Using synonyms and antonyms to teach vocabulary

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
MILITARY SCIENCE ACADEMY


Nguyen Thi Nhung


“An investigation into the effects of using synonyms and antonyms to teach vocabulary to 10th graders at Le Thanh Tong high school.”

THESIS SUPERVISOR:
TRAN TUAN ANH, M.A.
 



Table Of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1.THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1. Overview of vocabulary
1.2. Overview of synonyms
1.3. Overview of antonyms
1.4. Using synonyms and antonyms in teaching vocabulary
Chapter 2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Current situations of English vocabulary teaching and learning at LTT high school
2.2. Research hypothesis
2.3. Data collection method
Chapter 3. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
3.1. Findings and discussions of the study
3.2. Results and discussion from the questionnaires
3.3. Results and discussion from the interviews
3.4. Implications for using synonyms and antonyms in teaching
CONCLUSION






INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the study
2. The aims of the study
3. The objectives of the study
4. The object of the study
5. The scope of the study
6. The methodology of the study
7. The significance of the study
8. The design of the study


   
Chapter 1
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1. Overview of vocabulary
1.1.1. The definitions of vocabulary
1.1.2. The importance of vocabulary
1.1.3. The classification of vocabulary
1.1.4. The aspects of a word to be presented
1.1.5. The techniques in teaching vocabulary
1.1.6. The techniques for presenting new vocabulary
1.1.6.1.Visual techniques
1.1.6.2. Verbal techniques
1.1.6.3. The steps for teaching vocabulary
1.1.6.4. Student-centred
1.1.7. Techniques for consolidating and checking vocabulary


1.2. OVERVIEW OF SYNONYMS
1.2.1. The definitions of synonyms
According to Charles W. Kreidler [6, P. 97] writes about synonyms in his book Introducing English semantics that “synonyms is an instance of mutual entailment, and synonyms are instances of mutual hyponymy.”
Similarly, Michael McCarthy [18, p. 126] says “synonymy means that two or more words have the same meaning.”
Linguistic semantics with a famous representative, John Lyon, defines synonyms as “expressions with the same meaning”. It means that synonyms are words express the same meaning.
1.2.2. Classification of synonyms
Phraseological synonyms
stylistic synonyms
Semantic stylistic synonyms
semantic synonyms
Absolute synonyms
synonyms
Euphemisms
Territorial synonyms
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1.3.1 The definitions of antonyms
According to F.R Palmer[21, p.94] defines: “The term antonymy is used for oppositeness of meaning; words that are opposite are antonyms.”
Similarly, G.B Antrushina [2, p.167] states: “We use the term antonyms to indicate word of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meanings.”
Generally, I. Arnold [3, p.209] states: “ antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same part of speech and to same semantic, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution, associated and often used together so that their denotative meaning render contradictory or contrary notions.”


Gradable
1.3.2. Classification of antonyms
conversive
On word formation
On meaning
Absolute
Derivational
Complementary
ANTONYMS
1.4. USING SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS IN TEACHING VOCABULARY
1.4.1. The effects of using synonyms and antonyms to teach vocabulary
1.4.2. The requirements of using synonyms and antonyms in teaching vocabulary
1.4.3. The steps of applying synonyms and antonyms in teaching vocabulary
SUMMARY
CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY
2.1. CURRENT SITUATIONS OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY TEACHING AND LEARNING AT LTT HIGH SCHOOL
2.1.1. Description of the curricula
2.1.2. Content of the textbook
2.1.3. Description of the students
2.1.4. Description of the teachers
2.1.5. Description of the teaching facilities
2.2. RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
2.3. DATA COLLECTION METHOD
2.3.1. Participants of the study (the teachers, the students)
2.3.2. Sampling
2.3.3. Instruments
2.3.4. Procedures of data collection
2.3.5. Data analysis
SUMMARY
2.3.3. Instruments
The three main instruments are utilized to obtain the data for the study as follows: pre-test and post-test, survey questionnaires and interviews.
Instrument one: A quasi-experimental design: A pre-test - post-test is designed to find out the effects of using the technique of synonyms and antonyms in teaching vocabulary to the 10th graders at LTT high school.
Instrument two: Questionnaires: The questionnaires of the study involve both open-ended questions and closed-ended questions, The advantages of using questionnaire as data collection tools mainly come from the fact that with the help of questionnaires large amount of data can be collected quickly and economically.
Instrument three: Interviews: In addition to questionnaire, semi-structured interviews with five students were conducted as another important mode of data collection for this study. The interview is structured with a list of four questions.

2.3.4. Procedures of data collection
+ Duration: Data will be collected during10 weeks of the second term of the school year 2013-2014.
+ Steps:
- A pre-test is assigned to the experimental and control groups, post-test is administered. The scores of the pre-test and post-test are compared and marked by one experienced teacher and test scores are kept for later analysis.
- a survey questionnaire consists of pre-task questionnaire (11 questions) and post-task questionnaire (11 questions) and the results are showed by pie chart, options, tables of numbers and percentage%.
- During 6 of these lessons, another teacher interviews four groups, each group has five students with each question and record videos for internal evidence of the study.

2.3.5. Data analysis
+ The scores of the pre-test and post-test are used as the main source of data in this study. Those scores are compared on SPSS.
+ Results of the pre-task questionnaire(11 questions) and post-task questionnaire (11 questions) are also synthesized for analysis.
+ Results of interview for the students are recorded videos for internal evidence of the study.



CHAPTER 3
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS OF FINDINGS
This chapter is displayed findings of the research, discussions of the study and discuss its implications to teaching vocabulary for the tenth graders at LTT high school.
3.1. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS OF THE STUDY
3.1.1. Results and discussion from a quasi-experimental design
A T-test for independent samples is run to compare the results of pre-test and post-test of both the experimental class and the control one. The results of the control class are indicated based on these tables.
The pre-test of 10A (experimental class) and 10A1(control class) was carried out on December,12th 2013 and the post-test was passed on February, 28th 2014 in two classrooms at LTT high school, sixty students had 25 minutes to do the tests.



Based on the data given in figure 1 and figure 2, we can clearly see to describe the pre-test of control class and experimental class and marks in each group were not the same such as six was the best point of both groups but in experimental class got only one student(3.3%) and control class had three students (10%).
Moreover, the average mark of two groups was four but control class gained 11 students (36.7%) and experimental one got 8 students (26.7%), 3 students (10%) is control class 6 students in experimental class had 3 points.
In addition, both charts mentioned above show the standard of beginning through the pre-test in control class was better than experimental class.

3.1.2. Analysis descriptive statistics of control class and experimental class
A T-test for independent samples was run to compare the results of pre-test and post-test of both the experimental class and the control one. The results of the control class and the experimental class were indicated based on these tables below.

Figure 3.5. The pre-test of control class and the experimental class (N =60)
It can be seen clearly from the figure3.5 and figure 3.6 that most of the students gained improvement on their post-test after being taught in the different way. In fact, the scores of the post-test was mostly higher than that of the pre-one. The score difference was from 0 to 1.5 (0 ≤ Sd ≤ 1.5). It means that the best students of the post-test gained 1.5 marks higher than their pre-one.
We used SPSS to create histograms, frequency distributions and to calculate the standard measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode), calculate the standard measures of dispersion (range, standard deviation/ variance ). We got the descriptive statistics for the control class and experimental class separately.

More clearly, in the table 3 and the table 4 mean difference between the pre-test and the post-test was 1.01 (the mean scores of the pre-test was 4.00 and those of the post-test was 5.0). Moreover, the value of p was only less than 0.0001 in both one-tailed and two-tailed way (p < 0.05), which indicated that the data imparity did not exactly happened accidentally. So on figure 6 showed p(one-tailed of pre-test was 0.060 and post-test was 0.091) > 0.05 and p(two-tailed of pre-test was 0.016 and post-test was 0.044) < 0.05.
In addition to this, the t-value of pre-test was 1.40 and post-test was 0.77 which can be withdrawn synonyms and antonyms could have positive effects into teaching vocabulary to the students.


3.2. Results and discussion from the questionnaires
3.2.1. Results and discussion from the pre-task questionnaire
The pre-task questionnaire was designed to collect the following information:
Students` attitudes towards vocabulary learning (Question 1, 2, 3)
The common ways of presenting vocabulary and students` preferences (Question 4, 5)
Students` main difficulties in learning vocabulary (Question 6)
Students` common ways of learning vocabulary (Question 7)
Students` experience about using synonyms and antonyms and their attitudes to them (Question 8, 9, 10, 11)

3.2.2. Results and discussion from the post-task questionnaire
The post-task survey questionnaire was designed to collect the following information:
Students’ feelings and opinions about using synonyms and antonyms used in vocabulary lessons (Question 1, 2, 3)
Students’ assessment of the effectiveness of learning vocabulary through using synonyms and antonyms (Question 4, 5, 6, 7)
Students’ involvement in synonyms and antonyms (Question 8)
Students’ expectation for using synonyms and antonyms in vocabulary lessons (Question 9,10, 11)
3.3. Results and discussion from the interviews
According to the data gained in the interview for 4 questions:
1. What do you think about the role of vocabulary in learning English?
2. What do you think about learning vocabulary in your English lessons?
3. Through the use of synonyms and antonyms, what do you think of their role in teaching and learning English?
4. Could you suggest some ideas to the teacher do to make the use of synonyms and antonyms in your learning vocabulary more interesting?
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3.4. Implications for using synonyms and antonyms in teaching learning
Basing on the results of findings presented in the data, this part will be devoted to give some implications for using synonyms and antonyms in teaching and learning vocabulary.
3.4.1. Choosing appropriate synonyms and antonyms
3.4.2. Organization of the class
3.4.3. Participants
Summary
To summarize, the findings and discussions of the study have been presented in details. It was found that using synonyms and antonyms to practice vocabulary improved students` ability to memorize words, create real life context, encouraged students` interaction in a cooperative way and enhanced students` motivation on learning English vocabulary. This chapter lays a good foundation for the implication of the study, which is discussed, in the conclusion part.
CONCLUSION
In this final part, the summary of the study and its limitations as well will be stated briefly. Besides, some suggestions for further study are given.
Summary of the study
Limitations of the study
Suggestions for further study
Although there are controversial opinions about using synonyms and antonyms in teaching and learning, it cannot be denied that using synonyms and antonyms can create enjoyable and relaxing atmosphere, which helps students sustain their efforts of learning. Therefore, the researcher would like to recommend the wide use synonyms and antonyms in other aspects of language learning such as using synonyms and antonyms in teaching and learning four skills – reading, speaking, listening and writing.

THANK YOU
VERY MUCH