RESEARCH TASK

English Language Teacher Training

Year 1
Group Members:
Paulo António
Kinavuid Afonso
Sebastião Monteiro

TOPIC: VOCABULARY

TITLE: The Learning of Foreign Language Vocabulary in Context

PROBLEM
The EFL learners at PUNIV-Talatona struggle to communicate due to low vocabulary level.
As vocabulary is one of the three essential components (grammar, pronunciation and
vocabulary) that constitute language knowledge, the students attending tenth grade at
PUNIV-Talatona a high school in Luanda that has English as foreign language subject, they
have difficulties when interacting in different contexts which require a certain set of words
that enable them to keep their fluent communication. Despite the fact that the students spend
a great deal of time memorizing lists of words, they struggle to remember such words when
interacting once they were not learned in a certain context. The purpose of this study,
therefore, is to investigate how the low vocabulary level affects the students’ communication
and it also seeks to assess how they can effectively increase their vocabulary in order to
make them able to have fluent conversation despite the place or the context they are exposed
to.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. How the lack of enough vocabulary affects the students’ communication?
2. How can the EFL learners increase their vocabulary level?
3. What is the students´ expectation of learning vocabulary in context?
LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to perceive vocabulary importance, Sara shahiraki (2011) states that “mastering
vocabulary is one of the most challenging tasks that any learner faces when learning foreign
language and, thus, many language learners devote a great deal of time on memorizing L2
words and rely on their bilingual dictionary”. Regarding to this issue, Qi Pan and Rujiang Xu
(Vocabulary Teaching, 2011:4) concluded that “without a large English vocabulary, no one
can claim a good command of the language”).
Hatch and Brown (Vocabulary, Semantics and Language Education, 1995) say that “learners
strategies fall into five essential steps: 1. having sources for encountering new words; 2.
getting the forms of the new words; 3. learning meaning of the words; 4. making a strong
memory of the words; 5. using the words”. In her article, Lomakina L.V (2020:pag.18-19)
summarized her conclusion stating that “there are many different methods; however,
vocabulary is most effectively learned using several approach”.
In his conclusion, Stevick (Memory, Meaning and Method, 1973) pointed out “vocabulary is
easier to learn in contexts than in isolated word lists in that such meaningful contexts permit
this more complex and deeper cognitive processing, which enhances storage memory”.
In a Case Study conducted by Johnson and Rasmussen (1998) it was stated that “for
vocabulary learning, first, students should be provided with multiple exposures to words in a
variety of contexts over time; second, words should be taught in the context of a story,
theme, or content are unit; third, relationships should be established between new words and
known words and concepts; fourth, students should be taught to use contexts clues and
dictionaries to develop their word knowledge, finally students should be taught to interact
with words so deep processing can occur”.

REFERENCES

Sara Shahraki (2011): Vocabulary in the Approaches to Language Teaching. Journal of

Languge Teaching, Vol.2.
Lomakina L.V.(2020):Peculiarities Of Vocabulary Learning In Professional Foreign
Language Communication Training. National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor
Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”.
Qi Pan & Runjiang Xu (2011): Vocabulary Teaching in English Language Teaching. Theory
and Practice in Language Studies, Vol.1.
Stevick. (1973). Memory, Meaning and Method. Massachusetts: Newbury House.
Hatch, E., Brown, Ch. Vocabulary, Semantics, and Language Education. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Johnson, A. P. & Rasmussen, J. B. (1998): Two strategies to improve vocabulary instruction.
Journal of adolescent & Adult Literacy.
Method

Research Site: this research will be conducted at PUNIV-Talatona that is a high school in
Luanda. The target class is the tenth grade from Human Sciences Course which has English
as foreign language subject.

Participants: the participants will be a group of students who will be randomly selected
from the 52 learners attending tenth grade at PUNIV-Talatona. After being selected, learners
will be requested for voluntary participation so that they can be committed to carry out this
study. The teacher will also participate in this research by answering the questionnaire that
will be given related to vocabulary teaching in context.

Instruments

Audio-recorded interviews: after selecting the participants, learners´ speeches will be

recorded during a short conversation. In this interview we will be asking questions related to
several topics and contexts (personal questions, daily life, social and educational affairs)
from the simple to the complex ones. The learners will argue all these issues in order to
evaluate their vocabulary extent and their capacity to develop a fluent communication
discussing different themes. Their speeches will be utilized as the datum that will be
collected during the interviews in order to be analyzed and compared with the datum which
will be collected after the classes to be conducted and help the learners increase their
vocabulary.

Treatment: to help the students enlarge their vocabulary, the TBLT approach class will be
led. After recording and analyzing the speeches, learners will be taught with the TBLT
approach. Throughout the teaching we will be providing a certain set of texts containing
different contexts of story, contents discussing social, cultural and educational themes as
well as daily life activities. They will interpret the texts so that they can understand the
contents according to each context. After the interpretation, some new particular words will
be pointed out for:
1. Pronunciation and Spelling- as stated by Qi and Runjiang (2011) “the learners have to
know what a word sounds like (pronunciation) and what it looks like (spelling)”;
2. Grammar- an English word may have an unpredictable change of form in certain
grammatical contexts or may have some way of connecting with other words in sentences for
example, when teaching a new verb, we will give its past form if this verb is irregular
(forbid, forbade), and note if it is transitive or intransitive. Similarly, when teaching a noun,
we will need to present its plural form if the noun is irregular (criterion, criteria), or draw
them attention to the fact that it has no plural at all people;
3- Word Formation- one-word or multi-word, can often be broken down into their
component bits, and how these bits put together is another piece of useful information which
may be worth teaching. If students know the meaning of sub-, un-, and –able, this will help
them to guess the meaning of words like substandard, ungrateful and renewable;
4-Teaching Vocabulary with Semantic Field- for example, hyponymy, synonymy and
antonymy. By association of words in the same semantic field, we can train the students to
constantly deepen their recollection of words learnt and reinforce learning, for example In
teaching the word peer, we can elicit from the students words bearing the meaning look, soon
we get glance, glimpse, stare, gaze, glare, watch.

After this stage, students will be asked to deliver presentations about the texts they
interpreted. Then the interviews will be recorded again to assess the sudents improvement.
The first collected data will be compared to the second one after the TBLT approach, and
analyzed in order to assess the learners vocabulary increase.

QUESTIONNAIRE: this will be deliverd to perceive the learners expectations of learning

vocabulary using words in phrase rather than memorizing them in isolated lists. Questions
will be asked to assess their preferences, practices and concerns or interests about the learnig
strategies. At the same time the teacher will answer the questionnaire related to his
standpoint about the stratetgies to be applied in the learning and teaching of foreign language
vocabulary as well as the difficulties to implement them.