The Impact of Using Wordlists in The Language Classroom on Students' Vocabulary Acquisition (INTRODUCTION, REVIEW OF LITERATURE, and METHODOLOGY)

Hello, Good Readers :D

How are you doing today? Well, it's been three weeks I did not made any posts on my blog. Thus, I do hope you are in a very good condition while you read my new post today, because I actually bring a brand new Journal of English Teaching to be reviewed! Are you excited?

Well, the journal is actually not holding a very new topic, because I still engage the topic from my previous journal, which is about "Vocabulary Acquisition in English Language Learning". I indeed like reading a research about Vocabulary Acquisition, because I think the most important thing when you want to learn a new language is vocabulary. This is supported by McCarthy (Jahan, 2017) who states that: “[n]o 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 meaning, communication in L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”. Therefore, this is really clear that to master a language we need to first master its vocabularies.

So, if you are interested in learning and knowing about Vocabulary Acquisition, then you are in a truly right place!

The Journal of English Teaching that I have got and would like to review in today's post is a journal by Gülçin Coşgun entitled The Impact of Using Wordlists in The Language Classroom on Students' Vocabulary Acquisition. So, basically the differences between the last journal that I reviewed, i.e. Using Music: An Effective Medium of Teaching Vocabulary in ESL Classroom by Takwa Sultana Jahan, with the new journal is just the medium for acquiring vocabulary and its strategy. If in the previous journal the medium and strategy used is music, then in this new journal the medium and the strategy used is a word wall. Below I would like to state the similarities and the differences between my previous journal and my new journal in a form of a table, I hope it could make you easier to understand my explanation.

The Differences and the Similarities of the Previous Journal and the New Journal

Then, just as in the previous journal's review, before I start to write my review I would like to mention the components of the new journal first. Below are the list of components of a journal entitled The Impact of Using Wordlists in The Language Classroom on Students' Vocabulary Acquisition by Gülçin Coşgun.

THE COMPONENTS OF THE JOURNAL

1. Title : The Impact of Using Wordlists in The Language Classroom on Students' Vocabulary Acquisition
2. Author : Gülçin Coşgun.
3. Abstract
4. Keywords
5. Introduction
6. Review of the Literature

·         Statement of the Problem and Purpose

·         Significance of the Research

·         Research Question

7. Methodology

·         Setting

·         Vocabulary in the context of the institution

·         Participants

·         Research Tradition and Approach

8. Data Collection

·         Implementation of wordlists

·         Instruments

·         Data Analysis

·         Quality of Research

9. Results & Findings

·         Receptive vocabulary acquisition

·         Controlled productive vocabulary acquisition

·         Significance of the difference

·         Students’ attitudes towards using vocabulary lists in the classroom

·         Reflective notes

10. Discussion

·         Implication to Research and Practice

·         Ethical Consideration

·         Limitations of the Study

11. Conclusion

·          Future Research

12. References

So, that is all of the components. Now, I am going to move to the Introduction, Review of Literature, and Methodology directly, since the title, author, and abstract are clearly stated above.

INTRODUCTION

Vocabulary has always been an area of interest and concern for many researchers and teachers alike since words represent “the building block upon which knowledge of the second language can be built” and without them people cannot convey the intended meaning (Abrudan, 2010). In addition, knowing about which methods of acquiring vocabulary work better could assist learners in adopting more profitable strategies. Hulsjin (1993) cited in Morin and Goebel (2001) suggests that teaching vocabulary should not only consist of teaching specific words but also aim at equipping learners with necessary strategies to expand their vocabulary knowledge.

However, Schmitt in Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:200) stated that among vocabulary learning strategies only ‘guessing from context’ and ‘key word method’ have been investigated in depth. Therefore, there is need for more research on vocabulary language learning and strategy training whose pedagogical implications may contribute to the field of second language learning. Having the above-mentioned issues in her mind, Coşgun believes vocabulary is a worthwhile field to investigate. Hence, this paper aims at proposing a framework for vocabulary teaching strategy in English as a foreign language context.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

According to Harley (1996) vocabulary knowledge is “a disarmingly simple term for a complex multidimensional phenomenon”. The components of word knowledge can be regarded as form, word structure, syntactic patterns, meaning, lexical relations with other words and collocations (Richard 1976, Nation 1988). Owing to this complexity, classroom teachers need to adopt a comprehensive approach to vocabulary development in order to help their students reach a higher quality and quantity of L2 output (Swain, 1996). One guideline for effective vocabulary teaching either deductively or inductively is careful selection of words to learn or to teach. Vocabulary teaching and learning should not be a random, ad hoc, process but should be guided by well supported principles’.

Frequency has been the most common principled way of selection of vocabulary in second or foreign language learning. There are four different lists of vocabulary categorized by Nation (2001): high-frequency words, academic words, technical words, and low-frequency words. These wordlists provide learners with a useful solution to a problem in the naturalistic acquisition of the vocabulary needed for academic studies. In Nation’s view, high-frequency words are vital to second language learning and they should be taught explicitly. Academic and technical vocabulary is also worth focusing on for students who study in an English medium university. Conversely, teachers do not need to spend time on teaching low-frequency vocabulary in class since these words occur rarely and students can deal with these words on their own if they are taught necessary strategies (Schmitt & Schmitt, 2012).

Therefore, teachers can help students get in to the habit of noticing by making clear which items should be learned during classroom time. In that sense, wordlists which are designed to make students focus on a particular set of vocabulary words might be a good way of developing the idea of noticing.

Word walls are the collections of developmentally appropriate vocabulary items which are displayed somewhere in a language classroom for study by students (Brabham and Villaume 2001; Thompkins 2003; Vallejo 2006). Word walls are useful tools for both teachers and students since they let teachers and students see and monitor what has been taught and learned. In addition, they serve as guides for teachers to determine what needs to be added to make word study systematic and to avoid gaps in the curriculum (Brabham, & Villaume, 2001). Therefore, the wordlist on the interactive word wall is effective since it serves as a memory aid helping the learners to visualize the network of relationship between new and familiar words (Celce-Murcia, 2001). Consequently, regular use of the word wall ensures greater retention of vocabulary since the use of it allows teachers to recycle many words (Green, 2003). 

Related to the article, the aim of the research is to explore whether the use of wordlists on a word wall helps students improve students’ vocabulary acquisition. To be able to find an answer to this question, the questions focused on throughout the research were:

1.        Does the use of word lists on a word wall in the language classroom improve students’ vocabulary acquisition?

2.        What are students’ views on using word lists on a word wall in the language classroom?

METHODOLOGY

The study was conducted at the School of English Language Instruction in a private English medium university, in Istanbul, Turkey. The applications of teaching vocabulary mostly involves explicit teaching in which students are provided with meaning, form and collocations of the target vocabulary items. Two classes were selected purposefully for this study. One class served as the experimental group with whom the wordlist was used in the classroom, and the other class constituted the control group with whom the word list was not used in the classroom. Each class comprised of seventeen Turkish students, including 24 males and 10 females. Their ages ranged from 17 to 22 years old.

The research was classroom research which was conducted by the teacher “for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of her educational environment and improving the effectiveness of her teaching” (Dörnyei, 2007:191). Furthermore, mixed methods research was adopted in the research process. As a method, mixed methods research “focuses on collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies and its central premise is that the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in combination provides a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone” (Creswell, & Plano, 2007:5).    

I think that’s all I can deliver from today’s post. I hope this can be useful for you guys. I am so sorry if there are a lot of mistakes in my writing, and thank you very much for visiting my blog. I do appreciate it. Bye. Much Love.