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

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

CODE: 15

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

GRADUATION THESIS
B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY
TOWARDS IMPROVING VOCABULARY FOR THE FIRSTYEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH,
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Supervisor
Student
Date of birth
Course

: Le Thi Vy, M.A
: Do Thu Huong
: 28.02.1994
: K19A03 (2012-2016)

Hanoi – 2016


Graduation Paper
DECLARATION
Title: Towards improving vocabulary for the first year students at the
Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University
I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me
from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is
originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor.

Hanoi, 15 April, 2016
Student
Signature

Supervisor
Signature

Full name

Full name

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


Graduation Paper
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Mrs Le Thi Vy, M.A
– my supervisor. A person of varied skills and experiences in English
teaching, she has eased my research through valuable suggestions, careful and
detailed comments. Without her help, my thesis would not have been
completed.
I wish also to express my great thanks to the lecturers of the Faculty of
English, Hanoi Open University who have provided me with not only
knowledge but also the study condition as well as their useful advice, their
concerns and supports during the time I am studying here. My gratitude also
goes to the class K19A02, for their continuing supports and sharing their
ideas with me both as classmates and friends for the wonderful time we had in
Hanoi Open University.
I also would like to extend my thanks to the 100 first-year students of the
Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for their aid in implementing the

survey.
Finally yet importantly, I am indebted to my family especially my mother
who have had no knowledge of English but their helps, supports and
encouragements to my English study are uncountable. If there had not been
great help from the above people, the study could not have been fulfilled. For
which I am truly grateful.
Hanoi, 15 April, 2016

Do Thu Huong

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


Graduation Paper
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LIST OF TABLES
PART A: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1
1. Rationale .................................................................................................... 1
2. Aims and purposes of the study .................................................................. 2
3. Scope of the study ...................................................................................... 3
4. Research questions ..................................................................................... 3
5. Methods of the study .................................................................................. 3
6. Design of the study..................................................................................... 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................ 5
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................... 5
1. An overview of vocabulary ...................................................................... 5

1.1. Definitions of vocabulary .............................................................................................5
1.2. Classification of vocabulary........................................................................................6
1.2.1.The meaning .......................................................................................................................6
1.2.2.The function........................................................................................................................8
1.2.3.The concept of morphemes...........................................................................................9
1.3. The importance of vocabulary .................................................................................10
2. Vocabulary study.................................................................................... 12
2.1. Meaning .............................................................................................................................12
2.2. Form ....................................................................................................................................12
2.3. Collocation ........................................................................................................................13
2.4. Word formation...............................................................................................................14

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


Graduation Paper
2.5. Grammar............................................................................................................................16
3. Summary................................................................................................. 16
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY ..................................................................... 18
1. Methodology ........................................................................................... 18
1.1. Subjects ...............................................................................................................................18
1.2. Survey questionnaires ..................................................................................................18
2. Findings................................................................................................... 19
2.1. Data collection and analysis .....................................................................................19
2.2. Findings .............................................................................................................................26
2.3. Summary ............................................................................................................................27
CHAPTER III: SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE
FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY AT THE FOE, HOU ...... 28
1. Reading the materials .............................................................................. 28
2. Guessing words from context .................................................................. 29

3. Making it personal................................................................................... 32
4. Using Stick notes or Flash cards ............................................................. 33
5. Making friends with the dictionary ......................................................... 35
6. Taking advantages of mass media ........................................................... 36
7. Studying and Reviewing regularly .......................................................... 39
PART C: CONCLUSION .......................................................................... 42

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


Graduation Paper

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
HOU

: Hanoi Open University

FOE

: Faculty of English

Etc

: Et cetera

Et al

: Et alia

Q

: Question

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


Graduation Paper

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Students’ opinions and attitudes toward learning English vocabulary
(Question 1, 2, 3, 4)
Table 2: Students’ problems in English vocabulary learning (Question 5)
Table 3: Students’ understanding of English vocabulary learning (Question 6)
Table 4: Students’ common ways in English vocabulary learning (Question 7, 8)
Table 5: Students’ expectation to teachers (Question 9)

Do Thu Huong – K19A03 – (2012 – 2016)


PART A: INTRODUCTION

1.

Rationale

Each country in the world has their own language, custom and culture. But
nowadays, the development of the society and economy makes chances to all
nations co-operate to each other. Thus, they have to use a common language to
communicate – English. English is becoming very popular and important
because it is used widely in many fields of life such as technology, tourism

business, education, health, science especially foreign trade and so on…
To be specific, in Vietnam – a developing country with the open door-policy,
it is now a great demand to learn English for the process of assimilating and
promoting into regional and international economy. Therefore, English is also
considered the most important foreign language in Vietnam and taught as a
compulsory subject at almost every school. Moreover, English is taught at all
levels of education from kindergartens, elementary schools, junior and senior
high schools to colleges and universities.
Everyone has to experience new words first if they want to learn a language.
The more words you know, the more knowledge you will be able to
understand. Thus, vocabulary is a useful key and plays an important role in
learning English. However, it is not easy work because English is very varied
and complex. All of the learners in general and the first-year students at the
FOE, HOU in particular always have to face up with many difficulties when
they start learning English as a second language, namely vocabulary, grammar
and pronunciation in which vocabulary is the hardest issue. In fact, a word
may have more than one meaning and more than one part of speech; therefore,
students cannot avoid forgetting vocabulary in the process of studying English.

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For example, the word “increase” may be a noun and a verb also. Besides,
some words with different spelling and meaning have the same pronunciation
such as “sun” and “son”.
In this graduation paper, the author would like to carry out a study on how
first-year students at the FOE, HOU are learning English vocabulary in order
to find out their current situation of studying vocabulary and then to suggest

them some effective solutions to deal with their problems in learning as well as
improve their English vocabulary. With all the above reasons, the author
decided to choose the research title “Towards improving vocabulary for the
first-year students at the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University” to help
the mentioned students as well as others enrich their English vocabulary.

2.

Aims and purposes of the study

The graduation paper is about to help the first-year students at the FOE, HOU
make progress in studying vocabulary and improve their own vocabulary as
well as to prepare for their basic knowledge of vocabulary with higher
requirement for the next levels by suggesting some common useful ways. To
summarize the above, the study is aimed at:
- Covering background knowledge of vocabulary
- Giving a brief overview of how first-year students at the FOE, HOU study
vocabulary
- Finding out difficulties that first-year students are facing in learning English
vocabulary
- Suggesting some useful techniques to learn English vocabulary

Hopefully, the students will be interested in studying English especially
English vocabulary and get better results in this subject.

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3.

Scope of the study

The study limits itself to the investigation of the difficulties in learning English
vocabulary of the first-year students at the FOE, HOU and the solutions are
also provided to help them learn English vocabulary more easily and
effectively.
4.

Research questions

-

What are the vocabulary and its importance?

-

What is the real situation of learning English vocabulary for the first-

year students at the FOE, HOU?
-

What are the main difficulties experienced by the first-year students at

the FOE, HOU in the process of learning English vocabulary?
-

What are some recommendations for the first-year students to improve

their vocabulary?
5.

Methods of the study

To complete this graduation paper, some methods have been applied:
investigative method, descriptive method and theoretical method. All of the
considerations and theories given in this study are based largely on
publication. The statistics are collected from the survey questionnaires of the
first-year students at the FOE, HOU. The results of this survey will be
analyzed to clarify the current situation and then recommend some effective
solutions.
6.

Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

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Part A is the Introduction. This part is the academic routines required for a
graduation paper, namely rationale, aims and objectives, scope, research
questions, methods and design of the study.

Part B is the Development, including three chapters:

Chapter I is the Literature Review. This chapter provides theoretical

background of English vocabulary such as definitions and classification based
on some different aspects, etc.

Chapter II is The Study. It is the main part of the study, which represents the
current situation of the first year students at FOE, HOU in learning English
vocabulary as well as the findings and analysis based on data collected from
the survey questionnaires.

Chapter III presents some suggestions for improving the first - year students’
vocabulary at the FOE, HOU. In this chapter, some effective ways to improve
English vocabulary of the first year students to help them study better are
illustrated.

The last part is the conclusion. This part summarizes the whole study
mentioned in the previous parts. It is followed by the questionnaires and the
references used during the study.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter mentions the theoretical background of English vocabulary such
as definitions, classification based on some aspects (meaning, function,
morphemes). In addition, the author also addresses some issues what need to
be studied when coming across a new item like its grammar, form, formation,
collocation and meaning. Beside, the author analyzes the importance of

vocabulary in English learning and its role to students’ future so that students
can have good awareness of learning English vocabulary and put more efforts
in this process.

1.

An overview of vocabulary

1.1.

Definitions of vocabulary

The term “vocabulary” appears to be a very simple concept but in fact, it is
extremely difficult to give an exact definition of vocabulary. Basing on
different criteria, many linguists define vocabulary in different ways.

According to Ur (1996), vocabulary can be defined roughly “as the words we
teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be
more than a single word: a compound of two or three words or multi-word
idioms”. “It is in words that sound and meanings inter-lock to allow us to
communicate with one another and it is words that we range together to make
sentences, conversations and discourses of all kinds” (Mackey, 1971). Lewis
and Hill (1985) also share Ur’s idea that considers a vocabulary item more
than one word. They also mention a temptation to think that the core of

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learning foreign language was to use words for old things. However, in fact, it
is more complicated than that.

According to Wood (1981), vocabulary or lexicon refers to information stored
in memory concerning the pronunciation and meanings of words. Vocabulary
is also defined basing on phonological criterion. It is said that words are listed
in dictionaries that they are separated in writing by spaces and that they may
be separated in speech by pause (Nation, 1994).

Besides, Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Hoc (2002) consider their following
definition of vocabulary as “logical”. According to them, when the term
“vocabulary” of a language is mentioned, it should be mentioned as consisting
of all the words, compounds and idioms used to transmit information on both
“oral and written communication”.

In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language
possesses, including a single word, two or three word items expressing a single
idea and multi-word idioms whose meaning cannot be deduced from the
analysis of the component words. Vocabulary can be defined as the words we
teach in the foreign language and a useful convention is to cover all such cases
by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words”. It can be seen that a
“vocabulary” item can be more than one word. Therefore, it is necessary not to
make confusion between vocabulary item and word.

1.2.

Classification of vocabulary

1.2.1. The meaning

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A word can possess two kinds of meaning: lexical meaning and grammatical
meaning. Therefore, vocabulary can be divided into notional and functional words.

1.2.1.1. Notional words (lexical words)

Notional words are words with clear lexical meaning. They are objects,
actions, qualities, etc and they have meaning in themselves. Notional words
from a great number of each speaker’s vocabulary.

Example: a book, a house, a pen, a desk, etc.

In short, a notional word is “the realization of concept or emotion”.

1.2.1.2. Functional words (Grammatical words)

Functional words are those whose meaning is grammatical and they have
meaning in relation to the other words with which they are used. Functional
words are particles, articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions, etc, for
example: at, on, and, because.

Although the lexical words are different from grammatical words, there is no
clear-cut dividing line between the two types of word. In teaching vocabulary,
“the teacher should not spend too much time teaching functional words but
simply tell the learners how to use the words grammatically. It is important
that lexical and grammatical meanings do not exist separately but always go

together to make up the meaning of a word. The teacher; therefore, bears in
mind these characteristic of words when they teach vocabulary. It means that

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the teachers should teach learners the use of functional words within the
framework of a sentences pattern” (Wood, 1981).

1.2.2. The function

In sentence, a word has many different functions. “English words can be
classified basing on functions as different parts of speech such as noun, verb,
adjective, adverb and preposition” (Gaims & Redman, 1986). Each part of
speech has to follow particular grammar rules so that when learning English
words we have to be aware of the importance of the parts of speech of that
word in sentence.

For example:

- Noun: a table, a cat, a girl
- Verb: to see, to catch, to walk
- Adjective: tall, huge, tiny

Apart from the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of new words, learners
need to know how these words function in sentence. A word can have many
functions in the sentence. For example, with the word ‘foreigner’, some
learners may make sentence like this: “He is a foreigner teacher”. In that case,

the teacher would need to clarify that ‘foreigner’ is a noun and its adjective is
‘foreign’. Also, the students need to remember that a word can have more than
one grammatical function.

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1.2.3. The concept of morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit or part of a word. Words are
made up from free and bound morphemes. “According to the concept of
morphemes, we can classify words into three kinds: simple words, derived
words and compound words” (Bauer, 2002).

1.2.3.1. Simple words

According to Bauer (2002), a simple word consists of one morpheme only and
cannot be broken down into smallest meaningful unit. For example: boy, dog,
cake, pen, etc. Most simple words are root to make up compound words or
complex words in a language.

1.2.3.2. Derived words

A derived word is “a word that consists of a root and one or more derivational
morphemes” (Bauer, 2002). For example: interesting, employment, successful,
worker and so on.

1.2.3.3. Compound words

“Compound word is one that has at least two roots, with or without derivation
morphemes” (Bauer, 2002). For instance: post office, car park, greeting card,
etc.

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English has many compound words. Some of these are written as one word.
Other compounds are hyphenated, for example: kind-hearted, house-keeper
and so on. Still other like family car, shoes store, is written as two words.

Bauer (2002) also states that compounds can function in a sentence as separate
lexical units due to their integrity, semantic unity, etc. Compounds are easily
confused with free words. However, basing on the phonological criterion, we
can distinguish between compounds and free word groups. Most compounds
have a heavy stress on the first element, for example: ‘greenhouse’,
‘whitewash’. Free word groups have stresses on both elements and the second
element, for instance: ‘interesting’ film, ‘high’ building, etc.

Thus, when learning compounds words, the students should find clear
examples with accurate stress to understand deeply.

1.3.

The importance of vocabulary

Of many components of one language, vocabulary has been commonly
accepted to be the most important language one. Commenting on the role of

vocabulary, Wilkins (1972), a famous British linguist says: “without grammar,
very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed”.
People consider vocabulary the key to mastering English knowledge. With the
lack of vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate with other people
confidently. Moreover, it is hard to express ideas and explain something
necessary. Therefore, on a personal level, a good vocabulary is important in
sharpening one’s perception and thought that to become fully conscious, must
be formulated in words.

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A good vocabulary is important not only for more precision in thought but also
in one’s daily affairs, the action one must perform both on and off the job in
ordinary living.

Vocabulary plays an important role in combining four basis English skills such
as listening, speaking, reading and writing. “Comprehension improves when
you know what the words mean” and “Words are the currency of
communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication –
listening, speaking, reading and writing” (Alexander, 2006). When having a
multiform vocabulary, it is extremely advantageous to develop four above
skills. If the students lack of necessary vocabulary, it will be difficult to
express any ideas to others. Therefore, their speaking skill cannot make any
progress. Moreover, sometimes it makes confusion among people and leads to
many inconvenient situations. Additionally, if it is supposed that the freshmen
have a poor vocabulary, how can they write a lively and excellent essay or a
normal paragraph? Truly, it requires a great number of vocabularies.

Normally, the students also can get information from reading books. If books
are in Vietnamese certainly there are not any problems. However, these books
are written in English and denoted in English style. If they do not have a good
dictionary, it will take them lots of time to understand. The students have to
understand what they have learned to use vocabulary in each situation
effectively. Frequently reading comprehensions, and thus retention, is faulty
because of a learner’s less than adequate vocabulary. Moreover, it is easy to
have misunderstanding in the process of exchanging information. Only when
having a great number of vocabulary, the students can make a progress in
developing the above four skills. In communication, it is a decisive factor to
make them talk with others actively and understand each other quickly. With a

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poor vocabulary, the free flow of ideas and pen is blocked and dribbled out;
with a good vocabulary, it will be helped to flow and be unimpeded.
2.

Vocabulary study

2.1.

Meaning

According to Ur (2012), the first thing to realize about vocabulary items is that
they frequently have more than one meaning, so when the students learn a new
word, they should decipher its meaning in the context in which it is used.

Another fact about meaning is that sometimes words have meaning in relation
to other words. Thus, the students need to know the meaning of “animal” word
to describe anyone of a number of other things, for example: elephant,
peacock, penguin, dragonfly, etc. “Animal” has a general meaning whereas
“elephant” is more specific. We understand the meaning of the word like
“good” in the context of word like “bad”. Words have opposites (antonyms)
and they also have other words with similar meaning (synonyms), for
example: “bad” and “evil”. Even in that example, however, one thing is clear:
words seldom have absolute synonyms although context may take them
synonyms on particular occasions. As far as meaning goes, then, the students
need to know about meaning in context as well as sense relations.
2.2. Form
“Each English word has its spelling and pronunciation which are the first
things presented when we learn new words. Therefore, the learners have to
know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its
spelling). They are fairly obvious characteristics and one or the other will be
perceived by the learners when encountering the item for the first time.” (To
Thu Huong, et al, 2008).

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a. Spelling
Spelling is the writing of word or words with all necessary letters and
diacritics present in an accepted standard order, “the conventions which
determine how the graphemes of a writing system are used to write a
language” (Coulmas, 1996). It is one of the elements of orthography and a
prescriptive element of language. Most spellings attempt to approximate a

transcribing of the sounds of the language into alphabetic letter: however,
completely phonetic spellings are often the exception, due to drifts in
pronunciations over time and irregular spellings adopted common usage.
b. Pronunciation
Pronunciation plays an important part in making listeners understand what we
are speaking about. Therefore, it is extremely important in the process of
learning English vocabulary. However, it is not easy to pronounce an English
vocabulary to learn from dictionary, from daily conversations among different
people, from news on internet, radio, television… The students should pay
attention to the stress and intonation. However, if they make too many
mistakes in pronouncing English vocabulary, it may makes listeners confused
and lead to a wrong information transmission.
2.3.

Collocation

“Collocation refers to the way words tend to co-occur with other words or
expressions” (Ur, 2012), for example: commit a crime, meet the demand, etc.
These combinations just sound ‘right’ to native English speakers, who use
them all the time. On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and

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just sound ‘wrong’. In English, some words have the same meaning but they
are different in collocation, for example: to do and to make. Thus, it is very
important to learn this. When using the word to do, to make, the learners may
note that both words mean to perform but they can distinguished by the word

they collocate with. We usually say to do the washing not to make the washing
or to make the phone call not to do the phone call.

Learning collocation is very significant because collocations make our
language become more natural and more easily understood. In addition, they
also help us have alternative and richer ways of expressing ourselves and our
brain remembers then use language in chunks or blocks rather as single word.
Thus, when learning new words, the students need to concern about
collocations.

2.4.

Word formation

Word formation is the process of building new words from material already
existing in the language according to certain root and grammar rule and
formulate; therefore, word formation is very important for learners to enrich
their vocabulary and use them correctly.

“There are three main form of word formation in English, graded according to
their productive degree: affixation, compounding and conversation” (To Thu
Huong, et al, 2008). Besides, there are shortening, back derivation (back
formation), sound imitation, sound and stress interchange.

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Affixation consists of prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are added to the root (the

stem). Prefixes rarely form new parts of speech. They are divided into negative
prefixes, prefixes of time and space, prefixes of reversal and repetition, for
example: unhappy, repeat, supermarket. On the other hand, suffixes modify
the lexical meaning of stem and transfer words to different parts of speech.
Suffixes include four groups:

• Noun suffixes: teacher, kindness, partnership, etc.
• Adjective suffixes: cloudy, careful, homeless, etc.
• Verb suffixes: strengthen, shorten, signify, etc.
• Adverb suffixes: carefully, hardly, nicely, etc.
Compound is defined as stems consisting of more than one root. For example:
beside, black market, waste paper basket. According to word class and
syntactic relationship between the roots, we can classify compound into:

• Compound noun: any root + noun. For example : text-book, air chair
• Compound verb: any root + verb. For example : dry-clean, house-keep
• Compound adjective: any root (except verb) + adjective. For example :
south-west, earth-bound
• Compound adverb: adverb + adverb. For example : through-out
Conversion is the formation of a new word in a different part of speech
without adding any element. Conversion is also called “functional change” or
“zero derivation”. For example, lecture – to lecture, hand – to hand.
Conversation most often involves a change from one word class to another.
The major kinds of conversation are noun – verb (bottle – to bottle), verb –

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noun (to go –a go), adjective – noun (rich – the rich) and adjective – verb
(better – to better).

2.5.

Grammar

The grammar of a new item will need to be studied if this is not obviously
covered by general grammatical rules. Ur (2012) says: “An item may have an
unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical contexts (for example,
the past tense of irregular verbs) or may have some particular ways of
connecting with other words in sentences (for example, the verbs which take –
ing forms after them rather than the to-infinitive)”; therefore, it is important to
know this information at the same as we study the base form. When studying a
new verb, for example, we might give also its past form, if this is irregular
(buy – bought), and we might note if it is transitive or intransitive. Similarly,
when studying a noun, we may wish to present its plural form, if irregular
(mouse – mice), or draw learners’ attention to the fact that is has no plural at
all (happiness, information). We may present verbs such as “want” and
“enjoy” together with the verb form that follows them (want to, enjoy), or
adjective or verbs together with their following prepositions (interesting in,
accuse somebody of).
3.

Summary

In chapter I, the author helps students understand more specifically about
theoretical background of English vocabulary. Some different definitions are
addressed in this part. In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the
words that a language possesses, including a single word, two or three-word

items expressing a single idea and multi-word idioms whose meaning cannot
be deduced from the analysis of the component words. Furthermore, the author

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also gives students the classification of vocabulary based on several aspects
such as the meaning (notional words, functional words), the function (noun,
verb, adjective, adverb, preposition) and the concept of morphemes (simple
words, derived words, compound words). This part is very helpful for the firstyear students because it will help them build a background of knowledge about
the vocabulary. Besides, the vocabulary’s importance is also represented to aid
students have well awareness of vocabulary studying. What is more, some
issues which need to be studied in vocabulary learning are analyzed as well. In
English vocabulary learning process, students are forced to learn the meaning
of word and the way how to pronounce it in right way as well as the spelling of
word. In addition, students need to study about word collocations in order to
use them in right situations. Partly, its grammar and formation are also
important to students to get better result in vocabulary learning. To sum up, the
first-year students should spend much time reading vocabulary’s theories to
understand deeply about “word” and doing test regularly in order to enrich
their vocabulary which is very useful in the future.

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CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

In this chapter, the researcher introduces the reality of learning English
vocabulary of the first-year students at FOE, HOU. The researcher also deals
with the survey questionnaires which are given to the students to collect the
data and make an analysis. After having deep understanding about students
and their learning English vocabulary situation, some suggestions for
improving English vocabulary will be addressed.

1.

Methodology

1.1.

Subjects

In order to collect the data needed for this research study from the whole
population of students, the researcher decided to choose 100 first-year students
at FOE, HOU as the subjects of the study. These students would be required to
state their attitude towards their learning vocabulary. The basis English of
these students is not equal. However, they begin to acquaint with the English
learning environment from primary schools and are fully aware of the fact that
English is really important and necessary for their future careers. Most of the
students like learning English and have been learning English for many years.
They realize the importance of English with this positive attitude. English now
is not only their favorite subject but also essential to their future jobs.

1.2.

Survey questionnaires

In order to serve the purpose of the study, the author has designed survey
questionnaires for students. There are 9 questions for 100 first-year students at
FOE, HOU. Questions 1, 2, 3, 4 relate to students’ opinion and their attitude to
English vocabulary learning; question 5 to find out students’ difficulties in

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