Hiệu quả giới thiệu và luyện tập từ vựng mới qua văn cảnh tối thiểu cho sinh viên năm thứ 2 Trường Đại học Thương Mại

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
o0o





HOÀNG THU BA




THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTISING
NEW VOCABULARY THROUGH MINIMAL CONTEXT
FOR SECOND - YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS
AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

HIỆU QUẢ GIỚI THIỆU VÀ LUYỆN TẬP TỪ VỰNG MỚI
QUA NGỮ CẢNH TỐI THIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THƯƠNG MẠI

M.A Minor Thesis



Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
MA course: 19

HANOI – 2012


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
o0o




HOÀNG THU BA




THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTISING
NEW VOCABULARY THROUGH MINIMAL CONTEXT
FOR SECOND YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS
AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

HIỆU QUẢ GIỚI THIỆU VÀ LUYỆN TẬP TỪ VỰNG MỚI
QUA NGỮ CẢNH TỐI THIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THƯƠNG MẠI

M.A Minor Thesis






Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
MA course: 19
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh


HANOI – 2012



iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURES viii
INTRODUCTION 1
1. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE 1
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY 1

3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY 2
4. METHOD OF THE STUDY 3
5. ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS 3
DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4
1.1.1. Context and minimal context 4
1.1.2. Vocabulary 6
1.2 OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN CONTEXT 7
1.2.1. Vocabulary implicit learning and explicit teaching 7
1.2.2. Vocabulary teaching procedure 9
1.2.2.1. Vocabulary selection 9
1.2.2.2. Vocabulary presentation 10

v
1.2.2.3. Vocabulary practice 12
1.3 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRESENTING
VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT AND MINIMAL CONTEXT 12
1.4 PREVIOUS STUDIES 15
1.5 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY 16
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18
2.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 18
2.2 PARTICIPANTS 18
2.3 RESEARCH DESIGN 19
2.3.1 Identifying initial problem 20
2.3.2 Materials 22
2.3.2.1 New vocabulary 22
2.3.2.2 Minimal context 22
2.3.3 Data collection methods 23
2.3.3.1 Pre-test/ posttest 23

2.3.3.2 Observation 24
2.3.3.3 Questionnaire 25
2.3.4 Data collection procedure 25
2.3.5 Data analysis methods 27
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28
3.1 STUDENTS‟ IMPROVEMENT IN ACQUISITION OF THE TARGET
VOCABULARY 28
3.2 STUDENTS‟ MOTIVATION IN NEW VOCABULARY ACQUISITION . 30
3.2.1 Data from the Observation 31
3.2.2 Data from the students‟ questionnaire 33
3.3 DISCUSSION 35

vi
CONCLUSION 38
1. SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 38
2. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 39
3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 40
4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 40
REFERENCES 41
APPENDICES

vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as a foreign language
ELT English Language Teaching
MCQs Multiple Choice questions
M Mean
VUC Vietnam University of Commerce
SPSS Statistical Product and Service Solutions

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Plan of the intervention
Table 3.1 Means and Standard Deviations of the scores of the pretest and post test
Table 3.2 Correlations of the pretest and posttest
Table 3.3 Paired Sample T-Test
Table 3.4 Students‟ interest and benefits in the intervention



LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The frequency of adapting vocabulary teaching techniques
Figure 3.1 Scores of the pretest and posttest
Figure 3.2 Class motivation during the lessons
Figure 3.3 Students‟ motivation in guessing new vocabulary in minimal context
Figure 3.4 Students‟ motivation in vocabulary practice activities

1
INTRODUCTION
1. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE
Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of language learning and
language use (Laufer 1997; Bromley, 2007). It is a principle contributor to
comprehension, fluency and achievement. Moreover, lack of command in vocabulary
becomes the cause of communication breakdown (Balochowicz & Fisher, 2000; Nagy
& Scott, 2000). Therefore, it is of great importance for teaching and learning
vocabulary.
Meanwhile, in the real context in many English classes at Vietnam University of
Commerce, where teachers have devoted much time to vocabulary teaching, applied a
lot of different methods like glosses, translation, pictures, etc., the results have been
disappointing. A large number of students do not know and remember what word to
use, they never feel encouraged when frequently encountering unfamiliar and less
familiar words, much less do they have the passion and courage to use them in daily
social conversations and exchanges in an appropriate way. Thus, there needs a question
of the effective ways to promote understanding and use of vocabulary. Quite a few of
linguistics researchers (e.g. Nation, 1982; Nation & Coady, 1988), have suggested that
new words can be best learnt when presented in context and when their meaning must
be inferred from context by learners themselves.
From this suggestion and above initial problems, the author decided to develop
an action research on the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in
minimal context for second-year students at Vietnam University of Commerce.
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
This was an action research whose purpose was to investigate the effectiveness of
presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context for the second-year non

2
English major students at Vietnam University of Commerce (VUC). Specifically, it

addressed the following research questions:
a. How much do presentation and practice using minimal contexts improve
learners' acquisition of the target vocabulary?
b. Do presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context have any effect on
students’ motivation in learning of the words?
Pedagogically, the findings and comments of this study were believed to be
relevant to improve the teaching English to students at VUC. The study would help
teachers to motivate their English classroom so that their students can develop their
language skills.
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study was conducted on 40 second-year non English majors at the
University of Commerce. They were taught during two weeks (five contacts) of the
intervention.
The study covered the vocabulary items from course book including
collocations, nouns. Grammatical aspect of the vocabulary was beyond the scope of
this study. The study only focuses on vocabulary meaning recognition. Therefore, the
productive aspect of the vocabulary was ignored during the study.
Linguistic context and situational context in terms of background knowledge
presented in one sentence were used in this study. When the participants encountered
the single - context sentence, they used their prior knowledge as a comprehension
process approach. As a result, the participants should have schemata in order to make
sense of the minimal context.

3
4. METHOD OF THE STUDY
An action research was applied in this minor thesis to find out students‟
achievement and interest in learning vocabulary after new vocabulary items were
taught in minimal context.
In order to collect sufficient and relevant data for the study, three research
techniques were employed:

- using a pre-test and post-test to evaluate the teaching and learning results
- observing classes to find out how students participate in the intervention.
- Conducting a survey questionnaire to investigate how much students are
interested in the intervention
5. ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The study consists of three parts: Introduction, development and conclusion.
The Introduction presents the rationale, aims, scope and method of the study.
The development includes three chapters.
Chapter One covers an in-depth review of the literature in which relevant
theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning teaching vocabulary
in context and minimal context.
Chapter Two continues with the research method including the participants of
the study, the methods and procedures of data collection and data analysis.
Chapter Three demonstrates the findings accompanied by data analysis and
discussion.
The Conclusion ends the report with the summary of the findings, pedagogical
implications, limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies.


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DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter gives an overview of the literature related to the present study. In the
chapter, definitions of key terms and selected theoretical background such as context,
minimal context, vocabulary are presented. Then the review of the areas relevant to the
research questions, namely vocabulary teaching techniques, presenting and practicing
new vocabulary in context and minimal context is also provided.
1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1.1. Context and minimal context
In the study of language and discourse, the concept of “context” is notoriously

vague and ambiguous. As a result, a number of researchers have attempted to define
context in the framework of vocabulary learning.
According to New Oxford American Dictionary (2010), context is defined as (1)
The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea and in terms of
which it can be fully understood and assessed. Or (2) the parts of something written or
spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
Crystal (1991:78) defines that context is a general term in linguistics and phonetics
to refer to specific parts of an utterance (or text) near or adjacent to a unit (e.g., a
sound, word) which is the focus of attention. The occurrence of a unit is partly or
wholly determined by its context, which is specified in terms of the unit‟s relations.
Blackburn (1984) offers a similar definition: “In linguistics, context is the parts of an
utterance surrounding a unit and which may affect both its meaning and its
grammatical contribution.”(p.80) However, he is quick to add that context also refers
to the “wider situation, either of the speaker or of the surroundings, that may play a
part in determining the significance of a saying.”(p.80)

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Following the previous studies, Nguyen Hoa (2000) states context consists of
two components: the linguistic context (cotext) and the situational or extralinguistic
context. In that definition, cotext refers to the text surrounding a message. This
includes the textual elements that occur before and/or after a word, a phrase or even a
longer utterance or a text. The cotext often helps in understanding the particular
meaning of the word, phrase, etc. And situational context concerns the physical context
in which a message is conveyed. It includes the type of communicative event, the
topic, the purpose of the event, the setting, the participants and the relationships
between them, and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the
communicative event (Nunan, 1999). It is the broader social situation in which a
linguistic item is used.
On the whole, it is widely agreed that context has two aspects which are co-text
(linguistic context) and situational context.

Although linguistic context in language learning and teaching has been
extensively discussed in the literature, not much has been said about the effectiveness
both context types in language teaching and learning.
Due to the small scale of the study, the author decided to use the term “minimal
context” in the study, defined as co-text in a length of one sentence and non-linguistic
context covering a minimal scope of the background knowledge of the participants in
the communicative event.
Regarding the term “minimal context”, Laufer and Shmueli (1997) are among
the few researchers have used the term which is just defined as one meaningful
sentence. Recently, Webb (2007) has used the term “single-context sentence” in the
study on the effect of a single-context sentence on vocabulary learning, of which he
examined vocabulary learning in five dimensions: orthography, meaning and form,
syntagmatic associations, paradigmatic associations, and grammatical functions. In the
two earlier studies, minimal context is just limited in the co-text type. The findings of

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these studies yielded not much benefit for a seeming reason of the limited context into
co-text.
There are some examples below illustrating the minimal context used to teach the
word “tsunami”:
 Example 1:Non-linguisitc context
Japanese people were killed because of the tsunami on the March 11
th
,
2011.
In this type of context, prior knowledge was built to reveal the meaning of the
target word.
 Example 2: Co-text
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large
volume of a body of water.

This context used definition, synonyms surroundings to illustrate the meaning of
the target word.
In the present study, the author would adapt context in terms of co-text and
situational context featuring background knowledge which is embedded in one
sentence.
1.1.2. Vocabulary
In foreign language teaching, it is crucial to know words, because every
grammatical structure, every expression consists of them. They play a very important
role in communication.
What is vocabulary? According to Thornbury (2000:1), vocabulary means (1)
all the words that a person knows or uses; (2) all the words in a particular language; (3)
all the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject; (4) a list
of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a foreign language.
Nash and Snowling (2006) describe vocabulary as “the knowledge of words and their

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meanings” (p. 336). While Sheehan (2002) states vocabulary is “the ability to
understand and use words to acquire and convey meaning”.
Generally, it is a wide agreement on vocabulary as a powerful carrier of
meaning. Besides, to know vocabulary of a topic, learners need have knowledge of
that. It is possible for a reader to know all the words in the passage and still not make
any sense of it if he has no prior knowledge of the topic. Thus, “word meanings are not
just unrelated bits of information, but are part of a larger knowledge structures” (Stahl,
1999).
In short, for the purpose of the study, vocabulary is word meaning and its
relation with background knowledge.
1.2 OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN CONTEXT
1.2.1. Vocabulary implicit learning and explicit teaching
Recently, numerous studies have placed on much effort in discovering
vocabulary acquisition and instruction, including implicit incidental learning, explicit

teaching and independent learning strategies. Of these research, some suggest
accompanying implicit leaning with explicit teaching vocabulary be much beneficial.
For the naturalistic approach to language teaching, implicit incidental
vocabulary is favored, which emphasizes guessing the meaning from context and using
monolingual dictionaries, whereas defining and translating lexical items are to be
avoided. For that, the meaning of a new word is acquired totally unconsciously as a
result of abstraction from repeated exposures in a range of activated contexts. This
strong implicit position is usually identified with Krashen (1989) whose Input
Hypothesis assumes that vocabulary acquisition takes place so long as there is
comprehensible input as the essential environmental ingredient.
However, many arguments report the ineffectiveness for focusing solely on

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implicit learning coming from a number of potential problems associated with inferring
words from context. First, acquiring vocabulary mainly through guessing words in
context is likely to be a very slow error-prone process. Second, students, especially
those with low-level proficiency, are often frustrated with this approach and it is
difficult to undo the possible damage done by incorrect guessing (Sokmen, 1997).
Third, even when students are trained to use flexible reading strategies to guess words
in context, their comprehension may still be low due to insufficient vocabulary
knowledge. Besides, guessing from context does not necessarily result in long-term
retention. Some studies have shown that students who were just doing extensive
reading made smaller increases in word acquisition than those who read and completed
accompanying vocabulary exercises. Furthermore, putting too much emphasis on
inference skills when teaching vocabulary belies the fact that individual learners have
different strategies and styles of acquiring unfamiliar vocabulary. Students with a large
vocabulary are not necessarily good at inferring, they may use other means (Sokmen,
1997). As Coady (1997:226) and Schmidt (2000) investigate that the implicit learning
is still very limited and is not widely available to students around the world.
Apparently, from the above-mentioned arguments, vocabulary acquisition

cannot rely on implicit learning but needs to be controlled. For contemporary approach
to vocabulary teaching, it is worthwhile to add explicit vocabulary instruction to
implicit vocabulary learning. An explicit vocabulary instruction whose learning
hypothesis holds that a certain amount of consciousness must be involved in
vocabulary acquisition, from the learner noticing novel vocabulary, selectively
attending to and using a variety of strategies to trying to infer its meaning from the
context (Gass,1999; Schmidt, 1990) may not only enhance the efficiency of implicit
learning, but may also have an effect on students' learning strategies, and overall
interest and motivation in learning words. Schmidt (2000) confirms that in any well-
structured vocabulary program there needs to be the proper mix of explicit teaching

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and activities from which incidental learning can occur. With rank beginners, it is
probably necessary to explicitly teach all words until students have enough vocabulary
to start making use of the unknown words they meet in context.
From the given discussion on vocabulary teaching instruction, the present study
follows the current trend in teaching second language vocabulary which combines
implicit learning and explicit teaching. In details, for the students‟ language level, a
planned vocabulary teaching which refers to deliberate, explicit and directed
vocabulary teaching would be mainly used in the study. It encompasses the use of
teaching strategies such as ways in which teachers introduce and present the meaning
and form of new words, encourage learners to review and practice, recycle, and
evaluate the level of acquisition of vocabulary knowledge. In the meantime, teachers
do not explicitly present target words but implicitly do by eliciting word meanings
from given minimal context.
1.2.2. Vocabulary teaching procedure
Teaching English vocabulary is an important area worthy effort and
investigation. Recently, methodologists and linguists emphasize and recommend
teaching vocabulary because of its importance in language teaching. Vocabulary is
needed for expressing meaning and in using the receptive (listening and reading) and

the productive (speaking and writing) skills. Thornbury (2000) has his detail
explanation on the vocabulary teaching stages and principles. According to him, in
order to have an effective vocabulary learning process, teaching vocabulary involves
three stages: presenting, practicing and producing.
1.2.2.1. Vocabulary selection
The first step in teaching vocabulary is to determine what words to teach. They
should be useful. However, what is useful in one situation may be quite useless in
another. Therefore, the criteria given below depend on the particular teaching situation.

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Harmer (2001:154) provides the following general principles of vocabulary
selection: the principle of frequency – words that are frequently used should be taught
first, the principle of coverage – words that comprise more things and have no just one
specific meaning are useful to be taught as first. In addition to these principles, Gairns
and Redman (1986:59) provide also cultural factors and the principle of need and level
which are explained that learners have different lexical needs for different purposes, so
it helps motivate students to remember new words.
It is crucial to consider the words to teach, however, in most English teaching
programmes, the selection of useful words has already been done by the writer of the
textbook.
For the present study, a range of vocabulary items is selected in Vocabulary
Section of the course book.
1.2.2.2. Vocabulary presentation
The aim of the presentation stage is to establish the basic meaning and the
correct form of the word in the learner‟s memory. There are many ways to present the
meaning of new items. “Most of these are means which tend to be associated with
more teacher-centered approach and consequently the items taught through these
means are usually selected by the teacher rather than the learners”. (Gairns & Redman,
1986:73). Regarding to presentation techniques, there are several ways to present new
items, such as using translation, which is the most direct route to a word‟s meaning,

illustrate meaning using pictures, mime or realia, appropriate to teach beginners;
contextualizing, defining, giving synonyms, opposites and giving detailed descriptions
which are suitable for advance learners. Of these techniques, the majority of theorists
favor placing vocabulary into a meaningful context. Haycraft (1978) gives a simple
and traditional blueprint, in which form is presented first, as follow:

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a. Whenever possible, teach the words in spoken form first, and only when
students can pronounce them well, introduce the written form. Otherwise, the
students will always try and pronounce English words as if they were written in
their own language,
b. Try to present new words in context
c. Revision is essential. Blend words you have presented into later practice.
Meanwhile, Thornbury (2000:75) recently proposes a number of options that
ESL teachers should consider before presenting a set of words are the number of new
words, sequence of presentation and means of presentation. In detail, he states that (1)
the number of words is constrained by factors such as word difficulty, but need not be
limited to only a few words, (2) establishing the meaning of a new word first and then
presenting its forms is a standard approach, (3) explaining meaning verbally is time-
consuming but can be effective if explanations are kept clear and simple, (4) the
spoken form can be highlighted through the giving of clear models, the use of
phonemic scripts and repetition (5) by elicitation (Thornbury, 2000:30) it actively
involves the learners in the lesson, maximizes speaking opportunities, keeps the
learners alert and attentive, challenges better learners who might otherwise “turn off”.
According to Višnja (2008), there are some frequent ways of presentation
believed to involve learners‟ active participation although it is supposed that learners
mostly receive linguistic facts passively when being taught preselected lexical items.
Of them, there is presentation through context which is illustrated that “the teacher
creates a situation in which he/ she clearly contextualizes the lexical item”. Then
learners guess the meaning on the basis of the cumulative effect of the sentences.

Moreover, to build a link between meaning and form, he states that learners need to be
involved in the orthographic and phonological form of word, such as oral drill,

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phonetic transcription and graphic presentation, etc. Regarding the process of
presentation of meaning and form, it is suggested presenting them in either order.
For the current study, it investigates the effectiveness of presenting and
practicing vocabulary in minimal context which is a technique requiring the elicitation
from the students, so the author would follow the meaning first presentation.
1.2.2.3. Vocabulary practice
While presenting new vocabulary, teachers need to involve students in some of
the activities to check vocabulary comprehension, practice and and production.
The National Reading Panel (2000: 25) states that “vocabulary can be taught in
connection with other language activities. Such activities may be exercises following
or preceding speaking, listening, writing or reading.” Consequently, vocabulary can be
taught through various activities in order to move the words into long term memory
(Thornbury, 2000). Among these classroom activities, teachers can use some decision
making ones like identifying, selecting, matching, sorting, ranking and sequencing.
And also some production tasks, for instance, completion of sentences and texts and
creation of sentences and texts. The last stage is related to the production stage with the
aim of helping students to incorporate the new item into the lexicon. This can be done
using communicative activities in which the learners have to retrieve the vocabulary
already learnt and practiced.
In the present study, the author would follow the stages and the options
suggested above to design the action plan of this study.
1.3 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRESENTING
VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT AND MINIMAL CONTEXT
There is a fair amount of literature on context effects and vocabulary teaching in
context. A number of ELT researchers have their different points of view on this issue.

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For one group, presenting vocabulary in context brings various advantages.
First, it is beneficial for lexical learning in context rather than in isolated forms
such as word lists. For example, Doye (1980, cited in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999,
cited in Wang, 2005) suggested that new word should be presented in a semantically
typical linguistic context which is useful to work out its meaning. Beheydt (1987, cited
in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999, cited in Wang, 2005) further pointed out that thank
to the inherent polysemous versatility and context-dependent variation, the presence of
new word in context is much advisable than that in isolation. According to these
statements, context makes words‟ meaning more salient with semantic or linguistic
support. Furthermore, the role of context represents not only morphological, syntactic,
or discourse information within the text, but also readers‟ background knowledge of
the subject matter of a given text, or the general context (Nation & Coady, 1988;
Scherfer, 1993; Parbakht & Weche, 1999).
Second, there are quite a few authors proving the process of inferring from
context which has a good effect on vocabulary retention. The literature review has been
done by Nam (2010). He listed out a number of researchers such as Hulstijn (1992)
who first confirmed the longer retention of target vocabulary items whose meanings
were correctly inferred in context rather than explained by their synonyms, Joe (1995)
who also supported that the retention of unfamiliar words in a text-based task that
demanded a higher level of generativity; and recently Hulstijn and Laufer (2001)
realizing that EFL students involved in a composition task could retain target words
better than those engaged in a reading comprehension or fill-in task.
Regarding the cognitive approach, Hulstijn (1992) demonstrated the viewpoint
of presenting vocabulary in context based on the two assumptions:
- When subjects have to infer or induce the solution of a problem, they will
invest more mental effort than when they are given the solution to the problem.

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- Information that has been attained with more mental effort can later be better

retrieved and recalled than information that has been attained with less mental
effort.
On the basis of these assumptions, one could construct a mental effort
hypothesis, which predicts that the retention of an inferred word meaning will be
higher than the retention of a given word meaning.
Lastly, minimal contexts used to present new vocabulary items which are fun
and related to students‟ knowledge, study and lives hopefully would create an effective
teaching technique and involve the student participation.
To some extent, it is better to present new words in context, however; other
studies (e.g. Laufer,1984; McKeown, 1985; Stip & Hulstijn, 1986; Stein, 1993)
objected practically and pedagogically that context as an instructional method by itself
is considered to be ineffective and inefficient as a means of teaching new meanings. It
is quoted that the context may appear quite helpful if one already knows what the word
means, but it seldom supplies adequate information for a person who has no other
knowledge about the meaning of the word. Another disadvantage of context instruction
is that the inferring method has the inherent risk that learners will make wrong
inferences and hence learn the wrong meaning. Moreover, the inferring method only
works well with learners who are at advanced level or have good problem-solving
skills.
Fortunately, many factors affecting learners‟ success in lexical inferencing
studied have causes of the nature of the word and the text that contain the word
(Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Parry, 1993); the degree of textual information available
in the surrounding context (Dubin & Olshtain, 1993); the learner‟s ability to make use
of extra-textual cues (de Bot et al., 1997; Haastrup, 1991); the importance of the word
to comprehension of the text (Brown, 1993); the degree of cognitive and mental effort

15
involved in the task (Fraser, 1999; Joe, 1995); and the learner‟s attention to the details
in the text as well as his or her pre-conceptions about the possible meaning of the word
(Frantzen, 2003). The factors discovered above are the valuable resource for designing

the most appropriate minimal context to present new vocabulary.
1.4 PREVIOUS STUDIES
Historically, there are a lot of studies on context use and effects on incidental
vocabulary learning. However, it is not much said about the effects of “minimal
context” in vocabulary acquisition or effectiveness of deliberately presenting
vocabulary in context or minimal context. Only Laufer and Shmueli (1997), Webb
(2007) and Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) are among the very few researchers
studying this field.
Laufer and Shmueli (1997) did a research in the relationship between
memorization of new words (short-term and long-term) and four modes of vocabulary
presentation and diverse languages of vocabulary glossing. The four modes were words
presented in (a) isolation, (b) in “minimal context” , (c) text context; and (d) in
“elaborated” text context, that is in the original text supplemented by clarifying phrases
and sentences. The result of the study revealed that words presented in lists and
sentences were retained better than words presented in either type of texts. This study
was one of the first attempts to make distinction between vocabulary learning in a
minimal context (where the target word appears in a single sample sentence) and in a
text context.
Another study that investigated the effect of a single-context sentence on
vocabulary learning was Webb (2007), which compared two groups of learners who
involving in learning words in glossed sentences and learning word-pairs task.
However, the result of this study did not yield much benefit. Perhaps, it is due to he

16
examined vocabulary learning in five dimensions including orthography, meaning and
form, syntagmatic, associations, paradigmatic associations and grammatical functions.
Lastly, another research on the effect of three consecutive context sentences on
EFL vocabulary learning by Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) proved the positive role
for context sentences in vocabulary learning. In that study, thirty-three Iranian EFL
learners were asked to learn 20 challenging English words in two conditions. They

encountered half of the words in three consecutive sample sentences plus their Farsi
equivalents and the other half merely with their Farsi equivalents devoid of any context
sentences. The results of both immediate and delayed post-tests revealed a positive role
for context sentences in vocabulary learning. It is proposed that successful vocabulary
learning through context sentences could be attributed to the mixed effects of both
context and frequency of occurrence.
From these above overview, in any study of the effects of context, it would be
worth investigating the effectiveness of presenting and practicing vocabulary in context
sentences in the specific condition of University of Commerce.
1.5 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY
The above-mentioned discussion of related studies in the area concerning
vocabulary teaching and learning by using minimal context, the minimal context, the
teaching process serves to demonstrate how the present research could be fit into the
existing literature.
Firstly, a number of researches have just elaborated on the role of context in
implicit teaching/ incidental learning vocabulary. Meanwhile, there were merely a few
investigations into the use of context in presenting new words in both implicit/
incidental and explicit/ intentional ways. Therefore, the current study could play an
important role in exploring this issue more thoroughly to enrich the literature.

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Secondly, among all the reviewed studies, only three by Laufer & Shmueli,
1997; Webb, 2007; Baleghizadeh & Shahry, 2011 were close to the present research.
Three of them examined the roles of minimal context in vocabulary acquisition and
instruction. For the small scale of the field research, it is essential for more study in
teaching vocabulary in minimal context. Moreover, not only did this study investigate
the effects of minimal context on students‟ vocabulary learning but it also looked into
the procedure of implementing the teaching technique which also created the frequency
of the encounter leaving more durable imprint on the minds of the learners
(Baleghizadeh & Shahry, 2011). Therefore, the present study‟s inquiry was relevant

and significant in the research field.
Furthermore, all of the related studies simply based on the quantitative method.
Accordingly, in those investigations, there might be inevitably potential limitations of
relying on a single approach. Hence, the present study using both qualitative and
quantitative data attempted to address this gap. Moreover, the present research tried to
discover the effect of the teaching techniques on students‟ motivation in vocabulary
acquisition in the class which had not had studied previously.
In addition, the subjects of the previous studies were learners at intermediate
and advanced language levels who were exposed to new vocabulary in context.
Meanwhile, the present study tried to investigate the technique on students who were at
low level of language.
In general, with its own features in a different context, this research supported to
bridge several existing gaps in the literature on vocabulary presentation and practice
through minimal context, and bring new perspective to the field.

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CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter provides a description of the research implementation, including the
participants of the study, the methods and procedures of data collection and data
analysis accompanied by the researcher‟s justification.
2.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The study was conducted at the University of Commerce training students in the
field of commerce and economics. Every year, a large number of high school pupils
pass the university entrance examination to attend a 4 – year – training program which
equips them with plenty of knowledge, skills and experience. To meet the standard of
higher education quality, the university provides six English courses in seven semesters
to students namely, English 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. For the basic and pre-
intermediate level, the first to third year students attend English 1.1 to 1.4. The fourth-
year students attend English 1.5 and 1.6, which is English for specific purposes.
Regarding the course books used for English training program at VUC, the series of

course book New Market Leader (elementary to intermediate level) are applied to
English 1.1 to 1.4. New Market Leader is Business English course book designed by
David Cotton, David Falvey, Simon Kent for businesspeople and students of business
English. It has been developed in association with the Financial Times, one of the
leading sources of business information in the world. Being aware of the importance
of English, the university has been investing much in English study for their students.
2.2 PARTICIPANTS
The participants of the study were 40 second-year students who are at the age of
20 (18 to 22 years old) and from suburban and rural areas. Their English level was
measured with the score range of English 1.1 in the previous semester from 5.5 to 7.0
(band 10) which is equivalent to 250-300 TOEIC score. Because of studying basic
economics before being exposed to English 1.2, these participants have already had