The results showed that 91% of all students in the Reading Group wanted the
teacher to use the same way, that is, reading articles regularly, to help them learn
vocabulary; only 9% of them didn’t think so. Similarly, 94% of all students in the
Word Group were in support of learning words by memorizing word lists; only 6% of
them were not. Those who disapproved of this method suggested that word lists
combined with reading articles or example sentences resulted in better effects.
Although most students in the two groups showed high willingness to continue with
these two methods, it also revealed the fact that most students nowadays were passive;
they tended to accept any teaching method adopted by their teachers, without giving
their own judgments.
Discussion
In this section, the results found for the three research questions proposed in
Chapter One are discussed. As the results showed, the two methods had positive
effects on participants’ reading and vocabulary abilities in terms of the progress made
within each group. However, when comparing the progress between the two groups,
the reading scores of the participants in the Reading Group were not significantly
better than that of the Word Group. However, learning words via translation had
significantly better effects on improving participants’ vocabulary scores than learning
words in context. On the other hand, the two methods also had positive effects on
participants of High Proficiency and Low Proficiency levels because they all made
significant progress in their reading and vocabulary scores. Moreover, learning words
in isolation through translation had significantly better effects on both High
Proficiency and Low Proficiency students’ vocabulary scores than learning words in
context. However, the two methods didn’t have significantly different effects on
students’ progress in reading scores.
Effects of the Two Vocabulary-learning Methods on Reading Abilities
According to the results, the two vocabulary-learning methods had certain effects
on students’ reading scores because both groups, Reading Group and Word Group,
made progress in their reading posttest and the gains in reading scores made by the
two groups were quite similar. To make it clear, judging from the performance of
students in the Word Group, who received only training of memorizing words but not
training in reading, their progress in reading was similar to that of the students in the
Reading Group, who read articles regularly. Therefore, the finding here proves that
readers’ knowledge of word meanings will lead to an increase or facilitation of
reading comprehension. This is in accordance with the theories of many researchers
(Chern, 1993; Haynes & Baker, 1993; Hsieh, 2001; Huang, 2001), who argue that
vocabulary plays an indispensable role in reading comprehension.
In addition, students’ responses from the questionnaires also gave positive
comments on the effects of the two methods on their reading abilities. According to
their answers, almost all students in the Reading Group felt that reading articles
regularly helped them with their overall reading abilities, so did most students in the
Word Group, who believed that memorizing word lists helped with their overall
reading abilities. The qualitative data from questionnaires further substantiated the
quantitative data. On the other hand, since most students were supportive of any
method teachers gave, one point worth noticing here is whether students nowadays
were independent enough to really think about whether the method was good to them
or not. Therefore, if the two methods were implemented simultaneously, students
could provide more constructive and concrete response and made better comparison
of the two methods.
Effects of the Two Vocabulary-learning Methods on Vocabulary Abilities
Viewing from the performance in students’ vocabulary posttest, students in the
two groups all made progress; besides, by means of the independent t-test, learning
words in isolation through translation was significantly better in raising students’
vocabulary scores than learning words in context. The above finding is in agreement
with the findings of most previous researchers, who believe that learning words in
isolation through translation has better effects than learning words in context when it
comes to the quantity of the words learned or the retention of the vocabulary learned
immediately or after a period of time (Chen, 2001; Nation, 2001; Prince, 1996).
Moreover, when it comes to long-term memory of memorized words, studies show
that the results of deliberate learning of words persist over several years; that is, the
retention of words learned deliberately lasts longer (Bahrick, 1984; Bahrick and
Phelps, 1987). In my study, the Word Group memorized word lists, which belongs to a
kind of deliberate learning of words, while the Reading Group learned words from
reading, which is incidental learning of words. Therefore, the result also echoes those
researchers.
On the other hand, based on the responses in questionnaires, the reasons why the
Reading Group couldn’t have better performances in their vocabulary abilities are
many. First, they couldn’t make good use of contextual clues to successfully know the
meanings of the unknown words, because they lacked sufficient training and definite
instruction on how to do it. Second, those unknown words couldn’t be memorized and
retained based on a single exposure. Third, some students knew too few words to
comprehend the articles, or even to make successful inference of the meanings of the
unknown words. Just like Nassaji’s (2003) suggestion, context doesn’t necessarily
help learners generate new knowledge and learn new words only by a single exposure,
because the success to derive word meanings from context is low. In addition, training
students how to make use of contextual clues to guess the meanings of unknown
words is also important if EFL teachers want to implement the vocabulary-learning
method – learning words in context.
According to the responses from the questionnaires, almost all students in the
Word Group liked their new vocabulary-learning method. That is, learning words in
isolation through translation was quite acceptable and popular to students. The finding
was also in accordance with Chan’s study (1999), in which her participants appeared
to be positive toward learning words by translation. Moreover, nearly one-fourth of
students in the Reading Group mentioned the disadvantage of learning words in
context was that the words appeared in articles couldn’t be memorized and even
retained after reading. In addition, more than one-fourth of the students in the Reading
Group responded that they didn’t like to learn vocabulary via context because this
method distracted them from consciously focusing on the memorization of word,
which was still an important stage when students tried to learn these words by heart.
This echoes Nation’s (2001) viewpoint that the value of direct learning of vocabulary
is that “it allows learners to consciously focus on an aspect of word knowledge that is
not easily gained from context” (p.302). Therefore, all of these findings provide
empirical data to prove that learning words via translation is still a good way, which is
worth advocating (Chan, 1999; Chen, 2001; Nation, 2001), and to cite Seibert’s (1931)
word, “when it comes to memorizing the words…the method of associated pairs is the
best” (p.313).
Effects of Two Vocabulary-learning Methods on Different Proficiency Learners
In case of both High Proficiency subgroups’ (Reading and Word) performance,
the mean progress in reading of the High Proficiency students in the Reading Group
was higher than that of the Word Group; however, the mean progress in vocabulary
of the Word Group was higher than that of the Reading Group. Therefore, the
conclusion is that the two vocabulary-learning methods indeed give rise to different
effects among students of different language levels. To make it clear, learning words
in context seems more effective in boosting High Proficiency learners’ reading
scores, while learning words in isolation seems to have better effects on High
Proficiency learners’ vocabulary abilities.
With regard to the two Low Proficiency subgroups’ performance, the results
are similar. The mean progress in reading of the students in the Reading Group was
higher than that of the Word Group, while the mean progress in vocabulary of the
Word Group was higher than that of the Reading Group. Clearly, the two
vocabulary-learning methods had certain effects on Low Proficiency students’
reading and vocabulary abilities. Specifically, learning words in context was more
effective in raising Low Proficiency learners’ reading abilities while learning words
via translation had better effects on Low Proficiency learners’ vocabulary abilities.
This finding proves that direct training of certain abilities is essential. That is,
if students want to improve certain abilities, direct and specific instruction in that
aspect is needed and the effect is also strong. For example, this study proves that the
training of reading definitely increases reading abilities; similarly, training of
vocabulary undoubtedly makes the vocabulary abilities better.
However, when comparing the mean difference of progress in reading and
vocabulary between the two High Proficiency subgroups and the two Low
Proficiency subgroups, the difference was not similar. The results showed that
learning words via translation had significantly better effects on raising High
Proficiency and Low Proficiency students’ vocabulary scores than learning words in
context. However, it is still uncertain which way is better in improving High
Proficiency and Low Proficiency groups’ reading abilities due to the insignificant
difference between the progress in reading of both High Proficiency and Low
Proficiency groups. To sum up, this finding provides empirical evidence and further
strengthens the importance of the vocabulary learning method – learning words in
isolation through translation.
According to the responses in the questionnaires, all of the High Proficiency
students in the Word Group gave positive feedback to learning words in isolation
through translation, and all of them thought that this method had effects on both
their overall reading and vocabulary abilities. Similarly, most High Proficiency
students in the Reading Group mentioned that learning words in context helped
them with both their overall reading and vocabulary abilities, while only one of
them thought that it was no help. On the other hand, the majority of the Low
Proficiency students in the Reading Group thought that learning words in context
helped them with their reading abilities, and one-fourth of them thought that this
method didn’t help them with their vocabulary abilities. The majority of the Low
Proficiency students in the Word Group thought learning words by word lists helped
them with their overall reading abilities, and only one-tenth of them thought this
method didn’t help them improve their vocabulary abilities. The qualitative data
were consistent with empirical evidence in this study.
In the other hand, just as the statistic results presented before, an interesting
phenomenon is that regardless which vocabulary-learning method was adopted,
Low Proficiency students progressed more than High Proficiency students in their
reading scores. However, Low Proficiency students reported in the questionnaires
that they felt the pressure of reading articles because of their limited vocabulary
knowledge and the stress to memorize word lists within limited time. This suggests
that as long as teachers pay more attention to these Low Proficiency students’ need
and devote more time to devising or choosing teaching materials which are more
suitable to them, they can still make remarkable and surprising progress. What’s
more, all those Low Proficiency students need is more time to cultivate their
self-learning, more encouragement to build up their confidence, and more support to
motivate them to learn more.
Responses from Questionnaires
This study showed that, as for vocabulary learning strategies, when
encountering unknown words, six-tenth of the students in the Reading Group
would consult dictionaries, three-tenth of them tried to guess the meanings and
one-tenth students chose to skip the unknown words while reading. According to
Schmitt’s Taxonomy (1997, 2000), the majority of the students in the Reading
Group used determination strategies for initial discovery of words’ meanings.
When it comes to consolidation strategies, nearly half of the students in Word
Group used verbal and written repetition, which belonged to cognitive strategies,
while one-fourth of them tried to study word sounds and spelling, which belonged
to memory strategies.
With regard to the pros and cons of the two vocabulary-learning methods, nearly
one-third of the students in the Reading Group mentioned that the disadvantage of
reading articles regularly was time-consuming while more than one-third of the
students in the Word Group thought that the advantage of memorizing was
efficiency. This finding is in agreement with several researchers’ theories (Nation,
2001; Mondria’s, 2003). On the other hand, more than half of the students in the
Reading Group thought that the advantage of reading regularly was to improve
reading abilities, and one-third of them mentioned the advantage of the method was
learning new words and correct usages. Thus, most of the students in the Reading
Group recognized the advantage of elevating their reading and vocabulary abilities
via learning words in context. As for the disadvantage of learning in context, apart
from being less efficient, one-fourth of the students referred to the fact that new
words weren’t memorized if there wasn’t enough time spent on memorizing. Thus,
the learning effect of memorizing was the greatest in the acquisition of words,
which is in accordance with Mondria’s (2003) study.
More than half of the students in the Word Group mentioned that the
disadvantage of learning vocabulary via word lists was that these words were easily
forgotten and because of limited time spent on memorizing them. Besides, some of
them also emphasized the importance of phonetic transcripts or example sentences
and articles to facilitate their memorization. All of these responses provided
precious suggestions that the best way to train students to memorize word lists was
combined with phonetic transcripts, example sentences or articles. Most importantly,
reviewing of these words was indispensable so teachers should devise some
activities or arrange some tests to help students review these words. As for the
advantage of this method, almost half of them thought that it was efficient and it
sped up memorization. Besides, some of them thought this method could help them
learn more words in addition to words in textbooks, and others thought they could
increase their amount of vocabulary little by little, which could reduce their mental
burden in memorizing English words. The responses also provided empirical
evidence to support learning words via translation.
On the other hand, most students believed that memorizing word lists regularly
helped with their reading English abilities, because this method helped them have a
deeper impression of the memorized words so that they could easily get the main
ideas when reading, and thus have better performance in English tests.
To sum up, learning words in context and learning words in isolation through
translation had effects on participants’ reading and vocabulary abilities, however,
the two methods had their disadvantages as well. Participants’ responses in the
questionnaires provide precious suggestions and help teachers make adaptation
when using the two methods.