EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT Pedro Luchini & Myriam Serati Colegio Atlntico del Sur. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. The Modern Journal of Applied Linguistic An International Journal Page1. 252 2:3 March 2010 ISSN 0974-8741 Carmen Luz Trujillo Becerra EDU 560 Assignment 1 Professor Fran Byrnes May 20, 2011

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT

This study consisted in an action research project carried out in 2008 with a group of five teachers of English and their supervisor working at CADS (Colegio Atlntico del Sur), a private secondary school in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The main purpose of this action research is to explore the importance of vocabulary learning and teaching in the acquisition of a second language. The learners at this school, whose L1 is Spanish, are grouped according to their English proficiency level raging from elementary (level I), low-intermediate (level II), intermediate (level III), upper intermediate (level IV) and advanced (level V). In each group, there were approximately 25 students, their ages ranged from 13 to 17 and the English classes met twice a week for a 2-hour period. Each group was taught by a different teacher, (one male and five females). Their teaching experience ranged from 10 to 15 years. Three of them were university graduate English language teachers, one was a sworn translator and the other one was an advanced student at an English teacher training program. Rationale: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of a project work on vocabulary teaching, due to the low results of the students in an oral part of a test (as one of the institutional requirements, learners have to take and pass three term tests (written and oral) which are administered after each academic term (May, August and November)); teachers thought that one possible reason for this problem could have been the students lack of vocabulary to express their ideas efficiently, and decided to engage in an AR project with the intention of providing a description, explanation and some judgment about this assumption. Nature of the research: This is an AR project, which there is no explicit research question; its main purpose was to explore vocabulary learning and teaching. Action research is classroom-based research conducted by teachers in order to reflect upon and evolve their teaching. The purpose of teacher research is to gain understanding of teaching and learning within ones classroom and to use that knowledge to increase teaching efficacy/student learning (Uhl Chamot, A & Barnhardt, S & Dirstine, S. Conducting Action Research. Northeast conference, 1998.). The research was carried out in a naturalistic setting (classrooms with the purpose of instruction), the researchers adopted a qualitative method (paradigm 1: exploratoryinterpretive. Grotjahn, 1987), no quantitative data was collected and the study was simply

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

descriptive. The data gathered was analyzed and interpreted. Finally, the researchers provided some suggestions for further research. In the literature review, this paper, places emphasis on the low priority given to teaching and learning of vocabulary and their pedagogical implications in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and the issue of whether the vocabulary learning strategies should be implicit or explicit. They present some important approaches, methods, and techniques dealing with vocabulary instruction and/or acquisition in the area of SLA, as are: The adaptation of the teacher input to facilitate comprehension. Modified teacher input facilitates comprehension, and this in turn promotes acquisition (in Lightbown and Spada, 1993). Providing students with the tools to self-regulate their own learning (Skehan and Drnyei, 2002), they will be able to develop autonomy. Research on vocabulary teaching reports that explicit teaching of vocabulary results in better retention than incidental learning from natural text-based input (Folse, 2006). Coady (1997:281) proposes four main positions on a continuum of methods for teaching vocabulary: Context alone, Strategy instruction, Development plus explicit instruction and Classroom activities.

In Coadys proposed, He states that learners are able to learn vocabulary from the context by reading (context is the major source of vocabulary learning), and that contextualized learning is effective but contextualized reading plus instruction is superior, and finally, it advocates the teaching of vocabulary words without following a particular methodological approach; Allen (1983) suggests that vocabulary is best learned when it is encountered in the classroom situation when the learner perceives a need for it. (In Coady, 1997: 281). Students should be engaged in interactional tasks in which meaning is crucial, there is some kind of relationship with real life, like situations, task completion is the primary goal, and the assessment of task performance is related to task outcome. Skehan (1996)

The literature review concludes with the importance of encouraging learners to become centrally involved in their own learning process. First it involves some kind of systematic learner training under the direction of a teacher, working groups or on a selfaccess basis, moreover, it emphasizes that through a direct approach to vocabulary teaching, students will be able to pay explicit attention to vocabulary, and this, in turn, will eventually help them develop their own strategies, thus, becoming more independent learners.

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

Data Collection Methods: The instruments used in this study were class observation sheets, field notes and teachers reports (teaching activities and evaluation meetings). Each teacher designed and implemented a battery of comprehensible tasks with a strong focus on explicit vocabulary instruction to be taught along with the rest of the contents already set prior to this project. Each teacher should write a semi-structured report in which they should include the aims of their lessons, contents, a brief description of the tasks included and their perceptions regarding the results obtained. The researchers also worked on an observation time-plan, the observer accompanied each teacher in two consecutive classes and He took field notes of each class and kept records of those instances that He thought would be important for discussion later on. The observation period lasted five weeks. After observation, He held personalized debriefing evaluative sessions with each teacher. Once the observation period was over, they held a general meeting to evaluate results.

Data Results: Data collected in the study were analyzed taking into account the methods for teaching vocabulary introduced by Coady (1997), as a way to determine the effectiveness of the implementation of this vocabulary teaching Project. The results obtained from class observation and teachers reports, reflect different aspects from one class to another, then it seem important to appoint some of them. Anala, Level I: Class: past tense forms. She worked past tense through different tasks, in which her students felt the need to use new vocabulary (notice gap in their interlanguage storage); those linguistic holes were filled out through explicit instruction. So, the combination of contextualized reading plus formal instruction may have helped the students complete successfully the final activities. It seems her approach to teaching vocabulary not only helped her students use the lexical items presented but also become more confident and comfortable in using their English in class. Alejandra, level II: Class: the internet and technology. She made an effort to adopt an approach that included the teaching of vocabulary explicitly. Although most of her activities seemed to provide a context for the words she meant to teach, she did not offer her students specific learning strategies to learn from

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

context. And the objectives for each of the activities were not clear. As a result, this may have confused her students as to what they were asked to focus on in each task. This analysis highlighted the necessity of establishing clear parameters in terms of the basic principles of vocabulary acquisition. Laura: Level III Class: teaching of eight multipart verbs By using the text as a context, the students were able to infer the meanings of the multi-part verbs and relate them to their previous knowledge and personal experiences. Through this activity, Laura was encouraging her students to make their own lexical associations. Contextualized reading plus teacher intervention is superior to letting students infer meaning from context alone for vocabulary acquisition to occur. Luciana: Level IV Class: Through her activities she aimed to evaluate if her students were able to infer the meaning of some words from context and to assess their ability to retrieve these lexical items under this condition in the long-term. Luciana relied heavily on two main principles for vocabulary acquisition. First, she perceived that context provided her students with a vital source for vocabulary learning. She combined contextualized reading with explicit instruction. It can be inferred that Luciana recognized the importance of using context to help students infer the meaning of unknown words. She perceived that teachers ought to design communicative tasks to create in their learners the need to use new vocabulary items purposefully. She acknowledged the usefulness of exposing her students to new words several times for internalization and retrieval to take place. Daniela: Level V Class: The material that she used was part of a short story. Danielas major source of vocabulary teaching seems to be contextualized reading in combination with the teaching of specific language learning strategies. Another main concern appears to be her belief that students should be given the tools to self-regulate their learning and develop self-autonomy to manage their own achievements. Danielas perception indicates that most of her students acknowledged the importance of being given the opportunity to make some decisions on their own for their language development. Close examination of the findings reveals that the implementation of this action research project, which aimed mainly at teaching/learning vocabulary, turned out to be effective.

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

Research Outcomes: From analyzed data emerging a number of assumptions. First, when students work on projects that integrate the teaching of specific language learning skills with direct vocabulary instruction, learners are pushed to take on responsibility for their own learning process and thus develop self-regulation skills, crucial aspects for second language acquisition. Second, Projects of this type whereby teachers are encouraged to reflect upon their own teaching practices and engage in change by redirecting their instructional objectives to meet their students needs are valuable and contribute to enhance teacher development. Finally, the researchers based on these finding, invite to teachers and learners to interact with a proposal similar to the one deployed in this study. This may help explain how these steps might affect and shape acquisition over time before effectiveness can be claimed. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Study: The study presents a short time of observation, which decreases information about instances in action which could have been used to determine the extent of the impact of this project and its overall effectiveness. It there had been more extensive observation, this would have enabled the evaluator to have a greater research scope, a fact which would have strengthened the validity of the study. Although the research is based on certain parameters regarding the method of teaching vocabulary, was needed more conceptual strengthening to the teachers who were part of the project; it created ambiguity in some of the aspects that worked in their classrooms. Project of this sort, where teachers are pushed to work collaboratively with another colleague, exchange ideas, negotiate meaning and put their creative potential at play provide a great contribution to the profession and enables them to be self-reflective about their own work. I think it is important that the study was implemented at all levels, without leaving aside the proposal theme. This gives a broad framework of action to research and allows us to see how the vocabulary teaching strategies can be applied in different ways. The framework used in this study could be replicated in other contexts to compare these results with others, coming from different teachers under different circumstances who might also be in vast need of developing their vocabulary teaching skills.

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

Personal gains from the review and conclusions: Personally, I find this research important for two essential aspects. First, as a way of approaching to research related to second language vocabulary teaching and learning. Vocabulary teaching and learning is central to the theory and practice of ELT. Words have a central place in culture, and learning words is seen by many as the main task (an obstacle) in learning another language Carter, R. Vocabulary, Chapter 6. The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages. Second, Project as a model of AR, because it is a research method to analyze indivi dual and collective problems and cause changes. Within research on vocabulary acquisition, I think it is essential to frame clear parameters for effective teaching of vocabulary, this research attempts to decipher this important issue, but superficially. I think this kind of study would be more fru itful and deep, if the time of study had been longer. Furthermore, although the researchers had bases in oral exams submitted by students, there were very few references to these exams. Whether or not there were significant changes in the results of the exams to finish the investigation. I believe that using this data would allow a wider margin of confidence in the conclusions offered by the study. This study confirms the fact that vocabulary is feasible to work directly in our classes and the use of context as a support is fundamental in the acquisition of vocabulary, hence the importance of giving the students tools to be more autonomous and responsible for their own learning. Moreover, it clarifies that we as teachers must be carefully planned and focused our classroom activities, to avoid confusing our students and facilitate learning. This research shows these events framed in the reality that we learn from what we do, there is a complex relationship between what we, as teachers, plan to do, what actually happens in the moment-bymoment reality of the classroom, and what students actually learn. Nunan, D. Classroom research in a Chinese context: A review. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Special Issue on Classroom Research.

EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT.

REFERENCES:

Carter, Ronald and Nunan, David. The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages. Chapter 6, Vocabulary. P. 42-47

Luchini, P & Serari, M. EXPLORING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT. Colegio Atlntico del Sur. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. The Modern Journal of Applied Linguistic. An International Journal. Page1. 252 2:3 March 2010. ISSN 0974-8741. [On line] Available URL: http://www.mjal.org/Journal/Exploring%20second%20language%20vocabulary%20instruc tion%20An%20Action%20Research%20.pdf

Nunan, D. 2011. Classroom research in a Chinese context: A review. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Special Issue on Classroom Research. Anaheim University / University of Hong Kong. Uhl Chamot, Anna. Barnhardt, Sarah. Dirstine, Susan NORTHEAST CONFERENCE 1998, CONDUCTING ACTION RESEARCH. National Capital Language Resource Center, 2011 Eye Street NW Suite 200 Washington, DC 2006. [On line] Available URL: http://www.nclrc.org/about_teaching/reports_pub/conducting_action_research.pdf