VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
BÙI THỊ THÚY NGA A STUDY ON USING GAMES TO TEACH VOCABULARY TO THIRD
GRADERS AT DU HANG KENH PRIMARY SCHOOL, HAI PHONG
(WITH REFERENCE TO TIENG ANH 3)

(Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng trò chơi để dạy từ vựng cho học sinh lớp 3
tại trường Tiểu học Dư Hàng Kênh, Hải Phòng (theo sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 3)
M.A. MINOR THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10 HANOI, 2012


HANOI, 2012
i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ii
ABSTRACT
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
vi
Part A: Introduction

1. Rationale
1
2. Aims of the study
2
3. Methods of the study
2
4. Scope of the study
3
5. Design of the study
3
Part B: Development

Chapter 1: Literature Review
4
1. Introduction

3.4. The audio- lingual method
11
ii

4. Principles of teaching vocabulary
11
5. Games and its application in teaching vocabulary
12
5.1. Definitions of games
12
5.2. Classification of games
13
5.3. Benefits of using games in teaching vocabulary
14
5.4. Requirements of a good game for teaching vocabulary
15
6. Teaching English to young learners vs Teaching English to adults
16
7. Concluding remarks
18
Chapter 2: Current situation of teaching and learning Tieng Anh 3 at Du
Hang Kenh Primary School
19
1. Introduction
19
2. Overview of the school
19
3. The English teachers
20
4. The third graders

3. My teaching
31
3.1. Game “Hangman”
32
iii

3.2. Game “Word completion”
33
3.3. Game “Jumbled words”
33
4. Teachers‟ reactions and expectations about games given in Tieng Anh
3
34
5. Learners‟ attitudes towards using games in Tieng Anh 3 through
interviews
35
6. Suggestions
36
6.1 How to choose a game
36
6.2. When to use a game
36
6.3. Suggested games to teach vocabulary in Tieng Anh 3
37
Part C: Conclusion

1. Summary of the study
39
2. The limitation of the study
39

It can be seen easily that English nowadays plays an important role than ever
before. It has become an international language which is used widely all over the
world and in all fields of social life such as economy, technology, diplomacy,
foreign trade, education and tourism. Therefore, teaching and learning English have
become necessary for everyone.
In many countries in the world, in general, and in Vietnam, in particular, English
has been widely taught. Recently, English has been taught in the light of the
communicative and learner-centered approach which gives students more chances
to communicate. However, both teaching and learning English has been far away
from satisfaction. Both teachers and students face difficulties when teaching and
learning English vocabulary. There is a common fact that a lot of students cannot
remember words and certainly cannot use them despite teachers‟ efforts as well as
their own efforts.
At Du Hang Kenh Primary School, the situation is that the students find it hard to
learn new words and that the techniques exploited during a lesson such as role-
plays, reciting chants, singing songs, telling stories …are not quite effective. Hence,
there is a need to find out more games and more techniques to teach vocabulary in
the most effective way. Games have proved themselves not as “time filler activities”
but also a factor which can motivate students in the process of learning and using
English.
From the above-mentioned reasons, the writer would like to carry out a research to
find out the real situation of teaching and learning English at Du Hang Kenh
Primary School, the effectiveness of using games in teaching vocabulary to kids,
which techniques are used in using games to teach vocabulary by the teachers and
to make some suggestions for the better use of games in helping children acquire
fully English words in Tieng Anh 3.

2

2. Aim and objectives of the study

choosing all three schools for my study is a better choice, my study focuses only on
Du Hang Kenh Primary School due to time limitation. In my study, I focus on the
use of games to teach vocabulary, more exactly to consolidate learnt words, to third
graders who are learning Tieng Anh 3. However, I can just observe three classes
among six ones in which some games are applied in vocabulary lessons, interview
and survey five English teachers who are teaching textbook Tieng Anh 3 and
interview thirty third graders to find out their level of satisfaction and expectation.
5. Design of the study
The study is divided into three parts:
1. Part A – Introduction – provides the rationale for the study, aim and
objectives of the study, scope, methodology and design of the study.
2. Part B – Development – consists of three chapters:
- Chapter 1 focuses on four main issues relating to vocabulary in language teaching
and learning, some common methods associated with vocabulary teaching, the
application of games in teaching vocabulary and teaching English to young
learners.
- Chapter 2 is devoted to the provision of an overview of current situation of
teaching and learning Tieng Anh 3 at Du Hang Kenh Primary School. Detailed
information about the teachers, students and especially textbook Tieng Anh 3 is
given there.
- Chapter 3 is concerned with collecting data from Du Hang Kenh Primary School
and analysing these data to find out the teachers‟ attitudes towards using games to
teach vocabulary to young learners, teachers‟ methods and techniques in using
games to teach vocabulary and teachers‟ expectations about games given in Tieng
Anh 3. Besides, data will also be collected to find out students‟ reaction towards
games in Tieng Anh 3 and their expectations about their teachers‟ teaching
methodology.
3. Part C – Conclusion – summarizes what has been studied, points out the
limitation of the thesis, and makes some suggestions for further study.
4

The term vocabulary appears to be a simple concept but in fact, up to now, there
have been no linguists whose definition meets all the characteristics of vocabulary.
Thus, various definitions should be given below.
In his book A course in language teaching, Penny Ur (1996, p.60) stated that
“vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in a foreign language”.
He also said “a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word, a
compound of two or three words and multi-word idioms”. Vocabulary seen from
this view consists of all the words in a language, regardless of the number of words
in a word. Vocabulary is used as one means to communicate by making utterances
from words. This can be seen in the viewpoint of Pyles and Algeo (1970, p.96).
They saw vocabulary as “the focus of language”. In their opinion, words “allow us
to communicate with one another” and we arrange words “to make sentences,
conversations and discourse of all kinds”.
According to Morgan and Rinvolucri (1986), “A word is a basic unit of a language
denoting concepts, things and phenomena in the society”.
Palmer (1981) also pointed “the semantic unit may be a sequence of several words”.
Word is the smallest meaningful of language.
In short, these statements show that vocabulary is the total number of words that
exist in a language including not only single words but also two-word items or
three-words ones or even multi-word idioms. It serves as a means for people to
communicate. Without it, mutual understanding between people may be hard to be
obtained.
2.2. The role of vocabulary in language teaching and learning
As mentioned above, vocabulary can be considered as the most important part of a
language among three parts: grammar, phonetics and vocabulary. It is indicated
clearly in the saying of Wilkins, a famous British applied linguist, which echoes
what Henry Sweet had said over one hundred years before that “without grammar,
very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing conveyed”. This saying is
also similar to the advice given by Dellar and Hocking (Innovations, 2000) “If you
6

7

The notional words, whose meanings are lexical, name objects, actions, qualities
and have material meaning such as book, bicycle, to cry, to smile, fast, slowly…in
themselves. They are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on.
The functional words, whose meanings are grammatical, only have their meanings
in relation to other words with which they are used. They are participles, articles or
prepositions.
2.3.1.2. Denotational meaning vs connotational meaning
In actual usage, vocabulary may differ in their stylistic aspect. This leads to
denotational meaning and connotational meaning. Denotational meaning can be
found in dictionary. For example, “cat” denotes a kind of animal which has four
legs. While connotational meaning is related to the attitudes of the language user,
his emotional reaction. For instance, the word “dog” to the British, means friendship
and loyalty whereas to the Arabic, it means dirt and inferiority.
We can see that words have various types of meaning so teachers are required to
choose carefully which meaning to teach and how many meanings to teach in a
limited class hours.
2.3.1.3. Meaning relationship
When teaching new words to students, teachers should explain whether the words
are common, formal or informal, and so on. One thing that teachers should also bear
in their mind is that words have meaning relationships with the others. Learning
meaning relationship is a good way to remember new words. So in their teaching,
teachers should train their students the sense of meaning relationships between
words.
* Synonyms
Synonyms are words that mean the same or nearly the same. For example,
“interest”, “hobby” and “pastime” are synonyms. Learners can use one word to
remember the others which have the same meanings.
* Antonyms

9

To some extent, we can change the meaning of a word by the way we use it. There
are some phenomena in which the meanings of a word may change, namely
collocations, idioms and metaphor.
Collocation is a case in which words tend to co- occur with others with a high
frequency. Nattinger (1988, p.69) noted that “the meaning of a word has a great deal
to do with the words with which it commonly associate”. Students can take
advantage of dictionary of collocations to know as many as possible.
Word meaning is also changed by metaphorical use or idioms. For instance, the
word “busybody” refers to someone who interferes in the affairs of the others.
In short, the best way to teach vocabulary is to let the learners learn to use a word in
sentences or paragraphs, not to learn it separately.
3. Review on some common methods associated with vocabulary teaching
According to Le Van Canh (2002), “the status of English as an international global
language stresses the need for a new approach to English language teaching”. He
also pointed that “there is no single method or approach that can work for all
teachers or for all learners or under all conditions because teaching is socially
constructed activity” (Le Van Canh, 2004, p.95). Teachers should know as many
approaches and methods as possible. And they need to be flexible and sensitive
enough to choose the best ones for each situation.
3.1. The grammar translation method
This is one of the most traditional methods in the world, dating back to the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, it is no longer the leading
method in language education area. As its name suggests, it emphasizes the
teaching of grammar and translation from and into target language. The principal
characteristic of this method is to focus on learning grammatical rules and their
application in translating texts from one language to another one. Vocabulary is
presented mainly by direct translation and memorization. Students spend most of
their lesson time doing grammar exercises while time for oral practice is very little.

development of technology. Instead of bringing real objects to the class, teachers
simply show the pictures on the slides. It is a great advantage.
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3.3. The reading method
This method encourages the students to make use of dictionaries as they read the
passages. It is really useful for teaching vocabulary at advanced level because at
that level, students can consolidate their vocabulary.
3.4. The audio-lingual method
This method emphasizes on the ability of communication, in other words, oral
proficiency. Great importance is attached to pronunciation from the beginning. In
this method, there is much use of tapes, language labs and visual aids. Vocabulary is
strictly limited and learnt in context. It is presented in dialogues, everyday
expressions and basic structures. The learners listen carefully to the teacher or tape
recorder and then repeat it. Moreover, there is little or even no grammatical
explanation. Grammar is taught mainly by drills and examples rather than deductive
explanation.
4. Principles of teaching vocabulary
According to Hubbard et al (1983) and Nation (2003), teaching vocabulary has
some principles:
 If words are presented in a memorable way and practiced regularly, students
may remember them better.
 No matter how new words are presented, students should always be checked
if they have understood the new words.
 Like teaching anything else, when teaching vocabulary, revision is essential.
New words should be revised regularly, otherwise students may forget them.
 High frequency words should be paid more attention than low frequency
ones because they are more useful.
 To help learners self- study effectively, vocabulary learning strategies such
as guessing meaning from context, using dictionary, using word card, using

+ Guessing game:
+ Matching game:
+ Puzzle
+ Role-play game:
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In the viewpoint of Lee (1986), games can be categorised as follows:
+ Structure games: Games provide experience of the use of particular patterns of
syntax in communication such as “What is it? Is it…?”, “What‟s my name?”,
“Whose is it?”….
+ vocabulary games: Games in which the learners‟ attention is focused mainly on
words such as “ What‟s this/that?”, “Shopping”, “Coffee-pot”….
+ spelling games: may be looked upon as vocabulary games. Examples of these
games are “Write what you see”, “Write what you hear”, “Word completion”,
“Crossword”, “Spell aloud what you hear”….
+ pronunciation games: these games may base on words and sounds (at elementary
level) or even sentences (at higher levels). For instances, “The same or different”,
“Pronunciation bingo”…
+ number games: Games help the learners to get accustomed to the spoken forms of
numbers such as “Ring a number”, “How many”, “Number Bingo”, “ Missing
numbers”, “What‟s the time now?”…
+ listen-and-do games: In these games, the learners have to listen and understand,
then carry out some actions. Some typical games belonging to this type are “Doing
what you‟re told”, “O‟Grady says”, “Face to face”….
+ read-and-do games: Some typical games are “Games with flashcards”, “Matching
games”, “Reconstructing the story”…
+ miming and role-play: A situation is simulated in the classroom and the
participants adopt roles which belong to it.
+ discussion games: Games in which discussion plays a dominant role such as “
Who am I?”, “Find someone who…”,

and interesting.
Hadfield claimed that “Games should be regarded as an integral part of the language
syllabus, not as an amusing activity for Friday afternoon or for the end of the term”.
He confirmed the effectiveness of using games in teaching and learning English.
In the viewpoint of Richarch Amato (1988, p.147), “games can lower anxiety, thus
making the acquisition of input more likely”.
15

In conclusion, there are four advantages of using games in teaching vocabulary that
can be summed up as follows:
 Games can motivate the learners by bringing fun to the classroom.
 Games can provide language practice
 Games encourage learners to communicate with each other
 Games increase the cooperation and competition in the class
Games are undeniably useful in vocabulary classes. Using games is an interesting
and effective way to teach vocabulary. Children can learn English through playing,
without thinking they are studying, thus they learn a lot without stress.
5.4. Requirements of a good game for teaching vocabulary
Students may want to play games just for fun. However, teachers should give
convincing reasons when they use games in their lessons. Teachers should not
consider games as a time-filler. They should know “which games to use, when to
use them, how to link them up with the syllabus, textbook or programme and how,
more specifically, different games will benefit students in different ways.” (Khan,
1996). According to Lin Hong (2002), not all games are going to work to teach the
students language skills. If the games are just for fun and do not have any relations
to educational purposes, they should not be used. So to find out if the game is
educationally sound, think about questions raised by Hong:
 Which skills does it practice? The language skill focus could be any one of the
major skills of listening, speaking, reading or writing
 What types of game is it?

imitating and by doing things. It means children learn through what
they see, what they hear in their surrounding environment and then they
imitate by doing things. In other words, children learn by doing things.
 Are not able to understand grammatical rules and explanations about
language. This can be explained in the way that children of five to ten
still have limited knowledge. They cannot understand well the rules of a
language. They can just imitate what they see and hear. That‟s why
when teaching primary school students, teachers should provide them
17

with sentence patterns, not grammatical rules. The final aim is that the
students can use those sentence patterns to express their ideas.
 Try to make sense of situations by making use of non- verbal clues.
 Talk in their mother tongue about they understand and do this helps
them learn. This means that they understand everything when they use
their mother tongue. Its pedagogical implicature is that teachers
teaching children should use their mother tongue to explain things so
that they can understand.
 Can generally imitate the sounds they hear quite accurately and copy
the way adults speak. This is an important thing. Children learn quickly
what they hear. They can imitate very well. So when teaching words to
children, teachers should pay special attention to pronunciation.
 Love to play and use their imagination. It means they love learning by
playing.
To summarize, children learn by imitating what they see, what they hear and they
like to learn by playing things that makes them use their imagination. Teachers
should say and do well so that their students can imitate good things.
7. Concluding remarks
In this chapter, I have been concerned with the re-examination of some of the key
terms related to my thesis. I have dealt with several definitions of vocabulary, its

32 classrooms (only one room is provided with a projector). In this school,
mathematics and literature are still considered to be the most important subjects
while English is only regarded as subsidiary one. However, in the school-year of
2011-2012, with the support from Hai Phong Department of Education and
Training, the teaching and learning of English here have made some progress.
Especially, in this school year, the school received a foreign teacher who co-taught
with Vietnamese teachers, which improves students‟ learning vocabulary a lot. It is
a good sign that recently the school has paid more attention to English and decided
to give more time for extra English lessons in the afternoon.
3. The English teachers
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Most of the teachers of Du Hang Kenh primary school graduated from university.
All of five English teachers graduated from Hai Phong University. They are all
women, aged from 26 to 34. All of them are enthusiastic with their teaching career
and have at least three years of experience in teaching English to young learners.
Through class observation and discussion, most of the English teachers of the
school follow given parts of a unit. Some of them use traditional methods by
writing new words on the board, giving translation, get the class to repeat and ask
some students to read aloud. There are no extra language activities for vocabulary
teaching. It should be noted here that the material facilities here are backward.
There is only a CD player which supports teaching and learning English in a
classroom. This may be a reason why teaching vocabulary is not as effective as
expected.
4. The third-graders
In the school year of 2011- 2012, Du Hang Kenh primary school had six third-grade
classes. Each class had an average of 30 students. The biggest class had the
maximum of 38 and the smallest had the minimum of 29. In each class, the number
of female students is bigger than male ones. In three classes, there are several
mentally-deficient students which made the teaching of English really a hard job. It

points are as follows:
Review of games in Tieng Anh 3
Unit
Vocabulary points
Games
1 : Hello
Hi, hello, bye, goodbye
Name cards
2 : My name is
how, spell, name, alphabet
Circle the names
3 : How are you?
how, thank, thanks, fine, and
Greetings
4 : What’s your
name?
what, my, your, this, friend
Stand up when you
hear
5 : Our friends
yes, no, he, she, new, that
Physical line up
6 : My school
primary school, it, which, one
Pass the word
7 : Places in my
school
classroom, library, computer, music,
room, book, big, small, new, short,
Crossword Puzzle