Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students

A. INTRODUCTION
1. REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC
The thesis teaching vocabulary to young learners deals with the need of a teacher to know his or her learners and to understand their needs and problems. Other issue mentioned in the thesis is the question of motivation and including fun and games into the teaching process. The last issue the thesis deals with is the usage of different methods and approaches for teaching young learners.
“Why? What is it good for? Is it good for them at all? Do they really need it? Is it not only a useless worry? Why do we have to make them learn something more than what they really need and have to? How much hope shall we place in it?” 
These are the most frequent questions I have been thinking about. I have discussed them with many pupils, teachers and parents. Reactions and opinions were, of course, different. I have been teaching English for many years at a primary school. I have to admit that at the beginning I doubted about any acquisition for young learners and many arguments seemed cogent to me. During the time I began to realize chances and occasions that English language can offer to children and I started to be a big fan of teaching English to young learners. 
I ran against a lot of troubles that I would like to share in my final thesis and also I would like to share some ideas for teaching vocabulary to young learners. At the beginning during the discussions with my colleagues we found out that some kind of conception was needed, next we pointed out that there were missing good textbooks or materials, also didactic aids and methodology books. Frequent complain of many teachers is that it is extremely difficult to teach children that seem to lack the basic talent for learning languages. Therefore I would like to refer to the possibilities which teaching a foreign language to young learners brings. 
The aim of this work is to show several ways that can be used for teaching vocabulary to young learners. I would like to show why and how teaching vocabulary to young learners can be more efficient. 
I divided my thesis into the theoretical and the practical part – the practical part follows the theoretical part. In the theoretical part I will introduce the aim of this thesis, then I will try to describe who is a young learner. In the next chapter I will focus on what is vocabulary and how it is learned and also the ways how vocabulary can be presented.. 
In the second part of my thesis I would like to present my system of work and also different methods I use while teaching. I will enclose some materials and games that I use in 9 my lessons. In conclusion I will briefly summarize my thesis. After that follows the list of sources - books (used literature) which I used for my thesis and the appendices where I included some materials and exercises with the keys.
After exploring and accumulating the experiences from colleagues, I have some experiences in teaching reading comprehension and achieved quite effective results. The students are more interested in learning English and more confident in doing their reading exercises. This improves that my methods are right. With the passion and the love for teaching English, I have studied and developed the research: "Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students " 
2. THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH. 
- The research applies the methods of teaching vocabulary to involve students in learning English well.
- Creating the language circumstance to communicate in English and promote students to actively participate in communicative activities; offering some solutions and methods for teaching vocabulary.
- Exchanging and sharing some experiences in teaching vocabulary for primary students.
3. RESEARCH TASKS
- Systematizing some theoretical issues about the procedures and activities in teaching vocabulary in English Primary program according to the communicative approach.
- Exploring the present situation of teaching vocabulary at Primary School and suggesting some techniques in teaching vocabulary to develop skills for primary students, helping them be more confident to communicate in English.
4. RESEARCH TIME AND LOCATION
Research Time : School Year 2014-2015.
Research Location: Dong Ninh Primary School 
Research Object: " Experience in teaching vocabulary for primary students " 
The respondents of the research: With this research I focused on the primary student, especially the students of class 4.
B. CONTENT
1 . RATIONALE 
1.1. Young learner - who is a young learner? 
A young learner – who is he or she? This term covers a wide age range, this can be anybody from the age of three to the age of eighteen. There is a big difference between what a –three-year-old child can do and what a child of fifteen can do. We should consider their development too. Some children develop faster, others need more time. Teaching young learners requires the knowledge of knowing all the development differences. Understanding these differences can help me as a teacher to develop methods and a system of work that I will use in the process of teaching. Of course, it is not possible to say that every child of six will know this and that. But it is possible to pick out some characteristics which I as a teacher should know and should be aware of. 
I have decided to focus on young learners – age group 7-11. I have chosen this age group because I like working with young learners. From my own personal experience I have to admit that learners at this age are grateful when someone invests time in them. The results are seen quite easily and of course teachers demand this kind of satisfaction. These children still want to learn something new. When they know it, they are happy to present it and they feel more important. I remember a girl - 5th grades - who was able to “communicate” with a native speaker. Her joy was the best reward for me.
It is generally known that the Czech system officially allows children to start learning a foreign language in the 4th grade. In the Czech Republic children have started learning a foreign language in the 4th grade so far. However, according to the new school curricula, which are starting to be adopted from September 2006, the children will start a year earlier and in some schools the foreign language will be introduced from the 1st grade. In the 7th grade they will have to start learning a second foreign language. In my opinion, the sooner they start the better for them. Their brain and memory is ready for learning and most of them can learn quite well. There have been many disputes and discussions over this. I think these debates will be run over and over because nobody is able to say the exact time for beginning to learn foreign languages. From my personal experience, I achieved quite good results with kindergarten children so I do not see any problems for older learners. I think if very young learners are able to achieve good results, I think the older ones can do it too.
I would like to point out some characteristics about this age group:
- They are happy when they can play. 
- They love to share their experiences, they love when people pay attention to them and their talking. 
- They are able to talk about what they are doing. 
- They use imagination a lot. 
- They can think, argue, discuss and they are able to interact with both children and adults. They are able to concentrate for certain time. 
- They understand situations and through situations – they use several senses. 
- They are able to use language skills not even realizing them.
- They do not realize what fact is and what fiction is sometimes. 
- They want to learn and are happy when they learn something, then they have to share it with somebody and they are proud that they learnt something, they can show off a little bit. 
- Often they “teach” each other.
- They love to be praised for what they have done and learnt, this is very important fact to keep their motivation.
- Very often they pretend they understand everything and they know everything.
Halliwell states that: 
- Young children are already very good at interpreting meaning without necessarily understanding the individual words
- Already have great skill in using limited language creatively 
- Frequently learn indirectly rather than directly 
- Take great pleasure in creating fun in what they do 
- Their imagination is ready 
- “above all take great delight in talking” (Halliwell, 1992, p 3)
I do agree with Halliwell and her observations. My observations are the same as hers. These examples of characteristics I have mentioned above are great hints how to teach young learners and what kind of methods we should use. It is very important to choose the right way of teaching for these little children. The teacher definitely has to be very sensitive to the children’s needs and has to prepare the lessons well.. We should avoid a stereotype, the 12 lessons have to be creative and lively. Otherwise this could have really bad consequences for the learners´ further improvement in the language.
1.2. Vocabulary 
1.2.1. What is vocabulary? 
“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than just a single word: for example, post office, and mother-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary „ items “rather than „words“. (Ur, 2003, p 60) 
All languages consist of words. Languages emerge first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. Moreover, vocabulary is still widening. Even in our native language we are continually learning new words and meanings of old words. For example, Czech word pošta. This used to mean just the post office or simple letters but nowadays it also means emails. Some words can be entirely new to us. We come across completely new words that are made up according to new technologies and according to the needs of real life. For example, a verb to Google is used frequently a lot. Learners of a second language experience something similar. Thornbury states that they can be confronted by words that are totally unfamiliar, or being used in ways that for them are novel and possibly obscure. To find the right word to fit the meaning can be very frustrating, especially if the store of words is limited.
To summarize this, the learner while learning the vocabulary of a second language can come across several challenges: 
- “making the correct connections, when understanding the second language, between the form and meaning of words 
- When producing language, using the correct form of a word for the meaning intended ( i.e. nose not noise).
To meet these challenges the learner needs to: 
- Acquire a critical mass of words for use in both understanding and producing the language 
- Remember words over time, be able to recall them readily 14 
- Develop strategies for coping with gaps in word knowledge, including coping with unknown words, or unfamiliar uses of known words
- Have to take responsibility themselves for vocabulary expansion” (Thornbury, 2002, p 31).
1.2.2. How are words learned?
“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing nothing nothing can be conveyed.” 
 David Wilkins, linguist 
To know a word is one thing but we have to pause on the fact how this knowledge is acquired. Thinking about little children who learn to speak, then they always start with words used for labeling, so that the concept, for example, of a cat has a name cat. But of course not every animal is a cat. The child needs to learn how far to extend the concept of a cat. “In other words, acquiring a vocabulary requires not only labeling but also categorizing skills.” (Thornbury, 2002, p 18) The child has to realize that these common words like cat can be replaced by super ordinate terms like animals. And to this category also belongs other animals, not just cats. Thornbury states that the children have to develop some kind of network building – constructing some complex idea. Than during this process they will realize there also exist words like synonyms, homonyms etc.
There are many different methods and approaches how to teach a foreign language, including vocabulary. I will mention just some of them that can be used for teaching young learners.
- To help the learners understand it is important to visualize the item and get the pupils to repeat or use the item actively. One good way of doing this is to let them see or perhaps touch the vocabulary item, for instance a house. We need to let them repeat it in different ways and they should be given a chance to listen to the teacher talking about it. 
- A little bit of shocking method is the direct method or the direct approach. The mother tongue is never used, there are no translations. Only target language is used in the classrooms and only complete sentences are used. Culture is considered an important aspect. 
- Suggestopedia is a very successful method in helping learners to memorize words. This method stimulates the learner’s brain by music while learning but nowadays teachers seem to be leaving this method. 
- What really works especially for young learners is the Total Physical Response method - TPR. Very many children are nowadays very hyper and physically active 16 and to concentrate for a long time can be very difficult for them. Using this method, games, changing topics and using a variety of activities is very appreciated by them. This method is used a lot by teachers.
- Communicative Language Approach (Teaching) – CLT – stresses the meaning of a language in context. Communicative competence is highly developed here and learners are encouraged to communicate.
1.2.3. Which words and what should be taught? 
The significant point in teaching vocabulary is the selection of words we as teachers want to teach. It is quite easy to teach concrete words at lower level and then become more abstract. Thus, we need to consider the frequency too. There is a choice for us; we can decide which words to teach on the basis of frequency, how often the words are used by the speaker of the language. Especially with young learners words that they are familiar with and they can stick to them should be taught. Very often words are taught according to themes and topics. Nowadays all the course books are organized into themes and they provide vocabulary according to it. If there is a theme “Animals”, then we can expect words like naming animals, also where they live, what they eat etc. Words that have quite specific meaning should be avoided with young learners. 
Ur states the learners need to be taught the form of the word, then grammar, collocations, meaning and word formation. 
In the form pronunciation and spelling should be mentioned. “The learner has to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling).” (Ur, 1996, p 60) The grammar of a new item also needs to be taught. Again, depending what level the learners are they should be taught to follow some grammatical rules. For example when teaching nouns, we would like to present their plural forms, also regular and irregular (girl-girls, mouse-mice). When teaching verbs, maybe we would like to present their past forms, especially if the verb is irregular (forget-forgot). 
Word formation – using prefixes and suffixes, using hyphenated words etc. is too difficult for young learners. 
To summarize this, firstly I think that knowing the word and understanding its meaning go hand in hand. Secondly, it is easier to remember concrete words like a chair or a dog than abstract words. Young learners often put words together with what they can see, hear or with what they can touch. But as said above they also need to know other aspects of the words they learn. In my opinion, it is important to teach them all these aspects. Of course, we will not teach them, for example the irregular plural form right away, but they need to know it. I think that if we keep repeating the plural form “mice”, after some time most of them will not say “mouses”.
2. THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE PROBLEM 
For many years, teaching vocabulary was viewed as a mastery of these skills. Vocabulary followed what the study called mentioning, practicing, and assessing procedure where teachers mentioned a specific skill that students were to apply, had students practice the skill by completing workbook pages, then assessed them to find out if they could use the skill correctly. Instruction did little to help students learn how or when to use the skills, nor was is ever established that this particular set of skills enabled comprehension.
A significant base of research, developed over many years, is available to inform educators about effective approaches to teaching children to read. However, research on applying the methods of teaching vocabulary for primary students is in its infancy. This reflects the fact that many teachers in Vietnam are faced with the challenge of teaching children to listen and speak in English when the students have a heritage language that is not English and they are not yet proficient in English. Making this a more critical issue, several researches suggest that teachers are not receiving adequate professional development in effective strategies to teach vocabulary for students. In order to make best use of the information presented in this research, many teachers might want to consider the following set of questions together in preparation for making decisions about teaching vocabulary for primary students. 
Analysis of my school’s performance in teaching and learning vocabulary in recent years showed that students normally forget vocabulary after learning them. It was a situation that was of concern and motivated a thorough examination of the school’s approach to the teaching of vocabulary. 
Our school is a public primary school in Dong Son province. It is a large school with around . students, ranging from 6 to 10 years old. There are three to four classes in most year levels, meaning that collaboration among teachers is extremely important to ensure consistency in learning programs. After several years of teaching the book Tieng Anh 3,4,5, I found that most of the students do not like learning vocabulary. They often forget vocabulary after the lesson. 
* The quality survey and students’ classification:
	Based on the present situation of students in grade 4 the level of all students is acquired after a few weeks of the school year with the methods of teaching vocabulary. I had 40 minutes to test students in grade 4 to survey and classify the students. The following chart will show the result: 
Grade
The numbers
of students
Excellent
(A)
Good
(B)
Fair
(C)
Poor
(D)
Fail
(F)
4
78
0
17 = 22%
32 = 41%
22= 28%
7 = 9%
According to the survey result, I have classified the students and immediately applied the methods and experiences which I accumulated over the years to improve the teaching and learning quality. 
THE SOLUSION
According to the present situation in English classes at my school. Learning vocabulary is so difficult for all grades from 3 to 5. To improve this situation, I would like to present some techniques for teaching vocabulary and elicit the strategies of teaching vocabulary for primary students which I have researched and applied quite successfully at my school.
3.1. Vocabulary presentation 
“By presentation we mean those pre-planned lesson stages in which learners are taught pre-selected vocabulary items.” (Thornbury, 2002, p 75) 
Firstly, we should consider how many words should be presented during the lesson. This is closely connected with several factors: 
- The level of the pupils – beginners, intermediate etc. 
- Their famil