The effect of contextualized vocabulary presentation on 10th form students’ English vocabulary acquisition. An action research at To Hieu High school, Hai Phong = Ảnh hưởng của việc dạy từ vựng trong ngữ cảnh tới việc tiếp thu từ vựng của học sinh lớp 10. Nghiên cứu hành động tại trường THPT Tô Hiệu, Hải Phòng. M.A Thesis Linguistics: 60 14 10

Abstract

Vocabulary plays a critical role in second/foreign language learning, but learning vocabulary is really a great challenge to any learner. This is because vocabulary learning involves many cognitive processes such as recognition of the formal properties of the word, understanding its semantic and pragmatic properties, storing the word in the long-term memory, and using the word in language production. Therefore, teachers have to find ways of how to teach vocabulary effectively in different contexts. It has been recommended in the vocabulary teaching literature that presenting vocabulary in context or contextualized vocabulary presentation can help make the students’ vocabulary acquisition process less challenging and more effective. This is the motivation for me to carry out this study. The study, which is an action research study in nature, sets out to examine the effectiveness of contextualized vocabulary presentation to a group of high school students of grade 10 in a particular school. The study started with a simple, informal survey to find out the students’ difficulties in acquiring English vocabulary. On the basis of the outcome of this ‘survey’, I decided to design activities that help to present vocabulary in contexts. The intervention lasted six weeks. During this period, the students had to take three progress tests of vocabulary. The tests were designed to measure the students’ ability to use the taught words in different contexts as well as their retention of the taught words. By the end of the intervention, a focus group interview was carried out to find out the students’ attitudes towards this vocabulary strategy. Data from the interview showed that the students really enjoyed contextualized vocabulary activities and they also showed a positive attitude to this instructional strategy. Findings of the study did not show great improvement on the part of the students’ vocabulary acquisition. This might be because the time of the intervention was not long enough (6 weeks) for the students to familiarize themselves with the new instructional strategy and for the intervention to bring about significant difference. Drawing on the findings of the study I came to the conclusion that vocabulary teaching is complex and it seems that the application of one particular technique can hardly bring about the desired results. Instead, a variety of vocabulary techniques should be used. The change in teacher’s teaching methods can help motivate the students. This is evidenced by the students’ attitudes toward vocabulary learning despite their insignificant change in the test scores.