a. Sentence making – using the word to make a sentence;
b. translation – translating the word and making a sentence with it.
All the target words went through the phases of presentation, practice, and production stage. In each stage, the target words were reviewed twice. In total, the target words were repeated for six times through different activities during the 12-week experiment. The repetition followed the spiral curriculum design principle to create optimal opportunities for the students to review and use the words. In addition, reviewing all the target words over an extended period of time provided a great opportunity for the students to have constant exposure to the words through spaced
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repetition, which helped memorize the words better (Nation, 2001). Below was a detailed description of the rationale for the design, the materials for each stage, and the instructional processes.
The Presentation Stage (Week 2 – Week 5). The Presentation stage went from
week 2 to week 5. The major purpose of the stage was to provide the students with multiple exposure contexts of the target words. Through repetitive encountering with the words, the students were more likely to memorize them. In addition, seeing words in different contexts provided the students with more instruction to the target
vocabulary, which can increase the chances of picking up the words. Particularly, the first presentation aimed at familiarizing the students with the target words, while the second round focused on providing more information concerning word usage, such as derivations, useful phrases, and collocations.
Because of the specific aims, the teaching materials varied in the two
presentation stage. For the first presentation, the original example sentences of the students’ textbooks were used with the keywords boldfaced to raise the students’
awareness, a method inspired by the input enhancement hypothesis (Smith, 1993).
Such teaching materials helped the students repeat what they had learned and thus made it easier for them to recall the words. In addition, the boldface was used to draw the students’ attention to the highlighted parts and raise the awareness. One instance of the first round was listed as follows: “The story is based on Monica’s personal experience. She wrote down all of the interesting things she saw during her trip to Osaka” (please refer to APPENDIX D for more details).
For the second presentation, example sentences from the textbooks still remained the major sources. If suitable sentences could not be found from the textbooks,
renowned and widely-used online dictionaries, such as the Free Dictionary and Collins Dictionary, were used as the sources of the example sentences. Different from
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the first presentation, the derivations or collocations of the target words became the foci in the example sentences. One such example from the second round to teach the derivation of “influence” was listed here: “An influential leader can change how people think and also lead them through difficult times” (please refer to APPENDIX E for more details).
The instruction for the first and second presentation followed roughly the same procedures. First, the teacher-researcher and the students took turns reading the example sentences containing the target words. Then, the teacher-researcher elicited the meanings of the boldfaced words from the students by asking them to give the Chinese translation. If they had a hard time doing this, they would be guided to guess the words from contextual clues. This activity was followed by the explanation of the important points and the parts which the students struggled with as shown in the pre-test. Still, the emphasis was put on the target words and its meaning in contexts. As for the second presentation, the teaching process included more guidance since it involved more difficult derivative forms. After the students understood the meanings of the derived words, they were asked to recall the original forms they had learned in the first presentation. During the presentation stage (Week 2 – Week 5), the target words were taught following the sequence from G1 to G10, which was the order of the students’ sequence of learning. All the target words were taught at this stage. The whole presentation stage took 240 minutes, ten minutes for each vocabulary lesson in 24 classes.
The Practice Stage (Week 6 – Week 9). The Practice stage started from week 6
and ended in week 9. This stage was intended to enhance the students’ knowledge of the target words through different modes. Different from the previous stage, the practice stage involved the students more in the activities, which was necessary for memorizing the words according to the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Hulstijn &
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Laufer, 2001). To achieve the goal, the two rounds of practice were designed to provide adequate scaffolding for the production stage. The first round of practice focused on the spoken form and sound-meaning link of the vocabulary, while the second put emphasis on the students' active participation in learning the words through activities like peer teaching.
With the goal in mind, the practice stage was designed in a more challenging way. For the first round, the example sentences or passages were retrieved from the reading section of the textbook. This was not only a repetition but also a way to review words in different contexts. Different from Presentation, the first practice round required the students to do a partial dictation in each class period. The activity lasted for two weeks. With six classes in one week, there were 12 times for the students to do the partial dictation. In each lesson, there were several sentences, and the total number of words for each was around one hundred words. The students received a piece of paper with the example sentences or passages. They were required to listen to the teacher-researcher and fill in the blanks, which consisted of the key words, collocations, and sometimes derivatives of the target words. The sentences or passages were read twice. For the first time, the teacher-researcher read the sentences or passages as a whole and paused to wait for the students to fill in the blanks. For the second time, only the sentences that contained blanks were repeated. After the
listening, the students had a chance to look at the passages again and then gave the Chinese translation for the target words in the brackets below. Then, the teacher-researcher checked answers with them. The students reviewed the words in different contexts and deepened their word knowledge through listening. In addition, the act of providing glossing could involve the students in actively recalling the words (please refer to APPENDIX F for more detail). The rationale behind such design was to make the activity progressively challenging and give the students more chances to listen to
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the target words and how they appeared in a larger context. For the first Practice, instead of following the sequence of G1 to G10, the target words were organized around the reading passages in a theme-based fashion.
For the second Practice, the students were required to form a group of four to five people and take turns teaching their classmates the target words. Each group got six to seven words and prepared in advance. Then, they were scheduled to give a presentation of five minutes about their list of words. There were three requirements for their teaching. First, they had to think of effective and creative ways to teach their words to the class. Then, everyone in the group had to speak in front of the class.
Also, before the explanation, the group in charge needed to write down the words on the blackboard. To motivate the students, the teacher-researcher graded them
according to their participation and performance on stage. Bonus would be given to them if the teaching group or other students can ask questions regarding the words.
Like the presentation stage, the practice stage took 240 minutes, ten minutes for each vocabulary lesson in 24 classes (please refer to APPENDIX G for more detail).
The Production Stage (Week 10 – Week 13). The last stage went from week 10 to
week 13. The major purpose of the Production stage was to create chances for the students to use the target words, since literature has pointed out that pushed output (Swain, 1985, 1995) and the very act of using words contributed to productive word learning (Fan, 2000; Lee & Muncie, 2006). The two rounds of the Production stage were designed to guide the students to use the words in sentence-making tasks. For the first round, the major focus was making a sentence with the target words. A little more difficult than the first round, the second round required the students to first translate a target word from Mandarin Chinese to English, and then make a sentence with the word.
In the first Production stage, the students had to finish a sentence construction
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task. The target words and collocations of these words were written on separate pieces of paper. The students came to the teacher to draw the wordlist their group would be in charge of for the class period. Then, the students worked with their group members to come up with a sentence for each word on the list which contained at least ten words. Then, they wrote the sentences they had created on the blackboard. During the process, the teacher-researcher assisted them in solving grammatical problems, when the students figured out the usages of the target words on their own. This move was to push the students to actively recall the words or to make them look up the words themselves, so that they could remember the words better through more involvement (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Sokmen, 1997). After that, the teacher-researcher checked the sentences on the blackboard with the class. All the mistakes were corrected, but the emphasis was on the target words and the collocations. To motivate the students, the class voted on the best sentence of the day, and bonus was given to the group that produced the sentence.
The second Production stage required the students to use the target words through two tasks – Chinese-English translation and sentence construction of the words. First, the students came to draw the words for their group. However, this time, they would get a Chinese equivalent of the target words. Since a word may have various translations, only the core meaning was provided. The students, working with their groups, had to first translate the word and make a sentence with it. The rest instructional processes went just like the first stage. In the second Production, the translation task made it more challenging and motivating than the first Production.
Also, it better evaluated whether the students could actively recall the target words and use them accurately, which was a demonstration of deeper word knowledge (Fan, 2000; Laufer, 1998) (please refer to APPENDIX H for the examples of the
experiment). Like the previous two stages, the production stage took 240 minutes in
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total, ten minutes for each vocabulary lesson conducted in 24 class sections.
3. Post-Test (Week 14)
After the experiment of 12 weeks, the same writing prompt was used to evaluate the students’ learning effects and improvement in writing, especially the usage of the target words. The post-test was administered following the same procedures as those in the pre-test. This ensured that the pre-test and post-test were completed under the similar conditions to avoid other possible variables that might arise from the
differences between the test conditions. After finishing the writing prompt, the
students were once again tested on the VKS under the same conditions as the pre-test.
The results of the post-test were compared with those of the pre-test to provide insight into the effects of the teaching experiment.
Data Analysis
The current study adopted a mixed-method approach to analyze the data. First, each student’s writing product was examined closely to provide the information of how the students used the target words in their writing. The target words used correctly were marked as the “correct usage”. Since the study focused on word use, grammatical mistakes3 were neglected. If the students used the same target word more than once, it would be counted as only one correct usage. If words similar or relevant to the target words were used, they were marked separately as “related word”. For example, the word “upload”, an antonym of the target word “download”, was categorized as a related word. This was to examine the students’ ability to use the synonym, antonym, compound, and derivation of the target words. It was evidence of the students’ word knowledge. Another category was “mistake”, including
3 Here, grammatical mistakes that would be neglected included instances like misuse of past for present tense and vice versa or subject-verb agreement. However, if the students did not use irregular verbs correctly, such as misusing taught as “teached,” it would be categorized as a “mistake” in spelling.
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misspellings, wrong collocations, or incorrect part of speech of the target words.
The second set of data was the results of the VKS that showed quantitative information of the experiment. The VKS included five descriptors that showed different levels of vocabulary knowledge (see APPENDIX I). Though the students checked the descriptors that best described their knowledge of every word, their perceptions might be somewhat different from the reality. For example, the students may think they knew the word “community” and checked descriptors 3 or 4.
However, they may give a wrong meaning, which indicated insufficient word knowledge. It was therefore necessary for the teacher-researcher to examine if the descriptors the students checked matched their true knowledge. After the students completed the VKS, the teacher-researcher gathered their works and counted the individual scores of the words. If the students checked descriptors 1 or 2, there was no need for further check since they did not have to provide the word meaning. If the students checked descriptor 3 but gave a wrong meaning, the score of the word would be reduced to 2. If the students checked descriptor 4 but only provided a partially correct meaning, the score would be reduced to 3. However, if the meaning was totally different, the score was reduced to 2. If the students checked descriptor 5 and failed to use the word correctly in the sentence, the score was reduced to 4. Since the VKS tested words without giving a context, other meanings of homographs were accepted. For instance, the word “content” had the meanings of “something contained” or “be happy with”. In that case, both meanings were accepted if used correctly. The numbers of the descriptors indicated the knowledge level of the words (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996); the teacher-researcher thus counted the scores the students attained for each word since the descriptors can be directly converted into scores. Then, the scores were added together and averaged to obtain a score for the knowledge that the whole class demonstrated for all the target words.
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After obtaining the data of pre-test and post-test, the teacher-researcher
compared the results to see the effects of the experiment. The average VKS scores of the target words were further compared by using paired T-test to find out if any significant differences existed between the pre-test and post-test. This provided a quantitative and objective result, and also showed the students’ ability in recognizing words and doing more challenging tasks with them. On the other hand, the results of the students’ compositions were compared to see the active production of words before and after the treatment. This yielded information of the numbers of correct usages, related words, and mistakes before and after the experiment. More
importantly, closer inspection was carried out to analyze the actual words in each of the three categories. Individual writing products were also selected and analyzed to understand the changes of target word use after the experiment. The analysis of the writing products served to provide qualitative information to better understand the students’ active production when writing compositions.
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CHAPTER 4