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Enhancing EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Retention by Integrating New
Words into Writing Activities
Chun-Han Huang & Pi-Ching Chen∗ Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University ∗Department of International Business
Chang Jung Christian University
Abstract
For Taiwanese senior high school EFL learners, one of their major complaints is that the vocabulary they learned is always in the vicious circle of remembering and then forgetting. In other words, they are unable to retain the vocabulary words for a long period of time. Worse still, there are not sufficient current studies working out this situation; this problem thus becomes an elephant in the room. For that reason, this study aims to help Taiwanese senior high school EFL learners retain vocabulary through three different exercise types. In the experiment, the participants were divided into three groups. Group one was required to use six new words to write a short article. Group two was demanded to make six meaningful sentences with these words. Group three had to fill out the blanks with the target six words in a vocabulary exercise sheet. After the exercise, tests were given to all the participants to examine the vocabulary retention. The result showed that group one had the best retention.
Key words: vocabulary retention, vocabulary instruction, incidental vocabulary acquisition, creative writing
Introduction
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across. Strangely enough, before Taiwanese senior high school students take College Entrance Exam, they are supposed to have accumulated at least six years of English education. How come six years of English training would be an exchange for a blank English composition sheet? Most of those low-achievers complain that no matter how hard they try, they just can’t commit the vocabulary into their memory. From complaint of this sort, students have hard time retaining the words they have learned. In a nutshell, small vocabulary size limits the development of a composition, and the small vocabulary size results from being unable to retain it.
Unfortunately, there is very little literature that combines vocabulary retention with writing. If any, it was in the stage of creating a sentence instead of developing a paragraph, let along a complete composition. The previous research shows that students have better vocabulary retention if they make sentences with the words they have just learned. If students take multiple choice questions as a way of reviewing, they have better performance in immediate tests but inferior retention (Sun, 2007). Therefore, the research questions for this study are:
1. Which type of vocabulary exercise, using new words to write a short composition, using new words to make a meaningful sentence, or simply filling out the blanks in the vocabulary test sheets, is the most helpful to Taiwanese EFL senior high school students’ vocabulary retention?
2. What other positive effects of vocabulary acquisition can Taiwanese EFL senior high school students obtain from the three types of vocabulary exercise, which are mentioned above?
Literature Review
1. The Role of Vocabulary
When it comes to vocabulary, it surely is the first step toward learning a foreign language. A sentence is usually made up of numerous vocabulary words. Without any concepts of grammar, learners may guess the meaning of a sentence if they are given a dictionary. Likewise, learners of a foreign language are likely to get his message across by putting all the vocabulary words together, even though those words are not put in a grammatical, correct order. Therefore, the importance of vocabulary can’t be over emphasized, and it is an indispensable segment when we learn a foreign language.
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First, the learner must acquire the ability to produce (i.e., to produce or to write) unfamiliar words from the foreign language (L2). Second, the learner must differentiate these unfamiliar L2 words from one another. Third, the learner must connect the unfamiliar L2 words with their familiar native language (L1) equivalents. Forth, these new associations must be bidirectional (i.e., given the L1 word the learner must be able to produce the L2 equivalent and, conversely, given the L2 word the learner must be able to produce the L1 equivalent).
Based on Schneider et al.’s idea, we can infer that learning process from source language (L1) to target language (L2) is easier while the other way around is more challenging. In Schneider and al.’s paper published in 2002, they confirmed this after conducting two experiments. That is, L1-to-L2 vocabulary learning is more difficult than L2-to-L1 vocabulary learning, since the participants took longer response time for the former. Part of this phenomenon is because the target language is something we are not familiar with, whether in terms of form, pronunciation, or meaning. All of them are important aspects that EFL students ought to grapple with. For the students who have hard time learning English, vocabulary has always been one of the obstacles that hinders their English learning. Some are capable of recognizing the word in reading but fail to spell it out. Some are able to spell the word out in writing, yet they mispronounce the word in speaking. Still others can say the word and spell it out perfectly, but surprisingly, they don’t know the meaning of the word. Indeed, to learn is one thing; to know is another. In order to know a new word, students need to take great efforts. Nation (2001) pointed out that in order to know a word, many aspects are involved, which are shown under in Table 1. Nation distinguished vocabulary knowledge into receptive and productive. The former refers to the ability to understand a word while listening or reading. The latter means the ability to use a word in speaking or writing. Sun (2007) introduced an idea that vocabulary gaining develops along a linear continuum, and that the concept denies the dichotomy that vocabulary knowledge is either known or unknown. On the both ends of the continuum are one’s receptive vocabulary knowledge as well as one’s productive knowledge. This model assumes that for a word to be a productive one, it must be a receptive one first (Melka, 1997; Palmberg, 1987; Pigott, 1981, as cited in Sun, 2007).
65 Table 1. What Is Involved in Knowing a Word?
Form Spoken R What does the word sound like? P How is the word pronounced? Written R What does the word look like?
P How is the word written and spelled?
Word parts R What parts are recognizable in this word?
P What word parts are needed to express the meaning?
Meaning Form and meaning R What meaning does this word form signal?
P What word form can be used to express this meaning?
Concept and referents
R What is included in the concept?
P What items can the concept refer to?
Associations R What other words does this make us think of?
P What other words could we use instead of this one?
Use Grammatical
functions
R In what patterns does the word occur?
P In what patterns must we use this word?
Collocations R What words or types of words occur with this one?
P What words or types of words must we use with this one?
Constraints on use (register,
frequency…)
R Where, when, and how often would we expect to meet this word?
P Where, when, and how often can we use this word?
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2. Vocabulary Instruction
Traditionally, as teachers presented new vocabulary to students, they used to focus on the meaning of the new word or the equivalent in the native language. However, many scholars have found that only knowing the meaning of the word is not enough. Knowing the definition of a word may be conducive to reading, but it doesn’t enable students to produce a correct or authentic sentence, for they are not familiar with how the word should be used. Consequently, vocabulary instruction that focuses on collocation developed. “Collocation is of much higher importance, however, in terms of use, acquisition and ultimate success in language learning” (Stockdale III, 2004). When we focus on collocation, we will provide students with abundant exemplification, which will be helpful to students’ analysis and production.
Based on Stockdale’s studies in 2004, there are huge differences between the definition instruction and collocation instruction. Students who were trained with the emphasis of definition would annotate the word they didn’t know in L1. Then, they were likely to misuse them in an unsystematic way. Nevertheless, students who were trained with the emphasis of collocation would pay more attention to the word collocating the target words. Also, their class notes generally contained fewer L1 translations.
Apart from adding collocation to vocabulary teaching, implicit and explicit learning are also another focus for English teachers. Implicit learning is the acquisition of knowledge that takes place naturally, simply, and without conscious operations. Explicit learning refers to a conscious operation wherein the learner makes and tests hypotheses about the target language (Ellis, 1994). As to which approach brings better effectiveness, there is still no definite answer yet. Like Benthuysen said, over the years the “pendulum” has swung back and forth in second language education between methods that emphasize explicit instruction and methods that favor implicit learning. For instance, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which puts more stress on contents rather than forms, is more on the side of implicit learning. Nevertheless, The Audiolingual Method, in which reinforcement is an important element, stands closer to the side of explicit learning. In my opinion, it is easier for implicit vocabulary learning to take place with abundant English-speaking environment. If teachers want to achieve optimal effectiveness, they could take into account using these two models alternatively.
3. Creative Writing
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decades have seen an increased awareness of societal need for cultivating creative and imaginative thought. Given the importance of creativity, educational authorities in Taiwan and other countries alike have been laying high premium on provoking students’ limitless creativity. One way to foster students’ creativity is through writing. A blank sheet is an ideal place for them to bring their imagination into full play. According to Hamer (2005), the term creative writing suggests imaginative tasks such as writing poetry, stories, and plays. In the process of creative writing, it is a journey of self-discovery, and self-discovery promotes effective learning (Gafield-Vile, 1998). That is to say, when students are required to compose a piece of creative writing, they will meld together their creativity, imagination, past experiences as well as what they have learned in order to complete this project. Since the students are not restricted to a certain topic, their motivation will be higher with the imagination running wild. It is widely agreed that higher motivation gives rise to effective learning. In addition, creative writing has other benefits to offer, based on Ur (1996), when it comes to creative writing, most people feel pride in their work and want it to be read. With this thought in mind, we can infer that students will learn better if they are assigned to finish creative writing.
4. Incidental Vocabulary Learning
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Methodology
1. Participants
The participants of this experimental study come from two classes of the second grade (i.e. 11th grade) in Da-tung Senior High School in Pingtung County, Taiwan. Altogether 78 students took part in this experiment to enhance their vocabulary acquisition as well as retention. All the participants were randomly divided into three groups. Their group number is dependent on their seat number. That is, when their seat number is divided by three, those with the remainder one go to group one, those with the remainder two belong to group two, and the students with the remainder three is categorized into group three. The three groups’ English proficiency is considered homogeneous. That is because when it comes to the second monthly exam held on May 18th, 2010, the average score of English for group one is 64, group two 62.26, and group three is 64.23. The difference is not significant, (p < .05).
2. Instrument
The instruments for this experiment include the 2010 May Issue of Ivy League Analytical English magazine and a pre-test to determine the target words. Then, both a blackboard and chalk are used in the stage of teaching these target words. In addition, two post-tests are adopted for the evaluation of the students’ vocabulary acquisition as well as retention.
3. Procedure (1) Pre-test
In early-May, 2010, the researcher picked an article from the May Issue of Ivy
League Analytical English magazine. He especially chose the one from the end of the magazine in order to ensure that few students would have perused it. The vocabulary in this article was made into a test sheet as a pre-test to select the target words of this experiment. The design of the pre-test is shown under in Table 2. It has a list of English vocabulary words in the first column. If the students are familiar with the word or if they have seen it before, they are asked to give a check in the second column. Otherwise, they are asked to put a cross in the block. Those who gave a check to the second column are required to write the Chinese definition in the third column. What is put below is the sample of this pre-test.
Table 2. The Sample of Pre-test 英文
(English word)
認識/不認識
(Know the word or not)
中文意思
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Altogether 27 words were tested. They were boast, abide, eloquent, elaborate, intense, intensive, glimpse, portrait, evolve, individual, sheer, prospect, chill, optimal, norm, destination, arctic, block, suite, dazzling, chandelier, excursion, exhilaration, igloo, chalet, combine, and accommodations respectively. After all the test sheets were collected, it was found that none of the students was able to identify the following six words: elaborate, chill, optimal, arctic, suite, and chandelier. Even though several students gave a check beside “suite”, they actually mistook it for “suit.” Therefore, all these words were incorporated into my vocabulary list for teaching.
(2) Teaching
After the pre-test, I spent about half an hour teaching these words in both classes. When I taught the word, all the information about that word was provided, including how it is pronounced, its speech part, its derivations, its collocation, its countability if it is a noun, its past tense and its past participle if it is an irregular verb, and so forth. Most importantly, each word was instructed with an example sentence so that the students would be able to know how the word is used. After that, the students were asked to repeat the word twice to facilitate remembering the word. Basically, the teaching procedure follows the model of presentation and practice. It can be manifested by the figure below.
Figure 1. Process of vocabulary teaching
(3) Exercise Assigning.
Traditionally, a complete teaching process consists of 3Ps, that is, presentation, practice, and production. This process can be illustrated with the figure below.
Figure 2. The 3Ps in a teaching process
(teacher) present (student) practice
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Since in the process of teaching vocabulary, I have implemented presentation as well as practice, which I have mentioned in the previous section. Therefore, as for the production of the students’ works, they were divided into three groups. How the students were grouped has been mentioned in the section of participants. The students in group one were asked to compose a short story with these specific words. They don’t need to compose the story with the word order. As long as they finish a short article with the words, it is considered a job well done. As for the second group, they were required to create an example sentence that included the target word. That is to say, they will create six different sentences. I also encourage the students to write longer sentences so that the context is meaningful enough to indicate the definition of the target word. For example, the sentence “It is chilly today.” is frowned upon. Yet, its counterpart “It is chilly today so I put on my jacket.” will be considered better. When it comes to the third group, they were given a test sheet for vocabulary exercise. The test sheet was designed in a form of filling-in-the-black. There are ten questions. That means some target words will be tested twice. The following are two sample questions for this test sheet.
1. From the honeymoon __________ in this hotel, you can see a very good view of the ocean. (suite)
2. The president was given a __________ welcome when he arrived at this university to give a speech. (chilly)
(4) Immediate Test
Two days after all three groups had finished their exercise, an immediate test was given to see how many vocabulary words they had really learned. The test was made up of two parts. In the first part, the teacher wrote six target words on the blackboard and asked the students to write down their Chinese definitions. After that, the teacher erased all the English words on the blackboard and moved on to the second part. In part two, the teacher said the target words and had the students not only spell it out but also write down the Chinese meaning beside. By doing so, the form, the sound and the meaning of the word were tested.
(5) Delayed Test
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recognize the word while part two tests the students’ sound, form, and the Chinese meaning of the word.
Results and Discussion
1. Test Results
For part one, I divide the results into three categories. That is, students who got all the six questions right, students who got more than half of the questions right (over three questions), and students who got less than half of the questions right. The immediate test result for part one can be demonstrated by Table 3. below.
From this table, we can infer that group one has better performance than the other two groups. That means students who were required to write a composition based on the assigned words have clearer memories about the words they have practiced. As for group two and group three, there is no obvious difference. It is noteworthy, yet, in the part one of the immediate test, all of the three groups did a pretty good job. That is because over two thirds of the students (54/78) were able to answer the questions correctly. This implies that vocabulary exercise, to some degree, has reached its effectiveness.
Table 3. The Immediate Test Result for Part One Got all the
questions right
Got more than half of the questions right
Got less than half of the questions right Total Group one 24 0 2 26 Group two 14 10 2 26 Group three 16 10 0 26
Note: The figures in the table refers to the number of the students who got all the questions right, got more than half of the questions rights, or got less than half of the questions right respectively.
The delayed test result for part one is shown in Table 4 in the next page. This test aims to examine the participants’ memory retention after a certain period of time. When we learn new things, what we see and hear will be stored temporarily in our brain, which is called short-term memory. With no special practice or review, these short-term memories will slip away in the course of time. However, if learners keep retrieving the information, these short-term memories will become our long-term memories. That suggests it will be hard to forget these pieces of information.
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group three. So far, those who undertook more difficult training, i.e. composing a short article with the new vocabulary words, have outstanding memory retention. We should note that the majority of the students in group three falls in the category of “got more than half of the questions right.” This implies that even though most students in group three are not able to recognize all the six words correctly, at least they can still grasp most of the words, as evidenced by this table.
Table 4. The Delayed Test Result for Part One Got all the
questions right
Got more than half of the questions right
Got less than half of the questions right Total Group one 22 2 2 26 Group two 14 8 4 26 Group three 6 20 0 26
Part two in both immediate and delayed test is designed mainly to test participants’ word spelling. It is known to everyone that to know a word is one thing, but to spell it out is another. More often than not, spelling is a more difficult task. That is because the relationship between the pronunciation and its spelling is not so regular in the English language. Table 5 below is the immediate test result for part two.
From this table, we can observe that the students who received the training of incorporating new vocabulary words into the compositions outperformed those who received other types of vocabulary exercise, particularly as far as answering all the questions correctly is concerned. From Table 5, we can also observe that group two and group three seem to have the same performance results. For group two and three, the difference may not be so significant because the number of the participants is not big enough. If the number of the participants extends to a bigger sum, chances are that the difference between group two and group three will be more noticeable.
Table 5. The Immediate Test Result for Part Two Got all the
questions right
Got more than half of the questions right
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Part two of this vocabulary test is considered to be more difficult because the students are required to spell the word out. Therefore, it is assumed that the delayed test result for part two will be far from satisfactory, for after a stint of one week, the great memory loss of the word spelling is foreseeable. Below is Table 6, which shows the delayed test result for part two.
In this table, we can see that the students in group one showed some memory loss, but not significant. The number of the students who got all the questions right dropped from 14 to 12, but the number of the students who got more than half of the questions right rose from 8 to ten. As for group two, another four people joined the category of answering all the questions right. However, for those who got more than half of the questions right, the number falls greatly from 16 to 6. Some of the students were even categorized into the group of “answering less than half of the questions right.”
When it comes to group three, the situation is pretty similar to that of group two. Basically, there is no big difference between the immediate test and the delayed test for part two. (610; 1614; 42)There is little memory loss concerning the spelling out the words. Yet, it is an interesting phenomenon that the number of those who got the entire questions right rose from six to ten.
Table 6. The Delayed Test Result for Part Two Got all the
questions right
Got more than half of the questions right
Got less than half of the questions right Total Group one 12 10 4 26 Group two 10 6 10 26 Group three 10 14 2 26
In a nutshell, group one has an eminent performance in all the four tests (immediate test part one, immediate test part two, delayed test part one, and delayed test part two). Also, group one shows the best memory retention in both parts after one week. This experiment result conforms to Schneider et al.’s journal title in 2002 “What is learned under difficult conditions is hard to forget.” The memory retention for group two is acceptable in part one. Group three has the greatest memory loss in part one. Maybe that is because the students in group three receive the easiest training in vocabulary. They just need to fill in the correct target words on the basis of the context. Well goes the saying, “Easy come, easy go.” In my opinion, this proverb fits in this situation.
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demonstrated the greatest memory loss. Even though after one week, another four students had the honor of being members of “got all the questions right.” They might study hard and commit the word spelling into their memory during the week. However, for most of the students in group two, word spelling slips their minds quickly, which is proved by the increasing number from two to ten in the category of “getting less than half of the questions right.” In group three, there seemed to be a slight improvement in the category of “getting all the questions right” because the number of students rose from 6 to 10. These four students, like the ones in group two, may study spontaneously after the immediate test. Therefore, the vocabulary retention for group three is not so bad.
2. Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition
As the participants in group one and group two were given the exercise, they
were asked to underline the target words and highlight the words which they looked up in dictionaries in the process of either composition or sentence writing. As for the students in group three, they were required to highlight the words they didn’t know on the test sheet. When the students handed me in their exercise, it was found that a very high percentage of the participants in group one learned some extra words incidentally, whereas the participants in group three didn’t encounter any unfamiliar words when they were filling out the blanks. More detailed statistics were shown in the Table 7 below.
Table 7. The Participants’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition
Group one Group two Group three Number of students who
highlight unfamiliar words
8 4 0
Total 26 26 26
3. Creative Writing
Students in group one not only showed better vocabulary retention but also learned some extra words in the process of writing. On top of that, some students showed very good creativity in writing. The following passage is a brainchild from one participant, Mary (pseudonym).
Crystal went on an excursion with her friend, May. They wanted to go
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her an elaborate box. As soon as she opened it, it was dark before her eyes. The next second, she woke up and saw May sitting next to her on the bus. She had a dream. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, human’s cognitive complexity can be divided into multiple levels as Figure 3 demonstrates. On the top of the pyramid is creativity. That means in order to include the six target words into the composition, Mary has to remember the word, understand the word, and then apply the word to make a sentence. Finally, she exerted her imagination and creativity to finish this task.
Figure 3. Bloom’s Taxonomy
(retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom’s_Taxonomy)
Conclusion
Since vocabulary is the core of any existing language, the issue of vocabulary acquisition as well as retention is the interest of many researchers. In my study, I tried to measure the vocabulary retention through three different kinds of exercise, using the new words to compose a meaningful short story or article, using the new words to make sentences, and filling the blanks with the new words. After the experiment, the statistics show that the group which was assigned to compose an article had distinguished performance. They remembered the meaning and the spelling alike. This result corresponds to Schneider, Healy, and Bourne Jr.’s (2002) hypothesis that when foreign vocabulary words are learned under difficult conditions, they will be hard to forget. When composing an article in a foreign language, learners will put a lot into account, like coherence, structure, word use, collocation, and so forth. As a result, it would be long before the final composition was produced. The long writing process engraved the new vocabulary words on the learners’ memories. As for the sentence creating group, their performance was not so satisfactory as that of “filling out the blank” group.
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process of composing an article or making a sentence. This phenomenon is particularly conspicuous in the composition group. The “filling out the blank” group is deprived of this benefit of enlarging the vocabulary size. To sum up, it is recommended that EFL teachers encourage learners to incorporate a number of new words into a composition. In this way, the learners may not only remember those target words better but also learn new words at the same time. It’s like killing two birds with one stone.
Even though students may acquire some vocabulary words incidentally through the process of creative writing, the effectiveness of these incidentally acquired words were not evaluated in this study. For example, how long can these words be retained in students’ memories? How much do students know these words? Are they just able to do the vocabulary transfer in meaning or are they able to correctly apply these words to daily use? If students fail to use these incidentally acquired words, then the incidental vocabulary acquisition becomes meaningless. The above-mentioned questions leave much space for further investigation.
References
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