VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

BÙI THỊ KIM CÚC

TEACHING VOCABULARY EXPLICITLY TO FIRSTYEAR STUDENTS AT YEN BAI MEDICAL COLLEGE
(Dạy từ vựng cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất bằng cách cho nghĩa trực tiếp
tại trường Cao đẳng Y tế Yên Bái)

M.A. Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2012


VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

BÙI THỊ KIM CÚC

TEACHING VOCABULARY EXPLICITLY TO FIRSTYEAR STUDENTS AT YEN BAI MEDICAL COLLEGE
(Dạy từ vựng cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất bằng cách cho nghĩa trực tiếp
tại trường Cao đẳng Y tế Yên Bái)



TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………….

vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study……………………………………………………...

1

2. Aims and objectives of the study………………………………………......

2

3. Research questions ………………………………………………………..

2

4. Scope of the study …………………………………………………………

3

5. Method of the study ……………………………………………………….

3

6. Design of the study ………………………………………………………..

3




1.2.3. Current approaches to L2 vocabulary teaching and learning…..

9

1.2.4. Explicit and implicit approaches to vocabulary teaching………

10

1.2.4.1. Explicit approach ………………………………………..

11

1.2.4.2. Implicit approach ………………………………………..

13

1.3. Principles for explicit approach to vocabulary teaching …………….

14

1.4. Challenges in vocabulary teaching ……………………………………

16

1.5. Summary………………………………………………………………...

17


22

2.4.2. Data analysis procedures………………………………………..

23

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS…………………………..

24

3.1. Research question 1: Teachers' perceptions of explicit vocabulary
teaching at YBMC...........................................................................................

24

3.2. Research question 2: Teachers' selection of vocabulary to teach and
aspects of word knowledge to be taught……………………………………

26

3.3. Research question 3: The explicit vocabulary teaching techniques
most frequently used in the classroom and their relevance………………

v

29


Vocabulary presentation techniques ………………………………..




TRANSCRIPT CONVENTION
T:

teacher

S:

student

Ss

students

Italics

translation of original speech in vernacular

vii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EFL

English as a foreign language

L1

First language

In the context of Yen Bai Medical College (YBMC), English is being taught
as one of the compulsory subjects along with other vocational ones. The level of
students at YBMC is quite low in general. Some of them have learnt English for
several years in secondary schools and some others have not learnt English for a
few years. Moreover, there has been little attention paid to vocabulary teaching and
learning. At many schools or colleges in general and at YBMC in particular, for
most teachers of English, their common way of teaching vocabulary is to give
explanations, definitions or translation of the word-list. Then learners usually learn
vocabulary passively through their teachers’ explanation. Writing new words on the
notebooks with equivalence in Vietnamese and trying to learn new words by heart
are their major ways of vocabulary learning. Consequently, they hardly remember
the meaning of the words and use them oral activities. In other words, by the time
the new words are presented in the new lesson most of the words taught in the
previous lesson will have gone out of their mind.

1


As a teacher of English for nearly 12 years, I have realized that the reason
why learners have failed in using English is their lack of vocabulary. Therefore, it is
essential for every teacher in any language classes in Viet Nam educational system
to help his/her own students to widen their vocabulary size. Explicit vocabulary
teaching is particularly useful for beginning learners who have a limited reading
vocabulary and little exposure to incidental vocabulary learning through extensive
reading and listening like students at YBMC. This encourages the researcher to
conduct a study on explicit vocabulary teaching in an attempt to better vocabulary
teaching and learning at YBMC, a newly re-founded college in Yen Bai province.
2. Aims and Objectives of the study
The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of explicit vocabulary
teaching held by the teachers working at YBMC and how they teach vocabulary

To achieve its objectives, this study employed qualitative methods of data
collection which include interview, classroom observation and lesson analysis.
First, interviews with the teachers were conducted to investigate the teachers'
ideas of English explicit vocabulary teaching at YBMC as well as the way they
teach words explicitly, which includes their choice of vocabulary to teach, the
aspects of vocabulary focused on and their explicit vocabulary teaching techniques.
Then, classroom observations were conducted to supplement teachers'
interviews to test how English vocabulary is taught explicitly and the relevance of
explicit vocabulary teaching techniques can be evaluated through lessons analyses.
6. Design of the study
There are three main parts in my thesis as follows:
Part A is the Introduction presenting the rationale, aims, objectives, research
questions, scope, methods and design of the study.
Part B, the Development, includes three chapters:
Chapter 1 is the Literature Review. In this chapter, a basic theoretical
background for the study is created by reviewing the relevant issues related to
English vocabulary, vocabulary teaching and learning focusing on explicit and
implicit approaches.

3


Chapter 2 entitled Methodology is composed of some smaller parts: a
description of the current situation of English teaching and learning at YBMC, the
participants, the instruments and the procedures of data collection as well as data
analysis employed to reach the aims of the research.
Chapter 3 is the Results and Discussions which presents, analyzes and
discusses the findings that the researcher found out from the data collected by
means of interviews, class observations and lessons analyses.
Part C, the Conclusion gives the summary of the study, states some limitations of

language with its sound and meaning interlock to allow us to communicate with one
another. Ur (1996: 60) offered a clear and specific definition of vocabulary by
saying that: "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 and also multi-word idioms." By this way, he defines that vocabulary is bigger

5


than just the meaning of words. It covers a huge aspect of language and it is the
medium to express ideas or opinions.
In summary, among all various ways to define the concept "vocabulary", the
idea given by Ur (1996) that vocabulary is all the words existing in a language,
including single words to express ideas as well as multi-word idioms understood in
sentences or contexts is the most favorable.
1.1.2. The role of vocabulary in language teaching and learning
As said above, vocabulary, like grammar and phonetics, plays an important
role in mastering a foreign language. In order to emphasize the special importance
of vocabulary in teaching and learning a language, Folse (2004: 3) asserted that:
"Lack of grammar knowledge can limit conversation; lack of vocabulary knowledge
can stop conversation." In fact, learners can express themselves with poor grammar.
However, with poor vocabulary, communication is constrained considerably. In
other words, you can get by without grammar but you cannot get by without
vocabulary.
Shafaei and Nejati (2009: 32) also stated that “vocabulary is one of the most
important objectives in teaching foreign languages.” In addition, Gower et al (2005)
shared the agreement that vocabulary is very important to students; especially for
communication purposes it is more important than grammar. By all these
statements, it can be concluded that vocabulary is the decisive component of all
uses of language. The main objective of language learners is to understand and be

• Build a large sight vocabulary.
• Integrate new words with old.
• Provide a number of encounters with a word.
• Promote a deep level of processing.
• Facilitate imaging
• Make new words “real” by connecting them to the student’s world in some way.
• Encourage independent learning strategies.
In addition to these principles, Schmitt (2000) considered a few other points
which are also worth remembering. Firstly, the problem of cross – association is a
genuine one for learners. When two or more similar words, such as “left” and
“right”, are initially taught together in the same class, learning them might be more
difficult. Students are often confused in choosing which word form to go with
which meaning. Antonyms, synonyms, and closely related semantic groupings are
listed as subjects to cross – association. Secondly, it is worth teaching the
underlying meaning concept of a word. Many words are polysemous in English;
that is, they have more than one meaning sense. Besides, some of these different
meaning senses often have a common underlying trait. By defining the underlying
meaning, teacher can help students to understand the word in a much wider variety

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of contexts and the effect of teaching is maximized. Lastly, teaching word families
should be made a habit to enhance vocabulary learning. When teachers introduce a
new word, they should mention the other members of its word family.
The US Report of the National Reading Panel (2000) showed that
direct/explicit instruction is highly effective for vocabulary learning. In order to
acquire the in-depth word knowledge, students should be explicitly taught
individual words and word-learning strategies. Beck et al (2002) and Graves (2006)
summarized four strategies for teaching individual words explicitly: Provide a

such as movies, TV. Many linguists share the agreement that L2 learners have to
learn vocabulary implicitly from context. The context enables learners to know
different syntactic meanings and functions, to create appropriate word schemas, to
infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word and to promote the guessing meaning
strategies.
Learners can achieve benefits from implicit vocabulary approach because of
its contextualization, its pedagogical efficiency and its individualization (learnerbased feature). It means that incidental learning gives the learners a rich sense of
word use and meaning, encourages learners' vocabulary acquisition as well as
reading and enhance their own selection of reading materials. However, incidental
learning through reading might occur only to a limited degree as Schmitt (2000:
150) stated that "Unfortunately, this desirable approach is not widely available to
students around the world." For successful incidental acquisition of vocabulary,
many prerequisites should be paid attention to such as level of language proficiency,
learner’s large L2 vocabulary, strategic knowledge of inferencing process and rich
context with sufficient cues (Schmitt & McCarthy, 1997). Therefore, incidental
vocabulary learning of vocabulary may be a useful way of acquiring vocabularies
for most advanced learners.
From above, it can be concluded that any vocabulary programs need to
include explicit teaching and activities which promote incidental learning. The most
frequent 2,000 words are essential enough to teach explicitly, but less frequent
words may have to be largely acquired implicitly/incidentally. Vocabulary
acquisition is a gradual process; teachers have to focus not only on introducing new

13


words but also on enhancing learners' knowledge of previously presented words.
Therefore, there should be a combination of explicit teaching and incidental
learning in any well-structured vocabulary programs.
1.3. Principles for explicit approach to vocabulary teaching

pronunciation, (e) writing the word on the board, (f) pointing out any spelling
irregularity in the word.
Lastly, teachers can explain the use of the word by (a) quickly showing the
grammatical

pattern

the

word

fits

into

(countable/uncountable,

transitive/intransitive, etc), (b) giving a few similar collocates, (c) mentioning any
restrictions on the use of the word (formal, colloquial, impolite, only used in the
United States, only used with children, old fashioned, technical, infrequent), (d)
giving a well known opposite, or a well known word describing the group or lexical
set it fits into.
In addition, Nation also listed some main principles in vocabulary teaching
process. The teachers should 1) keep the teaching simple and clear and not give
complicated explanations, 2) relate the present teaching to past knowledge by
showing a pattern or analogies, 3) use both oral and written presentation - write it
on the blackboard as well as explain it, 4) give most attention to words that are
already partly known, 5) tell the learners if it is a high frequency word that is worth
noting for future attention, 6) not bring in other unknown or poorly known related
words like near synonyms, opposites, or members of the same lexical set.

characteristics of the students themselves and the method or teaching technique
approach. Students' problems in learning vocabulary are also regarded challenges in
language classes. Firstly, the students get difficulties in pronouncing words
correctly. Secondly, it is difficult for the students to memorize the meaning of the
words. In addition, they are not interested in studying in English because they feel
bored with the teaching technique. Usually the teacher taught vocabulary by
translating at the beginning of the lesson or translating of the material containing
new words or glossaries at the end. The teacher never uses self- defining context,
definition in the target language, opposites, picture, dramatization, and reality to put
across the meaning of a word to a class. In the literature, it seems that the problems
in the teaching and learning vocabulary tend to come from teachers. These factors
are listed followings:
(1) The teacher is not creative to use media as aids of teaching.

16


(2) The teacher only gives a little time to practice in pronouncing the words
correctly, whereas a little time to practice cannot create accurate pronunciation,
especially for the beginners or low-proficiency students.
(3) The technique of the teaching vocabulary that the teacher uses seems ineffective
for the students. It does not give the students great motivation to learn. In other
words, students are passive in learning vocabulary.
1.4. Summary
So far the theoretical issues related to the topic of the research have been
reviewed in this chapter. The next chapter will describe the methods employed in
the study and present procedure of data collection and data analysis.

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