary (Question 1, 2, 3, 4) Table 2: Students’ problems in English vocabulary learning (Question 5) Table 3: Students’ understanding of English vocabulary learning (Question 6) Table 4: Students’ common ways in English vocabulary learning (Question 7, 8) Table 5: Students’ expectation to teachers (Question 9) Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Each country in the world has their own language, custom and culture. But nowadays, the development of the society and economy makes chances to all nations co-operate to each other. Thus, they have to use a common language to communicate – English. English is becoming very popular and important because it is used widely in many fields of life such as technology, tourism business, education, health, science especially foreign trade and so on… To be specific, in Vietnam – a developing country with the open door-policy, it is now a great demand to learn English for the process of assimilating and promoting into regional and international economy. Therefore, English is also considered the most important foreign language in Vietnam and taught as a compulsory subject at almost every school. Moreover, English is taught at all levels of education from kindergartens, elementary schools, junior and senior high schools to colleges and universities. Everyone has to experience new words first if they want to learn a language. The more words you know, the more knowledge you will be able to understand. Thus, vocabulary is a useful key and plays an important role in learning English. However, it is not easy work because English is very varied and complex. All of the learners in general and the first-year students at the FOE, HOU in particular always have to face up with many difficulties when they start learning English as a second language, namely vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in which vocabulary is the hardest issue. In fact, a word may have more than one meaning and more than one part of speech; therefore, students cannot avoid forgetting vocabulary in the process of studying English. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 1 For example, the word “increase” may be a noun and a verb also. Besides, some words with different spelling and meaning have the same pronunciation such as “sun” and “son”. In this graduation paper, the author would like to carry out a study on how first-year students at the FOE, HOU are learning English vocabulary in order to find out their current situation of studying vocabulary and then to suggest them some effective solutions to deal with their problems in learning as well as improve their English vocabulary. With all the above reasons, the author decided to choose the research title “Towards improving vocabulary for the first-year students at the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University” to help the mentioned students as well as others enrich their English vocabulary. 2. Aims and purposes of the study The graduation paper is about to help the first-year students at the FOE, HOU make progress in studying vocabulary and improve their own vocabulary as well as to prepare for their basic knowledge of vocabulary with higher requirement for the next levels by suggesting some common useful ways. To summarize the above, the study is aimed at: - Covering background knowledge of vocabulary - Giving a brief overview of how first-year students at the FOE, HOU study vocabulary - Finding out difficulties that first-year students are facing in learning English vocabulary - Suggesting some useful techniques to learn English vocabulary Hopefully, the students will be interested in studying English especially English vocabulary and get better results in this subject. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 2 3. Scope of the study The study limits itself to the investigation of the difficulties in learning English vocabulary of the first-year students at the FOE, HOU and the solutions are also provided to help them learn English vocabulary more easily and effectively. 4. Research questions - What are the vocabulary and its importance? - What is the real situation of learning English vocabulary for the first- year students at the FOE, HOU? - What are the main difficulties experienced by the first-year students at the FOE, HOU in the process of learning English vocabulary? - What are some recommendations for the first-year students to improve their vocabulary? 5. Methods of the study To complete this graduation paper, some methods have been applied: investigative method, descriptive method and theoretical method. All of the considerations and theories given in this study are based largely on publication. The statistics are collected from the survey questionnaires of the first-year students at the FOE, HOU. The results of this survey will be analyzed to clarify the current situation and then recommend some effective solutions. 6. Design of the study The study is divided into three parts: Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 3 Part A is the Introduction. This part is the academic routines required for a graduation paper, namely rationale, aims and objectives, scope, research questions, methods and design of the study. Part B is the Development, including three chapters: Chapter I is the Literature Review. This chapter provides theoretical background of English vocabulary such as definitions and classification based on some different aspects, etc. Chapter II is The Study. It is the main part of the study, which represents the current situation of the first year students at FOE, HOU in learning English vocabulary as well as the findings and analysis based on data collected from the survey questionnaires. Chapter III presents some suggestions for improving the first - year students’ vocabulary at the FOE, HOU. In this chapter, some effective ways to improve English vocabulary of the first year students to help them study better are illustrated. The last part is the conclusion. This part summarizes the whole study mentioned in the previous parts. It is followed by the questionnaires and the references used during the study. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter mentions the theoretical background of English vocabulary such as definitions, classification based on some aspects (meaning, function, morphemes). In addition, the author also addresses some issues what need to be studied when coming across a new item like its grammar, form, formation, collocation and meaning. Beside, the author analyzes the importance of vocabulary in English learning and its role to students’ future so that students can have good awareness of learning English vocabulary and put more efforts in this process. 1. An overview of vocabulary 1.1. Definitions of vocabulary The term “vocabulary” appears to be a very simple concept but in fact, it is extremely difficult to give an exact definition of vocabulary. Basing on different criteria, many linguists define vocabulary in different ways. According to Ur (1996), vocabulary can be defined roughly “as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound of two or three words or multi-word idioms”. “It is in words that sound and meanings inter-lock to allow us to communicate with one another and it is words that we range together to make sentences, conversations and discourses of all kinds” (Mackey, 1971). Lewis and Hill (1985) also share Ur’s idea that considers a vocabulary item more than one word. They also mention a temptation to think that the core of Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 5 learning foreign language was to use words for old things. However, in fact, it is more complicated than that. According to Wood (1981), vocabulary or lexicon refers to information stored in memory concerning the pronunciation and meanings of words. Vocabulary is also defined basing on phonological criterion. It is said that words are listed in dictionaries that they are separated in writing by spaces and that they may be separated in speech by pause (Nation, 1994). Besides, Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Hoc (2002) consider their following definition of vocabulary as “logical”. According to them, when the term “vocabulary” of a language is mentioned, it should be mentioned as consisting of all the words, compounds and idioms used to transmit information on both “oral and written communication”. In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language possesses, including a single word, two or three word items expressing a single idea and multi-word idioms whose meaning cannot be deduced from the analysis of the component words. Vocabulary can be defined as the words we teach in the foreign language and a useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words”. It can be seen that a “vocabulary” item can be more than one word. Therefore, it is necessary not to make confusion between vocabulary item and word. 1.2. Classification of vocabulary 1.2.1. The meaning Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 6 A word can possess two kinds of meaning: lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. Therefore, vocabulary can be divided into notional and functional words. 1.2.1.1. Notional words (lexical words) Notional words are words with clear lexical meaning. They are objects, actions, qualities, etc and they have meaning in themselves. Notional words from a great number of each speaker’s vocabulary. Example: a book, a house, a pen, a desk, etc. In short, a notional word is “the realization of concept or emotion”. 1.2.1.2. Functional words (Grammatical words) Functional words are those whose meaning is grammatical and they have meaning in relation to the other words with which they are used. Functional words are particles, articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions, etc, for example: at, on, and, because. Although the lexical words are different from grammatical words, there is no clear-cut dividing line between the two types of word. In teaching vocabulary, “the teacher should not spend too much time teaching functional words but simply tell the learners how to use the words grammatically. It is important that lexical and grammatical meanings do not exist separately but always go together to make up the meaning of a word. The teacher; therefore, bears in mind these characteristic of words when they teach vocabulary. It means that Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 7 the teachers should teach learners the use of functional words within the framework of a sentences pattern” (Wood, 1981). 1.2.2. The function In sentence, a word has many different functions. “English words can be classified basing on functions as different parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition” (Gaims & Redman, 1986). Each part of speech has to follow particular grammar rules so that when learning English words we have to be aware of the importance of the parts of speech of that word in sentence. For example: - Noun: a table, a cat, a girl - Verb: to see, to catch, to walk - Adjective: tall, huge, tiny Apart from the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of new words, learners need to know how these words function in sentence. A word can have many functions in the sentence. For example, with the word ‘foreigner’, some learners may make sentence like this: “He is a foreigner teacher”. In that case, the teacher would need to clarify that ‘foreigner’ is a noun and its adjective is ‘foreign’. Also, the students need to remember that a word can have more than one grammatical function. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 8 1.2.3. The concept of morphemes A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit or part of a word. Words are made up from free and bound morphemes. “According to the concept of morphemes, we can classify words into three kinds: simple words, derived words and compound words” (Bauer, 2002). 1.2.3.1. Simple words According to Bauer (2002), a simple word consists of one morpheme only and cannot be broken down into smallest meaningful unit. For example: boy, dog, cake, pen, etc. Most simple words are root to make up compound words or complex words in a language. 1.2.3.2. Derived words A derived word is “a word that consists of a root and one or more derivational morphemes” (Bauer, 2002). For example: interesting, employment, successful, worker and so on. 1.2.3.3. Compound words “Compound word is one that has at least two roots, with or without derivation morphemes” (Bauer, 2002). For instance: post office, car park, greeting card, etc. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 9 English has many compound words. Some of these are written as one word. Other compounds are hyphenated, for example: kind-hearted, house-keeper and so on. Still other like family car, shoes store, is written as two words. Bauer (2002) also states that compounds can function in a sentence as separate lexical units due to their integrity, semantic unity, etc. Compounds are easily confused with free words. However, basing on the phonological criterion, we can distinguish between compounds and free word groups. Most compounds have a heavy stress on the first element, for example: ‘greenhouse’, ‘whitewash’. Free word groups have stresses on both elements and the second element, for instance: ‘interesting’ film, ‘high’ building, etc. Thus, when learning compounds words, the students should find clear examples with accurate stress to understand deeply. 1.3. The importance of vocabulary Of many components of one language, vocabulary has been commonly accepted to be the most important language one. Commenting on the role of vocabulary, Wilkins (1972), a famous British linguist says: “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed”. People consider vocabulary the key to mastering English knowledge. With the lack of vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate with other people confidently. Moreover, it is hard to express ideas and explain something necessary. Therefore, on a personal level, a good vocabulary is important in sharpening one’s perception and thought that to become fully conscious, must be formulated in words. Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 10 A good vocabulary is important not only for more precision in thought but also in one’s daily affairs, the action one must perform both on and off the job in ordinary living. Vocabulary plays an important role in combining four basis English skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. “Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean” and “Words are the currency of communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication – listening, speaking, reading and writing” (Alexander, 2006). When having a multiform vocabulary, it is extremely advantageous to develop four above skills. If the students lack of necessary vocabulary, it will be difficult to express any ideas to others. Therefore, their speaking skill cannot make any progress. Moreover, sometimes it makes confusion among people and leads to many inconvenient situations. Additionally, if it is supposed that the freshmen have a poor vocabulary, how can they write a lively and excellent essay or a normal paragraph? Truly, it requires a great number of vocabularies. Normally, the students also can get information from reading books. If books are in Vietnamese certainly there are not any problems. However, these books are written in English and denoted in English style. If they do not have a good dictionary, it will take them lots of time to understand. The students have to understand what they have learned to use vocabulary in each situation effectively. Frequently reading comprehensions, and thus retention, is faulty because of a learner’s less than adequate vocabulary. Moreover, it is easy to have misunderstanding in the process of exchanging information. Only when having a great number of vocabulary, the students can make a progress in developing the above four skills. In communication, it is a decisive factor to make them talk with others actively and understand each other quickly. With a Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 11 poor vocabulary, the free flow of ideas and pen is blocked and dribbled out; with a good vocabulary, it will be helped to flow and be unimpeded. 2. Vocabulary study 2.1. Meaning According to Ur (2012), the first thing to realize about vocabulary items is that they frequently have more than one meaning, so when the students learn a new word, they should decipher its meaning in the context in which it is used. Another fact about meaning is that sometimes words have meaning in relation to other words. Thus, the students need to know the meaning of “animal” word to describe anyone of a number of other things, for example: elephant, peacock, penguin, dragonfly, etc. “Animal” has a general meaning whereas “elephant” is more specific. We understand the meaning of the word like “good” in the context of word like “bad”. Words have opposites (antonyms) and they also have other words with similar meaning (synonyms), for example: “bad” and “evil”. Even in that example, however, one thing is clear: words seldom have absolute synonyms although context may take them synonyms on particular occasions. As far as meaning goes, then, the students need to know about meaning in context as well as sense relations. 2.2. Form “Each English word has its spelling and pronunciation which are the first things presented when we learn new words. Therefore, the learners have to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling). They are fairly obvious characteristics and one or the other will be perceived by the learners when encountering the item for the first time.” (To Thu Huong, et al, 2008). Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 12 a. Spelling Spelling is the writing of word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order, “the conventions which determine how the graphemes of a writing system are used to write a language” (Coulmas, 1996). It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of language. Most spellings attempt to approximate a transcribing of the sounds of the language into alphabetic letter: however, completely phonetic spellings are often the exception, due to drifts in pronunciations over time and irregular spellings adopted common usage. b. Pronunciation Pronunciation plays an important part in making listeners understand what we are speaking about. Therefore, it is extremely important in the process of learning English vocabulary. However, it is not easy to pronounce an English vocabulary to learn from dictionary, from daily conversations among different people, from news on internet, radio, television… The students should pay attention to the stress and intonation. However, if they make too many mistakes in pronouncing English vocabulary, it may makes listeners confused and lead to a wrong information transmission. 2.3. Collocation “Collocation refers to the way words tend to co-occur with other words or expressions” (Ur, 2012), for example: commit a crime, meet the demand, etc. These combinations just sound ‘right’ to native English speakers, who use them all the time. On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016) 13