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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstracts iii
Table of contents iv
List of abbreviations viii
List of tables ix
PART I. INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the Study 2
3. Research Hypotheses and Questions 2
4. Scope of the Study 2
5. Methods of the Study 2
6. Design of the study 3
PART II. DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition 4
1.1.1. Definition of vocabulary 4
1.1.2. Vocabulary: What needs to be taught? 5
1.1.2.1. Form: Pronunciation and Spelling 5

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1.1.2.2. Aspects of meaning 5
1.1.2.3. Grammar 7
1.1.2.4. Word formation 7
1.1.2.5. Collocation 8
1.1.3. The roles of vocabulary in Foreign Language Acquisition 8
1.2. Factors affecting the retention of vocabulary 9
1.2.1. Memory 9

REFERENCES 38
APPENDIX A. PRETEST I
APPENDIX B. POSTTEST 1 II
APPENDIX C. POSTTEST 2 III
APPENDIX D. KEYS FOR THE TESTS IV

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APPENDIX E. ASKING AND ANSWERING ABOUT TIME V
APPENDIX F. A DAY IN MY LIFE VI
APPENDIX G. INTERVIEWING VII
APPENDIX H. DESCRIBING THINGS IN A HOUSE VIII
APPENDIX I. READING-BASED VOCABULARY ACTIVITY IX
APPENDIX J. FINDING THE LOCATION OF THINGS IN THE HOUSE X

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AR Action Research
H
0
Null hypothesis
H
1
Alternative hypothesis
L2 second language
N Number of cases
p Probability

language use. Wilkins (1972, p.111) emphasized “Without grammar, very little can be
conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Vocabulary is a cohesive device
to link four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing together. Moreover, in order
to communicate smoothly in a particular language, people should acquire an adequate
number of words. Therefore, many linguists, educators and researchers have been
attempting to help learners of English expand their vocabulary knowledge and keep it in
the long-term memory.
Nonetheless, most Vietnamese students consider the vocabulary retention as a difficult task
in their English learning process. Students at Yen Bai Centre for Continuing Education
(YCCE) are no exceptions. Most of them are civil servants of middle age. They learn
English to meet the requirement of their jobs and their own needs. However, these adult
learners are much different from young learners. Bearing so many responsibilities with
their work, their families and many other affairs, they do not have sufficient time for their
learning after the class. Therefore, most of their learning time is often in class. However,
during class time, the students often pile up pages of vocabulary lists that are rarely looked
over again. Moreover, they have few chances to recycle their taught vocabulary. Thus,
students often soon forget most of words they have learnt before. As the result, they meet
many difficulties when communicating in English, both in the oral and written forms.
Take into account all the stated facts, the author - a teacher at YCCE has attempted to find
out appropriate solutions that help to improve her learners‟ vocabulary maintenance. She
has been motivated to conduct an action research titled “Activities to increase adult
learners’ retention of vocabulary at Yen Bai Centre of Continuing Education” with the
hope that it will facilitate her adult learners to retain their vocabulary.
2

authentic results. The study was conducted within a period of nine weeks in which a pretest 3
and two posttests were delivered to measure the changes in learners‟ vocabulary retention.
All scores of these tests were computed and analyzed with the assistant of the statistical
software named SPSS version 11.5 to find out how the intervention affect the English
vocabulary retention of the author‟s students.
The procedures of the study were undertaken as follows. First, problems were identified.
Then, the literature on vocabulary teaching was read and hypothesis was made. After that,
the intervention for the study was designed. Next, a pretest and two posttests were used to
collect data for analysis. Finally, the outcome was reported. Details of these procedure are
described in the chapter 2.
6. Design of the study
The minor thesis is composed of five chapters which are described as follows:
Part A entitled Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research hypotheses and
questions, scope, methods, and design of the study.
Part B - the development of the study which is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1-
Literature review supplies essential theoretical background relevant to the study. Chapter
2- Methodology deals with the rationale for using action research, the procedures, the
information about the participants, and the instruments for data collection as well as the
intervention of the study. Chapter 3 is about the detailed analyses of the data given by the
pretest and the posttests and discussion on the findings.
Part C is the conclusion. This chapter summaries the main findings and points out some
limitations of the study as well as several recommendations and suggestions for further
study.
The references come at the end of the paper, closing with Appendices.

Therefore, it is possible to state that the word vocabulary means both the knowledge of
words and word meanings in both oral and print language and in productive and receptive
forms. Of course, lexical meanings vary from context to context. Therefore, it is necessary
for teachers help students to gain vocabulary from the different contexts. This will help 5
learners not only use appropriate vocabulary in communication, but also develop their
vocabulary knowledge.
1.1.2. Vocabulary: What needs to be taught?
In many ESL learning situations, students can recognize a word when it is pronounced but
can not write down that correctly, or vice verse. Many learners even have difficulties with
using properly the word that they have in their mind. Therefore, according to Penny Ur
(1996), when vocabulary is introduced to learners, pronunciation and spelling, word form,
grammar, collocation, aspects of meaning, word-formation need to be taught. However,
which aspects of these should be focused on during the teaching and learning process
depends on whether a word is learned for receptive skills or for productive skills (Nation,
1990).
1.1.2.1. Form: Pronunciation and Spelling
According to (Ur, 1996), when introducing a new word to language students, the teacher
has to introduce what it sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling).
Gairns and Redman (1986, p.50) stated “Unfamiliarity with correct pronunciation can
result in the learner failing to understand words in connected speech that he clearly
understands in written English”. To many students, the complex relationship between
sound and spelling in English seems to make the language inexplicable. Therefore, the
teacher should pay careful attention to both of these two forms. It is easy to sympathize
with this view when we consider the number of homophones such as weight/wait, sole/soul

fellow may serve as synonyms of man.
+ Antonyms: items that mean the opposite: ugly is an antonym of beautiful.
+ Hyponyms: items that serve as specific example of a general concept: dog, cat, lion are
hyponyms of animal.
+ Co-hyponyms or co-ordinates: other items that are the “same kind of things”: yellow,
blue, red, and brown are co-ordinates.
+ Superordinates: general concept that cover specific items: cattle is the superordinates of
bull, cow, pig.
+ Translation: words or expressions in the learners‟ mother tongue that is more or less
equivalent in meaning to the items being taught or learnt. 7
1.1.2.3. Grammar
If the new item is not obviously covered by general grammatical rule, its grammar will
need to be introduced or examined. An item may have unpredictable change of form in
certain contexts or some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other words in sentences.
Thus, it is important to learners to have this information at the same time the base form is
learnt. For example, when a noun such as a mouse is learnt, it should be noticed that its
plural form is mice.
General speaking, teacher needs to be ready to teach the types of collocations especially
the ones with which students have the greatest difficulties.
1.1.2.4. Word formation
Vocabulary items, whether on-word or multi-word, can be broken down into their smaller
component. How these components are put together is useful information to learners
especially advanced learners. There are three main types of word building, which are
characteristics of English: affixation, compounding and conversion.

researchers in the field.
McCarthy, in the very first part of his book on vocabulary (2002, p.2) wrote: “It is
experience of most language teachers that the single, biggest component of any language
course is vocabulary. No matter how well students learn grammar, no matter how
successfully sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express the wide range of
meaning communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way.” This claim
indicates the great importance of vocabulary. If someone has adequate vocabulary, he or
she will feel more confident when communicating with others as well as expressing his/her
opinions about something very concrete to something very abstract in both oral and written
forms. Therefore, according to Schmitt (2000), second language students need
approximately 2,000 words to maintain conversations, 3,000 word families to read
authentic texts. The more words one knows well, the more successful he is in
communication and the more information he can get from different sources such as books,
newspapers, etc. The support for the important role of vocabulary can be found in the work
of Alexander. In her book “Understanding vocabulary” (2000, p.16), she wrote:
“Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean” and “words are the
currency of communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication – 9
listening, speaking, reading and writing”. From this point, acquisition of an adequate
vocabulary is essential for successful second language use, and is what separates good
learners from poor learners.
In short, it is clear that vocabulary has an important role in second language acquisition.
Vocabulary is an essential part of language, as Wilkins (1972, p. 111) emphasized in his
saying: “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be
conveyed”

contexts, whether visually or orally so that it can gradually be picked up into learners‟
mind. Therefore, learning activities and materials should be constructed in a systematic
procedure to help learners attach the new information into their long-term memory.
1.2.2. Learning strategies
It has been identified that one of ways to accelerate the retention of the learned items is
learning strategies. Learning strategies are “specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques
that students use to improve their progress in developing L2 skill. These strategies can
facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use if the new language” (Oxford,
1992/1993, p.18 cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1997). The impact of learning strategies on the
vocabulary learning is emphasized by Nunan (1999, p.171): “Knowledge of strategies is
important, because the greater awareness you have of what you are doing, if you are
conscious of the processes underlying the learning that you are involved in, then learning
will be more affective”. Ellis (1997, p.76-8) also shares the same idea when he states that
studies have shown that successful learners use more strategies than unsuccessful learners
and successful learners use different strategies at different stages of their development. He
emphasized that if crucial learning strategies can be identified, they can be taught to
students.
Learning strategies are the decisive factors for effective vocabulary retention. Many
scholars have striven to introduce different vocabulary learning strategies in order to help
learners of English improve their vocabulary retention. Oxford (1990, p.71) has
distinguished learning strategies into six groups: memory, cognitive, compensation
strategies and metacognitive, effective, and social strategies whereas Nation and Newton
(1997, p.240) indentified strategies for coping with and learning words as “guessing from
the context, using word parts to help remember word meanings, and using mnemonic and
rote vocabulary strategies. Research has also demonstrated that there is a relationship
between strategy use and success in second or foreign vocabulary retention. For instance,


opportunities to use the target language productively. Learners acquire and retain
vocabulary through seeing, hearing and saying the words numerous times in many contexts 12
then producing massages in communication. Steele (2005) justified that words are learnt
by individual, but through memorable presentation, personalization tasks, so how
vocabulary is presented and activities are conducted in the class for practice is very
important in anchoring new words into students‟ memory, especially when they do not
have advantageous language environment outside the classroom. In this case, classroom
practice embeds both input and output resources for the learners.
1.2.4. Word-related factors
Apart from memory, learning context, language strategies, L2 vocabulary retention of the
learners is also affected with the word-related factors. These factors, according to Schmitt
and McCarthy (1997), there are many factors affecting the word learnability such as
pronounceability, length, multiplicity of meaning, idiomaticity, etc.
+ Pronounceability: There are many difficulties in pronouncing a word such as final
consonant clusters (e.g. clothes, films), stress on the right syllables, the weakening of
unstressed vowels, homophones (e.g ban/van, think/sink, etc), the familiarity with
phonological features and word‟s phonotactic regularity. Rodgers‟ study (1969, cited in
Schmitt and McCarthy (1997)) with English-speaking learners of Russian showed that
foreign words which were difficult to pronounce (e.g. mgla) were not learned as well as the
more pronounceable ones. In Celce-Murica‟s description (1978), her daughter even
avoided or refused to say the word that was phonologically more difficult in term of her
systems. She preferred couteau to knife since “f” was difficult, boy to garcon since “r" was
also difficult. Therefore, it can be concluded that the pronounceable were perceived more
accurately and retained longer in the learners‟ memory than the unpronounceable ones.

meaning.
In short, the four main types of factors discussed above (memory, learning strategies,
learning context, and word-related factors) exits together and make great impact on the
retention of L2 learning vocabulary. Therefore, teachers should take all of them into
consideration and analyze them carefully before deciding what to teach and how to teach.
1.3. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition Process
With respect to vocabulary learning, it is evident that there are extensive demand on the
learner‟s attention in order to fully learn a word-namely, word forms, meaning and uses. It
is indicated in many theories that a learner must encounter a word more than once as the
target word passes though three processes of vocabulary acquisition. According to Nation
(2001, p.63), these three important processes that may lead to a word being remembered 14
are noticing, retrieval, and generation. These processes can be viewed as three steps with
the later steps including the earlier steps.
1.3.1. Noticing
To Nation, noticing involves seeing the word item to be learned. This noticing may be
affected by several factors, including the salience of the word in the textual input or in the
discussion of the text, previous contact that the learners have had with the word, and
learners‟ realization that the word fills a gap in their knowledge of the language (Schimidt
and Frota, 1980; Ellis, 1990). Motivation and interest are important enabling conditions for
noticing. The choice of content can be a major factor stimulating interest.
Nation suggests designing activities to encourage noticing. If the words occur in important
parts of the written input to the task they are likely to be noticed. The chances of a word
being noticed can be increased by pre-teaching, highlighting the word in the text by using
underlining, italics or bold letters, and glossing the word.

It may seem common sense that the more times we are exposed to a word, the stronger our
understanding becomes. It is indicated that repetition is essential for vocabulary learning
because there is so much to know about each word that one meeting with it is not sufficient
to gain this information, and because vocabulary items must not only known, they must be
known well so that they can be fluently accessed. Repetition thus adds to the quality of
knowledge and also to the quantity or strength of this knowledge.
1.4.1. Types of repetition
In his book “Learning vocabulary in another language” (2001), Nation indicated that the
repetition can extend and enrich previous meeting. He also gave types of repetitions as in
the table below.
Type of processing
Type of repetition
Noticing
Seeing the same word form and simultaneously presented
meaning again
Retrieval
Recalling the same meaning several times
Generation
Recalling the meaning in different contexts requiring a different
instantiation of the meaning
Table 1.1. Types of repetition of word meaning (Nation (2001, p.80)) 16
The types of repetition are related to the goal of learning. McKeown, Beck, Omanson and
Pople (1985) (cited in Nation (2001, p.80) found that if simple definitional learning was
the goal then more repetitions were better than fewer, but fewer repetitions (four

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1.4.2. Spacing of repetition
Spacing helps learners retain memory access to learned information over long periods of
time. Spacing prompts deeper processing of the learned material and it helps prevent
boredom and fatigue.
Many researchers such as Seibert (1927), Anderson and Jordan (1982), and Seirbert (1930)
(cited in Nation (2001)) investigated retention over periods of up to eight weeks. They
indicates that most forgetting occurs immediately after initial learning and then, as time
passes, the rate of forgetting becomes slower. Thus, they suggested that the repetition of
new items should occur very soon after they are first studied, before too much forgetting
occurs. After this the repetitions can be spaced further apart. This suggestion gains the
agreement with Pimsleur‟s (1967). Pimsleur suggested that the space between each
repetition should become larger, with initial repetitions being closer together and the later
repetitions much further apart. The general principle which lies behind the spacing is that
the older a piece of learning is, the slower the forgetting. This means two things. Firstly,
after a piece of learning, the forgetting is initially very fast and then slows down. Secondly,
on the second repetition a piece of learning is older than it was on the first repetition and so
the forgetting on the second repetition will be lower than it was. On the third repetition the
forgetting will be even slower. Therefore, the language teachers should provide their
learners spaced repetitions in order to help learners remember lexical items for a long
period of time.
1.4.3. Number of repetition
Repetition is only one of a number of factors affecting vocabulary learning and learning
generally are only moderate. For example, Saragi, Nation and Meister (1978) found a
correlation of about .45 indicating that repetition accounted for around 20% of the factors
involved in learning. It is thus not easy to fix on a particular number of repetitions needed
for learning to occur.
Kachroo (1962) found that words repeated seven times or more in his coursebook were
known by most learners. Crothers and Suppes (1967) found that most items on their
vocabulary learning experiments were learned after six or seven repetitions. Tinkham

Thus, the aim of AR is to improve the current state of affairs within the educational context
in which the research is being carried out. To be more specific, the AR reported in this
thesis was conducted in a specific situation of teaching English as a foreign language to
adult learners at YCCE, and is aimed at improving the practice of vocabulary teaching in
that situation.
Methodologically, a quantitative study with a pretest-posttest design was adopted for this
study in order to measure the impact of repetition-focused activities on adult learners‟
vocabulary retention. Given the purpose of the study, which is to test the effectiveness of
one specific instructional strategy, i.e., the use of repetition-focused activities, on learners‟
vocabulary retention, this research design is appropriate.
2.2. Procedures
The study followed the steps recommended by Nunan (1992, p. 19) for conducting an AR.
These steps include (i) initiation or problem identification; (ii) preliminary investigation;
(iii) hypothesis formation; (iv) intervention; (v) evaluation; (vi) dissemination; and (vii)
follow-up.
To be more specific, the researcher of this AR first observed the students in this study and
found that they had great difficulty retaining vocabulary. They seemed to forget most of