Suggesting some methods to help the form 9th students at Chu Van An secondary school overcome their difficulties in learning english vocabulary

INTRODUCTION
1. Reasons of choosing the study
As global communication among people has increased, English has become the first choice for cross-border communication worldwide. English is the language most widely taught as a foreign language in more than 100 countries in the world. In Vietnam, since the economic open door policy, English has been also considered to be the most popular foreign language. Especially after becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, English has become a great demand for schooling and job opportunities.
In learning a foreign language in general, and English in particular, vocabulary plays an important role. Because meaning is chiefly conveyed through words, vocabulary is the foundation of communication, without which communication would be very limited. McCarthy (1990) states that “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”[1]. By having rich vocabulary, students can improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities, not only in the way they comprehend but also in the way they produce language. In order to become independent users of English, students should acquire an adequate number of words and should know how to use them accurately. However, vocabulary acquisition is really challenging to every student, especially students at secondary schools. 
In the context of Chu Văn An secondary school (CVASS), English is a compulsory subject to the students. Vocabulary lessons are not paid enough attention in order to help students learn new words more effectively. As a result, most of them have formed a habit of only learning new words found in their text books or through teachers’ sources. They normally learn vocabulary by such methods as listing new words on a notebook and learning them by heart, writing new words repeatedly down on papers, reading new words out loud several times, and so forth. These above seem not to be very effective and interesting ways for vocabulary acquisition. Moreover, students only think of vocabulary learning as knowing the primary meaning of new words, they ignore all other functions of the words. Many of them may also recognize a word in a written or spoken form and think that they already "know the word", but they may not be able to use that word properly in different contexts or pronounce it correctly. Many students, after learning English for many years, can only read and understand short and simple texts and hardly communicate in English. 
As a specialist of English, I have dealt with many questions relating to vocabulary learning which are raised by the students or among the English teachers. For example, “why is it very difficult to remember new words?” or “what are the effective ways of learning vocabulary?”, etc. Therefore, I tried to find the answers to these questions by conducting a study. So I boldly choose the topic “SUGGESTING SOME METHODS TO HELP THE FORM 9TH STUDENTS AT CHU VAN AN SECONDARY SCHOOL OVERCOME THEIR DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY ” .
2. Purpose of the study 
The study aims to find out the factors that cause difficulties for the 9th form students in learning English vocabulary at Chu Văn An secondary school and to suggest some solutions to help students learn vocabulary more effectively.
3. Scope of the study
	 The subjects of the study include 130 9th form students at Chu Văn An secondary school. These participants are from 3 different classes. 78 of them are male and 52 are female. All of the participants are at the age of 15 and have been studying English for at least 6 years at primary schools and secondary schools. All of them come from different villages in Nga Son district, Thanh Hoa province. So they rarely have chance to commucicate with each other in English. It is one of their difficculties in learning English generally and learning vocabulary particularly.
4. Methods of the study
	In order to achieve the purpose of the study, both qualitative and quantitative methods are used. That is all comments, conclusions, suggestions given in the experience are based on the analysis of data from a survey questionnaire responded by 130 9th form students, an informal interview answered by three English teachers of the school, author’s classroom- observation and students’ result from some vocabulary tests.
CONTENT
Theoretical background
No doubt that vocabulary is a significant factor in language acquisition since words play an important role in expressing our feeling, emotions, and ideas to others during the act of communication. However, learning vocabulary is really a big challenge for students in learning a foreign language. The purpose of vocabulary learning include both remembering words and the ability to use them automatically in a wide range of language contexts. However, we can see that the major difficulties in learning vocabulary of the students are mispronunciation and incorrect usage of words. So they are less confident to speak English in front of their teachers as well as their classmates. Most of the students say that they can hardly express their ideas in speaking and writing lessons and it is difficult for them to get the gist of information from the conversation or texts in listening and reading lessons. As a result, students only “know a word” but they might not “use a word”. That’s why they easily forget the words they have learnt and they could not improve and develop their learning English skills.This is true in learning a foreign language. If a learner has a wide range of vocabulary, he can help himself understood and understand others easily. However, if his vocabulary is limited he will surely have difficulty in doing so and in English learning. Therefore, nobody can learn a language without learning vocabulary, and nobody can be a good language user without a reasonably rich vocabulary. These all show that the success of a student in becoming proficient in any language depends in part on the extent and richness of his/ her vocabulary, so vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus, and vocabulary should be taught on a well-planned and regular basis.
2. Practical back ground
	The study was conducted at Chu Văn An secondary school which located in the countryside of Thanh Hoa province. Established in 1991, CVASS is the most qualified secondary school whose students have always been selected from other schools in Nga Sơn district. All subjects including English are taught with new course books and new methods according to the renovation program put forth by the Ministry of Education and Training.
2.1.The teachers and their teaching methods
	In Chu Văn An secondary school, there are 4 English teachers whose teaching experience varies from 5 to 20 years. All of them have BA degrees in English language teaching from different tertiary institutions in Vietnam.
	It is obvious that most of the English teachers at CVASS are deeply influenced by grammar-translation method. Teachers at CVASS usually apply the traditional method of teaching in vocabulary lesson that Grammar- translation method. In classes, the teacher play the key role, talk most of the time, explain new words and mostly translate them into Vietnamese. Students often listen and copy on their notebooks passively. Hence, this method leads to lack of motivation and few chances for the students to practice English in general and vocabulary in particular.
2.2. The students and their background
	The learners at Chu Văn An secondary school are the best students who have been selected basing on their results from the entrance exam. There are around 45 students of mixed ability in each class. There are 18 classes, among which the 9th form students take up 5 classes. All of the students come from the countryside, so they have less or no exposure to authentic English. In fact, most of these students commonly spend very little time learning English as they have to spend much of the time learning other subjects. Especially they spend most of their time learning the subjects that they are good at and selected in the group of ten students to take the exams for good students. Therefore, the majority of them learn English because it is a compulsory school subject and they learn it just to pass the tests in the class. 
2.3. The teaching materials and facilities
	The book Tieng Anh 9 by the Ministry of Education and Training has been used as the only the textbook to teach the student at Chu Văn An secondary school. It consists of 10 units. Each unit is divided into 5 lessons. Every unit provides students with opportunities to learn and develop their knowledge in categories of grammar, vocabulary, communication skills, and pronunciation through practicing activities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Especially, the number of vocabulary in each unit is rather large. Thus, the students usually feel very difficult in learning and mastering it.
Teaching facilities also play an important part in teaching English and may affect the learning process positively or negatively. At Chu Van An secondary school, there is no English laboratory. There is one computer room but used for teaching informatics, not for English. There is also one library with few English books or magazines. The only facilities for learning and teaching English are some cassette-players in poor condition. It is obviously that the teaching facilities are poorly equipped. This certainly has considerable negative effects on teaching and learning English at Chu Văn An secondary school.
Thus the difficulties in learning English vocabulary were caused by both internal factors and external factors. The internal factors are such factors coming from the students themselves as, their lack of motivation and effective ways to learn vocabulary and also their natural characteristics of young age. The external factors are English learning environment, vocabulary learning task and lack of time for studying English 
3. The solutions
3.1. Encouraging students’ self- study
No doubt that the more vocabulary a language learner has, the better they are considered to master the language. However, it is impossible for students to learn all the vocabulary they need in the classroom since there are so many words which teachers cannot teach students properly within the class time limit, thus, vocabulary expanding process requires the higher level of autonomy as well as more responsibility from learners themselves.
Basing on the findings, the students at CVASS always encounter difficulties in understanding and remembering new words. Therefore, it is an important responsibility of the teachers to help learners develop their self- study.
Firstly, teachers should enhance the students’ interest and make them highly motivated in learning vocabulary by helping them realize that success in learning depends much on their own efforts, like the way Scharle and Szabó state: “success in learning very much depends on learners taking responsibility” (2000,p.4). [2]
Secondly, the teachers help students understand the nature of vocabulary learning process. It is an active process that requires students actively take part in. This means that the students no longer depend on teacher’s lecture, they must actively join in all vocabulary activities in order to understand and remember vocabulary better. 
Finally, it is clear that “autonomy is an ability to put one’s own study into effect”. However, learner autonomy does not mean avoiding any reliance on sources of help around you. This means that the student employs the teacher as a source of help, effectively bring the teacher into his or her own learning agenda. Therefore, the teachers should give homework frequently so that students have chance to practice what they have learnt and hence reinforce their specialized knowlegle. But to avoid sudents’copy the result from the others, the teachers should apply effective ways to give them the exercises and check their answers. 
Here is a sample exercise suggested by the author to provide students to do at home.
Sample exercise: Making sentence
Aim: revise and develop learned word usage in Unit 3: A trip to the countryside
Time: 15- 20 minutes
Procedures: 
- The first time: The teacher gives 5 learned words (all these words are the same parts of speech) and asks students to make the sentences with them.
- The second time: The teacher supplies another form of each word (teacher may encourage students to find out this form of a word themselves) and ask them to make other sentences with these new forms of the words.
- Each time as that, the student can create a portfolio about the different usage of the learned words in the sentences which completely distinguish from the other students’. 
For example: - The first day with the verb-form of word: collect
The students A may write: I like feeding chikens and collecting their eggs.
The student B may write another sentence: My younger sister has collected dolls since she was three years old.
- The second day with the noun- form of this word: Collection
The student A may make a sentence: My father has a large collection of coins 
The student B may write: Her collection of stamps is very beautiful.
If students become self- studiers and develop their autonomy in learning vocabulary as above, not only will sudents’ difficulties be overcome but also teacher’s heavy task in lecturing will be reduced. 
3.2. Providing students with different vocabulary learning strategies
Vocabulary can be learned in a variety of ways. The most common of these is incidental learning through listening and reading using context clues to work out the meaning. Vocabulary knowledge can also be enriched through having to produce vocabulary in spoken or written form. The quality and thoughtfulness of the production influences the quality of storage of the word.
However, from the findings, the students’ vocabulary learning strategies were limited. They have many difficulties in word usage, word pronunciation and word spelling. They couldn’t find the effective ways to learn English vocabulary so they expected their teachers to provide them with the better strategies. 
There are some typical vocabulary learning strategies which may be applied for the secondary school students and may reduce their difficulties. They are: 
* Learning vocabulary through communication
Learning vocabulary through communication is an important strategy. Though it does not contribute to vocabulary learning directly, it allows learners to be exposed to the target language. In this process, learners can produce the utterance and test the knowledge they have learnt [3]
Through communication, listener can help speaker by pointing out the incorrect use of item in his or her speech. Feedback is given immediately and learners can benefit from it. In this method learners can keep the conversation going on and acquire more new vocabulary.
 	Moreover, when communicating, there is interaction between speakers and learners so learners have to give some reaction to the speakers. Thus, they would concentrate on the speech and give response. In this process, they would encounter some word repeatedly and they have to produce output. when learners encourter the new item in communication, they are more likely to be required to use them productively in the activity. For example: In Unit 5: The media
Lien: you like watching sports, don’t you, Trung ?
Trung: Not really. Some sports are so violent, and I don’t like watching them. I prefer documentaries.
Lien: I’m the opposite. I love watching sports, and documentaries seem quite boring to me.
Trung:.
The students may communicate with their teachers, classmates, friends and so on. Through communication, the students can master the learned words with different usage, different degree of expressions and in different situations. So this strategy is very helpful for both unsuccessful learners and successful learners. 
* Learning vocabulary through listening
Listening provides students a best way to learn new words and review the words they have learned. They can listen to tapes, movie, music and their teachers when they are in class. This strategy can contribute to vocabulary learning directly. Nation states that there is evidence showing that through listening to a story learners can acquire vocabulary. Especially, listening to English songs, the stories in English can interest learners and their contexts are helpful in vocabulary acquisition. When they are listening to words time and time again, they need to pay attention to the sound of every word and the meaning of every sentence. The result that the students can improve their pronunciation, memorize the word and understand the usage of the new word in the learned context. For example: After learning Unit 8: Celebrations, the students can listen to the song Auld Lang Syne. This process helps them revise and develop the learned words which are highlighted below.
Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend!
and gie's a hand o’ thine!
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
* Learning vocabulary by guessing from context
Guessing from context is probably one of the most useful skills learners can acquire and apply inside and outside the class. Teacher can suggest a –five-step- strategy for guessing from context: 
1. Finding the part of speech of the unknown word.
2. Looking at the immediate context of the unknown word and simplying this context if necessary.
3. Looking at the wider context of the unknown word. This means looking at the relationship between the clause containing the unknown word and surrounding clauses and sentences.
4. Guessing the meaning of the unknown word.
5. Checking that the guessing is correct.
This means that the students may use structural formation and context clues to guess the new word.
- Using structural formation: The information of the unknown word such as prefixes, suffixes and part of speech is very useful for learners to refer the meaning of the new word. Such as, prefixes un-, dis-, always have negative meanings (appointed - disappointed, familar - unfamilar). Suffixes -ful, -able often occur in adjectives (careful, comfortable).
- Using context clues: Students can deduce the possible meaning of unknown word and phrase by using the meaning of other words around. For example : Unit 7 - The reading lesson .
In Western countries, electricity, gas, and water are not luxuries but necessities. Companies now realize that consumers want products that will not only work effectively, but also save money.
The students underline the word consumers and guess the meaning due to the words around it such as luxuries, products, save money.
Learning vocabulary by guessing from the context require so many skills. So, it has a bit difficulty for unsuccessful students in learning English but it is very useful for the students who are good at English. 
* Learning vocabulary through word formation
Most of content words in English can change form by adding prefixes ( re-, un-, in-, dis-, and so on) or suffixes (-ful, - less, -ly, -ness and so on). Thus, learning word parts may be helpful to acquire vocabulary. Nation states severals kinds of knowledge that are needed to use word parts. 
Firstly, learners have to be able to recognize that a complex word is made up by several parts and those parts are also co