Using flashcards to teach vocabulary for young learners at an english center in quy nhon = sử dụng thẻ từ vựng để dạy từ vựng cho học sinh nhỏ tuổi tại một trung tâm anh ngữ quy nhơn

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

VÕ TRẦN THU THẢO

USING FLASHCARDS
TO TEACH VOCABULARY FOR YOUNG LEARNERS
AT AN ENGLISH CENTER IN QUY NHON

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140111

Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức, PhD.


BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

VÕ TRẦN THU THẢO

SỬ DỤNG THẺ TỪ VỰNG
ĐỂ DẠY TỪ VỰNG CHO HỌC SINH NHỎ TUỔI
TẠI MỘT TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ QUY NHƠN

Chuyên ngành: LL & PP giảng dạy bộ môn tiếng Anh
Mã số : 8140111

Người hướng dẫn: TS. Võ Duy Đức


i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby certify that the thesis titled “Using flashcards to teach
vocabulary for young learners at an English center in Quy Nhon”, is entirely
my own original work except where otherwise indicated. I have not used any
sources other than those listed and identified as references. I further declare that I
have not submitted this thesis at any other institution in order to obtain a degree.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my
supervisor, Võ Duy Đức, PhD, for the enthusiastic and continuous support of
my thesis, for his patience, encouragement, and immense knowledge. His
guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I
could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my research.
I would send my special thanks to all lecturers and staff of the of the
Department of Foreign Languages and the Department of Pedagogy, Quy
Nhon University for their profound knowledge and guidance during my two
years of studying.
I am also thankful to all the English teachers and students at IALC
center for their enthusiastic participation in my research. Without their help, I
would not have been able to complete this paper.
Last but not least, I own a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family
whose support and encouragement have always been a great deal of motivation
that has helped me to overcome all problems to complete my thesis.


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ABSTRACT
This study was carried out in the form of an action research which

investigates teachers perspectives towards the use of flashcards in vocabulary
lessons and then figure out whether this visual aid in vocabulary teaching
could help improve students‟ vocabulary retention. In order to accomplish
these purposes, five teachers

and fifteen young learners at IALC center

(International Active Learning Center) in Quy Nhon were selected to
participate in the study, which last for eight weeks. Data collection
instruments were employed, namely teachers‟ questionnaire and interview,
pre-test and post-test, and class observation in order to have data to achieve
most reliable findings for the research. Results from the teachers‟
questionnaire and interviews reflected a completely positive attitude of the
teachers towards the use of flashcards, claiming that flashcard-based activities
helped teaching procedure more effectively. Findings from the tests and
observation revealed that students had experienced an improvement in their
vocabulary memorization throughout the eight weeks of study and the reason
for the vocabulary retention progress was mainly attributed to the use of
flashcards in language classroom. Benefits of using flashcards can be listed as
the deeper impression of vocabulary on students‟ memory and a more
frequently exposure to vocabulary use. On this basis, some implications for
teachers‟ preparation, classroom practices and future research were proposed.


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TABLE OF CONTENT
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
TABLE OF CONTENT
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale .............................................................................................. 1
1.2. Research aims and objectives .............................................................. 3
1.3. Research questions ............................................................................... 3
1.4. Scope of the study ................................................................................ 3
1.5.Significance of the study ....................................................................... 4
1.6. Design of the study .............................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 5
2.1. Vocabulary .............................................................................................. 5
2.1.1. Vocabulary definition ....................................................................... 5
2.1.2. Kinds of vocabulary .......................................................................... 6
2.1.3. Stages of Vocabulary teaching.......................................................... 7
2.1.4. Techniques in teaching vocabulary................................................... 8
2.1.5. Vocabulary retention ....................................................................... 10
2.2. Flashcards ................................................................................................. 10
2.2.1. Flashcards definition ....................................................................... 10
2.2.2. Kinds of flashcards.......................................................................... 11


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2.2.3. Use of flashcards ............................................................................. 12
2.2.4. Flashcard as a language teaching and learning tool........................ 14
2.2.5. Advantages and disadvantages of using flashcards ........................ 16
2.2.6. Teacher‟s roles in using flashcards ................................................. 17

2.3. Young learners ......................................................................................... 18
2.3.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 18
2.3.2. Characteristics of young learners .................................................... 20
2.4. Action research......................................................................................... 23
2.5. Previous studies on the relationship between flashcards and vocabulary
retention 26
CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY .................................................................. 31
3.1. Research design ........................................................................................ 31
3.2. Research context ...................................................................................... 31
3.2.1. Participants ...................................................................................... 31
3.2.2. Textbook ......................................................................................... 33
3.3. Data collection instruments ...................................................................... 34
3.4. Procedure.................................................................................................. 38
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................ 43
4.1. Teachers‟ perception towards the use of flashcards in teaching
vocabulary ...................................................................................................... 43
4.1.1. Findings and discussion from teachers‟ questionnaire ................... 43
4.1.2. Findings and discussion from teacher interviews ........................... 50
4.2. The extent to which flashcards can improve young learners‟ vocabulary
retention. 55
4.2.1. Results of pre-test and post-test ...................................................... 55
4.2.2. Comparison between pre-test and post-test .................................... 56
4.3.Summary ................................................................................................... 60
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .................. 61


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5.1.

Conclusions ..................................................................................... 61

5.2.

Implications ..................................................................................... 62

5.3.

Limitations and suggestions for further research ............................ 63

REFERENCES ................................................................................................ 65
APPENDICES


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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Design of the textbook “Every Body Up 4” .................................. 34
Table 3.2. What Is Involved in Knowing a Word (Adapted from Nation, 2010) . 37
Table 3.3. Procedure for data collection ......................................................... 40
Table 4.1. Teachers‟ common techniques in teaching vocabulary ................. 43
Table 4.2: Teachers‟ frequency of using flashcards in teaching vocabulary .. 46
Table 4.3. Teachers‟ purposes of using flashcards to teach vocabulary and its
frequency of use .................................................................................. 46
Table 4.4. Teachers‟ sources to get flashcards ............................................... 47
Table 4.5: Challenges faced by teachers in using flashcards to teach
vocabulary ........................................................................................... 48
Table 4.6: Scores of pre-test and post-test ...................................................... 56


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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Action research model based on Kemmis and McTaggart (1988)24
Figure 4.1: The teachers‟ view on the role of vocabulary teaching ................ 44
Figure 4.2. Teachers‟ evaluation of flashcards in general .............................. 45
Figure 4.3. Language games‟ availability ....................................................... 47
Figure 4.4: Problems encountered by teachers when using flashcards in the
processing of teaching vocabulary ...................................................... 48
Figure 4.5. Results of the pre-test ................................................................... 55
Figure 4.6. Results of the post-test .................................................................. 56


1

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale
In terms of students‟ competences, English teaching has the aim at

developing the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
This means that the students are expected to practice these language skills
through the activities given in the class. In supporting the development of the
four language skills, it is necessary to learn language components, including
pronunciation, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. It is believed that
vocabulary is one of the language components that play a significant part in
the development of the language skills. Building up a useful vocabulary is
important to the teaching and learning progress of a foreign language.
Limited vocabulary; therefore, is likely to be a barrier for students in their

foreign language learning. For this reason, vocabulary is highly important to
any language.
Whether learners are adults or young children, they need to broaden
their own vocabulary. Especially, for young learners who are at the beginning
level of language learning, vocabulary will go hand in hand with them in the
long journey of their language development. Insufficient vocabulary may
become a long-term trouble. In fact, to learn English vocabulary,
memorization is very important for the learners. In mastering English
vocabulary, the students do not only need to learn a lot of English words but
also to remember them (Thornbury, 2002: 23). Accordingly, low proficiency
makes students find a difficult in acquiring the language knowledge and
taking part in class activities. It is clear that they could not communicate well
because they lack words they need.
As the importance of mastering vocabulary is obvious, the teaching of
vocabulary should always receive high attention. However, the traditional


2
vocabulary teaching techniques in such a way as presenting new words on
blackboard together with its phonics, meaning and requiring students to learn
long word lists are still kept in many language classrooms, which lead to the
inefficiency of vocabulary retention, especially to young learners. How words
should be learnt attracts a lot of discussion from many influential experts.
They have suggested different ways to increase a learner‟s vocabulary which
is considered as a key aspect of learning a language. There are some learning
techniques that are proven effective such as extensive reading, contextualized
word study, using games and visual aids, incidental learning of vocabulary
and so on. Each of these ways has its own advantages and disadvantages. One
of the techniques is using flashcards in teaching and learning vocabulary
which increasingly draws plenty of attention from researchers. Among them,

Nation and Meara (2002) suggested that flashcards should have an important
place in language learning. With advances in flashcard technology, this
learning material has become much more powerful than ever before; that is
the reason why teachers can make use of it to bring students success of
learning a foreign language.
This study aims to help the young learner to be more successful in
English vocabulary retention and to investigate teachers‟ perceptions towards
using flashcards to teach vocabulary. Hence, conducting a study utilizing
action research could be the suitable strategy in the context when the teacher
in the study was also the researcher to examine the classroom setting, to
perform the teaching technique in a particular class as well as to identify solutions
for problems arising in teaching and learning English. For these purposes, it is
urgent for me to do an action research on the topic, “Using flashcards to teach
vocabulary for young learners at an English center in Quy Nhon”.


3
1.2.

Research aims and objectives
Aims of the study
The research is to provide a suggested technique in teaching English

vocabulary in an English center in Quy Nhon to make students more
interested in the lesson as well as to master learned knowledge of that lesson
in an effective way. The major aims of the study are to point out teachers‟
attitudes towards teaching vocabulary by using flashcards and to improve
young learners‟ vocabulary retention at an English center in Quy Nhon
through using flashcards.
Objectives of the study

To be more specific for the aim of the research, this study has been
carried out to explore:
-

To investigate teachers‟ perceptions of teaching vocabulary through

using flashcards.
-

To investigate the extent to which

flashcards can improve young

learners‟ vocabulary retention.
1.3.

Research questions

In an attempt to achieve the above-presented aims, the study seeks to answer
the following research questions:
1.

What are the teachers‟ perceptions towards teaching vocabulary by

using flashcards?
2.

To what extent do flashcards improve young learners‟ vocabulary

retention?

1.4.

Scope of the study

The research concentrates on investigating how utilizing flashcards improves
young learners‟ vocabulary retention. Due to time constraints and the length
of the study, it has the participation of fifteen students from ten to twelve and
five English teachers at IALC English center in Quy Nhon. The study was


4
conducted in eight weeks. Furthermore the study was to investigate attitudes
of teachers towards using flashcards and to measure students‟ ability of
remembering word meaning, word spelling and word pronunciation when
using flashcards. Other aspect of vocabulary such as: grammar, collocation ...
were not taken into consideration in the research. The course book which the
researcher used in this action research was “Everybody Up 4” Textbook,
published by Oxford University Press.
1.5.

Significance of the study
It is hoped that this study may provide some insights in both theoretical

and practical significance. In term of the theory, the study could contribute to
the general theory of vocabulary and vocabulary retention improvement
techniques to help pupils remember and recall vocabulary better and for a
longer time. Practically, the study will help to improve teachers‟ teaching
practices to enhance young learners‟ vocabulary retention. Furthermore,
teachers can drill and perform the new words to young learners basing on the
advantages and positive effectiveness of flashcards.

1.6.

Design of the study
The thesis consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the rationale, the aims, the research

questions, the scope and the design of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents theories related to vocabulary
and flashcards. Previous studies on flashcards are also reviewed.
Chapter 3, Methodology, presents the research methods, the setting of
the study, the participants, the research data and the research procedures.
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, presents the findings of the study
and some explanations, and comments on these findings.
Chapter 5, Conclusion, provides the pedagogical implications, some
limitations of the study and suggestions for future study


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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Second language acquisition (SLA) may involve various issues. In
terms of teaching young learners, it has a long history of constructing theory
and practice. In the trend of learning English as a foreign language in the
country, it is teachers who play numerous roles in the course of teaching to
help facilitate learning and flashcards seems to be a popular way that teachers
use in vocabulary lessons.
This chapter has introduced theoretical aspects of vocabulary retention,
teaching technique through flashcards as well as the literature review on
related studies.
2.1.

Vocabulary

2.1.1. Vocabulary definition
There are many definitions of vocabulary in existence. Vocabulary is
the key of the language. McCarthy (1990: 32) defined vocabulary is the word
in a specific language or freestanding items of language that have meaning.
According to Richard (2001:4), one of the first things applied linguistics
focused on was vocabulary, which is one of the most visible components of
language. Instead of thinking that vocabulary is taught, it can be presented,
explained, used in a variety of activities, but it must be learned by the
individual (Rivers, 1981). Another way of defining vocabulary, Ur (1998)
wrote that the words we teach in the foreign language can be considered as
vocabulary. Actually, vocabulary are not only the words of a language
including single items and phrases but also chunks of several words which
express a concepts meaningfully in the way any individual word could.


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It is clear that learning vocabulary is important to language learners
because they surely need enough words in their target language to
communicate efficiently.
2.1.2. Kinds of vocabulary
In vocabulary learning, the words to be learned can be classified into
two categories which are content words and function words. Content words
carry a lexical meaning, and function words cover grammatical meaning. In
language, to understand functions of words students can arrange words in a
correct sentence and analyze the sentence (Cameron, 2001: 82). Based on the
meaning of words, content words are the word classes of nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs. In teaching content words, the teacher can explain the

words and their meanings in a direct and explicit way (Cameron, 2001: 82).
On the other hand, function words are the classes of articles, prepositions,
conjunctions, and pronouns. In teaching function words, the teacher teaches
words incidentally and uses them continuously in a range of different
discourse contexts (Cameron, 2001).
However, according to Nation (2001: 78), groups of English
vocabulary have been categorized by frequency of overall occurrence in order
to determine which words are most necessary for students to learn. There are
two common divisions: high-frequency words and low-frequency words.
High-frequency words which, include function words and content words,
account for a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and
written texts and occur in all kinds of uses of the language. Low-frequency
words cover over 5 percent of the words in an academic text. In fact, English
students try their best to master a large amount of vocabulary. Based on the
learners‟ English level and the discussed issue, vocabulary and its compounds
and idioms focused in the present study will be chosen basing on frequency
and usefulness to the need of the learners.


7
2.1.3. Stages of Vocabulary teaching
Learners acquire vocabulary in various ways. Students are exposed to a
lot of new vocabulary during lessons by the teacher, by texts or other
materials they work with. A lot of this vocabulary is automatically absorbed
(Harmer, 2002). Various techniques and activities are aimed directly at
learning vocabulary, which is usually put into sets of somehow related words,
often by topics or meaning.
The first stage of teaching vocabulary is presentation. Pre-teaching
activities often activate students' attention and desire to explore a particular
topics or subjects in detail within the lessons.

The second stage of teaching vocabulary is comprehension. Both
McCarthy (1992) and Thornbury (2004) stated that there are two general
possibilities of engaging vocabulary presentation. In this stage, the form is
introduced first, followed by illustration to make the word‟s meaning clear to
learners. It is important that forms are often presented with the text or other
forms of contexts and students are encouraged to explore meanings and other
aspects of words themselves. Moreover, there are many possibilities how to
explain or give the meaning of the words. To make words easy to understand
for the learners requires teacher‟s skills and hard work. It is necessary to
mention that there are various techniques, but the teacher plays a significant
role to make their lessons successful.
The third stage is practice. Learners should be provided with plenty
opportunities to practice the newly-learnt language content because it is
crucial for successful remembering. This is done by various forms of practice
activities. Mechanical practice is usually applied in the forms of oral
repetition (Thornbury, 2004). Furthermore, he emphasized that it is necessary
to link new word items into learners‟ existing knowledge. This step is done by


8
types of activities, where students make judgments about words, such as
matching, comparing, filling in the blank and so on.
The last stage is revision. After the teachers have finished introducing
new word items, they should ask students to review the previous language
content. The aim of this activity is to know whether the students really
understand language content that they have been learned previously or not.
Following these strategies is important to teach second language
vocabulary both to adults and young learners. However, the procedure is not
fixed and not the only choice, the teacher can modify these stages for smarter
learning activities in their own situations.

2.1.4. Techniques in teaching vocabulary
Commonly, there are many techniques concerning the teaching of
vocabulary. There are a few aspects necessary to remember if English teachers
want to present a new vocabulary or lexical items to their students successfully.
2.1.4.1. Visual techniques
In these techniques, Gairns and Redman (1986) mentioned some visual
forms such as realia (real objects), picture, and mime or gesture. Realia means
using a variety of real objects so that the students can remember the written
materials related to the lessons. The objects can be shown in connection with
specific words found in the lessons. Mime or gesture is useful if it emphasizes
the importance of gestures and facial expression on communication (Klippel,
1994). Learners can remember their learning material with the help of visual
aids (Zebrowska, 1975); however, it is not easy to use this technique if the
words have an abstract meaning, for example, happiness.
2.1.4.2. Verbal techniques
This technique can be divided into four categories, namely, definitions
and illustrative sentences, synonyms and antonyms, explanation, translation
(Mendez and Rodriguez,1999)


9
Definition and illustration sentences: with this technique the English
teachers are expected to introduce a word in English through the use of other
simple words in the same language.
Synonyms and antonyms: they are especially important in building new
vocabulary because learners are able to know some lexical items based on
their own meaning features. Synonyms are words that have the same meaning
as the unknown in a given context. There may be written-related signals that
identify the presence of synonyms for the readers. They could be commas,
dashes, and colons. Meanwhile, antonyms are words that have the

opposite meaning of the unknown word in a given context. Signals such
as instead, although, but, yet, and however can help leaners make sense of
the unknown words.
Explanation: This technique explains the meaning and the use of a
foreign word in the foreign language itself. In this case, the language used
should be as meaningful simple as possible.
Translation: Second language (L2) is overwhelmingly used to express first
language (L1) in every language activity. Learners tend to compare L1 and L2 in
different aspects. Contrastive linguistics stated that this technique is not a good
way to learn an L2 communicatively because it has many drawbacks.
2.1.4.3. Use of dictionary
In addition to the previous two techniques, the use of dictionary is
another technique in finding out the meaning of unfamiliar words as well as
expressions. In this respect, the students can make use of a variety of
dictionaries, such as bilingual, monolingual, pictorial, and thesauruses. Gerald
and Laura (1989) stated that dictionaries are more easily used to look up word
meanings. In the students-centered learning activities, using dictionary
encourages students to learn independently (Allen, 1983). Actually, dictionary
look-up leads to vocabulary learning in an SLA environment (Bruton, 2007). For


10
beginner learners, they should make use of bilingual dictionaries. While a higher
learner can have enough vocabulary to understand the definitions so they can use
monolingual dictionaries. In short, the use of dictionary is an effective way for the
students to find out the meaning of words that are being learnt.
2.1.5. Vocabulary retention
Nation (1990, as cited in Xiqin, 2008) divided language retention into
two categories: short-term memory and long-term memory. This researcher
defines short-term memory as the capacity to process and recall information

at the same time. It holds a small amount of information, typically no more
than 7 objects in mind for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15
seconds, or sometimes up to a minute). Long-term memory is intended for
storing the information over a long period of time. Unlike short-term memory,
which is limited in capacity, long-term memory can accommodate any
amount of new information.
In the present study, short-term memory is referred as the initial
memory of the word meaning at the end of the lessons whereas the retention
of number of words recalled at the next lessons or at the end of the study is
considered as long-term memory.
The first part of this chapter clarified vocabulary in foreign language
teaching. It included vocabulary definition, vocabulary knowledge and methods of
teaching vocabulary. The next part of this chapter would overview the theory
related to flashcards, which help readers be clear about the specific strategies in
which flashcards have already been utilized in different language classrooms and
see how this techniques could fit in the specific context of this study.
2.2.

Flashcards

2.2.1. Flashcards definition
There are some definitions about flashcards. According to Harmer
(2002), flashcards are the tool which the teacher can hold up for the students


11
to see. A flashcard is made of a little piece of heavy paper with some typical
sizes. All flashcards bear language content related to the learning lessons. On
one side is a new word in the target language that needs remembering; the
other side may include L1 translations, examples, drawings, L2 synonyms or

any content helping learners remember the words in the target side.
Flashcards may have different colors. Colors may make flashcards more
interesting to learn with, so color pens and papers should be used for more
interesting flashcards. To avoid learning monotonously, teachers and students
can use various shapes of flashcards. Flashcards become a learning aid to help
students learn vocabulary visually and actively so try to make them beautiful.
In classroom, teachers can use flashcards to introduce new lexical items
and develop different activities to help students remember those words. To
make sure that everyone can see the letters on the card, teacher‟s flashcards
are made large enough so teachers can interact with students at different seats
in large classes. For students, they can make themselves sets of flashcards to
learn and revise their words with. Students should follow teacher‟s advice on
size (it can be smaller than teacher‟s flashcard so students can bring them
along easily), a number of flashcards in a set, how to use flashcards to learn
and revise their words or spaced repetition.
2.2.2. Kinds of flashcards
In Longman Dictionary (1985:107), in language teaching, flashcards
are cards holding words, sentences, or images. It is used in a language class as
an assist. It can be concluded from these definitions that flashcards are cards
with a word or words, or a sentence, or a picture on it used to learn and to
remember vocabulary. There are two kinds of flashcards: picture flashcards
and word flashcards (Haycraft, 1978).


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2.2.2.1. Picture flashcards
According to Wright & Haleem (1991:50), picture flashcards are cards
with pictures printed or drawn on having 15x20 cm. They should be small
enough for the users to easily handle and big enough for the whole class to
see clearly. The teachers can prepare them in free time at home. Advantages

of picture flashcards are the attractiveness and colorfulness with details which
blackboard pictures do not have. Picture flashcards are useful for presenting,
practicing and revising vocabulary of lessons.
2.2.2.2. Word flashcards
Bowen (1982) described word flashcards, which are cards containing
written words, may be "flashed" by the instructor in front of the class. The
height and width of a word flashcard are around 8cm and 10cm, respectively,
while its length depends on the size of the class. They may be used to
represent words or structures.
2.2.3. Use of flashcards
Flashcards are slowly shown in the stage of introduction of new lexical
items, but in memory-checking stages, flashcards should be swapped at the
speed of one flashcard per second, from back to front. Students can use
flashcards to learn their words in classroom or learn with their friends
informally. Working creatively is better for the brain. In other words, teachers
should help students keep their right and left brains balanced by asking them
to prepare themselves sets of flashcards. Blank flashcards should be available
just in case an unknown word appears and it deserves learning. Once
flashcards are at hand, learners have more opportunities to upgrade their word
stock with their readily-made flashcards.
To enhance vocabulary memory with flashcards in practice stage,
students should look at the new word on the first side and quickly try to relate
the words in definition, first language equivalents, examples, synonyms and


13
so on. Any word should be learned in meaningful ways. After that step, turn
the card over and see whether words are memorized correctly. Words
identified correctly are put in a new stack and unidentified words are put back
in the old stack to learn again until all words in the learning session are

memorized. When all words are identified correctly, the flashcards with all
identified words are put into a set for future use. The number of words used
per lesson should be around 7 (Miller, 1955), so students can work well over a
long period of time. Over time, going through this set of flashcards again
should be carried out because long term memory needs time and revision to
remember new things. Teacher should make students know that revisiting the
flashcards is an important point.
In many researches, flashcard-based learning may facilitate learning new
vocabulary sets and should go hand in hand with meaning-focused activities.
Researchers also agreed that it should have a place in L2 vocabulary instruction
(Nation & Webb, 2011). Given the effectiveness and popularity of flashcard-based
learning and teaching, it is necessary to examine the reasons flashcard-integrated
activities can optimize effects of vocabulary retention.
Firstly, flashcard learning is a kind of pair learning and it has also been
used in teaching English as second language (Hart, 1982). L2 vocabulary
should be taught and learnt in meaningful contexts. Pair learning techniques
may be as effective as or more effective than vocabulary learning from
context (Webb, 2007) because in a pair learning tasks, large numbers of
words can be learnt in a quite short time (Nation, 1980). There is the second
reason that wordlists are quite popular in language curricula. Unfortunately,
some researchers indicate that working with flashcards help learners in
acquiring vocabulary more effectively than word lists (Schmitt & Schmitt,
1995). Even though learning wordlists intentionally is better than learning
vocabulary incidentally. Learners often spend a lot of time trying to remember


14
an available wordlist which they write in their notebooks. In the SLA setting
of Vietnam, it is not difficult to meet wordlist in language lessons as L2
teachers and learners believe that wordlists can increase vocabulary quickly

(Nation, 1980). Oxford and Crookall (1990) noted that word lists with
mother-tongue translation, are not very useful because learners might not be
able to utilize these new words in a communicative way without any support.
To overcome the shortcoming, teachers should be encouraged to make full
use of flashcards for their language lessons because recent studies have also
suggested that flashcard-based learning help transfer to normal language use
and is a useful learning activity (Elgort, 2011).
Secondly, the increasing popularity of using flashcard-based learning
brings effectiveness. This techniques of learning and teaching is still bound
because students and teachers failed to determine the block size (number of
words learnt at once), retrieval format (practically-used flashcard to recall
words), spaced repetition (period of time to repeat learning words), and feedback
timing (frequency and times to give feedback in flashcard-based instructions).
To optimize the usefulness of the technique, teachers and learners should raise
their awareness on these mentioned aspects related to flashcard use.
2.2.4. Flashcard as a language teaching and learning tool
There are many types of materials that can support teachers in language
classrooms; however, teachers need to be flexible in using sources of teaching
tools based on different learners. Brown (1994) confirmed that “much of the
richness of language instruction is derived from supporting materials”. Adult
learners can interact with many learning resources, and the text-based
materials are considered more effective for them while it is less effective for
young learners due to their age (Moon, 2006).
As mentioned above, it is noted that the motivation of students is of
great importance. Thus, teachers should apply various teaching techniques to


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motivate students. Shaaban (2001) agreed that young children need to have a nonanxiety learning environment. In fact, young children love to play and they will
learn effectively when they are having fun (Scott & Lisbeth, 1990). From this

point of view, flashcards should be used in young learners‟ English classrooms
because they can be suitable to learning characteristics of young learners.
In SLA, flashcards are not only enjoyable but also effective. The reason
why English flashcards are used so successfully is that they are a very simple
and enjoyable way to memorize both vocabulary and other language aspects.
Both children and adults alike benefits from using flashcards to learn.
Although flashcards can be used for both children and adults, they have
primarily been used for teaching children. Children are not very good at
learning attentively for a long time, but they learn better when playing or
making something. Learning with flashcards gives the students the feeling of
learning to play games and playing to learn as students can feel studying as
easy as playing a game or making a simple craftwork. Children generally find
it easier to associate learning materials visually with words and this is why
many of the flashcards we will encounter with feature word related pictures.
Tuttle (1975) realized the good effect of visual materials in language
classrooms. Students may become more active through using visual material,
particularly flashcards. He suggested this learning tool can be appropriate
with multi activities which may take only a very short time. Hence, teachers
can arrange lots of learning activities for students.
Cross (1991) defined that a flashcard is a simple picture on a piece of
cardboard or paper and it is most widely used in language teaching. He also
mentioned that word cards are also a form of flashcards. Word cards have key
words or short phrases on them, but have no picture.
According to Brown (1994), flashcards are considered as one of the
most useful teaching materials for young learners. Oxford Advanced Learner