Activities to increase a dult learners' retention of vocabulary at Yenbai Centre of Continuing Education = Các hoạt động nhằm nâng cao khả năng lưu nhớ từ vựng

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstracts iii
Table of contents iv
List of abbreviations viii
List of tables ix
PART I. INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the Study 2
3. Research Hypotheses and Questions 2
4. Scope of the Study 2
5. Methods of the Study 2
6. Design of the study 3
PART II. DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition 4
1.1.1. Definition of vocabulary 4
1.1.2. Vocabulary: What needs to be taught? 5
1.1.2.1. Form: Pronunciation and Spelling 5

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1.1.2.2. Aspects of meaning 5
1.1.2.3. Grammar 7
1.1.2.4. Word formation 7
1.1.2.5. Collocation 8
1.1.3. The roles of vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition 8
1.2. Factors affecting the retention of vocabulary 9
1.2.1. Memory 9

1.2.2. Learning strategies 10
1.2.3. Learning context 11
1.2.4. Word-related factors 12
1.3. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition Process 13
1.3.1. Noticing 14
1.3.2. Retrieval 14
1.3.3. Generation 15
1.4. Repetition and vocabulary retention 15
1.4.1. Types of repetition 15
1.4.2. Spacing of repetition 17
1.4.3. Number of repetition 17
CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY 19
2.1. The rationale for using action research 19

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2.2. Procedures 19
2.3. Participants 20
2.4. The course book 20
2.5. Data collecting instruments 21
2.6. The Intervention 22
2.6.1. The intervention procedures 22
2.6.2. The intervention activities 23
CHAPTER 3. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27
3.1. Results of the pretest and discussion 27
3.2. Results of the posttests and discussion 29
3.3. Comparison of scores of pretest and two posttests 32
PART III. CONCLUSION 35
1. Conclusions 35
2. Limitations of the study 36
3. Suggestions for further study 36

REFERENCES 38
APPENDIX A. PRETEST I
APPENDIX B. POSTTEST 1 II
APPENDIX C. POSTTEST 2 III
APPENDIX D. KEYS FOR THE TESTS IV

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APPENDIX E. ASKING AND ANSWERING ABOUT TIME V
APPENDIX F. A DAY IN MY LIFE VI
APPENDIX G. INTERVIEWING VII
APPENDIX H. DESCRIBING THINGS IN A HOUSE VIII
APPENDIX I. READING-BASED VOCABULARY ACTIVITY IX
APPENDIX J. FINDING THE LOCATION OF THINGS IN THE HOUSE X




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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AR Action Research
H
0
Null hypothesis
H
1
Alternative hypothesis
L2 second language
N Number of cases
p Probability

SD Standard Deviation
YCCE Yen Bai Centre for Continuing Education


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LIST OF TABLES
Pages
Table 1.1. Types of repetition of word meaning 15
Table 3.1. Score results of the pretest 27
Table 3.2. The scores frequencies of pretest 28
Table 3.3. Statistics of the pretest 28
Table 3.4. Score results of the posttests 29
Table 3.5. The scores frequencies of Posttest 1 30
Table 3.6. The Statistics of Posttest 1 30
Table 3.7. The scores frequencies of Posttest 2 31
Table 3.8. The Statistics of Posttest 2 31
Table 3.9. The comparison of the pretest and the posttest 1 33
Table 3.10. The comparisons of the pretest and the posttest 2 33








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PART I - INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It cannot be denied that vocabulary plays a significant role in both language learning and

language use. Wilkins (1972, p.111) emphasized “Without grammar, very little can be
conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Vocabulary is a cohesive device
to link four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing together. Moreover, in order
to communicate smoothly in a particular language, people should acquire an adequate
number of words. Therefore, many linguists, educators and researchers have been
attempting to help learners of English expand their vocabulary knowledge and keep it in
the long-term memory.
Nonetheless, most Vietnamese students consider the vocabulary retention as a difficult task
in their English learning process. Students at Yen Bai Centre for Continuing Education
(YCCE) are no exceptions. Most of them are civil servants of middle age. They learn
English to meet the requirement of their jobs and their own needs. However, these adult
learners are much different from young learners. Bearing so many responsibilities with
their work, their families and many other affairs, they do not have sufficient time for their
learning after the class. Therefore, most of their learning time is often in class. However,
during class time, the students often pile up pages of vocabulary lists that are rarely looked
over again. Moreover, they have few chances to recycle their taught vocabulary. Thus,
students often soon forget most of words they have learnt before. As the result, they meet
many difficulties when communicating in English, both in the oral and written forms.
Take into account all the stated facts, the author - a teacher at YCCE has attempted to find
out appropriate solutions that help to improve her learners‟ vocabulary maintenance. She
has been motivated to conduct an action research titled “Activities to increase adult
learners’ retention of vocabulary at Yen Bai Centre of Continuing Education” with the
hope that it will facilitate her adult learners to retain their vocabulary.






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2. Aims of the Study
The main aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of repetition-focused activities
in helping YCCE adult learners at elementary level increase their retention of English
vocabulary.
3. Research Hypotheses and Question
To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the study was designed to test the hypothesis:
H
1
:

Repetition-focused activities help to increase adult learners’ vocabulary retention.
The acceptance of the above hypothesis would obviously be the rejection of the following
null hypothesis, which denotes that repetition-focused activities have impact on adult
learners‟ vocabulary retention, or vice versa.
H
0
: Repetition-focused activities have no effect on adult learners’ vocabulary retention.
In order to decide which hypothesis would be accepted, the satisfactory answers to the
following research question would be found:
Are there any significant differences in the students‟ vocabulary retention which is
measured by their scores in the pretest and the posttests?
4. Scope of the Study
This study is narrowed down to measuring the effectiveness of repetition-focused activities
which is employed to increase students‟ vocabulary retention in the context of an evening
English class of 28 adult learners at YCCE. The textbook used in this class is “Life Lines
Elementary” by Tom Hutchinson, Oxford University Press.
5. Methods of the Study
In an attempt to test the above-mentioned hypothesis and find the answers for the research
question, an action research with a pretest-posttest design was carried out by the teacher-
researcher herself. The study was carried out in her real educational context to get

authentic results. The study was conducted within a period of nine weeks in which a pretest





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and two posttests were delivered to measure the changes in learners‟ vocabulary retention.
All scores of these tests were computed and analyzed with the assistant of the statistical
software named SPSS version 11.5 to find out how the intervention affect the English
vocabulary retention of the author‟s students.
The procedures of the study were undertaken as follows. First, problems were identified.
Then, the literature on vocabulary teaching was read and hypothesis was made. After that,
the intervention for the study was designed. Next, a pretest and two posttests were used to
collect data for analysis. Finally, the outcome was reported. Details of these procedure are
described in the chapter 2.
6. Design of the study
The minor thesis is composed of five chapters which are described as follows:
Part A entitled Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research hypotheses and
questions, scope, methods, and design of the study.
Part B - the development of the study which is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1-
Literature review supplies essential theoretical background relevant to the study. Chapter
2- Methodology deals with the rationale for using action research, the procedures, the
information about the participants, and the instruments for data collection as well as the
intervention of the study. Chapter 3 is about the detailed analyses of the data given by the
pretest and the posttests and discussion on the findings.
Part C is the conclusion. This chapter summaries the main findings and points out some
limitations of the study as well as several recommendations and suggestions for further
study.
The references come at the end of the paper, closing with Appendices.

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PART II - DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition
1.1.1. Definition of vocabulary
Vocabulary is an important aspect of leaning a foreign language and is of great
significance to language researchers, teachers and learners. However, it is not easy to
define exactly what vocabulary is. So far, vocabulary has been defined in various ways.
According to Lewis (1993, p. 89), vocabulary “… may be individual words, or full
sentences – institutionalized utterances - that convey fixed social or pragmatic meaning
within a given community”. In this definition, vocabulary is not only the single words but
also the complex and compound words, the meaningful units of language. The Lewis‟s
statement seems to have the agreement with Ur‟s (1996) that is “When most of us think
about language we think first about words. It is true that the vocabulary is the focus of
language. It is in words that we arrange together to make sentences, conversation and
discourse of all kinds”
Vocabulary can also be interpreted as knowledge of words and word meanings. Firstly,
words are virtually manifested in the two forms: spoken form and written form. Oral
vocabulary including the words, phrases or sentences are used for listening and speaking,
and the words which we recognize and use for reading and writing can be identified as
written vocabulary. Secondly, our word knowledge is also represented in two forms,
receptive and productive. The words that we use to write and speak are considered as
productive vocabulary and the words that we hear from the people around us and see or
read from stories, books, newspaper, etc… are recognized as receptive vocabulary.

Therefore, it is possible to state that the word vocabulary means both the knowledge of
words and word meanings in both oral and print language and in productive and receptive
forms. Of course, lexical meanings vary from context to context. Therefore, it is necessary
for teachers help students to gain vocabulary from the different contexts. This will help





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learners not only use appropriate vocabulary in communication, but also develop their
vocabulary knowledge.
1.1.2. Vocabulary: What needs to be taught?
In many ESL learning situations, students can recognize a word when it is pronounced but
can not write down that correctly, or vice verse. Many learners even have difficulties with
using properly the word that they have in their mind. Therefore, according to Penny Ur
(1996), when vocabulary is introduced to learners, pronunciation and spelling, word form,
grammar, collocation, aspects of meaning, word-formation need to be taught. However,
which aspects of these should be focused on during the teaching and learning process
depends on whether a word is learned for receptive skills or for productive skills (Nation,
1990).
1.1.2.1. Form: Pronunciation and Spelling
According to (Ur, 1996), when introducing a new word to language students, the teacher
has to introduce what it sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling).
Gairns and Redman (1986, p.50) stated “Unfamiliarity with correct pronunciation can
result in the learner failing to understand words in connected speech that he clearly
understands in written English”. To many students, the complex relationship between
sound and spelling in English seems to make the language inexplicable. Therefore, the
teacher should pay careful attention to both of these two forms. It is easy to sympathize
with this view when we consider the number of homophones such as weight/wait, sole/soul

and the number of similar forms that differ wildly in their pronunciation like play (/ei/) and
ball (/Ɔ:/); hurry (/ʌ/) and humor (/j /) … Swan (1980) and Gimson and Ramsaran (1982)
indicated that there are so many exceptions in English pronunciation. Therefore, the
teachers needs to make sure that both word‟ pronunciation and spelling are accurately
presented to the learners.
1.1.2.2. Aspects of meaning
Aspects of meaning include denotation, connotation, appropriateness and meaning
relationships.





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The denotation meaning refers to or point out things, concepts. This is often the sort of
definition given in dictionary such as “fish” denotes an animal that can swim.
Connotation of a word is less obvious component of its meaning. This is the association, or
positive and negative feelings the word evokes which nay or may not be indicated in a
dictionary definition. Connotation includes stylistic, affective, evaluative, intensifying
values, pragmatic communicative values, the word acquires by virtue of where, when, how
and by whom, for what purpose and in what context it is or it may be used.
Appropriateness is a more subtle aspect if meaning which indicates whether a particular
item is appropriate one to use in a certain context or not. Thus, it is useful for a learner to
know whether a certain word is very common, or relative rare or taboo in polite
conversation, or tend to be used in writing but not in speech, or is more suitable for a
formal than informal discourse or belongs to a certain dialect.
Meaning relationship can also be useful in vocabulary teaching and learning. They show
how the meaning of one item relates to the meaning of others. There are various
relationship and follows are some of the main ones.
+ Synonyms: items that mean the same or nearly the same, for example, chap, lap, and

fellow may serve as synonyms of man.
+ Antonyms: items that mean the opposite: ugly is an antonym of beautiful.
+ Hyponyms: items that serve as specific example of a general concept: dog, cat, lion are
hyponyms of animal.
+ Co-hyponyms or co-ordinates: other items that are the “same kind of things”: yellow,
blue, red, and brown are co-ordinates.
+ Superordinates: general concept that cover specific items: cattle is the superordinates of
bull, cow, pig.
+ Translation: words or expressions in the learners‟ mother tongue that is more or less
equivalent in meaning to the items being taught or learnt.





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1.1.2.3. Grammar
If the new item is not obviously covered by general grammatical rule, its grammar will
need to be introduced or examined. An item may have unpredictable change of form in
certain contexts or some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other words in sentences.
Thus, it is important to learners to have this information at the same time the base form is
learnt. For example, when a noun such as a mouse is learnt, it should be noticed that its
plural form is mice.
General speaking, teacher needs to be ready to teach the types of collocations especially
the ones with which students have the greatest difficulties.
1.1.2.4. Word formation
Vocabulary items, whether on-word or multi-word, can be broken down into their smaller
component. How these components are put together is useful information to learners
especially advanced learners. There are three main types of word building, which are
characteristics of English: affixation, compounding and conversion.

+ Affixation is the process of adding prefixes or suffixes to base item. These items are
called derived words. When being added prefixes and/or suffixes , items can be modified
in meaning and or changed between parts of speech to another. Foe example, honest
(adjective) + ly = honestly (adverb).
+ Compounding is the combination or two or more separate words which can stand
independently in other circumstances. There are three different types of compounds:
adjective compounds such as long-necked, time consuming, verb compounds such as to
babysit, to sighsee and nound compounds such as waste paper, mother-in-law.
+ Conversion, also known as zero affixation, is the process by which an item may be used
in different parts of speech without changes in form. For example, Could you buy me a
drink? (noun), and I can’t drink wine (verb).






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1.1.2.5. Collocation
Collocation is the way in which words are used together regularly in a specific language. It
refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together in right contexts. Therefore,
this is another piece of information about a new item, which may be worth teaching. For
example, you throw a ball but toss a coin. We can talk about thick fog and dense fog, thick
smoke and dense smoke with the same meaning. However, we cannot say dense hair
instead of thick hair.
1.1.3. The roles of vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition
Vocabulary is central to language and is of great significance to language learners. It is the
building block of a language since it labels objects, actions, ideas without which people
cannot convey the intended meaning. The prominent role of vocabulary knowledge in
second or foreign language learning has been recently recognized by theorists and

researchers in the field.
McCarthy, in the very first part of his book on vocabulary (2002, p.2) wrote: “It is
experience of most language teachers that the single, biggest component of any language
course is vocabulary. No matter how well students learn grammar, no matter how
successfully sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express the wide range of
meaning communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way.” This claim
indicates the great importance of vocabulary. If someone has adequate vocabulary, he or
she will feel more confident when communicating with others as well as expressing his/her
opinions about something very concrete to something very abstract in both oral and written
forms. Therefore, according to Schmitt (2000), second language students need
approximately 2,000 words to maintain conversations, 3,000 word families to read
authentic texts. The more words one knows well, the more successful he is in
communication and the more information he can get from different sources such as books,
newspapers, etc. The support for the important role of vocabulary can be found in the work
of Alexander. In her book “Understanding vocabulary” (2000, p.16), she wrote:
“Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean” and “words are the
currency of communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication –





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listening, speaking, reading and writing”. From this point, acquisition of an adequate
vocabulary is essential for successful second language use, and is what separates good
learners from poor learners.
In short, it is clear that vocabulary has an important role in second language acquisition.
Vocabulary is an essential part of language, as Wilkins (1972, p. 111) emphasized in his
saying: “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be
conveyed”

1.2. Factors affecting the retention of vocabulary
When referring to numerous factors that affect vocabulary retention, theorists and
researchers present slightly different opinions. However, various opinions meet at some
points and below are the four main types of factors said to have great impact on language
learners‟ vocabulary retention.
1.2.1. Memory
Whoever learns anything, he/she desires to keep what has been learned in the long-term
memory. In the human mind, there are three kinds of memory: sensory memory, short-term
memory, and long-term memory (Peet, 2003, p.3).
Sensory memory refers to the ability to hold a limited number of items for a period of only
a few seconds, for immediate tasks that require little or no processing, such as
remembering a phone number long enough to dial it, or a word long enough to repeat it.
Short-term memory holds information in mind over a brief period if time. Short-term
memory is a controlled processing procedure at which the learners can retrieve their newly
knowledge with effort. Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman (1999) suggested that short-term
memory is limited in capacity.
Long-term memory, in contrast, has the ability to store information away indefinitely.
According to Gairns, R & Redman, S (1999, p.87) “Long-term memory is seemingly
inexhaustible and can accommodate any amount of new information”. This is seen as an
automatic processing that ensures retrieval without effort.





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From above points of view, learning new items involve storing them first in our short-term
memory, and afterward in long-term memory. Information is transferred from short-term to
long-tern memory basing on the principle of seeing – hearing – touching – saying, so after
a word is presented to students, it should be met again and again in different discourse

contexts, whether visually or orally so that it can gradually be picked up into learners‟
mind. Therefore, learning activities and materials should be constructed in a systematic
procedure to help learners attach the new information into their long-term memory.
1.2.2. Learning strategies
It has been identified that one of ways to accelerate the retention of the learned items is
learning strategies. Learning strategies are “specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques
that students use to improve their progress in developing L2 skill. These strategies can
facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use if the new language” (Oxford,
1992/1993, p.18 cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1997). The impact of learning strategies on the
vocabulary learning is emphasized by Nunan (1999, p.171): “Knowledge of strategies is
important, because the greater awareness you have of what you are doing, if you are
conscious of the processes underlying the learning that you are involved in, then learning
will be more affective”. Ellis (1997, p.76-8) also shares the same idea when he states that
studies have shown that successful learners use more strategies than unsuccessful learners
and successful learners use different strategies at different stages of their development. He
emphasized that if crucial learning strategies can be identified, they can be taught to
students.
Learning strategies are the decisive factors for effective vocabulary retention. Many
scholars have striven to introduce different vocabulary learning strategies in order to help
learners of English improve their vocabulary retention. Oxford (1990, p.71) has
distinguished learning strategies into six groups: memory, cognitive, compensation
strategies and metacognitive, effective, and social strategies whereas Nation and Newton
(1997, p.240) indentified strategies for coping with and learning words as “guessing from
the context, using word parts to help remember word meanings, and using mnemonic and
rote vocabulary strategies. Research has also demonstrated that there is a relationship
between strategy use and success in second or foreign vocabulary retention. For instance,

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Cohen and Aphek (1981, cited in Chamot, 2001) taught students of Hebrew to remember
vocabulary items by making paired mnemonic associations and found that those who made
associations remembered vocabulary more effective than those who did not. In another
attempt, Sanaoui (1995) carried out a study to demonstrate the relationship between
strategy use and success in acquiring and retaining vocabulary items. The study
demonstrated that adult learners of L2 vocabulary were likely to fall into two categories:
those who adopted a structured approach to their learning and those who did not. And the
results of the study showed that students who had structured learning approach were more
successful in retaining the vocabulary items taught in their classrooms then learners who
had an unstructured approach.
From these points of view, it is suggested that learning strategies should be introduced to
learners. However, learners should not only taught about learning strategies but also
instructed on how to choose the best and most appropriate strategy in a given situation.
Research shows that for most adult learners, direct vocabulary instruction is beneficial and
necessary, due to the fact that students are not able to acquire the mass of vocabulary just
by meaningful reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Learners can be taught explicitly
how to improve their own vocabulary by teaching them appropriate c learning strategies in
contrast to simply letting them learn vocabulary in their own way (Brown & Perry, 1991)
1.2.3. Learning context
The third type of factors of L2 language vocabulary retention is the learning context. It is
the socio-cultural-political environment where learning takes place. The learning context
can include many things such as learners‟ needs, learning content, teaching and learning
materials, classroom activities, language input and language output, etc. According to
Krashen (1982) second language is most successful acquired when the conditions are
similar to those present in first language acquisition. This suggests that the focus of the L2
classroom should be on something meaningful, which is then processed in the learners‟
mind, and that modification of the target language facilitates language acquisition.
Students will face difficulties to learn and use lexical items if they do not have

opportunities to use the target language productively. Learners acquire and retain
vocabulary through seeing, hearing and saying the words numerous times in many contexts





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then producing massages in communication. Steele (2005) justified that words are learnt
by individual, but through memorable presentation, personalization tasks, so how
vocabulary is presented and activities are conducted in the class for practice is very
important in anchoring new words into students‟ memory, especially when they do not
have advantageous language environment outside the classroom. In this case, classroom
practice embeds both input and output resources for the learners.
1.2.4. Word-related factors
Apart from memory, learning context, language strategies, L2 vocabulary retention of the
learners is also affected with the word-related factors. These factors, according to Schmitt
and McCarthy (1997), there are many factors affecting the word learnability such as
pronounceability, length, multiplicity of meaning, idiomaticity, etc.
+ Pronounceability: There are many difficulties in pronouncing a word such as final
consonant clusters (e.g. clothes, films), stress on the right syllables, the weakening of
unstressed vowels, homophones (e.g ban/van, think/sink, etc), the familiarity with
phonological features and word‟s phonotactic regularity. Rodgers‟ study (1969, cited in
Schmitt and McCarthy (1997)) with English-speaking learners of Russian showed that
foreign words which were difficult to pronounce (e.g. mgla) were not learned as well as the
more pronounceable ones. In Celce-Murica‟s description (1978), her daughter even
avoided or refused to say the word that was phonologically more difficult in term of her
systems. She preferred couteau to knife since “f” was difficult, boy to garcon since “r" was
also difficult. Therefore, it can be concluded that the pronounceable were perceived more
accurately and retained longer in the learners‟ memory than the unpronounceable ones.

+ Length: The length of a word is one of factor that affect the word retainability. It would
seem that longer words should be more difficult simply because there is more to learn and
remember. In Stock‟s study (cited in Schmitt and McCarthy (1997)), one-syllable word had
a higher retention rate than the two-syllable ones. Coles (1982), on the other hand, found
that word length has a strong effect on a word recognition, at least in its written form.
Thus, learners may find longer words more difficult to learn and to remember than the
shorter ones.





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+ Multiplicity of meaning: According to Schmitt and McCarthy (1997), one form can have
several meanings and one meaning can be represented by different forms. This apparently
affect much the learnabilty and retainability of a word. One word which represents several
meanings can be either a polyseme or a homonym depending on whether the meanings are
related or not. But in practice, it is hard to distinguish which meaning are related and which
are not and therefore “the problem of distinguish between homonymy and polysemy is, in
principle, insoluble” (Lyons, 1981, p.148).
+ Idiomaticity: Both teachers and learners will admit that idiomatic expressions are much
more difficult to understand and learn to use than their non-idiomatic meaning equivalents.
Therefore, decide would be easier than make up one’s mind . Dagut and Laufer (1985), in a
examination of the avoidance of phrasal verbs by Hebrew speakers, found that Hebrew
speakers preferred one-word verb (e.g. postpone) to phrasal verbs (e.g. put off).
If often happens that students know one meaning of a polyseme, or a homonym and are
reluctant to abandon it even when, in a particular context, its meaning is different. For
example, 'since' was interpreted as 'from the time when' though it meant 'because'; 'abstract'
as 'not concrete' instead of 'summary'; 'state' as 'country' instead of 'situation'. The mistaken
assumption of the learner in this case was that the familiar meaning was the ONLY

meaning.
In short, the four main types of factors discussed above (memory, learning strategies,
learning context, and word-related factors) exits together and make great impact on the
retention of L2 learning vocabulary. Therefore, teachers should take all of them into
consideration and analyze them carefully before deciding what to teach and how to teach.
1.3. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition Process
With respect to vocabulary learning, it is evident that there are extensive demand on the
learner‟s attention in order to fully learn a word-namely, word forms, meaning and uses. It
is indicated in many theories that a learner must encounter a word more than once as the
target word passes though three processes of vocabulary acquisition. According to Nation
(2001, p.63), these three important processes that may lead to a word being remembered





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are noticing, retrieval, and generation. These processes can be viewed as three steps with
the later steps including the earlier steps.
1.3.1. Noticing
To Nation, noticing involves seeing the word item to be learned. This noticing may be
affected by several factors, including the salience of the word in the textual input or in the
discussion of the text, previous contact that the learners have had with the word, and
learners‟ realization that the word fills a gap in their knowledge of the language (Schimidt
and Frota, 1980; Ellis, 1990). Motivation and interest are important enabling conditions for
noticing. The choice of content can be a major factor stimulating interest.
Nation suggests designing activities to encourage noticing. If the words occur in important
parts of the written input to the task they are likely to be noticed. The chances of a word
being noticed can be increased by pre-teaching, highlighting the word in the text by using
underlining, italics or bold letters, and glossing the word.

1.3.2. Retrieval
Retrieval is the second process that may lead to a word being remembered. It involves
recalling items met before. A word may be noticed and its meaning comprehended in the
textual input to the task through teacher explanations or dictionary use. If that word is
subsequently retrieved during the task then the memory of that word will be strengthened.
Retrieval may be receptive or productive.
Receptive retrieval involved perceiving the form and having to retrieve its meaning when
the word is met in listening or reading.
Productive retrieval involves wishing to communicate the meaning of the word and having
to retrieve its spoken or written form as in speaking or writing.
It is noted that retrieval does not occur if the form and its meaning are presented
simultaneously to the learners. To encourage retrieval, there are many effective ways. They
are reading repeatedly, listening to a story two or three times a week, or speaking activities,
etc.





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1.3.3. Generation
The third major process that may lead to a word being remembered is generation or
creative use. Generation processing occurs when previous met words are subsequently met
or used in ways that differ from previous meeting with the word. It includes “attaching new
aspects of knowledge to what is known through instantiation (i.e., visualizing examples of
words), word analysis, semantic mapping and using scales and grids” (Nation, 2001, p.
222). Generation includes rule-driven generation, as well; such as, creating context,
collocations and sentences containing the new word. Besides, the mnemonic strategies and
using the word in different context through four skills are also defined as generation.
1.4. Repetition and vocabulary retention

It may seem common sense that the more times we are exposed to a word, the stronger our
understanding becomes. It is indicated that repetition is essential for vocabulary learning
because there is so much to know about each word that one meeting with it is not sufficient
to gain this information, and because vocabulary items must not only known, they must be
known well so that they can be fluently accessed. Repetition thus adds to the quality of
knowledge and also to the quantity or strength of this knowledge.
1.4.1. Types of repetition
In his book “Learning vocabulary in another language” (2001), Nation indicated that the
repetition can extend and enrich previous meeting. He also gave types of repetitions as in
the table below.
Type of processing
Type of repetition
Noticing
Seeing the same word form and simultaneously presented
meaning again
Retrieval
Recalling the same meaning several times
Generation
Recalling the meaning in different contexts requiring a different
instantiation of the meaning
Table 1.1. Types of repetition of word meaning (Nation (2001, p.80))





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The types of repetition are related to the goal of learning. McKeown, Beck, Omanson and
Pople (1985) (cited in Nation (2001, p.80) found that if simple definitional learning was
the goal then more repetitions were better than fewer, but fewer repetitions (four

encounters) achieved respectable results. If making use of newly learned word was the
goal, then the previous vocabulary teaching had to allow the learners to meet the new word
being used in several different ways so that the meaning of the word was enriched, not just
repeated, by each meeting. This enrichment was even more critical when fluency of access
was required. The repetition was typed as following.
Massed repetition involves spending a continuous period of time, say fifteen minutes,
giving repeated attention to a word.
Spaced repetition involves spreading the repetitions across a long period of time, but not
spending more time in total on the study of the words. For example, the words might be
studied for three minutes now, another three minutes a few hours latter, three minutes a
day later, three minutes two day later, and finally three minutes a week later. This spaced
repetition results in learning that will be remembered for a long period of time. The
principle behind spaced repetition is that it's a lot more effective to review something at the
point when it's about to be forgotten. Alternative names of spaced repetition include spaced
rehearsal, expanding rehearsal, graduated intervals, repetition spacing, repetition
scheduling, spaced retrieval and expanded retrieval.
According to Nation (2001, p.80), there are many activities that can be used for repetition
strategy such as using word cards, meeting words in reading, listening, writing and
speaking tasks.
However, for which level of the leaners the repetition should be used for? In the book The
practice of ESL language Teaching (2003, p.45) Harmer indicated the repetition was found
effective to beginners, but at the higher levers it seemed strange and patronizing.
Therefore, the teachers should pay careful attention to the level of their learners as using
the repetition strategy.

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1.4.2. Spacing of repetition
Spacing helps learners retain memory access to learned information over long periods of
time. Spacing prompts deeper processing of the learned material and it helps prevent
boredom and fatigue.
Many researchers such as Seibert (1927), Anderson and Jordan (1982), and Seirbert (1930)
(cited in Nation (2001)) investigated retention over periods of up to eight weeks. They
indicates that most forgetting occurs immediately after initial learning and then, as time
passes, the rate of forgetting becomes slower. Thus, they suggested that the repetition of
new items should occur very soon after they are first studied, before too much forgetting
occurs. After this the repetitions can be spaced further apart. This suggestion gains the
agreement with Pimsleur‟s (1967). Pimsleur suggested that the space between each
repetition should become larger, with initial repetitions being closer together and the later
repetitions much further apart. The general principle which lies behind the spacing is that
the older a piece of learning is, the slower the forgetting. This means two things. Firstly,
after a piece of learning, the forgetting is initially very fast and then slows down. Secondly,
on the second repetition a piece of learning is older than it was on the first repetition and so
the forgetting on the second repetition will be lower than it was. On the third repetition the
forgetting will be even slower. Therefore, the language teachers should provide their
learners spaced repetitions in order to help learners remember lexical items for a long
period of time.
1.4.3. Number of repetition
Repetition is only one of a number of factors affecting vocabulary learning and learning
generally are only moderate. For example, Saragi, Nation and Meister (1978) found a
correlation of about .45 indicating that repetition accounted for around 20% of the factors
involved in learning. It is thus not easy to fix on a particular number of repetitions needed
for learning to occur.
Kachroo (1962) found that words repeated seven times or more in his coursebook were
known by most learners. Crothers and Suppes (1967) found that most items on their
vocabulary learning experiments were learned after six or seven repetitions. Tinkham

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(1993), like many other researchers, found that the learners differed greatly in the time and
number of repetitions required for learning. Most learners required five to seven repetitions
for the learning of a group of six paired associates. A few required over twenty repetitions.
To sum up, the old saying "practice makes perfect", rings very true for vocabulary
retention. Above mentioned researches show that repetition dramatically improves long
term memory. In fact, it takes between 6 and 20 repetitions to make a word part of one‟s
vocabulary. What is even more surprising is that repeating a word, even after you believe
you have mastered it, can double the effectiveness of the learning, greatly reducing the
chance that learners will forget the word in the future.





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CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. The rationale for using action research
This study is an action research (AR) by nature, which is characterized by:
- Its specific and immediate outcome, which is directly related to practice in the teacher‟s
own context.
- The non-generalization of the findings
(Wallace, 1991, p. 56-57)
However, as Cohen and Manion (1985) stated that AR is first and foremost situational,
being concerning with the identification of, and solution to, problems in a specific context.

Thus, the aim of AR is to improve the current state of affairs within the educational context
in which the research is being carried out. To be more specific, the AR reported in this
thesis was conducted in a specific situation of teaching English as a foreign language to
adult learners at YCCE, and is aimed at improving the practice of vocabulary teaching in
that situation.
Methodologically, a quantitative study with a pretest-posttest design was adopted for this
study in order to measure the impact of repetition-focused activities on adult learners‟
vocabulary retention. Given the purpose of the study, which is to test the effectiveness of
one specific instructional strategy, i.e., the use of repetition-focused activities, on learners‟
vocabulary retention, this research design is appropriate.
2.2. Procedures
The study followed the steps recommended by Nunan (1992, p. 19) for conducting an AR.
These steps include (i) initiation or problem identification; (ii) preliminary investigation;
(iii) hypothesis formation; (iv) intervention; (v) evaluation; (vi) dissemination; and (vii)
follow-up.
To be more specific, the researcher of this AR first observed the students in this study and
found that they had great difficulty retaining vocabulary. They seemed to forget most of