VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
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VŨ THU TRANG

USING DIALOGUES TO TEACH VOCABULARY FOR THE
SECOND-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY
SỬ DỤNG ĐOẠN HỘI THOẠI ĐỂ DẠY TỪ VỰNG CHO SINH VIÊN
KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ HAI CỦA TRƯỜNG
ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field

: English Teaching Methodology

Code

: 60. 14. 10

Hanoi – 2013


VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
-----  -----


Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

Table of contents

vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1

1. Rationale

2

2. Aims of the study

2

3. Research question

2

4. Research methodology


1.2. Context and vocabulary teaching & learning

5

1.3. Guessing and inferencing strategy

6

1.4. Contextual clues

8

1.5. Advantages and disadvantages of context in vocabulary teaching and 11
learning.
2. Dialogues as a context for teaching vocabulary

12

2.1. Dialogue definition

12

2.2. Types of dialogue

12

2.2.1. Grammar-demonstration dialogue

13


2.3.1.5. Psychological features

16

2.3.2. Methodological features

16

2.4. Stages of teaching dialogues

16

2.4.1. Presentation Stage

17

2.4.2. Practice Stage

21

2.4.3. Production Stage

24

CHAPTER II: ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING CONTEXT 26
AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY
2.1. Students and their background

26


32

3.3.2. Data collection instruments

33

3.3.2.1. Test

33

3.3.2.2. Group Interview

33

3.3.4. Data collection procedure

34

CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS

36

v


4.1. The result of the pre-test and post-test

36



I

APPENDIX 2

V

APPENDIX 3

XI

APPENDIX 4

XII

APPENDIX 5

XIV

vi


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. RATIONALE
Hammer (1991) states “If language structure makes up the skeleton of language,
then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and flesh”. It is clearly seen from
this statement that vocabulary is central to language and is of great significance in
language learning. In the past, the importance of vocabulary teaching and learning was
generally neglected for a long time, yet in recent years, the nature of vocabulary and its
role in learning and teaching has been an increasingly interesting topic of discussion for

7. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The research includes three main parts: Part A, Part B and Part C.
Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research
question, the method of the study, the scope of the study, the significance of the study
and the design of the study.
Part B: Development consists of four chapters:
 Chapter 1: literature review
 Chapter 2: English teaching and learning context at Hanoi University of Industry
 Chapter 3: methodology
 Chapter 4: data analysis and discussion
Part C: Conclusion provides summary of major findings, implication, as well as
presents limitation and suggestion for further study.

3


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Teaching vocabulary in context
1.1. Definition of context
Context is an important concept. Therefore, there have been many different
definitions about context.
The word “context” comes from Latin words “co”, which means “together” and
“text”, which means words, sentences. Thus we can define that “context is the
circumstance in which the word is used”. In other words, it is the relationship between a
word and other words around it.
In the light of linguistics, David Nunan (1993:7) points out in his book that “context
refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse and within which the discourse is
embedded”.
Another as noted by Nguyen Hoa (2000: 39), “context seems to be the minimal

about the characteristic features of that word and the linguistic context in which that
specific word occurs. Gardner (2007) argues that many words in English have multiple
meanings which are context-dependent. When one tries to teach those words isolated
from context, they lose their meanings and become vague.
In the work namely “The book of Learning and Forgetting”, Frank Smith asserts
“Teaching one word at a time out of context is the worst way of teaching vocabulary,
with rapid forgetting almost guaranteed.” In his opinion, people assimilate new words
from context the first time they read them, “provided that gist of the material being read
is both interesting and comprehensible. Within five more encounters, the word and its
conventional meaning are usually firmly established in the mind of the reader.”

5


One principle of effective vocabulary learning is to provide multiple exposures to
a word‟s meaning. This is gre at improvement in vocabulary when students encounter
vocabulary words often (National Reading Panel. 2000). As stated by Stahl(2005),
students probably have to see a word more than once to put it firmly in their long-term
memories. In other words, it is essential that vocabulary instruction provide students with
opportunities to encounter words repeatedly and in more than one context. Teaching
vocabulary in context is probably the most useful technique, because it gets students to
work out the meaning of words for themselves.
Kruse (1979) made some suggestions for teaching vocabulary in context:
1. Word elements such as prefixes, suffixes and roots: recognizing component
parts of words, words families is of great value because it is one of the most
significant vocabulary skills the students may need. It also decreases the
number of new words they will encounter and increases their control of the
English lexicon.
2. Pictures, diagrams, charts: students may relate the illustration with the item
that is difficult to understand.

something tangible or intangible. But the act giving is radically different in these cases.
Each meaning of the verb “give” can be grasped through guessing strategy.
It is vital to understand when teaching learners to make contextual guesswork that
they will not be able to guess successfully until they know about 95-98% of the other
words in the text. Therefore, it is wise not to start teaching this strategy too early in the
learning process, because the learners will not know enough other words to guess
successfully. Teacher can help students to discover unknown-word meaning with specific
techniques and practice in contextual guesswork. Teacher can make use of the following
general strategies for guessing meaning from context:

7


1. Attempt to infer the meaning of the unknown word from the general
context preceding the word
2. Attempt to infer the meaning of the unfamiliar word from the general
context that follows the word
3. Attempt to infer the meaning of the unknown word by looking at the word
parts
4. Attempt to define the word
5. Attempt to infer the meaning of the unknown word by looking for specific
cues in the surrounding context
6. Attempt to construct a coherent definition, using internal and external cues,
as well as the general ideas expressed by the passage and general world
knowledge
7. Check definition to see if meaning is appropriate for each appearance of the
word in the context
(Sternberg et al., 1983:140)
1.4. Contextual clues
The use of context clues plays a vital role in language acquisition. Actually most

The last type is punctuation. Readers can also use clues of punctuation and type
style to infer meaning, such as quotation marks (showing the word has a special
meaning), dashes, parentheses or brackets (enclosing a definition), and italics (showing
the word will be defined). For example:
 Brackets: A tornado (a violent storm of twisting wind) struck Edmonton
and caused a lot of damage.
 Commas: A tornado, a violent storm of twisting wind, struck Edmonton
and caused a lot of damage.

10


 Dashes: A tornado – a violent storm of twisting wind – struck Edmonton
and caused a lot of damage.
1.5. Advantages and disadvantages of context in vocabulary teaching and learning
Teaching and learning vocabulary in context is the most important of all sources.
The real value of context lies in its authenticity, the benefits of which are of three
different sorts. As it is suggested by Monsell (1985), first of all, assessing the meaning of
a word in context obliges students to develop strategies like anticipating and inferring,
which become highly beneficial as learning progresses because they instill an attitude of
self-reliance that is the distinctive feature of proficiency. Secondly, systematically
meeting new vocabulary items in context emphasizes the fact that the words are actually
used in discourse for purposes of communication. Lastly, all the factors mentioned above
can be said to contribute to a learner‟s L2 autonomy and to facilitate the transfer of
knowledge that accompanies it. Moreover, they underline the fact that the mental
presentation of a word‟s meaning improves together with successive encounters in
different contexts. Thus, it may be subjected to modification because new and finer
semantic distinctions are added.
However, this strategy also has following disadvantages. In the first place, the
strategy is complex and often difficult to carry out successfully, because, the learners

conversation by a teacher in order to teach a language point (1997:105).
2.2. Types of dialogue
According to Rivers (1981), there are two broad categories of dialogues: grammardemonstration dialogues and conversation-facilitation dialogue.

12


2.2.1. Grammar-demonstration dialogue
This is the kind of dialogue which is designed to demonstrate grammatical rules,
and examples of rules in use. They provide contextualized examples from which students
will deduce generalizations about a particular grammatical structure.
For example: this dialogue focused on presenting the Near Future Tense in English.
Bill: Where are you going this evening?
Jane: I am going out with my family. We are going to the cinema.
Bill: What are you going to see?
Jane: “Gone with the wind”. My cousin‟s going with us. He and his wife are going
to meet us there
2.2.2. Conversation-facilitation dialogue
This type of dialogue provides learners with useful expressions and constructions
for daily conversation. That helps much in creating communicative skills for learners. For
example: many useful expressions in telephoning presented in the following dialogue

(New Headway Pre-intermediate, Unit 10, page 85)

13


2.3. Features of dialogue
A dialogue is a spoken form of language therefore it has all the features of spoken
language.

A: Coffee?

B: On the sofa.

B: No, thanks.

2.3.1.3. Syntactic features
Unlike the written language, the spoken one is not highly structured and organised
and sometimes ungrammatical because of some features mentioned above. However, it
doesn‟t make any difference for both speakers and learners because what they focus is
whether the message is understandable or not.
2.3.1.4. Objective features and situational features
In order to choose an appropriate style of language, before joining a conversation,
people should take in consideration the following factors such as: whom they
communicate with, in what situation the conversation takes place as well as the aims of
conversation. For example:
 A dialogue between two people who

 Or: A dialogue between two

meet for the first time.

friends

A: Excuse me! Could you tell me the time, A: Hey, Mary, tell me the time.
please?

B: 2p.m

B: It is 2p.m.

Teacher‟s role
In this stage, the teacher works as a guide and an informant. With the first role, the
teacher guides students to access to the dialogue by setting the scene for the dialogue,
eliciting from the students‟ knowledge, experience of the language used in the scene.
16


Thanks to such help, students can discover the dialogue themselves. With the second role,
the teacher is the person who introduces new knowledge to students such as new words,
new expressions, new grammatical structures or pronunciation.
At this stage, there are some principles the teacher should keep in their mind as
follow:
 Meaning, i.e. relate the word to an appropriate object or context
 Usage, i.e. knowledge of its collocations, metaphors and idioms, as well as style
and register (the appropriate level of formality),to be aware of any connotations
and associations the word might have
 Word formation, i.e. ability to spell and pronounce the word correctly, to know
any derivations (acceptable prefixes and suffixes),
 Grammar, i.e. to use it in the appropriate grammatical form
(Harmer, 1993)
Techniques
The following techniques for presentation stage are widely used for dialogue teaching.
They consist of visual techniques and verbal ones.
1. Visual techniques
Real object
When the teacher uses real objects to present new words especially concrete
nouns, students are directed towards the image of the word and memorize them more
quickly.
For example: to present the word “a watch” (New Headway Pre-intermediate, Unit
1, page 12), the teacher can pick up a watch, point at it and say “This is a watch.” Of

For example: to teach the phrases “sit down” and “stand up” (unit 11, page 92), the
teacher can do these actions in front of the class. The meaning of two phrases will be
introduced easily. Or some words expressing emotion like “sad” or “happy” can be taught
by facial expression.
However, when using these techniques, the teacher should notice that action, mine,
gestures performed by him/her must be clear and reasonable so as to avoid
misunderstanding of the meaning of words.
2. Verbal techniques
Contextual guesswork
Contextual guesswork can be used effectively while new vocabulary especially
abstract words are presented through dialogues because each dialogue is a context itself.
In order to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words, students had better see those words in
the relationship with words around; therefore this technique is considered rather difficult.
For example:
A: What‟s the weather like in December?
B: It‟s cold.
Proposed that “cold” is the word that students have to guess the meaning here. In
this case, the teacher firstly points out the key words of the dialogue: “weather” and
“December” and then asks students the meaning of these words. Surely, students can
easily deduce the meaning of “cold”.

19


Using definitions, examples, synonyms and antonyms
In some situations, definition may be the best choice for introducing new words.
For example: the word “nanny” ( New Headway Pre-intermediate, Unit 8, page 67) can
be conveyed to students by giving definition: a nanny is a person who looks after a child.
Besides that, the teacher should make full use of the synonyms to introduce the
meaning of the new word because “words are best taught in groups of similar meaning.”