MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI LAN HUONG TEACHING ENGLISH VOCABULARY TO THE
FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT NGHE AN TRADING AND TOURISM
VOCATIONAL COLLEGE MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Nghệ An, 2014
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that the thesis entitled “Teaching English vocabulary to the first-year
students at Nghe An Trading and Tourism Vocational College” is the result of
my own work, and that the thesis or my any parts of the same has not been
submitted to any university or institution.
Vinh, August 2014
Author’s signature

Nguyen Thi Lan Huong ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen
Gia Viet, for his kind help, careful guidance, valuable advice and
encouragement from shaping the first draft till the completed thesis.
I am also grateful to the head of Foreign Language Department of Nghe An
Tourism-Trading Vocational College, Mrs. Le Thi Mai Hong, my colleagues
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABERIVIATION…………………………………………………………… … 4
LISTS OF TABLES…………………………………………………………… … 5
LISTS OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………… 6
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 7
1.1. Rationale 7
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study 9
1.3. Research questions 9
1.4. Significance of the study 9
1.5. Scope of the study 9
1.6. Methods of the study 10
1.7. Organization of the thesis 10
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
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2.1. Vocabulary 12
2.1.1. What is vocabulary? 12
2.1.2. Types of vocabulary. 13

5.2.1. For teaching 56
5.2.2. For learning 56

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5.3. Suggestion for future research 57
5. 4. Suggestions for Vocabulary Teaching and Learning 57
5.4.1. Teaching vocabulary through games. 57
5.4.2. Teaching vocabulary through audio-visual aids and video clips 59
5.4.3. Using synonyms and antonym 59
5.4.4. Pair and group works 60
5.4.5. Role play 60
5.4.6. Using Mind-mapping 60
5.4.7. Using diagrams 63
5.4.8. Using flash cards 63



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LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1. The position of vocabulary in English learning ……………… 44
Figure 4.2. The difficulty in vocabulary learning ………………………… 46
Figure 4.3: The position of vocabulary in language teaching …………… 47
Figure 4.4. The difficulty in vocabulary teaching ………………………… 49
Figure 4.5: Students’ interest in learning English vocabulary ……………… 51
Figure 4.6: Students’ efficiency evaluation in vocabulary learning ……… 52
Figure 4.7: Teacher’s interest in teaching English vocabulary …………… 53
Figure 4.8: Teacher’s efficiency evaluation in vocabulary teaching …… 54 7
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter is written with the purpose of giving the rationale, objectives of

compulsory subject. I am myself a teacher in Nghe An Trading and Tourism
Vocational College in Cua Lo Town in which English is focused to help students in
their work in the future. Besides four skills (listening, speaking, reading and
writing), the teachers of English in my college spend more time on vocabulary
because of its importance in learning a language. However, it is not easy to study
perfect English vocabulary. Almost students often face up with some problems in
learning vocabulary. In fact, it is difficult to memorize a new word with its
meaning, spelling and pronunciation, many students are often confused with
knowing how can apply grammar into sentences, sometimes, they cannot
understand when being opposed to video and audio. Moreover, techniques to
teach English is traditional teaching methods and similar activities days by
days, which makes students become fed up with learning English. Therefore,
interesting techniques to teach English are necessary to help students learn English
vocabulary better; they also attract students’ interest on English.
There were some problems that made the students difficult to know the
vocabulary meaning in Nghe An Trading and Tourism Vocational College such as,
some students less knowledge about vocabulary, students’ lack of vocabulary,
students never try to find the new words from a text.
To overcome the problems, the teacher could try some ways to develop
their vocabulary and explore their ideas. In this case, I have the ambition of
presenting some effective techniques to teach English vocabulary with hope
that students will be interesting in learning English. Due to my English knowledge
limitation and the frame of the graduation paper, I would like to choose the
research paper entitle “Teaching English vocabulary to the first-year students at
Nghe An Trading and Tourism Vocational College”. 9
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study
The aims of this study are to find out the difficulties in teaching and learning

Theoretically, by exploring difficulties in teaching and learning vocabulary, the
study adds to the growing demand of strategies for learning and memorizing words
for English language learners (ELLs). Also, by investigating the techniques used to
teach vocabulary within academic settings, it is hoped to provide useful information
about characteristics and benefits of this interesting but less-exploited strategy in
dealing with vocabulary so far.
Practically, the study is hopefully to provide some solutions and recommend
clear guidelines for teachers to deal with vocabulary in particular and, thus, to
facilitate their teaching of English in general. For learners, this study hopefully
provides useful instructions so that they can use them as effective vocabulary self-
learning tips.
1.6. Methods of the study
This study involves 10 teachers and 70 students in Nghe An Trading and
Tourism Vocational College. The study employs survey questionnaire as the
principal method of data collection. Data are analyzed statistically, resulting in
percentage of items. The data are presented in tables and figures in Chapter Four.
More details about research methodology are provided in Chapter Three.
1.7. Organization of the thesis
The study consists of the following parts:
Chapter I. Introduction
This part introduce the issues leading to the study, including rationale, aims,
methods, scope, and organization of the study.
Chapter II: Literature review
Theoretical background relevant to the topic and surveys of articles, books
and other resources relevant to a particular the study topic be presented. This part
also provide description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work quoted.
Chapter III. Methodology

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This part presents the detailed procedure of the study: the methodology,

perception in teaching vocabulary. First, main issues related to teaching vocabulary
as a foreign language are presented, such as the definition, the types and the roles of
vocabulary, etc. In addition, the chapter refers to the perceptions related to
vocabulary teaching. Finally, the chapter states the previous studies of vocabulary
teaching.
2.1. Vocabulary
2.1.1. What is vocabulary?
There are many definitions of vocabulary.
Vocabulary is defined as "all the words known and used by a particular
person" and “all the words which exist in a particular language or subject”
(Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary).
According to the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1989,
p.1629), “the vocabulary of a language is the total number of words in it” and
“someone's vocabulary is the total number of words in a language that he or she
knows”, However, this term will be used in a more restricted sense in this paper: we
will limit ourselves to what Michael Wallace in his work Teaching Vocabulary calls
“content words” as opposed to “structure words”, and which would include nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs derived from adjectives. According to this author,
structure words are almost deprived of mean trip when consider in isolation and,
therefore, should be considered as part of the grammar of a language (Wallace,
1988, p.18).
Another definition of vocabulary: vocabulary is knowledge of words and
word meanings. However, vocabulary is more complex than this definition
suggests. First, words come in two forms: oral and print. Oral vocabulary includes
those words that we recognize and use in listening and speaking. Print vocabulary
includes those words that we recognize and use in reading and writing.

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Second, word knowledge also comes in two forms, receptive and productive.
Receptive vocabulary includes words that we recognize when we hear or see them.

Listening vocabulary
Listening vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to
understand what we hear.
A person's listening vocabulary is all the words he or she can
recognize when listening to speech. This vocabulary is aided in size by context and
tone of voice.
Writing vocabulary
Writing vocabulary consists of the words we use in writing.
A person's writing vocabulary is all the words he or she can employ in
writing.
Contrary to the previous two vocabulary types, the writing vocabulary
is stimulated by its user.
Speaking vocabulary
Speaking vocabulary consists of the words we use in everyday speech.
A person's speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she can use in speech.
Due to the spontaneous nature of the speaking vocabulary, words are often misused.
This misuse – though slight and unintentional – may be compensated by
facial expressions, tone of voice, or hand gestures.
However, according to Nation (1990, p.29), vocabulary is divided in the
specific reference, such a word.
Receptive vocabulary
Knowing a word involves being able to recognize it when it is heard
(what is the sound like?) or when it seen ( what does it look like?) and having an
expectation of what grammatical pattern the word will occurrence. This includes
being able to distinguish it from word with similar form and being able to judge if
the word form sounds right or look right. 15
Productive vocabulary

although not the only one that conveys meaning. There ate certainly other elements
such as grammar, stress, rhythm, intonation, tone of voice, pauses, hesitations or
silences, not to mention the use of non-vocal phenomena such as kinetic and
phonemic features. Learning a language cannot be reduced, of course, to only
learning vocabulary, but it is also true that “no matter how well the student learns
grammar, no matter now successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without
words to a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen
in any meaningful way” (McCarthy 1990. VIII), an idea defended by many applied
linguists, e.g. Allen (1983, p.1), Wallace (1988, p.9), Corder (Rossner & Bolitho
1990, p.113), Taylor (1990, p.1), Willis (1990, p.1-14) etc. Nevertheless, in spite of
the importance of this element, vocabulary is often the least systematized and the
most neglected of all the aspects of learning a second language, not only in EGP but
in ESP as well (Kennedy & Bolitho, 1984, p.65). This lack of attention is not only
characteristic of older grammatical syllabuses but of more recent communicative
approaches, On the contrary the emphasis is rather placed on structures, “functions,
notions and communicative strategies” (Dubin & Olshtain 1986, p.111-112).
Students need to be made aware of the importance of this element because, in
general, there is a tendency to concentrate on grammar, paying little attention to
vocabulary. This can be done through the so-called “awareness” activities such as
the one that follows. Two texts are produced from an English passage, one
containing all the content words (text A) and the other all the structure words (text
B). Half of the class is given A and the other half, B, and they are all asked to infer
what the original text is about. It is obvious that those having the content word can
make at least some guesses whereas the others do not have a clue as to what the
passage deals with.
2.1.4. What vocabulary to teach: criteria for selection
When making decisions about content, one of the first questions the language
teacher will have to address is what vocabulary to teach. For many of them this will
be determined by the choice of the course book, the syllabus designers, or other


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necessarily the most useful ones for learner s and that common sense demands that
the most frequent words be supplemented by intuition.
Range
A word may be quite frequent, but a majority or even all of its occurrences
might be in just one or two texts. In this case, although its frequency might look
significant, its range might be quite small. The most useful words for the learner
then are those which are frequent and occur across a wide variety of texts.
Teachers who take their own texts into the classroom will often have to
decide from experience, intuition or even the use of a dictionary, which words are
likely to have the most useful range, a job which has already been done to a great
extent in good course books.
Availability and/or expediency
The classroom will also often dictate the need for certain vocabulary without
which the SS may fail to understand their teacher, classmates or the activity they
are engaged in. One of these areas is grammatical terminology. Many teachers do
not wish to burden their SS with too many grammatical labels, but it is also true
understanding such items can be very helpful. On the one hand, the explanations
given can be shorter and, on the other hand, the student can make a more profitable
use of dictionaries and grammar books, it is the teacher who, taking into account
factors such as age, course duration, etc., must weigh tips the possible benefits or
harm of using such terminology. The same would apply to phonological
terminology.
Another area of classroom language has to do with the items which often
appear in language activity instructions. Although constant expositive alone usually
guarantees that these items with eventually inflated, it is possible to speed up the
process by designing classroom activities containing many of these items and so
avoid confusion or misunderstanding.
Specific need/interest on the learners’ part
It is possible for students to feel they need or to be interested in different


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Production or productive skill is strategies that activate one’s storage
retrieving the words from memory and then by using those words in appropriate
situation. This productive skill employs vocabulary, words that students understand,
can pronounce correctly, and use them in speaking and writing.
As for recognition which also called comprehension or reception is the skill
to understand store that words that students recognize and understand when to occur
in a context.
Vocabulary is an indispensable element of language that language learners
need to acquire. The vocabulary which are meant here are only the basic vocabulary
related to the material.
Vocabulary is a list of the word in a language with their meaning (Hornby,
2000, p.1331). There are several aspects of lexis that need to be taken into account
when teaching vocabulary. The list below based on the work of Gaims and Redman
(1986):
a. Polysemy: A term to refer to word which has a set of different meanings
which are related by extension.
b. Homonym: A term to refer to one form, which is the same in both
written and spoken, with two or more unrelated meanings.
c. Metaphors: The meaning of the word not the literal meaning of the
words.
d. Synonym: Sameness of meaning which is not concerned with the
conceptual meaning of words, but relation of words which have, more or less, the
same conceptual of meaning.
e. Antonym: Oppositeness of meaning.
f. Affective meaning: The meaning of words which reflects the personal
feelings of the speaker, including attitude to the listener, or attitude to something he
is talking about.
2.1.6. How to teach vocabulary