PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
English plays an important role as it has become the international language and its
contribution to different fields of our life such as: economy, technology, science,
education, trade and tourism is obviously considerable.
English language is now widely used in Vietnam. It serves as a main language for
international communication and it is taught throughout of Vietnam and it has been learned
by people in all walks of life not only at universities, colleges and schools but also in many
part-time English classes at foreign language centers. Consequently, the teaching and
learning of English has become more and more significant. However, both teaching and
learning of English are still far from being satisfaction. Both teachers and learners have
faced many difficulties in English teaching and learning - especially in teaching and
learning of vocabulary.
It is of common knowledge that vocabulary plays a significant role in second language
acquisition. Wilkins, a famous British applied linguist, emphasized this with his saying
"without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be
conveyed " (1972, p.11). Pyles and Algeo (1970) also supported this idea with "when we
first think about language, we think about words. It is words that we arrange together to
make sentences, conversation and discourse of all kinds". In fact, vocabulary is the
decisive element that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing all
together. In order to communicate well in a foreign language, students should acquire an
adequate number of words and should know to use them accurately.
In Vietnam in general, vocabulary teaching has yet to be paid due attention to as it
deserves. Vocabulary has not been a particular subject for students to learn but has been
taught within lessons of reading, writing, speaking and listening. For most of teachers the
common way to communicate word meaning is translation through word list and many
learners use rote strategies as their major way of vocabulary learning.
In the Foreign Language Center of Haiphong University (FLC - HPU) the problem of
vocabulary teaching and learning is more difficult, especially for the learners at Pre-
Intermediate level. The main reason is that the classes are usually big with learners of
different ages and abilities. It seems difficult for the teachers to apply the suitable way to

games.
Therefore, the research is carried out with an attempt to find out the answers to the
following research questions:
- What is the present situation of teaching and learning vocabulary at Pre-
Intermediate level at FLC-HPU like?
- What are the main difficulties in vocabulary teaching and learning at Pre-
Intermediate Level at FLC-HPU?
- What activities should be used to help learners to feel more interested and
comfortable in vocabulary lessons?
- Are games useful in vocabulary teaching and learning at Pre-Intermediate Level at
FLC-HPU?
3- Methods of the study
To achieve the aims mentioned above, quantitative method is used and the following tasks
are involved.
- Collecting data for the analysis from 160 learners of B level classes at FLC-HPU in
2005.
- Collecting data for the analysis from 16 teachers teaching B level at FLC-HPU.
2
- Observing some experienced teachers' classes teaching B level at FLC-HPU and
interviewing some teachers and learners as well.
- Assessing what difficulties one dominant in vocabulary teaching and learning.
- Applying games in vocabulary lessons in some classes.
- Conducting a post-class survey.
- Collecting data for the analysis from some teachers and 90 learners (from 3 classes)
4- Scope of the study
The study focuses on effective ways to teach and to learn vocabulary and on
presenting some advantages of the application of games in vocabulary lessons at Pre-
Intermediate level at FLC-HPU. Due to time limitation, I can just conduct survey on
learners of B level and teachers teaching B level to investigate the problems
experienced by these learners and teachers and observe some classes in which some

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” (Ur, 1996, p.60). Pyles and Algeo also gave their idea about vocabulary.
They said “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 sounds and meanings interlock
to allow us to communicate with one another, and it is words that we arrange together to
make sentences, conversation and discourse of all kinds” (1970, p.96). These statements
indicate that vocabulary is the total number of the words of a language and it is an essential
part of language, as Wilkins emphasized this with his saying: “without grammar, very little
can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing conveyed”.
This is all true in teaching and learning a foreign language. Therefore, the teaching of
vocabulary to foreign language learners has long been an area of concern to language
teachers because learning vocabulary in a foreign language is much more than making
form - meaning correspondences and simply filling up individual words. “Knowing a
word, according to Nation (2001) means knowing at least its forms, its meanings and its
basic usage”.
1.2. Concept of words
Barry Sesnan in his book “How to teach English” considers “the words we use are like the
bricks, blocks, planks and tiles which we need to build a house” (2001, p.123). However,
he did not give a definition of words of his own.
In fact, linguistics has found it is difficult to define what precisely a word is. According to
Lyons “a word may be defined as the union of a particular grammatical employment”
(1974, p.200). This definition shows that the words must be a unit of meaning, phonology
and grammar.
Pyles and Ageo (1970) also had difficulty in giving the notion of words. They talked about
it but did not give their own definition of it.
According to Quirk: “words come to us so naturally that it takes a serious effort to realize
what miraculous devices they are”. Like so many other things that are basic and elemental
in our lives, we take them for granted and we are apt to be surprised to find how hard it is
to say what exactly a word is” (1979, p.128).

and may be indirect when the object is referred to indirectly by associating with other
object. Connotation is, on the other hand, an addition to denotation. It is related to the
attitudes of the language user, his emotional reaction to the use of a word. Lyon (1977)
considers co notational meaning of a word as an emotive or affective component additional
to its central meaning. As said above words have various types of meaning. Its is required
that the teacher has to make a careful choice of and decision on which meaning of a word
to teach and how many meanings and words to teach in the given class time or else
learners will be impeded by the pressure to absorb too many meanings and words.
1.4. Word use
What a word means can be changed, stretched or limited by how it is used. Therefore,
vocabulary knowledge involves considerably more than just knowing the meaning of a
given word in isolation, it also involves knowing the words that tend to co - occur with it.
These patterns or collocations, consist of pair of groups of words that co - occur with very
high frequency and are important in vocabulary learning because, as Nattger notes “ the
5
meaning of a word has a great deal to do with the words with which it commonly associate
(1988, p.69). These associations assist the learner in committing these words to memory
and also aid in defining the semantic area of a word.
Word meaning is frequently stretched through the use of metaphor and idiom. We know
that the word “hiss”, for example, describe the noise that snakes make. But the stretch it’s
meaning to describe the way people talk to each other. That is metaphorical use.
Talking about the use of words Jeremy Harmer (1991,p.157) stressed that we often use
words only in certain social and topical context. What we say is governed by the style and
register we are in.
1.5. Form of words
Each English word has its spelling, pronunciation and grammatical functions. The English
learners need to know all of these functions of words to speak, to write and to use them
correctly.
It is obvious that vocabulary has close relationship with phonetics and grammar. In terms
of phonology Palmer (1983) noted that a word is marked at least by some features of the

language. Rivers (1983, p.125) has also argued that the acquisition of an adequate
vocabulary is essential for successful second language use because. Without an extensive
7
Words
Word use
Meaning
Word information
Word grammar
Meaning in context
Sense relations
Metaphor and idiom
Collocation
Style and register
Prefixes and suffixes
Spelling and Pronunciation
Nouns, countable and uncountable
Parts of speech
Verbs complementation, phrasal verbs etc
Adjectives and adverbs; position
vocabulary, we will be unable to use the structures and functions we may have learned for
comprehensible communication.
Therefore, teaching and learning vocabulary is a very crucial aspect in foreign language
methodology. Yet, in past years this area of teaching was often neglected because it was
thought that vocabulary simply be left to take care of itself. Much linguistics has
complained about this matter. According to Meara, “vocabulary acquisition has received
short shrift from applied linguistics. This neglect is all the more striking in that learners
themselves readily admit that they experience considerable difficulty with vocabulary
(1982, p.100).
The low status of vocabulary and vocabulary teaching was in large part due to language
teaching approaches based on American linguistics theories, which only emphasized

The world in which we live is becoming increasing global. Therefore, “the status of
English as an international global language stresses the need for a new approach to English
language teaching", (Le Van Canh, 2003). As mentioned above, foreign language teaching,
especially vocabulary teaching has undergone dramatics changes during the last two
decades. In order to fully understand this development it is certainly worth giving a brief
discussion of some major foreign language teaching approaches and their role in teaching
vocabulary.
The first approach to be under issue is the Grammar - Translation method. As this method
"aims at inculcating an understanding of the grammar of the language and training the
students to write the new language accurately by regular practice in translating from the
native language "(Rivers, 1981, p. 29). Here vocabulary is only taught in the form of
bilingual lists and the intricacies of grammar are provided by long elaborate explanations
to give the rules for putting words together. With respect to the teaching of vocabulary, this
approach may be easy, cheap and useful but its relevance is restricted because its focus is
on form and not meaning (Krashen, 1984, p.128).
The second major foreign language teaching approach is the Direct Method. This method
is useful for teaching vocabulary. The words used are very common active and concerning
everyday activities. In the class - room only the target language is used to teach the
students during the sessions, so it focuses on speaking and listening which enables teachers
to drill students more on vocabulary. Using this method teacher can introduce many
concrete objects and pictures for illustration; therefore, it is particularly useful for teaching
simple and specific words.
In Reading method the vocabulary is controlled and the grammar which is relevant for the
reading is explicitly taught. This method encourages the students to make use of
dictionaries as they read the passages. Concerning vocabulary in this method, Mackey
wrote: "After a certain vocabulary is reached supplementary readers in the form of stories
or simplified novels are introduced, in order to enable the learner to consolidate his
vocabulary" (1978, p. 153). Reading method is quite useful for the teaching of vocabulary,
especially at the advanced language level.
The Audio - lingual method is very successful in improving students' comprehension and

level of vocabulary learning learners need to a achieve their goal in their language
learning. Recently, vocabulary teaching and learning has called for great attention from
researchers. Hunt and Bedlar (2001) discuss three approaches to vocabulary teaching and
learning: incidental learning, explicit instruction and independent strategy development.
4.1. Incidental learning
According to Hunt and Bedlar, incidental learning is learning vocabulary as a by - product
of doing other things such as reading or listening. A major source of incidental learning is
extensive reading which they recommend as a regular out - of - class activity. The
incidental learning of vocabulary requires that teachers provide opportunities for extensive
and reading and listening. Most research has shown that most words are probably learned
incidentally through extensive reading (Chan and Plass 1996, Day Omora 1991), Elley
(1989) say that extensive listening can also increase vocabulary learning. With the similar
idea Woodinsly and Nation (1988) emphasized that the incidental learning of vocabulary
through extensive reading can benefit language curricular and learners at all levels.
4.2. Explicit instruction
Explicit instruction depends on identifying specific vocabulary acquisition targets for
learners. It also involves diagnosing the words learners need to know. Explicit instruction
requires that teachers provide opportunities for intentional learning of vocabulary;
opportunities for elaborating word knowledge and opportunities for developing fluency
with known vocabulary.
According to Nation (1990), Paribakht and Wesche (1996), Zimnerman (1997) intentional
learning through instruction also significantly contributes to vocabulary development. And
here the researchers agree that translation has a necessary and useful role in vocabulary
learning. Translation makes vocabulary learning faster (Nation 1982) and once again
Nation (1990) emphasized that “vocabulary can be effective way to quickly learn word
10
pair translation”. However, it is more effective to use vocabulary cards because learners
can control the order in which they study the words (Atkinson, 1972).
Moreover, Prince (1996) states that simply knowing translation for words does not
"guarantee that they will be successfully assessed for use in an L2 context” (p. 488)

- Determine the part of speed of unknown word.
- Look at the immediate context.
- Look at the wider context.
- Guess the meaning of unknown word.
- Check that the guess is correct.
11
In vocabulary learning process, foreign language learners should use dictionaries for
vocabulary development. In Nation’s (2001) opinion, dictionary use helps learning
comprehension and particularly useful for learners who do not cope well with guessing
from context. Although dictionaries are important tool, learners should know how and
when to use them to their advantages. Day and Luppescu (1995) when talking about the
use of dictionary in vocabulary acquisition, show that students who used a dictionary
scored significantly better on vocabulary test than students who did not. However, in some
cases, using the dictionary can inhibit vocabulary learning which was attributed to the
effect of a large number of entries in the dictionary, and this sometimes makes the students
confused. Rhoder and Huerster (2002) provide useful suggestions for the efficient
utilization of dictionaries; i.e. for learning the meaning of words, dictionaries can be
effective if used in combination with context and word elaboration activities.
Learning vocabulary through incidental, intentional and in independent approaches
requires teachers to plan a wide variety of activities and exercises. “Teachers and programs
decide to place on any given activity will depend on the learners level and the educational
goals of the teacher and the program” (Hunt and David Beglar, 2001). The exercises and
activities mentioned here include learning words in word association lists, focusing on high
lighted words in the text and playing vocabulary games. The next part will be some
literature of using games in vocabulary teaching and learning as one of the aims of this
minor study is the consideration if the used of games is effective in teaching and learning
of vocabulary at Pre-Intermediate level – at FLC - Haiphong University.
4.4. The use of games in vocabulary teaching and learning
Many experts of language teaching methodology agree that playing games is a good way to
learn vocabulary; especially in communicative languages teaching (CLT) class. With the

vocabulary items they do not know (Nation and Newton, 1997, P.244)
From these advantages Lee (1995) comes to a conclusion that games should be treated as
central part to the foreign language teaching program. In language classes in Vietnam in
general and in English classes in FLC – HPU particularly, games are often used as warm
up activities or time filling activities. However, according to Uberman (2000) teachers can
use games at all stages inn vocabulary teaching, provided that they are suitable and
carefully chosen. Games can also be used as main exercises for lexical acquisition or
revision exercises.
In summary, games are useful and effective tools that should be applied in vocabulary
classes. Application of games in vocabulary teaching and learning is a way to make lessons
more interesting, enjoyable and effective. However, very little information is available
about using games in context of English language teaching and learning in Vietnamese
condition and no study has investigated strategies for vocabulary development among
Vietnamese learners. In FLC – HPU the use of games in teaching and learning of
vocabulary has never been taken seriously, especially at Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate
levels. Some teachers consider that games are only useful for the learners at Elementary
level. Therefore, in the light of result of relevant research, together with investigation into
some approaches of vocabulary teaching and learning at Pre-Intermediate level at FLC -
HPU I would like to conduct a research survey to find out whether the application of
games in vocabulary lessons is useful or not.
13
CHAPTER TWO: PRESENT SITUATION OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH AT FLC - HPU
Teachers, learners’ background, their needs and motivation, learning environment
and material play an important role in learners' success or failure in learning a
foreign language.
In chapter two I would like to give a brief overview on learners and their needs to learn
English, teacher and their methods of teaching at FLC - HPU. Further, a description of
materials and material assessment are also mentioned.
1. Learners and learners’ needs

considered only their "second language". The other third among the teachers at FLC - HPU
14
have been trained at HaiPhong people founded University or from in - service training
courses of the center.
The number of English classes usually occupied about 70 or 75 % of the total of language
classes at FLC - HPU; therefore, the center has to employ about 70% of the teachers from
other universities, colleges or high schools in Haiphong city. The part time teachers have
been trained mainly at FLC-HPU (full time - courses or in - service courses).
For most of the teachers of the center, the common method of teaching is traditional
teacher - centered. In classes, explanation, translation and sentence making up activities are
the main class activities. Through class observation and discussion it is obvious that most
of the teachers teaching at the center are too deeply influenced by grammar - translation
method. Therefore, their lessons focus on grammatical structures and translation, and they
do not pay much attention to vocabulary teaching. For these teachers, teaching vocabulary
involves writing new words on the board, giving translation, getting the class to repeat the
word in chorus (sometimes), asking some of their learners to read the words aloud (rarely),
that is all. There are no language activities for vocabulary teaching and learning. That is
the main reason why the learners usually feel bored in vocabulary learning.
3. Materials and material assessment
Talking about syllabus Jeremy Harmer commented: “The shape of a syllabus may depend
to large extend of the needs of the students who are going to be taught. The level of the
students will be vital too. The age of the students may have a lot to do with it as well”
(1991, p153). It can’t be denied that course books play important part in teaching and
learning process. Which course books are used for a course depends on many factors such
as: ages of learners, levels of learners, learners’ needs and so on. In FLC-HPU a series of
books have been used. These are Streamline English, Headway, Facts and Figures and
Course and Effects (for reading skill development), Listen carefully and let’s Listen (for
listening skill improvement).
For Pre - Intermediate level, the books "Streamline English" (Connections) and Headway
(Pre-Intermediate) are used as the main course books. However, the number of vocabulary

(unit 8), animals (unit 1) are introduced.
- Encouraging effective vocabulary learning habits.
In early units of Headway Pre-Intermediate, students are helped to use their bilingual
dictionary, both L
1
to L
2
and L
2
to L
1
. There are many exercises in the student's book
and the work book where either the learners are given a set of pictures and have to
find the right word in English or they are given the English word and they have to
find the equivalent in L
1
. There are also extracts from the Oxford Elementary
Learner's Dictionary of English, showing how collocations, doubling of consonants,
and word stress are given (unit 1). Especially, in the listening exercise in unit 5, eight
learners of English describe how they approach their own vocabulary learning. It is
very useful for the teachers to encourage their learners as strongly as possible to try
some of these approaches as some of them seem to be very interesting are suitable for
Vietnamese learners of English.
In this course book vocabulary networks, such as electrical household goods (unit 2),
winter (unit 8), travelling by air (unit 9) are suggested as a means for students to add
to their vocabulary and to remember the words they have learnt. After every three
units there is a Stop and Check section which revises much of the vocabulary of the
three previous units with the crossword section which makes students feel very
interested.
- Introducing students to the system of vocabulary.

Of the 16 teachers seven are full-time teachers, and four have been teaching English for
more than 15 years, three for more than five years, and other nine part-time teachers are
teaching English at high school or colleges in Haiphong. After work, they come to the
center to teach one or two extra classes.
The learners aged from thirteen to forty five. Most of them are students from colleges in
Haiphong, others are workers, engineers, shop assistants and pupils. They come to English
classes three times a week for three lessons (each lesson lasts 90 minutes) during a course
of several months. Nearly half of them are male and more than a half of them are female.
These learners are randomly chosen from 460 learners at B level during the school year
2004-2005. The research is based on the approach of Fraenkel and Wallen (1996) for
randomly selecting four classes for investigation as this approach is more appropriate and
convenient for the observation of the participants who filled the questionnaires in their
classes.
1.2. Instruments for collecting data
In order to have a good understanding of the issue it is necessary to refer to an important
source of data collection together with the literature review. I hope that by means of
literature comparison and by cross checking with the information obtained from a
questionnaire, from observation and discussion with the teaching staff, some useful
suggestions can be made to reduce the difficulties in teaching and learning vocabulary at
Pre-Intermediate level at FLC - HPU.
1.2.1. Questionnaire
The questionnaires were delivered to 16 teachers and 160 learners. After carefully
examining the available instruments and basing on certain knowledge about learners
gained through 20 years of experience as a teacher of FLC-HPU I design these
questionnaires to get information as follows
Learners:
- Learners' attitude towards vocabulary leaning and their difficulties in vocabulary
learning.
- Learners' common ways in vocabulary learning.
- Learners' comments on the ways their teachers use to teach vocabulary and their

a b c d
1
What do you think of the role of vocabulary in learning a foreign
language?
a. Very important
b. Rather important
c. Not important
d. Not important at all
96.8% 3.2% 0 0
2
What do you think of learning new vocabulary in your English
lessons?
a. Very interesting
b. Rather interesting
c. Interesting
d. Boring
6.1% 13.55 15.35 65.1
3
Do you find it difficult to communicate or learn such skills as
listening, speaking, reading and writing due to your inadequate
knowledge of words?
a. Yes, always
b. Yes, sometimes
c. Yes, but rarely
d. No. never
76.7% 19% 4.3% 0

4
a.
4

participate in order to learn and to retain new words. Working in this way makes the
learners more interested and excited so they can learn new words more effectively.
It is also shown from a table one that different learning have different “most difficulties” in
their learning English vocabulary. It can be classified that only few of them feel difficult in
pronunciation (5%). Perhaps these learners do not pay much attention on this matter when
learning new words or they have good accent or good ability to imitate either their teachers
or accent of native speakers in the cassettes. For nearly one third of the learners (28. 8%)
the easiness to forget the words they’ve learnt is the most difficult. One fourth of learners
(21. 2%) decided that it is difficult for them to remember the new words. This may result
from the fact that there are too many new words for them to study in the course book
Headway Pre - Intermediate. Moreover, observation shows that the teachers have not
always provided them with the necessary word discovery techniques, for instance, word
building, suffixes and prefixes. In addition there has not been frequent reinforcement of the
vocabulary the learners have learnt, nor have they been given visual aids such as picture,
maps or film etc to facilitate their memorization.
The most considerable finding is relation to the learners’ area of difficulty is that many
learners find it difficult to use English words (45%). The fact shows that many learners
complain about their knowing a large number of words but they can not use them in exact
situation. For these learners it is certain that they may recognize a word in written or
spoken and think that they already “know the word” but they may not be able to use that
word properly in different context concepts, since they do not know the use of words. It
means that they may know only a half of the word (the meaning or the form) not know the
“whole word” since Nation (2001) stated that knowing a word means knowing at least it’s
forms, it’s meanings and its basic usage
21
2.1.2 Learners’ common ways in vocabulary learning
Options
Questions
a b c d e
5

d. Learn your favorite items
20.7% 11.8% 49.3% 18.2%
Table 2
22
As mentioned in 2.3 in chapter two, one of the aims of the course book Headway Pre -
Intermediate is to give individual students insights into language learning processes and to
decide their priorities for self – study. Even though vocabulary items in this book are
usually introduced in the sets of different topics (fruit, vegetables, clothes…) and patterns
(synonyms, antonyms, homonyms…) most learners at Pre – Intermediate level at FLC -
HPU are influenced by traditional ways in their learning habits, such as writing words on
paper and trying to learn them by heart. That is why from the figures shown in table 2 it is
clear to see that more than half of learners usually learn new words by writing them again
(55%). Learning new words by this way, after a short period of time, many learners find
that they very soon forget the words they have learnt by heart. Obviously, it is not an
effective way in learning vocabulary, as Decarrico (2001) states that words should not be
learnt by memorization without understanding.
From table 2, it can be seen that only a small percentage of learners learn new words in-
groups or topics (16.2%) and follow word - families (15%). However, it is showed that
learning words in groups or topics or words families seem to be good way to enrich the
learners’ vocabulary.
Another finding in table 2 is that most of the learners always try to guess the meaning of
the words they encounter in their learning process. Only 3% of them do not want to try.
Considerable percentages of learners try to guess the meaning of new words through
illustrated pictures in that book (34.8%). It cannot be denied that this is one of the easiest
and quickest ways to find out of the meaning of new words because the learners can see
what the words mean and sometimes it makes them feel interested and excited if, the
pictures look funny. Unfortunately, the number of pictures in the course book Headway
Pre – Intermediate is not large while the number of new words is enormous. Also, learning
new words by this way means that the learners can learn only the basic meaning of the
words, not their forms and their usage. It is possible that guessing the meaning of new

Nation (2000,p.6) emphasized that learning new words is a cumulative process, with words
enriched and established as they are met again. Therefore, the learners must be harder and
spend more time learning vocabulary if they want to be masters of many words.
The last finding in relation to the learners’ most effective ways of learning vocabulary is
surprising that half of them always learn new words separately (49.3%). In fact it has never
been considered the good way to learn new words. It is clear that the most important factor
for learners to learn a new word is to know how to use it appropriately and effectively in
different oral and written contexts or else it may become a deal of forgettable word.
Therefore, the best way for the learners to learn the use of a new word is to learn it in
sentence or paragraphs contexts, not to learn it separately as Decarrico (2001) states that
words should not learn separately. Also, words do not just exist on their own: they live
with other words and they depend upon each other. (Jeremy Harmer, 1991, p. 24).
Fortunately, a considerable number of learners decide that the best way for them to learn
new words is to put them in contexts (20.7%) and in the relation with known words
(11.8%). However, a worrying number indicates that they only learn the words they like
(18.2%). For these learners it is difficult to add more new words in their vocabularies, so
they always have to face difficulties in their learning process due to the lack of words.
24
2.1.3 Learners’ comment on teacher’s method and their expectation
Options
Questions
a b c d
9 How often does your teacher create language
activities when teaching new vocabulary?
a. Always
b. Sometimes
c. Rarely
d. Never
12.5% 21% 59% 6.5%
10 What do you think of your teacher's method of