VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
o0o HOÀNG THU BA

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRESENTING AND PRACTISING
NEW VOCABULARY THROUGH MINIMAL CONTEXT
FOR SECOND - YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS
AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

HIỆU QUẢ GIỚI THIỆU VÀ LUYỆN TẬP TỪ VỰNG MỚI
QUA NGỮ CẢNH TỐI THIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THƯƠNG MẠI

M.A Minor Thesis
Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
MA course: 19


M.A Minor Thesis
Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
MA course: 19
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh HANOI – 2012
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURES viii
INTRODUCTION 1
1. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE 1
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY 1

2.3.3.2 Observation 24
2.3.3.3 Questionnaire 25
2.3.4 Data collection procedure 25
2.3.5 Data analysis methods 27
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28
3.1 STUDENTS‟ IMPROVEMENT IN ACQUISITION OF THE TARGET
VOCABULARY 28
3.2 STUDENTS‟ MOTIVATION IN NEW VOCABULARY ACQUISITION . 30
3.2.1 Data from the Observation 31
3.2.2 Data from the students‟ questionnaire 33
3.3 DISCUSSION 35

vi
CONCLUSION 38
1. SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 38
2. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 39
3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 40
4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 40
REFERENCES 41
APPENDICES

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Plan of the intervention
Table 3.1 Means and Standard Deviations of the scores of the pretest and post test
Table 3.2 Correlations of the pretest and posttest
Table 3.3 Paired Sample T-Test
Table 3.4 Students‟ interest and benefits in the intervention
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The frequency of adapting vocabulary teaching techniques
Figure 3.1 Scores of the pretest and posttest
Figure 3.2 Class motivation during the lessons
Figure 3.3 Students‟ motivation in guessing new vocabulary in minimal context
Figure 3.4 Students‟ motivation in vocabulary practice activities

addressed the following research questions:
a. How much do presentation and practice using minimal contexts improve
learners' acquisition of the target vocabulary?
b. Do presenting and practicing vocabulary in minimal context have any effect on
students’ motivation in learning of the words?
Pedagogically, the findings and comments of this study were believed to be
relevant to improve the teaching English to students at VUC. The study would help
teachers to motivate their English classroom so that their students can develop their
language skills.
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study was conducted on 40 second-year non English majors at the
University of Commerce. They were taught during two weeks (five contacts) of the
intervention.
The study covered the vocabulary items from course book including
collocations, nouns. Grammatical aspect of the vocabulary was beyond the scope of
this study. The study only focuses on vocabulary meaning recognition. Therefore, the
productive aspect of the vocabulary was ignored during the study.
Linguistic context and situational context in terms of background knowledge
presented in one sentence were used in this study. When the participants encountered
the single - context sentence, they used their prior knowledge as a comprehension
process approach. As a result, the participants should have schemata in order to make
sense of the minimal context.

3
4. METHOD OF THE STUDY
An action research was applied in this minor thesis to find out students‟
achievement and interest in learning vocabulary after new vocabulary items were
taught in minimal context.
In order to collect sufficient and relevant data for the study, three research
techniques were employed:

vague and ambiguous. As a result, a number of researchers have attempted to define
context in the framework of vocabulary learning.
According to New Oxford American Dictionary (2010), context is defined as (1)
The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea and in terms of
which it can be fully understood and assessed. Or (2) the parts of something written or
spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
Crystal (1991:78) defines that context is a general term in linguistics and phonetics
to refer to specific parts of an utterance (or text) near or adjacent to a unit (e.g., a
sound, word) which is the focus of attention. The occurrence of a unit is partly or
wholly determined by its context, which is specified in terms of the unit‟s relations.
Blackburn (1984) offers a similar definition: “In linguistics, context is the parts of an
utterance surrounding a unit and which may affect both its meaning and its
grammatical contribution.”(p.80) However, he is quick to add that context also refers
to the “wider situation, either of the speaker or of the surroundings, that may play a
part in determining the significance of a saying.”(p.80)

5
Following the previous studies, Nguyen Hoa (2000) states context consists of
two components: the linguistic context (cotext) and the situational or extralinguistic
context. In that definition, cotext refers to the text surrounding a message. This
includes the textual elements that occur before and/or after a word, a phrase or even a
longer utterance or a text. The cotext often helps in understanding the particular
meaning of the word, phrase, etc. And situational context concerns the physical context
in which a message is conveyed. It includes the type of communicative event, the
topic, the purpose of the event, the setting, the participants and the relationships
between them, and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the
communicative event (Nunan, 1999). It is the broader social situation in which a
linguistic item is used.
On the whole, it is widely agreed that context has two aspects which are co-text
(linguistic context) and situational context.

This context used definition, synonyms surroundings to illustrate the meaning of
the target word.
In the present study, the author would adapt context in terms of co-text and
situational context featuring background knowledge which is embedded in one
sentence.
1.1.2. Vocabulary
In foreign language teaching, it is crucial to know words, because every
grammatical structure, every expression consists of them. They play a very important
role in communication.
What is vocabulary? According to Thornbury (2000:1), vocabulary means (1)
all the words that a person knows or uses; (2) all the words in a particular language; (3)
all the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject; (4) a list
of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a foreign language.
Nash and Snowling (2006) describe vocabulary as “the knowledge of words and their

7
meanings” (p. 336). While Sheehan (2002) states vocabulary is “the ability to
understand and use words to acquire and convey meaning”.
Generally, it is a wide agreement on vocabulary as a powerful carrier of
meaning. Besides, to know vocabulary of a topic, learners need have knowledge of
that. It is possible for a reader to know all the words in the passage and still not make
any sense of it if he has no prior knowledge of the topic. Thus, “word meanings are not
just unrelated bits of information, but are part of a larger knowledge structures” (Stahl,
1999).
In short, for the purpose of the study, vocabulary is word meaning and its
relation with background knowledge.
1.2 OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN CONTEXT
1.2.1. Vocabulary implicit learning and explicit teaching
Recently, numerous studies have placed on much effort in discovering
vocabulary acquisition and instruction, including implicit incidental learning, explicit

cannot rely on implicit learning but needs to be controlled. For contemporary approach
to vocabulary teaching, it is worthwhile to add explicit vocabulary instruction to
implicit vocabulary learning. An explicit vocabulary instruction whose learning
hypothesis holds that a certain amount of consciousness must be involved in
vocabulary acquisition, from the learner noticing novel vocabulary, selectively
attending to and using a variety of strategies to trying to infer its meaning from the
context (Gass,1999; Schmidt, 1990) may not only enhance the efficiency of implicit
learning, but may also have an effect on students' learning strategies, and overall
interest and motivation in learning words. Schmidt (2000) confirms that in any well-
structured vocabulary program there needs to be the proper mix of explicit teaching

9
and activities from which incidental learning can occur. With rank beginners, it is
probably necessary to explicitly teach all words until students have enough vocabulary
to start making use of the unknown words they meet in context.
From the given discussion on vocabulary teaching instruction, the present study
follows the current trend in teaching second language vocabulary which combines
implicit learning and explicit teaching. In details, for the students‟ language level, a
planned vocabulary teaching which refers to deliberate, explicit and directed
vocabulary teaching would be mainly used in the study. It encompasses the use of
teaching strategies such as ways in which teachers introduce and present the meaning
and form of new words, encourage learners to review and practice, recycle, and
evaluate the level of acquisition of vocabulary knowledge. In the meantime, teachers
do not explicitly present target words but implicitly do by eliciting word meanings
from given minimal context.
1.2.2. Vocabulary teaching procedure
Teaching English vocabulary is an important area worthy effort and
investigation. Recently, methodologists and linguists emphasize and recommend
teaching vocabulary because of its importance in language teaching. Vocabulary is
needed for expressing meaning and in using the receptive (listening and reading) and

illustrate meaning using pictures, mime or realia, appropriate to teach beginners;
contextualizing, defining, giving synonyms, opposites and giving detailed descriptions
which are suitable for advance learners. Of these techniques, the majority of theorists
favor placing vocabulary into a meaningful context. Haycraft (1978) gives a simple
and traditional blueprint, in which form is presented first, as follow:

11
a. Whenever possible, teach the words in spoken form first, and only when
students can pronounce them well, introduce the written form. Otherwise, the
students will always try and pronounce English words as if they were written in
their own language,
b. Try to present new words in context
c. Revision is essential. Blend words you have presented into later practice.
Meanwhile, Thornbury (2000:75) recently proposes a number of options that
ESL teachers should consider before presenting a set of words are the number of new
words, sequence of presentation and means of presentation. In detail, he states that (1)
the number of words is constrained by factors such as word difficulty, but need not be
limited to only a few words, (2) establishing the meaning of a new word first and then
presenting its forms is a standard approach, (3) explaining meaning verbally is time-
consuming but can be effective if explanations are kept clear and simple, (4) the
spoken form can be highlighted through the giving of clear models, the use of
phonemic scripts and repetition (5) by elicitation (Thornbury, 2000:30) it actively
involves the learners in the lesson, maximizes speaking opportunities, keeps the
learners alert and attentive, challenges better learners who might otherwise “turn off”.
According to Višnja (2008), there are some frequent ways of presentation
believed to involve learners‟ active participation although it is supposed that learners
mostly receive linguistic facts passively when being taught preselected lexical items.
Of them, there is presentation through context which is illustrated that “the teacher
creates a situation in which he/ she clearly contextualizes the lexical item”. Then
learners guess the meaning on the basis of the cumulative effect of the sentences.

13
For one group, presenting vocabulary in context brings various advantages.
First, it is beneficial for lexical learning in context rather than in isolated forms
such as word lists. For example, Doye (1980, cited in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999,
cited in Wang, 2005) suggested that new word should be presented in a semantically
typical linguistic context which is useful to work out its meaning. Beheydt (1987, cited
in Engelbart & Theuerkauf, 1999, cited in Wang, 2005) further pointed out that thank
to the inherent polysemous versatility and context-dependent variation, the presence of
new word in context is much advisable than that in isolation. According to these
statements, context makes words‟ meaning more salient with semantic or linguistic
support. Furthermore, the role of context represents not only morphological, syntactic,
or discourse information within the text, but also readers‟ background knowledge of
the subject matter of a given text, or the general context (Nation & Coady, 1988;
Scherfer, 1993; Parbakht & Weche, 1999).
Second, there are quite a few authors proving the process of inferring from
context which has a good effect on vocabulary retention. The literature review has been
done by Nam (2010). He listed out a number of researchers such as Hulstijn (1992)
who first confirmed the longer retention of target vocabulary items whose meanings
were correctly inferred in context rather than explained by their synonyms, Joe (1995)
who also supported that the retention of unfamiliar words in a text-based task that
demanded a higher level of generativity; and recently Hulstijn and Laufer (2001)
realizing that EFL students involved in a composition task could retain target words
better than those engaged in a reading comprehension or fill-in task.
Regarding the cognitive approach, Hulstijn (1992) demonstrated the viewpoint
of presenting vocabulary in context based on the two assumptions:
- When subjects have to infer or induce the solution of a problem, they will
invest more mental effort than when they are given the solution to the problem.

14
- Information that has been attained with more mental effort can later be better

the most appropriate minimal context to present new vocabulary.
1.4 PREVIOUS STUDIES
Historically, there are a lot of studies on context use and effects on incidental
vocabulary learning. However, it is not much said about the effects of “minimal
context” in vocabulary acquisition or effectiveness of deliberately presenting
vocabulary in context or minimal context. Only Laufer and Shmueli (1997), Webb
(2007) and Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) are among the very few researchers
studying this field.
Laufer and Shmueli (1997) did a research in the relationship between
memorization of new words (short-term and long-term) and four modes of vocabulary
presentation and diverse languages of vocabulary glossing. The four modes were words
presented in (a) isolation, (b) in “minimal context” , (c) text context; and (d) in
“elaborated” text context, that is in the original text supplemented by clarifying phrases
and sentences. The result of the study revealed that words presented in lists and
sentences were retained better than words presented in either type of texts. This study
was one of the first attempts to make distinction between vocabulary learning in a
minimal context (where the target word appears in a single sample sentence) and in a
text context.
Another study that investigated the effect of a single-context sentence on
vocabulary learning was Webb (2007), which compared two groups of learners who
involving in learning words in glossed sentences and learning word-pairs task.
However, the result of this study did not yield much benefit. Perhaps, it is due to he

16
examined vocabulary learning in five dimensions including orthography, meaning and
form, syntagmatic, associations, paradigmatic associations and grammatical functions.
Lastly, another research on the effect of three consecutive context sentences on
EFL vocabulary learning by Baleghizadeh & Shahry (2011) proved the positive role
for context sentences in vocabulary learning. In that study, thirty-three Iranian EFL
learners were asked to learn 20 challenging English words in two conditions. They

and significant in the research field.
Furthermore, all of the related studies simply based on the quantitative method.
Accordingly, in those investigations, there might be inevitably potential limitations of
relying on a single approach. Hence, the present study using both qualitative and
quantitative data attempted to address this gap. Moreover, the present research tried to
discover the effect of the teaching techniques on students‟ motivation in vocabulary
acquisition in the class which had not had studied previously.
In addition, the subjects of the previous studies were learners at intermediate
and advanced language levels who were exposed to new vocabulary in context.
Meanwhile, the present study tried to investigate the technique on students who were at
low level of language.
In general, with its own features in a different context, this research supported to
bridge several existing gaps in the literature on vocabulary presentation and practice
through minimal context, and bring new perspective to the field.

18
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter provides a description of the research implementation, including the
participants of the study, the methods and procedures of data collection and data
analysis accompanied by the researcher‟s justification.
2.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The study was conducted at the University of Commerce training students in the
field of commerce and economics. Every year, a large number of high school pupils
pass the university entrance examination to attend a 4 – year – training program which
equips them with plenty of knowledge, skills and experience. To meet the standard of
higher education quality, the university provides six English courses in seven semesters
to students namely, English 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. For the basic and pre-
intermediate level, the first to third year students attend English 1.1 to 1.4. The fourth-
year students attend English 1.5 and 1.6, which is English for specific purposes.
Regarding the course books used for English training program at VUC, the series of