iii
ABSTRACT: The present qualitative case study is aimed at finding out the perceptions of vocabulary
teaching held by a group of upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-
secondary school in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices. The study
was conducted from February through May of the 2010 - 2011 academic year, and the data
were analyzed qualitatively. The study involves 8 teachers of English working with their
teaching experience ranging from 1 to 31 years. 8 pre-observation interviews, 16 observations
and 8 post-observation interviews were conducted to seek the answers for the following
research questions 1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign
language teaching? 2) What do they think of the opportunities for and constraints on
vocabulary teaching in their school? 3) To what extent do their self-reports of vocabulary
teaching diverge from their actual classroom teaching? 4) What are the common vocabulary
exercises they use in the classroom?

The overall findings of the survey show that the majority of respondents have understanding
about the significance of vocabulary in English acquisition and English teaching, but that there
exist some negative views on implementing the techniques in vocabulary teaching with regard
to its classroom practice. Additionally, some useful implications are proposed based on
research findings in order to help teachers to construct and implement techniques in
vocabulary teaching more effectively.
1.5.6. The Audio-lingual Method 10
v

1.5.7. The Cognitive Approach: 11
1.5.8. The Communicative Language Teaching 11
1.5.9. The Lexical Approach 12
1.5.10. Content-based Instruction: 13
1.6. Techniques in presenting new vocabulary: 13
1.7. Vocabulary learning strategies: 13
1.7.1. Guessing meaning from context 14
1.7.2. Vocabulary notebooks and word cards 15
1.7.3. Learners' first language and dictionary use 15
1.8. Previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom: 16

CHAPTER II. THE STUDY 18
2.1. Rationale of using a case study approach: 18
2.2.The case: 19
2.3. Participants: 20
2.4. Instruments: 20
2.4.1.The Interview: 21
Pre-observation interview: 21
Post-observation Interview: 22
2.4.2. Classroom Observation: 22
2.5. Data collection and data analysis procedures: 22
2.5.1. Data collection procedures: 22
2.5.2. Data analysis procedures: 24

CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 25
3.1. Findings: 25
3.1.1. Teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary 25

1. Summary of main findings: 40
2. Implications: 40
3. Suggestions for further studies: 41
3.1. Limitations: 41
3.2. Suggestions for further studies 42
vii

REFERENCES 43

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS I
APPENDIX B: PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW SCHEDULE II
APPENDIX C: SAMPLE OF PRE-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW III
APPENDIX D: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SCHEDULE VII
APPENDIX E: SAMPLE OF LESSON OBSERVATION: IX
APPENDIX F: SAMPLE OF POST-OBSERVATION INTERVIEW: XI


ix

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT Communicative Language Teaching
EFL English as a foreign language
ELL English language learner
ESL English as a second language
L1 First language
L2 Second language
MOET Ministry of Education and Training
OHP Overhead Projector
QOUS

Quang Oai upper-secondary school

VLS Vocabulary learning strategy
prominent role in foreign language learning. In other words, vocabulary is the basis for
communication, reading, and writing. Therefore, an effective approach to vocabulary is
always one of the great concerns of every language teacher. The reason is that learning
vocabulary is really challenging requiring many cognitive processes, and teachers have to
make sure that the students understand the word and its meaning as well as how to use the
word accurately and appropriately.
At supper-secondary schools in Vietnam, with a short duration of 3 periods (135
minutes) per week for all language skills and language focus, vocabulary instruction has been
paid less attention than it should have been. Students have to learn so many new words every
week, and by the time they learn the new words in the new lesson they have forgotten most of
the words they have learned in previous lessons. Consequently, word retention has always
been a difficult problem for the students.
As an English teacher, I found out that one of the major reasons for which the students
were not successful users of English is their vocabulary deficiency. This motivates the
researcher to conduct this study in an attempt to find out how vocabulary is taught and learned
in one particular upper secondary school in Hanoi.
2. Aims and Objectives of the study:
The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of vocabulary teaching held by
the upper-secondary school teachers working in Quang Oai upper-secondary school (QOUS)
in Hanoi and the connection between their beliefs and practices.
The objectives of the study are:
a) to understand teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching
as well as their perceived opportunities for and constraints on vocabulary teaching
b) to investigate their teaching approach to vocabulary in the classroom and the extent to
which their self-reported teaching approach diverges their actual classroom teaching
2

In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives, I decided to carry out a
qualitative case study, which is aimed at seeking answers to the following research questions:
1) What are teachers’ opinions of the role of vocabulary in foreign language teaching?

Part A is the Introduction presenting the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, research
questions, methods and design of the study.
Part B, the Development, includes three chapters:
Chapter I is the Literature Review, which reviews theoretical issues related to the definitions,
roles of vocabulary in English language acquisitions, techniques in vocabulary teaching as
well as previous studies on vocabulary teaching in the classroom.
Chapter II is the study which is composed of some smaller parts: rationale for choosing the
case study, the settings (the case), the participants, the instruments and research procedures of
the study.
Chapter III is the analysis and discussion of the findings through an analysis of the data
collected by means of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews.
Part C is the Conclusion. In this Chapter, major findings of the study will be briefly
summarized to answer the research questions. Also, the limitations of the study and
suggestions for the future researches will be presented in this chapter.
4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature on vocabulary teaching. It begins with definitions and
1.2. Roles of Vocabulary in Second Language Acquisition:
“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”
David Wilkins, linguist
This is how linguist David Wilkin sums up the importance of vocabulary learning. It’s
known to most L2 learners that acquisition of vocabulary is a fundamental and important
component in the course of their learning. McCarthy (1990: viii) emphasizes that:
"No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2
are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot
happen in any meaningful way"
(McCarthy 1990: viii)
A good repertoire of vocabulary is essential for ESL/ EFL learner, especially for those
who learn English for specific purposes or those who expect to become expert users of
English. As a result, the teaching and learning vocabulary, although it is only one sub-goal of
a range of goals that is important in ELL, plays a key role in the overall structure of language
teaching program because of its basic function in language components. Huckin and Block
(1993: 154) show that L2 readers may rely heavily on vocabulary knowledge and that a lack of
vocabulary knowledge is the largest obstacles for L2 readers to overcome. If someone has
adequate vocabulary, he/ she will feel more confident in communicating with others as well as
expressing his/her opinions in both oral and written forms.
According to Meara (1995), central to learning to communicate in the target language
are vocabulary and lexical units. No amount of grammatical or other type of linguistics
knowledge can be employed in communication or discourse without the mediation of
vocabulary. Folse (2004: 3) claims that
“The lack of grammar knowledge can limit conversation; lack of vocabulary knowledge can
stop conversation”.

6



relevant corpus is determined on the basis of the students' needs and then the traditional
perspective that high frequency words should be the first and main consideration in
vocabulary teaching.
1.4. Challenges in Vocabulary Teaching:
Since a good knowledge of vocabulary has a great effect on the learners’ improvement
of other aspects of language such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension,
speaking, and writing, due attention should be paid to choosing and implementing appropriate
vocabulary teaching/learning techniques in language classes. However, in general, teaching
vocabulary is not easy, clearly more than just presenting new words (Harmer, 1993: 159).
It shows that the students’ vocabulary mastery is poor. According to Aganes (2008), the
causes of the problem might be that: 1) the material is not interesting; 2) the limited time and
the equipment; 3) the technique of delivering materials is neither suitable nor interesting.
Because of the problems, students got difficulties in learning vocabulary.
Aganes (2008) also points out that there are many challenges that students are
encountered with while learning vocabulary. Firstly, they get difficulties in pronouncing
words correctly. Pronouncing the word correctly is an important part in teaching vocabulary
because incorrect pronunciation will influence the meaning of the words. Moreover, by
pronouncing the words correctly, it can help the students remember the word longer and
identify it more readily when they hear or see it. Thus, in introducing new words, the teacher
should pronounce every new word correctly and carefully, and then repeat it in chorus by the
class or by individual student. In fact, the students still get difficulties in pronouncing the
words correctly.
Secondly, the students get difficulties in remembering and grasping the meaning of the
words often appears when they do the exercises. They cannot do the exercise perfectly. Most
of them fill the wrong answers. That mistake is caused by translation method in teaching
vocabulary. The problem gets worse when the teacher teaches vocabulary mostly through
translation at the beginning of the lesson or translation of the material containing new words
or glossaries at the end. An overreliance on translation, the teacher may ignore other strategies
to present new words such as using the self-defining context, definition in the target language,

the form and inflection of words.
9

5) Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.
6) Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical
analysis
7) Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target
language onto the mother tongue.
8) Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.
1.5. 2. The Reading Approach:
The reading approach attached more importance to vocabulary than grammatical skills.
The vocabulary of the early readings was strictly controlled. Since the acquisition of
vocabulary was regarded more prominent than the mastery of grammatical skills, expanding
vocabulary as fast as possible was of great importance (Murcia and Prator, 1979: 3).
1.5. 3. The Reform Movement:
The reform movement, which was set up as a reaction to the Grammar Translation
Method, stressed the primacy of spoken language and the presentation of the written word
only after the spoken form had been provided. It was emphasized that new vocabulary should
only be met in sentences and meaningful contexts (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 10).
1.5. 4. The Direct Method:
The Direct Method, which grew out of the Reform Movement, made emphasis on
interaction for language acquisition and acquiring an acceptable pronunciation from the
beginning. It introduced vocabulary through classroom objects, mime, drawings and
explanations (Rivers, 1981: 32-33).
1.5.5. The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching:
These were British structuralism approaches to language teaching developed between
the 1930’s and the 1960’s (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 39). In the Oral Approach, grammar
and vocabulary was carefully chosen and graded. This ultimately led to the Vocabulary
Control Movement and West’s ‘A General Service List of English Words’ 1953, which had a
permanent effect on the grading of vocabulary (Schmitt 2000: 15; Zimmerman, 1997: 9).

12) There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.
1.5. 7. The Cognitive Approach:
11

The Cognitive Approach, which emerged as a reaction against the defects of the
Audio-lingual Approach and its behavioristic features at the end of the 1960s and beginning of
the 1970s, took as its theoretical base the Transformational-Generative Grammar of Chomsky
(Stern, 1991: 169). In this approach, the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary was crucial for
successful second language use. Students could not use the structures and functions during the
act of communication without having sufficient amount of vocabulary. In a cognitive class, the
language teacher had to move from competence to performance. To put it another way, he was
expected to follow the presentation, practice and the application stages. To teach the meanings
of the lexical items, techniques like contextualization, demonstrations, drawings, real objects,
flashcards, OHP, etc. were used to a great extent. Moreover, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms,
collocations, cognates and semantic fields, etc. were also utilized by language teachers (Senel,
2002: 161).
1.5. 8. The Communicative Language Teaching
The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach is a renowned British
Approach to language teaching the emergence of which dates back to the mid-1960s.
Especially, British applied linguists like Henry Widdowson, Halliday, Brumfit, Johnson, and
Wilkins leaded to this communicative movement, advocating that communicative proficiency
and functions of language should be emphasized over the mastery of structures (Duman, 1997:
22). Concepts like context, use, effective communication, communicative function,
comprehensible pronunciation, etc. were given importance in this approach. Senel (2002: 243)
emphasized that new words were not presented in isolation, but in the context of a complete
sentence, and in a meaningful situation. This way, the words acquired meaning when they
appeared with a particular definition in a determined context. Moreover, Thornbury (2002:14)
stated that course books began to incorporate communicative activities specifically targeting
vocabulary since the meaning-giving role of lexis was recognized in this approach. For the
sake of simplicity and directness, Brown (2000: 266-267) offered four interconnected

learning and teaching. This approach has been utilized in immersion programs, teaching
languages for specific purposes, and for teaching all levels of proficiency. In this approach,
vocabulary is completely contextualized and courses which have carefully designed the scope
and the spiraling sequence of the content manage to recycle both the content and the
13

associated vocabulary. Many language programs also choose content to conform to the
knowledge students already possess and texts may either be authentic or specially written
(Stryker and Leaver, 1997: 291).
1.6. Techniques in Presenting New Vocabulary:
After the teacher chooses what items to teach, he or she should follow certain
guidelines. In my opinion, this includes teaching the vocabulary "in spoken form first" to
prevent students from pronouncing the words in the form they are written, placing the new
items in context, and revising them.
A number of techniques can be adapted to present new vocabulary items. Some
techniques are more popular and more often used than others. Also it is up to the teacher
which techniques he or she decides to use but always the effectiveness of teaching should be
considered.
In teaching vocabulary, teachers of English mainly focus on explaining the meaning,
presenting the form as well as the use of a new word. Nation, Paul (2005) suggested different
techniques that teachers of English can implement in their teaching vocabulary.
Firstly, teachers quickly give the meaning of the word by (a) using an L1 translation,
(b) using a known L2 synonym or a simple definition in the L2, (c) showing an object or
picture, (d) giving quick demonstration, (e) drawing a simple picture or diagram, (f) breaking
the word into parts and giving the meaning of the parts and the whole word (the word part
strategy), (g) giving several example sentences with the word in context to show the meaning,
(h) commenting on the underlying meaning of the word and other referents.
Secondly, teachers can draw attention to the form of the word by (a) showing how the
spelling of the word is like the spelling of known words, (b) giving the stress pattern of the
word and its pronunciation, (c) showing the prefix, stem and suffix that make up the word, (d)

the network of relationship between new and familiar words (Murcia, 2001). Nation (2001)
believes that students become excited about the progress they make and one way to make
them excited and motivated about the progress they make is to raise their awareness of how
their knowledge of vocabulary is improving through effective use of vocabulary notebooks.
Students can choose a loose-leaf ring binder and record the new word on the front of each
page together with other information such as pronunciation, derivatives and collocations. The
15

meaning and/or translation is recorded on the reverse side of the page. Each time they see or
hear it, they can add more information like its stylistic aspects and sentences illustrating its
use. To review the new words, they must first look at the front page and try to recall the
recorded information on the reverse side (Ledburry, 2007).
Learning from word cards, on the other hand, is another useful strategy which
increases vocabulary size quickly (Nation, 2001: 302-315). Nation, however, argues that the
effectiveness of word cards is heavily dependent on the way they are used. He introduces
some techniques in order to increase their efficiency. These are: 1) put the words on one side
and the meaning on the other to encourage recall 2) do not put the words to each other that
belong to the same lexical set, or are near synonyms or opposites, or are formally similar 3)
keep changing the order of the cards in the pack and put difficult words near the beginning 4)
at early stages see the word and try to recall the meaning , later turn over the pack ,look at the
meaning and try to remember the word 5) put the words in phrases or sentences or with some
collocates 6) say the words aloud or to yourself. Silent repetition is not very efficient.
1.7.3. Learners' First Language and Dictionary Use:
A strategy which is commonly reported in the literature to be used by learners is the
use of first language in learning second or foreign language words. Nation (2001: 304)
mentions that research shows learning are facilitated if the meaning is in the learner's first
language. The reason, according to him, is that first language meaning has already rich
associations for the learner and experiment shows that both short-term and long-term retention
are superior with L1 glosses. One criticism which is leveled against the use of first language in
vocabulary learning is that students may think "there is a one-to-one correspondence between

acquisition. Both studies suggest that hearing stories lead in vocabulary development and also,
vocabulary acquisition is possible from extensive reading than previous studies have
suggested.
Finally, a study conducted by Yoshi and Flaitz (2002) showed that annotations with
text and picture enhanced vocabulary acquisition.