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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ HÒA

PROMOTING LEARNER AUTONOMY IN LEARNING
VOCABULARY FOR SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT HAI PHONG
MEDICAL UNIVERSITY
(Phát huy tính tự chủ trong việc học từ vựng cho sinh viên năm thứ hai,
Trƣờng Đại học Y Hải Phòng)
M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
HANOI - 2010

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Declaration i
Acknowledgement ii
Abstract iii
List of tables and figures viii
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methods of the study 3
5. Significance of the study 4
6. Overview of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Vocabulary 5
1.1. Definition of vocabulary 5
1.2. Processes of vocabulary acquisition 5
2. Vocabulary learning and teaching 7
2.1. Aspects of learning a word 7
2.2. Explicit approach vs. Incidental learning approach 8
3. Learner autonomy 10
3.1. Definition of autonomy 10

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3.2. Principles of developing autonomy 12
4. Vocabulary learning strategies 14
4.1. Definition of learning strategies 14
4.2. Classification of vocabulary learning strategies 15
4.3. Frameworks for strategy training 16
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
1. Background of the study 18

the strategy training programme 34
3.2.1. Students’ frequency of using the taught strategies before and
after the training programme 34
3.2.2. Usefulness of the taught strategies 35
3.2.3. Students’ evaluation of the strategy training programme 36
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Conclusion 39
2. Pedagogical implications from the findings 40
3. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 40
REFERENCES 41 9
APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Schmitt’s taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies (1997) I
Appendix 2: Three lesson plans III
Appendix 3: Three word-learning records XXIV
Appendix 4: Sample vocabulary-learning diaries XXXIII
Appendix 5: Pre-treatment questionnaire survey (English version) LVIII
Appendix 6: Pre-treatment questionnaire survey (Vietnamese version) LX
Appendix 7: Post-treatment questionnaire survey (English version) LXII
Appendix 8: Post-treatment questionnaire survey (Vietnamese version) LXV 10
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES PAGE

Despite being widely discussed worldwide, learner autonomy remains a fairly
novel concept in Vietnam. Whether or to what extent learner autonomy is developed and
practiced in Vietnamese schools and universities is still open to question. Furthermore,
since the idea of learner autonomy originated from Western cultures, it hardly suffices to
just transfer the concept to an Asian context (Benson, Chik & Lim, 2003; Smith, 2003).
Rather, the implementation of learner autonomy in Asian countries should be tailored so
that an appropriate methodology for developing learner autonomy in non-Western contexts
can be devised (Smith, 2003). Another argument is that learner autonomy is a universal
social phenomenon, which manifests itself differently in different local contexts (Holliday,
2003). Because of all these complex and interesting points, it seems appealing to explore
how autonomy can be enhanced in an Asian educational institution like Hai Phong Medical
University. Moreover, developing learners’ autonomy becomes increasingly important as
far as tertiary education is concerned. A student at university is required to do a substantial
amount of research for his assignments, so he is supposed to know when and how to work
independently so that he can achieve a satisfactory result.
Specifically, the local context of Hai Phong Medical University calls for the idea of
promoting learner autonomy. The second-year students, who are at pre-intermediate level,
do not seem to study English as well as in the first year. Having taught them for three
successive semesters, I immediately take notice of the situation and intend to design a
remedy plan to improve it. After my open talk with the whole class, several problems came
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to light. Most of the students feel discouraged by a large number of words they encounter
in each English lesson. As many of them confess, learning vocabulary seems to be the
most difficult and most important to them. However, as English non-majors, the students
have only four periods per week for English lessons. It means the time spent on vocabulary
learning is really limited in class. In order to develop the students’ vocabulary, it is crucial
that they practice independent vocabulary learning regularly outside class. Therefore, it has
become increasingly essential to provide them with useful learning strategies so that they
can employ in their self-study time. In this case, the success of learning vocabulary
depends very much on how effectively and autonomously the students practice vocabulary

and maintenance. Performance refers to the extent of correctness when the students use the
taught strategies while participation means how much they use these strategies in their
guided vocabulary practice. Lastly, maintenance refers to the extent of retaining the taught
strategies in their independent vocabulary study.
The participants include 27 second-year students of the same English class at Hai
Phong Medical University and their teacher. In this study, the teacher is in charge of
teaching the class and plays the role of the researcher at the same time.
4. Methods of the study
The current study is carried out as an action research, which combines qualitative
and quantitative approaches. The action actually taken is a vocabulary-learning strategy
training programme designed for the duration of ten weeks. The programme is divided into
three phases.
In phase one, pre-treatment questionnaires are distributed to seek the answer for
research question one regarding the students’ problem in learning vocabulary. Then, the
students are taught about three strategy sets, namely dictionary-related strategies,
vocabulary-recording and affix-studying.
In phase two, three word-learning records are provided as guided practice of the
taught strategies. The data from the word-records aim at answering the research question
two and three about the students’ performance and participation in the use of the taught
strategies.
In phase three, the students keep free-style vocabulary learning diaries, in which
they record the vocabulary they want to learn in their self-study time. The diaries are used
to answer the research question four about the extent of maintaining the taught strategies in
the students’ independent vocabulary learning. By the end of phase three, post-treatment
questionnaires are distributed to answer the research question five about the learners’
perception of the strategy training programme.
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The data from the pre-treatment and post-treatment questionnaires, the word-
learning records and vocabulary-learning diaries are calculated with regard to items’
frequency, mean, and percentage.

1.1. Definitions of vocabulary
There exist several definitions of vocabulary in the literature review, all of which
seem to share the idea of what vocabulary is. According to Longman dictionary of
language teaching and applied linguistics (Richard, Platt & Platt, 1992), vocabulary is
defined as “a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms”. This
way of defining is similar to the one given in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: “a
list or collection of words and phrases usually alphabetically arranged and explained or
defined.” It is clear from these two definitions that vocabulary includes not only individual
words but also fixed expressions. This point is directly identified by Ur (1996: 60),
“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language.
However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word”. He highlights that
some vocabulary items such as “post office” and “mother-in-law” express a single idea.
Besides, the meaning of idioms such as “call it a day” can not be deduced from an analysis
of the component words. Therefore, Ur (1996: 60) suggests that “A useful convention is to
cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary items rather than words” . In the same
vein, McCarthy (1990) argues that multi-word units including idioms and phrasal verbs
should clearly be treated as single lexical items since their meaning are partly identified by
their fixedness. The central idea of these definitions can be best summed up by Lewis
(1993, cited in Nguyen, 2007: 7) who defines vocabulary as “individual words, or full
sentences – institutionalized utterances – that convey fixed social or pragmatic meaning
within a given community”.
1.2. Processes of vocabulary acquisition
According to Nation (2001), in order to remember a word, the learner needs to
experience three processes, namely noticing, retrieval and creative (generative) use.
Most simply, noticing means giving attention to an item. This can happen in a
variety of ways, including learners deliberately studying a word or having a word
explained to them and the word appearing crucial in the textual input. Noticing involves
decontextualization, which occurs when “the word is removed from its message context to
be focused on as a language item” (Nation, 2001: 64). The role of decontextualization is
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previous meeting with the word” (Nation 2001: 68). Those new encounters push learners
towards reconceptualization of their knowledge of these words. There are also receptive
and productive forms of generation. Receptive generation occurs when a word is
encountered in listening and reading and has slightly different meaning whereas productive
generation involves using the word in a new context.
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The three processes discussed above tend to correspond to the three-point scale for
describing depth of processing suggested by Stahl (1985, cited in Nation, 2001). The scale
includes three levels, namely association, comprehension and generation.
2. Vocabulary learning and teaching
2.1. Aspects of learning a word
The question of what it means for a language learner to “know” a word is a central
issue of second language vocabulary acquisition. A close examination of the literature has
revealed that the nature of lexical knowledge can be depicted as a continuum of several
dimensions.
On the one hand, several writers have regarded vocabulary learning as the task of
mastering its constituents. As illustrated by Ur (1996), learners have to know the word
form - including pronunciation and spelling, grammar, collocation, aspects of word
meaning, and word formation. By grammar, he means the information such as irregular
past form, irregular plural form, which should be showed to learners, especially when an
item has an unpredictable change of form. Ur differentiates two levels of meaning aspects.
The first level includes denotation, connotation and appropriateness of use in a certain
context, and the second level covers meaning relationships, namely synonyms, antonyms,
hyponyms, co-hyponyms, superordinates. Clearly, knowing a word requires more than just
its meaning and form. Sharing the view with Ur, Harmer (1991: 158) presents a more
detailed and systematic summary of “knowing a word” in the following chart:


In a much more concise manner, as stated by Finegan (2004: 40), using a word
requires that the mental lexicon of children and adults alike should store four kinds of
information:
 its sounds and their sequencing (phonological information)
 its meaning (semantic information)
 how related words such as the plural and past tense are formed (morphological
information)
 its category and how to use it in a sentence (syntactic information)
On the other hand, some researchers have approached the learning of vocabulary
from a broader view. For example, Chapelle (1994) suggests a three-component construct
of vocabulary ability including (1) the context of vocabulary use, (2) vocabulary
knowledge and fundamental processes and (3) metacognitive strategies for vocabulary use.
As regards context, it can influence lexical meaning in various ways. The second
component is further divided into four elements, namely vocabulary size, knowledge of
word characteristics, lexicon organization (the way in which lexical items are organized in
the mental lexicon) and fundamental vocabulary processes that users apply to access their
lexical knowledge. Finally, metacognive strategies or strategic competence can be
avoidance, paraphrase, guessing meaning, asking teacher or consulting dictionary etc.
Another direction in the research of lexical competence is to head for links and
interrelationships between the different kinds of word knowledge (Schmitt & Meara,
1997).
2.2. Explicit approach vs. Incidental learning approach
Vocabulary learning has been emerging in the literature review as a complex,
interesting issue that involves different processes. The most notable topic is the distinction
between explicit and implicit (or incidental) learning.
As regards explicit learning, the central idea is that the application of
vocabulary learning strategies can greatly facilitate vocabulary acquisition, and learners
play an active role in processing information (Ellis, 1995). Unsurprisingly, a large number
of books have focused on numerous activities and exercises for explicit study of
vocabulary. According to a survey by Sokmen (1997 cited in Schmitt, 2000: 146), explicit

exposures in a range of contexts, where the conscious focus is not on form, but on the
message. To put it simply, the key to incidental learning approach is to make sure that
learners get maximum exposure to the language. In second language classrooms, this can
be best achieved through reading.
However, much of the literature has showed that incidental learning through
reading occurs only to a limited degree. This is attributed to several factors. Firstly, lexical
inferencing is not always successful. For example, word meanings are not inferable from
context or lead learners to make wrong inferences. Alternatively, not all contexts are
equally conducive to make informed guesses. Secondly, incidental vocabulary acquisition
is unlikely if new words are not noticed or processed deeply. Furthermore, the question of
how many and what kind of exposures are necessary for acquisition to occur remains
unanswered. As Hulstijin et al. (1996) concludes, incidental learning in second language
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only occurs incrementally and in small quantities. Besides, according to Schmitt and
McCarthy (1997), the prerequisites for successful incidental acquisition include:
 Level of language proficiency
 Learner’s large L2 vocabulary
 Strategic knowledge of inferencing process
 Rich context with sufficient cues
All things considered, it is generally agreed that any vocabulary program needs to
include both explicit teaching and activities which promote incidental learning. In the
words of Schmitt (2000: 146), explicitly teaching all the words is necessary for beginners
whereas beyond this level, “incidental learning should be structured into the program in a
principled way.” Incidental learning not only helps to consolidate vocabulary but also
exposes learners to different contexts in which a word is used, thus expanding the
knowledge about the word. Moreover, some aspects of word knowledge, especially
collocation and register constraints, can only be fully acquired through numerous
exposures. Another reason is that explicitly presenting all the uses of a word to students is
obviously an impossible task. More specifically, Ellis (1995) contends that both implicit
and explicit learning suit different levels of word meaning. In his view, implicit vocabulary

entails the right to make decisions as well” whereas responsibility is understood as “being
in charge of something, but with the implication that one has to deal with the consequences
of one’s own actions.” (Scharle & Szabo, 2000: 4). They argue that autonomy and
responsibility are interrelated and both require learners’ active involvement. Since
successful learning depends considerably on learners having a responsible attitude,
students need to develop a sense of responsibility together with autonomy capacity.
However, Benson (2001: 47) states that it is preferable to define autonomy as the
capacity to take control of one’s own learning, largely because the construct of “control”
appears to be more open to investigation than the constructs of “charge” or
“responsibility.” In his definition, he specifies three levels of control that a learner should
take in order to develop his/her learning autonomy: “An adequate description of autonomy
in language learning should at least recognize the importance of three levels at which
learner control may be exercised: learning management, cognitive processes and learning
content” (Benson, 2001: 50). This definition will be the guideline for the current study.
Most interestingly, several writers have approached the concept of autonomy with
reference to the combination between independence and interdependence. Although
independence from a teacher is often seen as an observable sign of autonomy, the value of
interdependence, defined as “the ability of learners to work together for mutual benefit,
and to take shared responsibility for their learning” (Palfreyman, 2003: 4), can hardly be
denied. Little and Dam (1998) also argue for the interdependence inside independence:
We are social creatures, and as such we depend on one another in infinity of ways.
Without the stimulus and comfort of social interaction, for example, child
development is disastrously impaired: it is our condition that we learn from one
another. Thus, the independence that we exercise through our developed capacity
for autonomous behavior is always conditioned and constrained by our inescapable
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interdependence. In contexts of formal learning as elsewhere, we necessarily
depend on others even as we exercise our independence.
Admittedly, autonomy does not exclude interdependence. Learning, like other
social communication activities, is more fruitful with the cooperation of people involved.

encourage students to focus on the process of their learning rather than the outcome, we
help them consciously examine their own contribution to their learning.” This is really the
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vital step to the development of a responsible attitude. Another key point is the teaching of
learning strategies, which are regarded as the tools for students to expand their language
competence and to undertake their own learning responsibility. Students should be shown a
variety of available strategies and encouraged to find out which strategies work best for
them in certain contexts. Meanwhile, certain attitudes are also required of teachers. They
should be willing to share information with the learners in terms of both short and long
term objectives, to take consistent control by clearly establishing expectations towards
learners and lastly to delegate tasks and decisions to learners.
With a view to reinforcing these skills and attitudes for learners and teachers,
Scharle and Szabo (2000) go on to detail the process of developing responsibility that
learners and teachers go through. This process is divided into three phases: raising
awareness, changing attitudes and transferring roles. First, the stage of raising awareness
includes highly controlled activities which are intended to present new experiences to
learners and to make them conscious of the inner processes of their learning. Second, the
changing – attitude – stage allows repeatable, less controlled activities through which
students practise and reinforce their new roles and habits. Finally, the stage of transferring
roles contains loosely structured activities that give students considerable freedom. It is
clear that as learners move from one phase to the next, they are facilitated to exercise
greater autonomy and more responsibility.
More specifically, Vieria (2003) puts principles in a common framework for learner
and teacher development. This framework should be highly recommended for its thorough
presentation of action principles to promote learner autonomy. Besides, it nicely compares
autonomous learner development side by side with reflective teacher development.
However, for the scope of the present study, the researcher will only make use of the
principles concerning learners. According to Vieria (2003: 226), the action principles to
develop learner autonomy include:
Reflection: Developing language / learning awareness

prompting from the language teacher, learners should be able to monitor and evaluate the
relative effectiveness of their strategy use, and more fully develop their problem-solving
skills. In this way, learners are encouraged to become more autonomous, to diagnose some
of their own learning strengths and weaknesses, and to self-direct the process of language
development. This section offers a literature review concerning the training of vocabulary
learning strategies.
4.1. Definition of learning strategies
There is no consensus on a definition of learning strategies due to different
interpretations of the term strategy in the literature.
Several writers seem to pay attention to the utility of learning strategies when
defining them. For example, Rubin (1975: 43) provides a very broad definition of learning
strategies as “the techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge.”
Similarly, in the view of Willing (1989), learning strategies may be identified as specific
study skills or techniques, a general ability to take the initiative or just an enthusiasm for
learning while Beckman (2006) considers learning strategies a set of steps to accomplish a
particular task such as taking a test, comprehending text and writing a story. In a more
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specific manner, Oxford (1990: 8) states that “ learning strategies are operations
employed by learners to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information.” She
further stresses the richness of learning strategies by expanding the definition, “ learning
strategies are specific actions taken by learners to make learning easier, faster, more
enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations”
(Oxford, 1990:8). It is obvious from these definitions that learning strategies serve as the
tool to facilitate learning.
Other writers, however, put more focus on the inner process that learners
experience when they employ learning strategies. In a helpful survey article, Weinstein and
Mayer (1986: 315) define learning strategies broadly as "behaviours and thoughts that a
learner engages in during learning" which are "intended to influence the learner's encoding
process." Later Mayer (1988: 11) more specifically defines learning strategies as
"behaviours of a learner that are intended to influence how the learner processes

Affective strategies exhibit how to manage one’s emotions in language learning.
Compensation strategies involve different ways of compensating for missing knowledge.
However, Schmitt (1997) only adopted four strategy groups: Social, Memory, Cognitive,
and Metacognitive. Besides, he added a new category – Determination Strategies (DET) to
account for situations when an individual discovered a new word meaning without
resource to another person’s expertise. The second dimension is the distinction between
initial discovery of word meanings and remembering words that divide strategies into
discovery and consolidation groups respectively (Nation, 1990). Taken together, Schmitt’s
taxonomy contains 58 individual strategies characterized by the discovery – consolidation
division and into five groups, namely social, memory, cognitive, metacognitive and
determination. Appendix 1 presents Schmitt’s final version of taxonomy of vocabulary
learning strategies.
4.3. Frameworks for strategy training
Before any discussion on setting an appropriate framework for strategy training, it
is important to investigate some central issues in instruction in learning strategies.
The first topic concerns whether strategy instruction should be provided as a
separate program or as an integrated component in the language or content subject course.
Those in favor of separate strategy training programs argue that students will learn
strategies better if all their attention is focused on strategic processing skills (Jones et al.
1987, cited in O’Malley & Chamot, 1990: 152). However, integrated strategy instruction
programs tend to have much more advantages. First, Wenden (1987) asserts that learning
in contexts outperforms learning separate skills. Scharle and Szabo (2000) also regard the
regular school curriculum a meaningful context for strategy training. Second, it saves time
and money to combine strategy training with regular courses. In the case of Vietnam,
where few separate strategy training courses are offered, it is advisable that teachers
integrate strategy instruction into their daily teaching.
The second argument is between direct and embedded strategy instruction, which
can be named explicit and implicit instruction respectively. As defined by O’Malley and
Chamot (1990: 153), “ In direct instruction, students are informed of the value and purpose
of strategy training, whereas in embedded instruction, students are presented with activities

evaluation and revision. The training program can be evaluated by means of student
performance across language tasks and skills, maintenance of the new strategies over time,
effective transfer of strategies to other learning tasks and a positive attitude towards the
training program (Wenden, 1987; Oxford, 1990). This ongoing assessment is certainly
based on feedback from the learners themselves.
In the present research, the general guidelines from O’Malley & Chamot (1990)
and Cohen (1998) will be followed.
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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter is devoted to presenting the methodology of the current research,
including the research design, the participants, the data collection instruments and
procedure, and data analysis.
1. Background of the study
1.1. Current learning and teaching of English at Hai Phong Medical University
English, a compulsory subject for all the students at Hai Phong Medical University,
is taught in two separate stages. In the first stage, the students learn General English for
four successive semesters. They are expected to complete the elementary level after the
first two semesters and then the pre-intermediate level after the next two semesters. In the
second stage, they study English for Medicine during the fifth semester. Each semester
lasts 15 weeks, and the English class meets for a four-period lesson each week. Obviously,
the time spent on English learning and teaching is rather limited.
1.2. Identification of the problem
By the end of 2009, the second-year class that I had been teaching at Hai Phong
Medical University seemed to have a declining performance in English. They showed a
lack of interest in reading and vocabulary lessons and their first-term test results were
rather low. Having taught them for three successive semesters, I immediately realized that
they were having some problems learning English. I decided to investigate the situation by
having an open talk with the whole class. The talk turned out to be a lively discussion in
which my students expressed their feelings about learning English. Most of them shared
the view that learning vocabulary was the most difficult and most important to them. More