case study on vocabulary teaching at Quang Oai upper-secondary school, Hanoi = Điển cứu về việc dạy từ vựng tại trường THPT Quảng Oai, Hà Nội

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ABSTRACT:


The present qualitative case study is aimed at finding out the perceptions of vocabulary
teaching held by a group of upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-
secondary school in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices. The study
was conducted from February through May of the 2010 - 2011 academic year, and the data
were analyzed qualitatively. The study involves 8 teachers of English working with their
teaching experience ranging from 1 to 31 years. 8 pre-observation interviews, 16 observations
and 8 post-observation interviews were conducted to seek the answers for the following
research questions 1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign
language teaching? 2) What do they think of the opportunities for and constraints on
vocabulary teaching in their school? 3) To what extent do their self-reports of vocabulary
teaching diverge from their actual classroom teaching? 4) What are the common vocabulary
exercises they use in the classroom?

The overall findings of the survey show that the majority of respondents have understanding
about the significance of vocabulary in English acquisition and English teaching, but that there
exist some negative views on implementing the techniques in vocabulary teaching with regard
to its classroom practice. Additionally, some useful implications are proposed based on
research findings in order to help teachers to construct and implement techniques in
vocabulary teaching more effectively.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION: i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: ii
ABSTRACT: iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS: iv
TRANSCRIP CONVENTION viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: ix
LIST OF TABLES: x

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale for choosing the topic: 1
2. Aims and Objectives of the study: 1
3. Scope of the study: 2
4. Method of the study: 2
5. Design of the study: 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT: 4
Chapter I: Literature review: 4
1.1. What is vocabulary?: 4
1.2. Roles of vocabulary in second language acquisition: 5
1.3. What is Involved in Teaching Vocabulary: 6
1.4. Challenges in vocabulary teaching: 7
1.5. Approaches to vocabulary teaching: 8
1.5.1.The Grammar Translation Method: 8
1.5.2. The Reading Approach: 9
1.5.3. The Reform Movement: 9
1.5.4. The Direct Method: 9
1.5.5.The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching: 10

1.5.6. The Audio-lingual Method 10
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1.5.7. The Cognitive Approach: 11
1.5.8. The Communicative Language Teaching 11
1.5.9. The Lexical Approach 12
1.5.10. Content-based Instruction: 13
1.6. Techniques in presenting new vocabulary: 13
1.7. Vocabulary learning strategies: 13
1.7.1. Guessing meaning from context 14
1.7.2. Vocabulary notebooks and word cards 15
1.7.3. Learners' first language and dictionary use 15
1.8. Previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom: 16

CHAPTER II. THE STUDY 18
2.1. Rationale of using a case study approach: 18
2.2.The case: 19
2.3. Participants: 20
2.4. Instruments: 20
2.4.1.The Interview: 21
Pre-observation interview: 21
Post-observation Interview: 22
2.4.2. Classroom Observation: 22
2.5. Data collection and data analysis procedures: 22
2.5.1. Data collection procedures: 22
2.5.2. Data analysis procedures: 24

CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 25
3.1. Findings: 25
3.1.1. Teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary 25

Vocabulary is instrumental to language acquisition: 25
Vocabulary as foundation of communication skills: 26

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3.1.2. Teachers’ perceptions of the opportunities for vocabulary teaching 26

Textbooks as resources: 27
Teaching facilities: 27
3.1.3. Teachers’ perceptions of the constraints on vocabulary teaching: 28
Time constraints: 28
Students’ vocabulary deficiency: 28
Teachers’ limited knowledge of vocabulary teaching 29
3.1.4. Teachers’ self-reports of their vocabulary techniques: 29
Use of translation: 30
Use of visual aids and realia: 30
Use of synonyms or antonyms: 31
Integration of vocabulary into skills lessons: 32
3.1.5. Consistency and inconsistency between teachers’ self-reports and actual practice
regarding vocabulary teaching: 33
Consistency: 33
Use of translation: 33
Use of visual aids and realia: 34
Use of synonyms: 36
Integration of vocabulary into skills lessons: 37
Inconsistency: 38
3.1.6. Common classroom vocabulary activities: 38
3.2. Discussion: 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

1. Summary of main findings: 40
2. Implications: 40
3. Suggestions for further studies: 41
3.1. Limitations: 41
3.2. Suggestions for further studies 42
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REFERENCES 43

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS I
APPENDIX B: PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW SCHEDULE II
APPENDIX C: SAMPLE OF PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW III
APPENDIX D: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SCHEDULE VII
APPENDIX E: SAMPLE OF LESSON OBSERVATION: IX
APPENDIX F: SAMPLE OF POST-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW: XI

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TRANSCRIP CONVENTION

T: teacher
S: Student
Ss:
Tuan:
Students
Student’s name
Italics:
translation of original speech in vernacular

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LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS


CLT Communicative Language Teaching
EFL English as a foreign language
ELL English language learner
ESL English as a second language
L1 First language
L2 Second language
MOET Ministry of Education and Training
OHP Overhead Projector
QOUS

Quang Oai upper-secondary school

VLS Vocabulary learning strategy

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LIST OF TABLE

Table 2.1: Background of participants

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1.Rationale of the study:
As one of the fundamental building blocks of language, vocabulary knowledge plays a

prominent role in foreign language learning. In other words, vocabulary is the basis for
communication, reading, and writing. Therefore, an effective approach to vocabulary is
always one of the great concerns of every language teacher. The reason is that learning
vocabulary is really challenging requiring many cognitive processes, and teachers have to
make sure that the students understand the word and its meaning as well as how to use the
word accurately and appropriately.
At supper-secondary schools in Vietnam, with a short duration of 3 periods (135
minutes) per week for all language skills and language focus, vocabulary instruction has been
paid less attention than it should have been. Students have to learn so many new words every
week, and by the time they learn the new words in the new lesson they have forgotten most of
the words they have learned in previous lessons. Consequently, word retention has always
been a difficult problem for the students.
As an English teacher, I found out that one of the major reasons for which the students
were not successful users of English is their vocabulary deficiency. This motivates the
researcher to conduct this study in an attempt to find out how vocabulary is taught and learned
in one particular upper secondary school in Hanoi.
2. Aims and Objectives of the study:
The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of vocabulary teaching held by
the upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-secondary school (QOUS)
in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices.
The objectives of the study are:
a) to understand teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching
as well as their perceived opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching
b) to investigate their teaching approach to vocabulary in the classroom and the extent to
which their self-reported teaching approach diverges their actual classroom teaching
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In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives, I decided to carry out a
qualitative case study, which is aimed at seeking answers to the following research questions:
1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching?

2) What do they think of the opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching in
their school?
3) To what extent do their self-reports of vocabulary teaching diverge from their actual
classroom teaching?
4) What are the common vocabulary activities they use in the classroom?
3. Scope of the study:
The study is confined to the investigation of the teachers’ perceptions related to
vocabulary teaching as well as the way they taught vocabulary in the classroom within the
context of one particular upper secondary school. I therefore had no intention of generalizing
the findings. Rather, I wanted to identify the space where improvements in vocabulary
teaching can be improved so as to make a small contribution to the effort to make English
language teaching in the researched upper secondary school more effective.
4. Method of the study:
This study is designed as a single qualitative case study and uses a combination of
various methods to achieve its objectives such as pre-observation interviews, observations,
and post-observation interviews.
The case here is an upper secondary school on the outskirts of Hanoi. Qualitative data
were collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations.
First, pre-observation interviews were conducted. The obtained data help to investigate
teachers’ attitudes towards English vocabulary teaching in Quang Oai Upper-Secondary
Schools in Hanoi, the opportunities as well as constraints.
After that, classroom observations were conducted to find out how effectively the
teachers taught English vocabulary.
Finally, I carried out post-observation interviews to gain understanding of teachers’
reasoning for their classroom practices.

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5. Design of the study:
There are three main parts in my thesis:

Part A is the Introduction presenting the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, research
questions, methods and design of the study.
Part B, the Development, includes three chapters:
Chapter I is the Literature Review, which reviews theoretical issues related to the definitions,
roles of vocabulary in English language acquisitions, techniques in vocabulary teaching as
well as previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom.
Chapter II is the study which is composed of some smaller parts: rationale for choosing the
case study, the settings (the case), the participants, the instruments and research procedures of
the study.
Chapter III is the analysis and discussion of the findings through an analysis of the data
collected by means of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews.
Part C is the Conclusion. In this Chapter, major findings of the study will be briefly
summarized to answer the research questions. Also, the limitations of the study and
suggestions for the future researches will be presented in this chapter.









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PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature on vocabulary teaching. It begins with definitions and

relevant knowledge around vocabulary teaching, followed by the significance of vocabulary in
language acquisition as well as the challenges of vocabulary teaching and a review of related
studies in the same field.

1.1.What is Vocabulary?
In some literature, vocabulary is defined differently by different scholars. Below is the
presentation of some definitions that are relevant to the present study.
According to Websters Collegiate Dictionary (9
th
ed., 1978:1320), vocabulary is defined as:
a) a list or collection of words and phrase usually alphabetically arranged and explained or
defined.
b) a sum or stock of words employed by a language group individual or work or in a field of
knowledge.
c) a list or collection of terms or codes available for use.
This definition is echoed by Hatch and Brown (1995). Ur (1996) elaborates further and
she uses the term ‘vocabulary item’ to refer to ‘word’. This is because, she argues, a
vocabulary item can be either a single world or a multi-word phrase. According to her,
“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However,
a new item of vocabulary may be more than just a single word: for example, post office, and mother-
in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. A useful convention is to
cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “word” which is made up of two
or three words but express a single idea”. (p. 60)

Similarly, Lewis, an advocate of the lexical approach to second language teaching,
views vocabulary either as individual words or as full sentences, which he terms as
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‘institutionalized utterances, that “convey fixed social or pragmatic meaning within a given
community” (Lewis, 1993: 89).

1.2. Roles of Vocabulary in Second Language Acquisition:
“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”
David Wilkins, linguist
This is how linguist David Wilkin sums up the importance of vocabulary learning. It’s
known to most L2 learners that acquisition of vocabulary is a fundamental and important
component in the course of their learning. McCarthy (1990: viii) emphasizes that:
"No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2
are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot
happen in any meaningful way"
(McCarthy 1990: viii)
A good repertoire of vocabulary is essential for ESL/ EFL learner, especially for those
who learn English for specific purposes or those who expect to become expert users of
English. As a result, the teaching and learning vocabulary, although it is only one sub-goal of
a range of goals that is important in ELL, plays a key role in the overall structure of language
teaching program because of its basic function in language components. Huckin and Block
(1993: 154) show that L2 readers may rely heavily on vocabulary knowledge and that a lack of
vocabulary knowledge is the largest obstacles for L2 readers to overcome. If someone has
adequate vocabulary, he/ she will feel more confident in communicating with others as well as
expressing his/her opinions in both oral and written forms.
According to Meara (1995), central to learning to communicate in the target language
are vocabulary and lexical units. No amount of grammatical or other type of linguistics
knowledge can be employed in communication or discourse without the mediation of
vocabulary. Folse (2004: 3) claims that
“The lack of grammar knowledge can limit conversation; lack of vocabulary knowledge can
stop conversation”.

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Learners can express themselves with poor grammar. However, it is always a challenge
to get the message across in a foreign language (Wallace, 1982), and because of this
communication in foreign language is constrained considerably to those with limited
vocabulary.
1.3. What is Involved in Teaching Vocabulary?
Basic to the teaching of vocabulary is the question of what it is to know a word. It is
widely believed that people learn words receptively first and later achieve productive
knowledge (Schmitt, 2000). Schmitt (1995: 86) presents a list of the word knowledge types
that native speakers typically possess: 1. a word’s spoken form, 2. a word’s written form, 3. a
word’s part of speech, derivative forms, and grammatical patterns, 4. a word’s collocations, 5.
how frequently a word is used in a language, 6. the many stylistic constrains which determine
if a word is appropriate in a given context, 7. a word’s conceptual meaning, 8. a word’s
semantic network of associations. Schmitt (1995: 87) pictures the development of the overall
knowledge of a word in the following way: After the initial exposure, a learner may have an
idea of one of the word’s possible meanings, along with an impression of its form. As the
learner repeatedly comes into contact with and uses the word, understanding of the word’s
form and meaning are strengthened, while other word knowledge aspects are generally added.
This may continue until the learner finally controls the collocational and stylistic aspects.
These final two kinds of word knowledge may well be the last to be controlled, since they
seem to require a great deal of exposure to a language, and arguably, only a minority of L2
learners ever achieves native-like competence of these two aspects.
In a similar vein, Ur (1996: 60-63) argues that the following aspects of a new
vocabulary item must be taught to the students: 1- form: pronunciation and spelling, 2-
grammar: if it is regular or irregular, transitive or intransitive, its plural and singular forms
etc., 3- collocation, 4- aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation, appropriateness, 5-
meaning relationships: synonyms, antonyms, co- hyponyms, super-ordinates, translation, 6-
word formation: if it can be broken down to its components. Schmitt (2000: 37-39) believes
that vocabulary teaching should be determined by two major considerations: 1- learners' needs
and 2- the usefulness of the vocabulary items. In order to account for these two factors the
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relevant corpus is determined on the basis of the students' needs and then the traditional
perspective that high frequency words should be the first and main consideration in
vocabulary teaching.
1.4. Challenges in Vocabulary Teaching:
Since a good knowledge of vocabulary has a great effect on the learners’ improvement
of other aspects of language such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension,
speaking, and writing, due attention should be paid to choosing and implementing appropriate
vocabulary teaching/learning techniques in language classes. However, in general, teaching
vocabulary is not easy, clearly more than just presenting new words (Harmer, 1993: 159).
It shows that the students’ vocabulary mastery is poor. According to Aganes (2008), the
causes of the problem might be that: 1) the material is not interesting; 2) the limited time and
the equipment; 3) the technique of delivering materials is neither suitable nor interesting.
Because of the problems, students got difficulties in learning vocabulary.
Aganes (2008) also points out that there are many challenges that students are
encountered with while learning vocabulary. Firstly, they get difficulties in pronouncing
words correctly. Pronouncing the word correctly is an important part in teaching vocabulary
because incorrect pronunciation will influence the meaning of the words. Moreover, by
pronouncing the words correctly, it can help the students remember the word longer and
identify it more readily when they hear or see it. Thus, in introducing new words, the teacher
should pronounce every new word correctly and carefully, and then repeat it in chorus by the
class or by individual student. In fact, the students still get difficulties in pronouncing the
words correctly.
Secondly, the students get difficulties in remembering and grasping the meaning of the
words often appears when they do the exercises. They cannot do the exercise perfectly. Most
of them fill the wrong answers. That mistake is caused by translation method in teaching
vocabulary. The problem gets worse when the teacher teaches vocabulary mostly through
translation at the beginning of the lesson or translation of the material containing new words
or glossaries at the end. An overreliance on translation, the teacher may ignore other strategies
to present new words such as using the self-defining context, definition in the target language,

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opposites, pictures, and dramatization as a number ways to put across the meaning of a new
word to a class.
Thirdly, the students’ attention and motivation in learning vocabulary are decreasing.
The students do not pay attention to the teacher’s explanation. They are also easy to get bored
in having the lesson. It can be seen from the responses in doing some exercises and practices.
In the literature, it seems that the problems in the teaching and learning vocabulary tend to be
related to teacher factors. These factors are:
1) the teacher only gives a little time to practice in pronouncing the words correctly, whereas
a little time to practice cannot create accurate pronunciation, especially for the beginners;
2) the technique of the teaching vocabulary that the teacher uses seems ineffective for the
students. It does not give the students great motivation to learn. In other words, students
are passive in learning vocabulary.
1.5. Approaches to Vocabulary Teaching:
There are many different methods, approaches, techniques as well as strategies to
vocabulary teaching. In the early decades of the 20th century, vocabulary teaching and
research were respectable. The Grammar Translation Method and the Reading Approach were
the leading language teaching methodologies at that time. Both of these approaches involved a
great deal of direct vocabulary teaching and learning (Murcia, 1991: 296).
1.5.1. The Grammar Translation Method:
The Grammar Translation Method aimed to provide the students with a detailed
literary vocabulary which is learned through long lists of translated items and a bilingual
dictionary and practiced through sentence translation with little opportunity to try out
pronunciation (Rivers, 1981: 28-30). Murcia and Prator (1979: 3) listed major characteristics
of Grammar translation:
1) Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language
2) Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.
3) Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given
4) Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on

the form and inflection of words.
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5) Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.
6) Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical
analysis
7) Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target
language onto the mother tongue.
8) Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.
1.5. 2. The Reading Approach:
The reading approach attached more importance to vocabulary than grammatical skills.
The vocabulary of the early readings was strictly controlled. Since the acquisition of
vocabulary was regarded more prominent than the mastery of grammatical skills, expanding
vocabulary as fast as possible was of great importance (Murcia and Prator, 1979: 3).
1.5. 3. The Reform Movement:
The reform movement, which was set up as a reaction to the Grammar Translation
Method, stressed the primacy of spoken language and the presentation of the written word
only after the spoken form had been provided. It was emphasized that new vocabulary should
only be met in sentences and meaningful contexts (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 10).
1.5. 4. The Direct Method:
The Direct Method, which grew out of the Reform Movement, made emphasis on
interaction for language acquisition and acquiring an acceptable pronunciation from the
beginning. It introduced vocabulary through classroom objects, mime, drawings and
explanations (Rivers, 1981: 32-33).
1.5.5. The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching:
These were British structuralism approaches to language teaching developed between
the 1930’s and the 1960’s (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 39). In the Oral Approach, grammar
and vocabulary was carefully chosen and graded. This ultimately led to the Vocabulary
Control Movement and West’s ‘A General Service List of English Words’ 1953, which had a
permanent effect on the grading of vocabulary (Schmitt 2000: 15; Zimmerman, 1997: 9).

In Situational Language Teaching, the meaning of words was not to be given via explanation
in either the mother tongue or the target language but was to be induced from the way the form
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was used in a situation. The learner was expected to deduce the meaning of a particular
vocabulary item from the situation in which it was presented. The meaning of new words was
not conveyed through translation. It was made clear visually with objects, pictures, action and
mime (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 36-38).
1.5.6. The Audio-lingual Method:
The Audio-lingual Method was shaped after the Second World War when the need for
foreign language speakers was better appreciated. In this method, the amount of vocabulary
presented was kept low (Thornbury, 2002: 14) and was chosen for its simplicity (Schmitt,
2000: 13). It was assumed that when grammatical fluency was present, exposure to the foreign
language itself lead to vocabulary development (Coady, 1993: 4). It was also stressed that
knowing too much vocabulary would cause students to have a false sense of security
(Zimmerman, 1997: 11).
The characteristics of Audio-lingual Method may be summed up in the following list
(adapted from Murica and Prator, 1979):
1) New material is presented in dialog form.
2) There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases, and over learning
3) Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time.
4) Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.
5) There is little or no grammatical explanation: grammar is taught by inductive analogy
rather than deductive explanation.
6) Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.
7) There is much use of tapes, language labs and visual aids.
8) Great importance is attached to pronunciation.
9) Very little use of the mother tongue by teacher is permitted.
10) Successful responses are immediately reinforced.
11) There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.

12) There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.
1.5. 7. The Cognitive Approach:
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The Cognitive Approach, which emerged as a reaction against the defects of the
Audio-lingual Approach and its behavioristic features at the end of the 1960s and beginning of
the 1970s, took as its theoretical base the Transformational-Generative Grammar of Chomsky
(Stern, 1991: 169). In this approach, the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary was crucial for
successful second language use. Students could not use the structures and functions during the
act of communication without having sufficient amount of vocabulary. In a cognitive class, the
language teacher had to move from competence to performance. To put it another way, he was
expected to follow the presentation, practice and the application stages. To teach the meanings
of the lexical items, techniques like contextualization, demonstrations, drawings, real objects,
flashcards, OHP, etc. were used to a great extent. Moreover, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms,
collocations, cognates and semantic fields, etc. were also utilized by language teachers (Senel,
2002: 161).
1.5. 8. The Communicative Language Teaching
The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach is a renowned British
Approach to language teaching the emergence of which dates back to the mid-1960s.
Especially, British applied linguists like Henry Widdowson, Halliday, Brumfit, Johnson, and
Wilkins leaded to this communicative movement, advocating that communicative proficiency
and functions of language should be emphasized over the mastery of structures (Duman, 1997:
22). Concepts like context, use, effective communication, communicative function,
comprehensible pronunciation, etc. were given importance in this approach. Senel (2002: 243)
emphasized that new words were not presented in isolation, but in the context of a complete
sentence, and in a meaningful situation. This way, the words acquired meaning when they
appeared with a particular definition in a determined context. Moreover, Thornbury (2002:14)
stated that course books began to incorporate communicative activities specifically targeting
vocabulary since the meaning-giving role of lexis was recognized in this approach. For the
sake of simplicity and directness, Brown (2000: 266-267) offered four interconnected

characteristics as a definition of CLT.
1) Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence and
not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence.
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2) Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatics authentic,
functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Organizational language forms are not
the central focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learners to accomplish those
purpose.
3) Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative
techniques. At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order
to keep learners meaningful engaged in language use.
4) In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language,
productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts.
1.5. 9. The Lexical Approach
The Lexical Approach was developed by Lewis in 1993. This approach stresses the
importance of vocabulary as being basic to communication. It is claimed that if learners do not
recognize the meaning of keywords, they will be unable to participate in the conversation,
even if they know the morphology and the syntax of the foreign language. However, Lewis
states that the Lexical Approach is not simply a shift of emphasis from grammar to vocabulary
teaching since ‘language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of
multi-word prefabricated chunks.’ (Lewis, 1997: 7) Hence, lexical Approach emphasizes
language as prefabricated chunks that the learner can take and use to promote fluency:
collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, catchphrases, sayings, sentence frames, social formulae
and discourse markers being the most significant chunks for the foreign language learner
(Thornby, 2002: 115). This approach has influenced course books and dictionaries. It is simply
due to this reason that many course books and dictionaries incorporate collocational exercises
and information in our times.
1.5. 10. Content-based Instruction:
In recent years, Content-based Instruction has gained popularity in foreign language

learning and teaching. This approach has been utilized in immersion programs, teaching
languages for specific purposes, and for teaching all levels of proficiency. In this approach,
vocabulary is completely contextualized and courses which have carefully designed the scope
and the spiraling sequence of the content manage to recycle both the content and the
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associated vocabulary. Many language programs also choose content to conform to the
knowledge students already possess and texts may either be authentic or specially written
(Stryker and Leaver, 1997: 291).
1.6. Techniques in Presenting New Vocabulary:
After the teacher chooses what items to teach, he or she should follow certain
guidelines. In my opinion, this includes teaching the vocabulary "in spoken form first" to
prevent students from pronouncing the words in the form they are written, placing the new
items in context, and revising them.
A number of techniques can be adapted to present new vocabulary items. Some
techniques are more popular and more often used than others. Also it is up to the teacher
which techniques he or she decides to use but always the effectiveness of teaching should be
considered.
In teaching vocabulary, teachers of English mainly focus on explaining the meaning,
presenting the form as well as the use of a new word. Nation, Paul (2005) suggested different
techniques that teachers of English can implement in their teaching vocabulary.
Firstly, teachers quickly give the meaning of the word by (a) using an L1 translation,
(b) using a known L2 synonym or a simple definition in the L2, (c) showing an object or
picture, (d) giving quick demonstration, (e) drawing a simple picture or diagram, (f) breaking
the word into parts and giving the meaning of the parts and the whole word (the word part
strategy), (g) giving several example sentences with the word in context to show the meaning,
(h) commenting on the underlying meaning of the word and other referents.
Secondly, teachers can draw attention to the form of the word by (a) showing how the
spelling of the word is like the spelling of known words, (b) giving the stress pattern of the
word and its pronunciation, (c) showing the prefix, stem and suffix that make up the word, (d)

getting the learners to repeat the pronunciation of the word, (e) writing the word on the board,
(f) pointing out any spelling irregularity in the word.
Finally, the use of the word can be explained by (a) quickly showing the grammatical
pattern the word fits into (countable/uncountable, transitive/intransitive, etc), (b) giving a few
similar collocates, (c) mentioning any restrictions on the use of the word (formal, colloquial,
14

impolite, only used in the United States, only used with children, old fashioned, technical,
infrequent), (d) giving a well known opposite, or a well known word describing the group or
lexical set it fits into.
1.7. Vocabulary Learning Strategies:
Vocabulary learning strategy (VLS) is an approach which facilitates vocabulary
learning and has attracted considerable attention. It is a movement away from teaching -
oriented approach toward one that is interested in seeing how actions of learners might affect
their acquisition of vocabulary (Schmitt, 2002). Strategies can help learners both in
discovering the meaning of a word and consolidating it and are specially needed when they are
encouraged to learn independently (Celce-Murcia, 2001).
1.7.1. Guessing Meaning from Context:
One of the strategies commonly used is guessing word meaning from context or
inferring from context. It involves learners systematically drawing on the available clues to
work out the unknown words' meaning (Richards and Renandya, 2002). Richards and
Renandya believe that in order to use it correctly students' confidence in guessing from context
must be raised and they must be made sensitive to the clues available.
Schmitt and McCarthy (2005), however, believe that a number of potential problems are
associated with it. First of all learning words through guessing is very slow and students
usually have a limited amount of time to learn the words they need. Secondly, it is "an error-
prone process" and students, specially low –level ones, are often frustrated with it. Finally,
guessing from context does not necessarily result in long-term retention.
1.7.2. Vocabulary Notebooks and Word Cards:
Setting up vocabulary notebooks is a memory aid which helps the students to visualize

the network of relationship between new and familiar words (Murcia, 2001). Nation (2001)
believes that students become excited about the progress they make and one way to make
them excited and motivated about the progress they make is to raise their awareness of how
their knowledge of vocabulary is improving through effective use of vocabulary notebooks.
Students can choose a loose-leaf ring binder and record the new word on the front of each
page together with other information such as pronunciation, derivatives and collocations. The
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meaning and/or translation is recorded on the reverse side of the page. Each time they see or
hear it, they can add more information like its stylistic aspects and sentences illustrating its
use. To review the new words, they must first look at the front page and try to recall the
recorded information on the reverse side (Ledburry, 2007).
Learning from word cards, on the other hand, is another useful strategy which
increases vocabulary size quickly (Nation, 2001: 302-315). Nation, however, argues that the
effectiveness of word cards is heavily dependent on the way they are used. He introduces
some techniques in order to increase their efficiency. These are: 1) put the words on one side
and the meaning on the other to encourage recall 2) do not put the words to each other that
belong to the same lexical set, or are near synonyms or opposites, or are formally similar 3)
keep changing the order of the cards in the pack and put difficult words near the beginning 4)
at early stages see the word and try to recall the meaning , later turn over the pack ,look at the
meaning and try to remember the word 5) put the words in phrases or sentences or with some
collocates 6) say the words aloud or to yourself. Silent repetition is not very efficient.
1.7.3. Learners' First Language and Dictionary Use:
A strategy which is commonly reported in the literature to be used by learners is the
use of first language in learning second or foreign language words. Nation (2001: 304)
mentions that research shows learning are facilitated if the meaning is in the learner's first
language. The reason, according to him, is that first language meaning has already rich
associations for the learner and experiment shows that both short-term and long-term retention
are superior with L1 glosses. One criticism which is leveled against the use of first language in
vocabulary learning is that students may think "there is a one-to-one correspondence between

words in the second language and words in the first language". Learners, therefore, need to be
made aware that this is not so by drawing their attention to the underlying meanings of words.
In this connection, Richards and Renandya (2002) favor bilingualized dictionaries.
Bilingualized dictionaries do the job of both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries by
providing L2 definitions and examples as well as L1 synonyms. One advantage is that they
can be used by all types of learners. Folse (2004) believes that this type of dictionary is user-
friendly and provides appealing information to a wide variety of learners.
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Other useful techniques which are cited in the literature to improve vocabulary
learning are: to integrate new words with the old, to provide a number of encounters with a
word, to promote a deep level of processing and facilitate imaging and concreteness (verbal
and non-verbal links like diagrams, pictures etc.), to arrange the words in units and stages and
use a variety of techniques (Schmitt and Mc. Carthy, 2005).
1.8. Previous Studies on Vocabulary Teaching in The Classroom:
There are a growing number of studies looking at what teachers do about vocabulary in
classrooms. The results of the study conducted by Gu and Johnson (1996) showed that the
most used strategies were: guessing from the context, using dictionary, paying attention to a
word formation, and using the newly learned word in sentences seemed to be useful to the
learners. Nevertheless, Schmitt's (1995) study showed that the most used strategies were:
bilingual dictionary, asking teacher for a paraphrase, and analyzing pictures/gestures.
Mehrpour (2008), in A Comparison of the Effects of Two Vocabulary Teaching
Techniques, compares the impact of different instructional vocabulary techniques on a low-
proficiency group of fifty Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. Mehrpour
concludes that rote-memorization of word-lists can work better than sentence-making practice,
for Iranian learners of English at low levels of proficiency. Traditional techniques of
vocabulary learning such as rote learning are sometimes considered outdated and
inappropriate even for low–level learners.
In contrast to these studies, Mason (2004) and Pigada and Schmitt (2006) attempted to
find out whether language skills such as reading and listening to stories enhance vocabulary

acquisition. Both studies suggest that hearing stories lead in vocabulary development and also,
vocabulary acquisition is possible from extensive reading than previous studies have
suggested.
Finally, a study conducted by Yoshi and Flaitz (2002) showed that annotations with
text and picture enhanced vocabulary acquisition.