Activities to increase a dult learners' retention of vocabulary at Yenbai Centre of Continuing Education Phạm Thị Kim Thanh Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: Trần Thanh Nhàn, MA. Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract: This minor study is an action research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of repetition-focused activities in helping YCCE adult learners at elementary level increase their retention of English vocabulary. The study was carried out in an authentic context of a class of 28 adults learners aged from 25 to 41 at Elementary level of English. To gain the aim of the study, the hypothesis Repetition- focused activities help to increase adult learners’ vocabulary retention were set. The acceptance of this hypothesis was decided by the answers of the research questions, i.e., Are there any significant differences in the students’ vocabulary retention that is measured by their scores in the pretest and the posttests? The intervention applied in the study was repetition-focused activities. The instruments to collect data in this study were a pretest and two posttests on vocabulary to measure the changes in students’ ability to retain vocabulary (if there were any) when repetition-focused activities were employed in teaching and learning process. All scores of these tests were computed and analyzed with the assistant of the statistical software named SPSS version 11.5. The results obtained in this study showed that the repetition-focused activities helped to increase students’ vocabulary retention. From the findings, there were also several suggestions for further studies. Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Động từ; Ngữ pháp; Yên Bái. iv Content: 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 v 1.1.2.1. Form: Pronunciation and Spelling 5 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 vi 2.1. The rationale for using action research 19 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 vii APPENDIX D. KEYS FOR THE TESTS IV 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 viii 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 ix 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 1 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. 2 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 3 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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