T. C. ULUDAĞ ÜNĐVERSĐTESĐ EĞĐTĐM BĐLĐMLERĐ ENSTĐTÜSÜ YABANCI DĐLLER EĞĐTĐMĐ ANABĐLĐM DALI ĐNGĐLĐZ DĐLĐ EĞĐTĐMĐ BĐLĐM DALI MEMORY STRATEGIES IN SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY LEARNING (YÜKSEK LĐSANS TEZĐ) BURCU BAYKUL DANIŞMAN: Yrd. Doç. Dr. MERAL ÖZTÜRK BURSA 2010 T. C. ULUDAĞ ÜNĐVERSĐTESĐ EĞĐTĐM BĐLĐMLERĐ ENSTĐTÜSÜ MÜDÜRLÜĞÜNE Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı, Đngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bilim Dalı’nda 700760009 numaralı Burcu BAYKUL’un hazırladığı “Memory Strategies in Second Language Vocabulary Learning” konulu Yüksek Lisans ile ilgili tez savunma sınavı, 13/10/ 2010 günü 12:30 – 13:30 saatleri arasında yapılmış, sorulan sorulara alınan cevaplar sonunda adayın tezinin başarılı olduğuna oybirliği ile karar verilmiştir. Üye (Tez Danışmanı ve Sınav Komisyonu Başkanı) Üye Yrd. Doç. Dr. Meral ÖZTÜRK Doç. Dr. Gülten GÜLER Uludağ Üniversitesi Uludağ Üniversitesi Üye Yrd. Doç. Dr. Derya DÖNER YILMAZ Uludağ Üniversitesi 13 /10 / 2010 ii ABSTRACT Yazar : Burcu BAYKUL Üniversite : Uludağ Üniversitesi Anabilim Dalı : Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı Bilim Dalı : Đngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bilim Dalı Tezin Niteliği : Yüksek Lisans Tezi Sayfa Sayısı : x + 88 Tez Danışmanı : Yrd Doç Dr Meral ÖZTÜRK This study investigated the effects of memory strategy instruction on Turkish EFL learners’ strategy use. It also sought to find out whether memory strategy training made a difference to the learners’ vocabulary learning levels both immediately and after one week. This research was carried out with the participation of 48 students in two classes at a state Vocational and Technical High School for Girls in Turkey. Technical class which consisted of 19 students was chosen as the experimental group and Vocational class which consisted of 29 students was chosen as the control group. Data were collected during the first term of the 2008-2009 academic year in a six week period. Before the strategy training, both groups were given a pre-test to determine the previous knowledge of the target words and the known words were deleted from the list. The experimental group was given three-week strategy training by their teacher who was at the same time the researcher. After the trainings, a strategy checklist and receptive and productive vocabulary tests were applied to both groups. The analyses of the quantitative data revealed that three-week strategy training failed to make statistically significant changes between the experimental and control group students’ strategy use. However, the experimental group showed a better performance in vocabulary tests than the control group, so it can be said that training in vocabulary learning strategies makes a significantly positive difference in students’ vocabulary achievement. Key Words Language learning strategies, vocabulary learning strategies, memory strategies, strategy training. iii ÖZET Yazar : Burcu BAYKUL Üniversite : Uludağ Üniversitesi Anabilim Dalı : Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı Bilim Dalı : Đngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bilim Dalı Tezin Niteliği : Yüksek Lisans Tezi Sayfa Sayısı : x + 88 Tez Danışmanı : Yrd Doç Dr Meral ÖZTÜRK Bu çalışma bellek stratejileri eğitiminin Đngilizce’ yi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen Türk öğrencilerinin strateji kullanımlarına olan etkisini incelemiştir. Bu çalışma ayrıca bellek stratejileri eğitiminin öğrencilerin kelime öğrenme düzeylerinde eğitimden hemen sonra ve bir hafta sonra fark yaratıp yaratmadığını araştırmıştır. Bu araştırma Türkiye’de devlete bağlı bir kız meslek ve teknik lisede öğrenim gören 48 öğrencinin katılımıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. 19 öğrenciden oluşan teknik sınıf deney grubu ve 29 öğrenciden oluşan meslek sınıfı kontrol grubu olarak seçilmiştir. Veriler 2008-2009 öğretim yılının 1. yarıyılında 6 haftalık bir sürede toplanmıştır. Strateji eğitiminden önce, her iki gruba da hedef kelimeleri tanıyıp tanımadıklarını belirlemek amacıyla bir ön-test verilmiştir ve bilinen kelimeler listeden çıkarılmıştır. Deney grubuna 3 haftalık strateji eğitimi aynı zamanda araştırmacı olan öğretmenleri tarafından verilmiştir. Nicel veri analizi 3 haftalık strateji eğitiminin deney ve kontrol grubu arasında istatistiksel olarak anlamlı fark yaratmada başarısız olduğunu göstermiştir. Bununla birlikte, deney grubu kelime testlerinde kontrol grubundan daha iyi bir performans göstermiştir. Bu yüzden, kelime öğrenme stratejileri eğitiminin öğrencilerin kelime öğrenme düzeylerine olumlu katkılarının olduğu değerlendirilmektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler Dil öğrenme stratejileri, kelime öğrenme stratejileri, bellek stratejileri, strateji eğitimi. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Meral ÖZTÜRK for her kind and constructive comments, suggestions, and supervising throughout my study. I would also like to express my gratitude to my students at Osmangazi IMKB Vocational and Technical High School for their contributions in this study as subjects. I owe special thanks to my best friend Sebahat SAYIN for her great support and help with SPSS. Finally, I am grateful to my dear husband Ahmet Ozan BALAK and my family for their valuable support and motivation during all the stages of this study. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE TEZ ONAY SAYFASI…………………………………………………………. ii ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………… iii ÖZET ………………………………………………………………………….. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………. v CONTENTS …………………………………………………………………… vi LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………... viii LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………………….. ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS …………………………... x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0. Introduction.................................…………………………………………... 1 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. The Importance of Vocabulary in ELT......………………………………… 4 2.2. Knowing a Word...........................................................……………………. 6 2.3. Trends in L2 Vocabulary Teaching......................…………………………. 8 2.4. Language Learning Strategies...............……………………………………. 9 2.5. Strategy Instruction........................................................................................ 15 2.6. Vocabulary Learning Strategies........................……………………………. 19 2.6.1. Memory Strategies........................................................................... 23 2.6.1.1. The Keyword Strategy........................................................ 24 2.6.1.2. Image Word Form............................................................... 25 2.6.1.3. The Grouping Strategy........................................................ 26 2.7. Vocabulary Learning Strategies Research..................................................... 26 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1. Participants ………………………………………………………………… 33 3.2. Procedure..........……………………………………………………………. 33 3.3. Pre-Testing..................................................................................................... 34 3.3.1. Target Words................................................................................... 34 3.3.2. Pre-test............................................................................................. 35 3.4. Strategy Training........................................................................................... 36 3.4.1. Target Strategies.............................................................................. 37 3.4.2. Training............................................................................................ 39 3.4.2.1. The Keyword Strategy....................................................... 39 3.4.2.2. The Word Form Strategy................................................... 41 3.4.2.3. The Grouping Strategy....................................................... 42 vi PAGE 3.5. Post-tests........................................................................................................ 45 3.5.1. Word Learning................................................................................. 45 3.5.2. Strategy Checklist………………………………………………… 45 3.5.3. Vocabulary Tests……………………………………..................... 46 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 4.1. Strategy Use…………………………………………………..……………. 49 4.2. Vocabulary Learning…………………………………………………...….. 51 4.2.1. English to Turkish Vocabulary Translation Test………………… 51 4.2.2. Turkish to English Vocabulary Translation Test………………… 5 2 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION 5.1. Strategy Use……………………………………...………………………… 54 5.2. Vocabulary Learning…………….………………………………………… 58 5.2.1. Success in Learning Vocabulary………………………………….. 58 5.2.2. Success in Retaining Vocabulary…………………………………. 59 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION 6.1. Conclusions………………………………………………………………… 61 6.2. Limitations of The Study…………………………………………………... 62 6.3. Suggestions for Further Research………………………………………….. 63 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………… 64 APPENDIX I Word list (Target words) …………………………………… 73 APPENDIX II Word test (Pre-test) ………………………………………… 74 APPENDIX III Powerpoint presentation for keyword strategy……………… 75 APPENDIX IV Words used for exercise in keyword presentation………… 79 APPENDIX V Words used in word form training…………………………... 80 APPENDIX VI Powerpoint presentation for grouping strategy……………… 81 APPENDIX VII Worksheet for grouping words……………………………… 82 APPENDIX VIII Test for grouping words……………………………………. 84 APPENDIX IX Strategy checklist…………………………………………… 85 APPENDIX X Kelime testi (Turkish-English)……………………………… 86 APPENDIX XI Word test (English-Turkish)………………………………... 87 ÖZGEÇMĐŞ ………………………………………………………………… 88 vii LIST OF TABLES PAGE Table 2.1.: What is involved in knowing a word …………………………… 7 Table 2.2.: Features of Language Learning Strategies ……………………… 11 Table 2.3.: Steps in the Strategy Training Model …………………………... 18 Table 2.4.: A taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies………………….. 21 Table 3.1.: Research Procedure ……….......................................................... 34 Table 4.1.: Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups’ Learners in Terms of Their Checklist Scores…………………… 49 Table 4.2.: Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups in Terms of Their English to Turkish Vocabulary Test Scores……... 51 Table 4.3.: Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups’ Learners in Terms of Their Turkish to English Vocabulary Test Scores……………………………………………………………... 52 viii LIST OF FIGURES PAGE Figure 3.1.: First Step in Explaining the Keyword Strategy …………………. 39 Figure 3.2.: Second Step in Explaining the Keyword Strategy………………. 39 Figure 3.3.: Explanation of the Grouping Strategy…………………………… 42 Figure 3.4.: Semantic and Thematic Clustering……………………………… 44 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS CALLA: Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach COBUILD: Collins Birmingham University International Language Database EFL: English as a Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching ESP: English for Special Purposes FL: Foreign Language L1: First Language L2: Second Language LLS: Language Learning Strategies VOLSI: Vocabulary Learning Strategy Inventory x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a growing interest in vocabulary learning and teaching. Vocabulary acquisition research has established itself as a central research focus for language acquisition researchers. Vocabulary is central to language acquisition and a key element in the foreign language class. While grammar is important for meaning, without vocabulary no message is conveyed (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Miller, 2007). Words are the building blocks of a language since they label objects, actions, ideas without which people can not express the intended meaning (Ghazal, 2007). The importance of vocabulary knowledge was summed up by Micheal McCarthy (2001:2 cited in Fan, 2003: 222): Vocabulary forms the biggest part of the meaning of any language, and vocabulary is the biggest problem for most learners. So I’ve always been interested in ways of helping learners in building up a big vocabulary as fast and efficiently as possible. As a key to vocabulary learning, McCarthy (2001:2 cited in Fan, 2003:222) pointed out: The successful learners are those who develop techniques and disciplines for learning vocabulary: It might just be a question of keeping a notebook, or using a dictionary properly or perhaps disciplining yourself to look over your notes or to read a lot outside of class. The more independent you become as a learner, the better and stronger your vocabulary becomes, I think. This view implies that language achievement depends quite heavily on the individual learner’s attempts (Schmitt, 1997). Language learners who take greater control of their learning will become more successful than those who do not. This naturally led to a greater interest in the strategies employed by successful or good language learners assuming that it could help other learners to become more successful. Early researchers tended to make lists of strategies and some features of “good language learners”. For instance, Rubin (1975 cited in Rasekh & Ranjbary, 2003) proposed that good L2 learners are willing and accurate guessers; have a strong desire to communicate; are often uninhibited; are willing to make mistakes; focus on form by looking for patterns 1 and analyzing; take advantage of all practice opportunities; monitor their speech as well as that of others; and pay attention to meaning. These characteristics have been confirmed by later researches except for the “uninhibited” aspect. According to Horwitz and Young (1990 cited in Oxford 1993), many successful L2 learners are normally inhibited rather than uninhibited owing to language anxiety. They struggle with inhibition by using some strategies such as positive-self talk, practicing in private and putting themselves in situations where they have to participate communicatively. Like Rubin; Naiman, Frohlich, and Todesco (1975 cited in Rasekh & Ranjbary, 2003) made a list of strategies used by successful L2 learners, adding that good language learners learn to think in the language and attend to the affective aspects of language acquisition as well. According to Rasekh and Ranjbary (2003), in the field of learning strategy instruction, most of the research has focused on reading strategies as one of the important language skills, and on cognitive strategies as one of the main categories of learning strategies. Most of the research on vocabulary learning strategies has also focused on cognitive strategies. The importance of memory strategies has been emphasized by Oxford (1990, p.38) by stating “The mind can store some 100 trillion bits of information, but only part of that potential can be used unless memory strategies come to the aid of the learner”. Although many teachers think that vocabulary teaching is “a low-level intellectual activity unworthy of their full attention” (Coady, 1997, p.274), the learners have serious problems while they are trying to remember large amounts of vocabulary with many different meanings. Therefore, it is necessary to raise the consciousness of learners about vocabulary learning and to expand their repertoire of vocabulary learning strategies through strategy instruction. According to Tezgiden (2006), the need for strategy training might be even more urgent at the local level, as the learners are generally teacher-dependent in the Turkish EFL context. Memory strategies help learners to cope with the difficulty of vocabulary learning by helping them learn faster and recall better as they can integrate the new words into existing ones. As it has been suggested by some researchers including Oxford (1990), Coady (1997), and Nation (2001), one of the areas that teachers could help their students in relation to 2 learning strategies could be to familiarize them with different lexical learning strategies, which would lead to more autonomy in students. Moreover, most of the studies in learning strategies have concentrated on identification, description and classification of learning strategies used by language learners. Therefore, more attention should be paid to training in vocabulary learning strategies and whether strategy training has an effect on strategy use of the learners and their levels of vocabulary knowledge. The goal of this training is to help learners in becoming more effective learners by allowing them to facilitate their awareness of strategies which they can use to learn on their own after they leave the language classroom. This study aims to find out whether memory strategy instruction has an effect on Turkish EFL learners’ strategy use while learning L2 words. It also examines whether memory strategy training makes a difference to EFL learners’ vocabulary learning levels in the short-term and after a week’s interval. To achieve the purpose of the study the following research questions were proposed: 1. Will there be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their strategy use? 2. Will there be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their success in learning vocabulary? 3. Will there be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their success in retaining vocabulary? 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter discusses the theoretical background relevant to present study. It consists of seven main sections. The following section 2.1 presents the importance of vocabulary in ELT. Section 2.2 enlightens the reader about knowing a word while section 2.3 concentrates on the trends in L2 vocabulary teaching. In section 2.4, language learning strategies are discussed. Section 2.5 deals with strategy instruction. Section 2.6 explains the vocabulary learning strategies which is furthered in section 2.6. with the focus on memory strategies. Finally, vocabulary learning strategies research is reviewed in section 2.7. 2.1. The Importance of Vocabulary in ELT Vocabulary learning has often had a key role in second or foreign language learning. In the words of Genç (2004), the studies on vocabulary teaching and vocabulary selection go as far as to Michael Philip West (1888-1973), who was a pioneer in work on vocabulary selection. West proposed two ways of improving reading texts for the sake of children’s learning more easily. First of all, he offered using common words instead of old-fashioned literary words. Secondly, he suggested reducing the overall number of words in a text, since too many new words which are packed together frustrate teachers and students to teach and to learn (Genç, 2004). In 1953, with the publication of the General Service List, West aimed to list 2000 words which were adequate for the learners of English to express practically any idea they wanted to. After West, vocabulary learning became a neglected issue in second language research due to American linguistic theories that were dominant throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s (Decarrico, 2001). With the emergence of the Audio- Lingual Method, the method of Charles Fries, grammar was the starting point of language learning. Foreign language learning was seen as a process of mechanical habit formation. Rather than emphasizing vocabulary acquisition through exposure to its use in situations, the Audio-Lingual Method drilled students in the use of grammatical 4 sentence patterns (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). Once the students learned the structural frames, lexical items to fill the grammatical slots in the frames could be learned later (Decarrico, 2001). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a shift from a linguistic structure- centered approach to a Communicative Approach in the field of ELT. Although vocabulary research did not receive considerable attention, the importance of vocabulary was emphasized by some of the advocates of the Communicative Approach (Shen, 2003). For instance, Wilkins (1972, 1974 cited in Shen, 2003) stated that “learning vocabulary is as important as learning grammar”. He emphasizes the importance of collocations by claiming that even if the learners do not make grammatical mistakes, they can not achieve native-like proficiency without using collocations well (Shen, 2003). Furthermore, Allen (1983, cited in Shen, 2003) pointed out the reason for breakdown in communication as the wrong use of lexical items. However, the emphasis in Communicative Approach on the notional and functional aspects of language to achieve communicative competence led to inadequate focus on vocabulary teaching in many ELT classrooms (Shen, 2003). Towards the end of the twentieth century, vocabulary has gained importance both in second language research and in language teaching. One of the research implications about the importance of vocabulary is that “lexical competence is at the heart of communicative competence” (Meara, 1996). The central role of lexical units in learning and teaching was stressed in several approaches such as The Lexical Syllabus (Willis, 1990), Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992), and The Lexical Approach (Lewis, 1993; cited in Richards & Rodgers, 2001). According to the lexical approach, the building blocks of language learning and communication are not grammar, functions or notions but lexis, that is, words and word combinations. Multiword lexical units or “chunks” have a pivotal role in the development of learner’s proficiency. Woolard (2000, cited in Richards & Rodgers, 2001) emphasizes the use of activities that draw students’ attention to lexical collocations and suggests that teachers should reexamine their course books for collocations, providing exercises that focus explicitly on lexical phrases. Also, Woolard (2000, cited in Richards & Rodgers, 2001) believes that “The learning of collocations is 5 one aspect of language development which is ideally suited to independent language learning”. Advances in computer-based studies of language contributed to the selection of core vocabulary or corpus (for example, the Birmingham COBUILD corpus) and provided a huge database for lexically based inquiry and instruction (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Therefore, the weak and discriminated status of vocabulary as criticized (Levenston 1979, cited in Shen, 2003) in both L2 acquisition research and teaching methodologies has changed and is no longer the case. Nowadays, teachers and students of second or foreign languages agree that vocabulary knowledge constitutes an essential part of competence in language learning. Encounters with unfamiliar vocabulary are among the serious challenges which hamper the learners’ ability to use the target language in communication, as lexical items carry the information they want to express. Meara (1980 cited in Lai, 2005) states that language learners experience considerable difficulty with vocabulary even when they upgrade from an initial stage of acquiring a second language to a much more advanced level. Therefore, researchers on vocabulary draw their attention to the ways of understanding and managing this difficult process, which is one of the main aims of this study. 2.2. Knowing a Word There are many aspects of knowing a word because words do not exist as isolated items in a language. In simple terms, knowing a word is considered as knowing its meaning and its form. However, as Richards (1976, cited in Lai, 2005:6) suggests, knowing a word includes “knowledge of word frequency, collocation, register, case relations, underlying forms, word association and semantic structure.” In other words, knowing a word includes many aspects other than just the meaning and the form. Nation (2001) applies the terms receptive and productive to vocabulary knowledge description covering all the aspects of knowing a word. In receptive knowledge, the learners receive language input from others through listening or reading and try to understand it. On the other hand, in productive knowledge, the learners produce language forms by speaking and writing in order to convey messages to others. At the most general level, knowing a word involves form, meaning and use (Nation, 2001). 6 Nation’s (2001) classification of the aspects of knowing a word both from the point of view of receptive knowledge and productive knowledge is shown below in Table 2.1. Table 2.1 What is involved in knowing a word (Nation, 2001, p.27) 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 R: Where, when and how often would we expect to meet this word? P: Where, when, and how often can we use this word? Note: R = receptive knowledge, P = productive knowledge The amount of effort required to learn a word is the learning burden of a word and the various aspects of knowledge constitute this learning burden. Learners from different language backgrounds experience different levels of difficulty while learning a word. For learners whose mother tongue is closely related to the second language, the learning burden will be light, whereas the learning burden will be heavy for the learners whose mother tongue is not related to the second language. Teachers can diminish this burden by emphasizing the systematic patterns and analogies within the second language by identifying the connection between the first and second language (Nation, 2001). If learners achieve the criterion of knowing a vocabulary item and if the learners have both productive and receptive control of the new item, only then the new vocabulary 7 item is acquired. However, it is not usually possible to learn all these aspects at one time (Schmitt, 2000 cited in Tezgiden, 2006). Therefore, the learners should be exposed to the words in different contexts as much as possible. 2.3. Trends in L2 Vocabulary Teaching This section identifies three main positions dealing with vocabulary instruction. The first position is inferring from context which proposes that there is no need for direct vocabulary teaching. The students will learn all the vocabulary they need from context by reading. Although exposure to a word in a variety of contexts is very important to understand the depth of the word’s meaning, providing incidental encounters with words is only one method to facilitate vocabulary learning (Sökmen, 1997). Therefore, the contextualized approach to vocabulary teaching is criticized for a number of reasons. First of all, acquiring vocabulary through guessing in context seems to be a rather slow process especially in a classroom atmosphere. Secondly, many language learners simply ignore the unknown words in context and their attempts to infer word meanings from context often end up with inaccurate guesses due to their lower proficiency level in the target language and / or inadequate context clues. (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Hulstijn, 1992; Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Wesche & Paribakht, 2000, cited in Zhang, 2008). In addition, guessing from context does not necessarily aid learners in retaining the guessed words into their long-term memory (Sökmen, 1997). As Wesche and Paribakht’s (1994 cited in Lai, 2005) study indicates, learners who read and complete accompanying vocabulary exercises perform better in word acquisition than learners who only do extensive reading so, a combination of two approaches are better. Finally, even the students are trained to use flexible reading strategies to guess words in context, their comprehension may still be low due to insufficient vocabulary knowledge. As a result, scholars come to call for a greater need of an explicit approach to vocabulary teaching. The second position is explicit teaching. Explicit teaching refers to focused study of words, that is, teachers make learners concentrate on vocabulary through exercises, vocabulary lists, mnemonic devices, games etc. In the case of explicit teaching, the attention is deliberately directed towards a specific learning goal 8 (vocabulary learning). The direct studying of vocabulary has been shown to be very effective among good EFL learners in “input-poor environments”, where learners unluckily have insufficient reading materials (Kouraogo, 1993 cited in Gu & Johnson, 1996). Explicit vocabulary teaching is based on the following key principles: building a large sight vocabulary, integrating new words with old, providing multiple encounters with the word, promoting a deep level of processing, facilitating imaging and concreteness, using a variety of techniques, and encouraging independent learner strategies. (Sökmen, 1997). The third position is strategy instruction. According to Zhang (2008), vocabulary instruction should involve helping students learn how to continue to acquire vocabulary on their own. This view emphasizes the importance of vocabulary leaning strategies, which is the main focus of attention in this study. Learners tend to use a variety of strategies in combination based either on their beliefs about vocabulary and vocabulary learning or on the requirements of the situation they are in (Gu & Johnson, 1996). By adopting different learning strategies, students become independent language learners and they know how to continue to learn vocabulary on their own outside the class. Therefore, the following section will focus on one of the important factors in creating independent learners, namely language learning strategies, examining their definition, classification and basic features. 2.4. Language Learning Strategies Within the field of second language education, there has been a gradual but important shift, focusing on learners and learning rather than teachers and teaching (Lessard-Clouston, 1997). Particularly, developments in cognitive psychology and second language acquisition influenced much of the research on language learning strategies. As, Wenden (1987, cited in Kudo, 1999:1) states, “Research on learner strategies in the domain of second language learning may be viewed as a part of the general area of research on mental process and structures that constitutes the field of cognitive science”. Many scholars investigating the language learning strategies attempted to identify them in certain frames. In most of the research on language learning strategies, the primary stress has been on "identifying what good language 9 learners report they do to learn a second or foreign language, or, in some cases, are observed doing while learning a second or foreign language." (Wenden and Rubin, 1987:19 cited in Karatay, 2006). Learning strategies are defined by O’Malley and Chamot (1990 cited in Lessard- Clouston, 1997) as “special thoughts or behaviours that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information”. Wenden & Rubin (1987 cited in Lai, 2005:11) define them as “strategies which contribute to the development of the language system which the learner constructs and affect learning directly”. Finally, Oxford (1990, p.8) uses Rigney’s (1978) definition of language learning strategies as “operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information” as a base and expands this definition by stating that “learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations”. Considering the definitions above it can be seen that there is a change over time emphasizing the processes and characteristics of language learning strategies rather than products of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (Lessard- Clouston, 1997). Although the terminology is not always uniform, with some writers using the terms "learner strategies", others prefer "learning strategies" or "language learning strategies", there are a number of basic characteristics of LLS. In the generally accepted view of language learning strategies, Lessard-Clousten (1997) proposes these features as: • Language learning strategies are learner-generated; they are steps taken by language learners. • Language learner strategies improve language learning and language competence, as reflected in the learner’s skills of L2 or FL. • Language learning strategies maybe visible (behaviours, steps, techniques,etc.) or invisible (thoughts, mental processes). • Language learning strategies include information and memory (vocabulary, knowledge, grammatical rules, etc.). One of the main figures of this field, Oxford, proposes a list of twelve key features involving language learning strategies as shown in Table 2.2. 10 Table 2.2: Features of Language Learning Strategies Language Learning Strategies 1. Contribute to the main goal, communicative competence. 2. Allow learners to become more self-directed. 3. Expand the role of teachers. 4. Are problem-oriented. 5. Are specific actions taken by the learner. 6. Involve many aspects of the learner, not just the cognitive. 7. Support learning both directly and indirectly. 8. Are not always observable. 9. Are often conscious. 10. Can be taught. 11. Are flexible. 12. Are influenced by a variety of factors. (Oxford,1990: 9) Among the features above, the second argument, self-direction is worth mentioning as it is essential for the active development of ability in a new language. Since learners will not always have the teacher around to guide them while they are using the language outside the classroom, it is important to assist them in gaining independence by teaching various language leaning strategies. Self-directed learners are independent learners who are capable of assuming responsibility for their own learning and gradually gaining confidence, involvement and proficiency (Oxford, 1990). Learning strategies expand the role of teachers. Traditionally, teachers are expected to be the authority, director, manager, controller etc. However, in a learner-centered classroom, teachers act as facilitators, guides or coordinators who identify students’ learning strategies, train them in learning strategies and help them become more independent. Another important feature of language learning strategies, the tenth argument, which notes that strategies are teachable to language learners, makes it particularly worthwhile for language practitioners to study this issue further so that appropriate strategy instruction can be provided to students to enhance their learning. Thus, strategy training will be discussed in detail after presenting the different classification systems proposed by different researchers. 11 Classification of the language learning strategies is another issue which has been discussed in this field for the last two decades. A number of attempts have been made to classify language learning strategies. Rubin was one of the pioneers who focused on the strategies of good language learners. She categorized the language learning strategies into two general categories: • strategies contributing to the language learning directly • strategies contributing to the language learning indirectly The first category consists of clarification/verification, monitoring, memorization, guessing/inductive inferencing, deductive reasoning, and practice. The second group includes creating opportunities for practice and production tricks. (Lai, 2005) O’Malley and Chamot (1990, cited in Schmitt, 1997) proposed three types of strategies: metacognitive (strategies for overviewing the processes of language use and learning, and for taking steps to efficiently plan and regulate those processes), cognitive ( strategies which involve the manipulation of information in an immediate task for the purpose of acquiring or retaining that information) and social/ affective ( strategies dealing with interpersonal relationships and those which deal with controlling one’s emotional constraints). On the other hand, Oxford (1990) proposed a more comprehensive model in which six categories, classified into two groups of direct and indirect exist. Oxford’s (1990:17) taxonomy of language learning strategies is given below: 1-Direct Strategies I. Memory A. Creating mental linkages B. Applying images and sounds C. Reviewing well D. Employing action II.Cognitive A. Practising B. Receiving and sending messages C. Analysing and reasoning D. Creating structure for input and output 12 III. Compensation strategies A. Guessing intelligently B. Overcoming limitations in speaking and writing 2-Indirect Strategies I. Metacognitive Strategies A. Centering your learning B. Arranging and planning your learning C. Evaluating your learning II. Affective Strategies A. Lowering your anxiety B. Encouraging yourself C. Taking your emotional temperature III. Social Strategies A. Asking questions B. Cooperating with others C. Emphathising with others 1-Direct Language Learning Strategies Language learning strategies that directly involve the target language are called direct strategies which are divided into memory, cognitive and compensation strategies. A. Memory Strategies: Memory strategies help students to store and retrieve new information. These strategies are sometimes called mnemonics and have been used for thousands of years. People used memory strategies to remember practical information about farming, weather, or when they were born before literacy became widespread. Memory strategies reflect very simple principles which involve meaning. These are arranging things in order making associations, and reviewing. For the purpose of learning a language, the arrangement and associations must be personally meaningful to the learner, and the material to be reviewed must have significance. Thus, memory strategies help learners to cope with the difficulty of vocabulary learning. They enable learners to store verbal material and then retrieve it when needed for communication. 13 B. Cognitive Strategies: Cognitive strategies are essential in learning a new language. They help learners to understand and produce language in different ways. The function of these strategies is manipulation or transformation of the target language by the learner. The four sets of cognitive strategies are; practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, and creating structure for input and output. C. Compensation Strategies: Despite limitations in knowledge, compensation strategies enable learners to use the new language for either comprehension or production. Many compensation strategies are used to make up for an inadequate repertoire of grammar and especially of vocabulary. 2-Indirect Language Learning Strategies Language learning strategies that support and manage language learning without directly involving the target language are called indirect strategies. The indirect strategies include metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. A. Metacognitive Strategies: Metacognitive strategies are activities which go beyond purely cognitive devices, and which provide a way for learners to coordinate their own learning process. Language learners are often overwhelmed by too many novelties such as unfamiliar vocabulary, confusing rules, different writing systems, and seemingly inexplicable social customs, and non-traditional instructional approaches. With all this novelty, many learners lose their focus, which can be regained by the conscious use of metacognitive strategies such as paying attention and overviewing/linking with already familiar material. Other metacognitive strategies, like organizing, setting goals and objectives, considering the purpose, and planning for a language task, help learners to arrange and plan their language leaning in an efficient and effective way. The metacognitive strategy of seeking practice opportunities make the learners to take responsibility to seek as many practice opportunities as possible, usually outside the classroom. Oxford (1990:137) states that sometimes language learners have problems in realistically monitoring their errors, so these problems can be improved by using the metacognitive strategies for self-monitoring and self-evaluating. 14 B. Affective Strategies: Affective strategies help to regulate emotions, motivations, and attitudes. The affective side of the learner is probably one of the very biggest influences on language learning success or failure. Negative feelings can stop progress in language learning. On the other hand, positive emotions and attitudes can make language far more effective and enjoyable. Attitudes are strong predictors of motivation in language learning. Just as attitudes affect motivation, attitudes and motivation work together to influence language performance itself. Self-encouragement strategies are powerful ways to improve attitudes and, thus, motivation. Self-encouragement via positive statements can change one’s feelings and attitudes and can indirectly reduce performance anxiety, including the tensions which surrounds test taking. Listening to bodily signals is an especially helpful strategy for discovering and controlling anxiety. C. Social Strategies: Social strategies help students learn through interaction with others. There are three sets of social strategies: asking questions, cooperating with others, and empathizing with others. Asking questions helps learners get closer to the intended meaning and thus aids their understanding. One social strategy concerns asking questions for clarification (when something is not understood) or verification (when the learners want to check whether something is correct). A related social strategy involves asking for correction, which is especially useful in the classroom. Cooperating with peers and with more proficient users of the target language is extremely important for language learners as cooperating implies the absence of competition, and the presence of group spirit. According to Oxford (1990), cooperative strategies have provided the following benefits: better student and teacher satisfaction, stronger language learning motivation, more language practice opportunities, more feedback about language errors, and greater use of different language functions(146). 2.5. Strategy Instruction Several different terms are used for the training of language learning strategies such as “strategy training”, “learner training”, “strategy instruction”, “learning-to-learn training” and so on. This research uses both the terms “strategy training” and “strategy instruction” interchangeably as they are generally used in the literature. 15 Strategy training can be defined as the explicit teaching of how, when, and why learners should adopt language learning strategies to improve their attempts at reaching language program goals (Cohen, 1998; Ellis and Sinclair, 1989; cited in Chen, 2007). Cohen claims that “the ultimate goal of strategy training is to empower students by allowing them to take control of the language learning process’ (1998: 70, cited in Chen, 2007:21). Therefore, he suggests three main goals of strategy training: “to develop the learners’ own individualized strategy systems, to promote learner autonomy and learner self-direction and self-evaluation, and to encourage learners to take more responsibility for their own language learning” (Chen, 2007:21). Learners should believe that their own efforts are vital to progress in learning. Furthermore, they have to accept the fact that teachers can not learn for their students: the learners can only learn if they are willing to learn. Therefore, the best strategy training should not only teach language learning strategies but also deal with feelings and beliefs about taking on more responsibility. Oxford (1990:201) believes that unless learners alter some of their old beliefs about learning, they will not be able to take advantage of the strategies they acquire in strategy training. There are different approaches in which language learning strategy training can be carried out and they can be divided into two categories: direct strategy training and embedded strategy training. In direct (explicit) strategy training, learners are informed about the value and purpose of learning strategies whereas in embedded training learning strategies are embedded into the task materials but not explicitly defined to the learner. Oxford (1990:201) points out that “Many language teachers advocate explicit training of language learners in the ‘how to’ of language study” since such training “makes language learning more meaningful”, “encourages a collaborative spirit between learner and teacher”, helps “to learn about options for language learning” and “to learn and practice strategies that facilitate self-reliance”. Further, she adds that strategy training should not be abstract and theoretical but should be highly practical and useful for students (Oxford, 1990:201). Following an explicit approach to strategy training, Chamot & O'Malley (1994, cited in Rasekh and Ranjbary, 2003) provided a useful framework called Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). Chamot et al. (1999:7, cited in 16 Tezgiden, 2006) claim that the theoretical framework of CALLA is “a social-cognitive learning model that emphasizes the role of students’ prior knowledge, the importance of collaborative learning, and the development of metacognitive awareness and self- reflection.” CALLA approach is a five step model for introducing, teaching, practicing, evaluating, and applying learning strategies. In this model, explicit instruction in using strategies gradually disappear so that learners can take greater responsibility in choosing and applying suitable learning strategies. When the learners add new strategies to their repertoires, the steps of the model repeat (Chamot & O'Malley, 1994; Chamot Barnhardt, El Dinary, & Robbins, 1999, cited in Rasekh and Ranjbary, 2003). The CALLA model is based on the following five steps, which do not have to be followed in a strict order: 1. Preparation – the prior knowledge of students in relation to a specific language learning strategy is analyzed, 2. Presentation – a new language learning strategy is presented and its use is demonstrated, 3. Practice – the presented strategy is practiced using the usual classroom material, 4. Evaluation – students evaluate how well the strategy is helping them, 5. Expansion – students attempt to extend the examined language learning strategy to new tasks. (Jurkovic, 2006) According to Oxford, language learning strategies can be taught in three different ways: awareness training, one-time strategy training, and long-term strategy training. Awareness training is an introduction to the general idea of language learning strategies so it is very important to motivate learners to expand their knowledge of strategies. In one-time strategy training, learners are trained to use one or more strategies with actual language tasks. The learners are informed on the value of the strategies and where, when and how to use them. One-time strategy training, which is the case in this research, is suitable for students who need certain type of strategies that can be taught in a few sessions. Oxford (1990:203) believes that long-term training is more effective than one-time training because it includes a greater number of strategies and lasts a long time fitting into the regular language program. 17 Another model for strategy training which is especially useful for long-term strategy training, but can be adapted for one-time training is proposed by Oxford (1990). The model which is shown below in Table 2.3 consists of 8 steps. The steps between 1 and 5 are for planning and preparing for the strategy training while the steps between 6 and 8 are used for conducting, evaluating and revising the strategy training. Oxford(1990) states that the steps of the model might be performed in a slightly different order. Table 2.3: Steps in the Strategy Training Model 1. Determine the learners’ needs and the time available. 2. Select strategies well. 3. Consider integration of strategy training. 4. Consider motivational issues. 5. Prepare materials and activities. 6. Conduct “completely informed training.” 7. Evaluate the strategy training. 8. Revise the strategy training. (Oxford, 1990: 204) As it can be seen from the table 2.3 above, the first step of the model is considering the needs of the learners and the amount of time available for the strategy training. It is also necessary to know about their existing use of learning strategies. The second step is selecting strategies well. Oxford (1990) proposes some criteria for this step such as selecting strategies which are suitable to the needs and characteristics of the learners, choosing more than one kind of strategy which are generally useful for most learners and which are not either too easy or difficult. The third step, integrating strategy training with the activities and objectives and materials used in the regular language training program is very important so that students think that they are doing something related to their actual learning. The fourth step is about the motivational issues. The students can be motivated to learn strategies either by giving grades for the achievement of new strategies or by emphasizing that they will become more effective learners. MacIntyre and Noels (1996, cited in Tseng and Schmitt, 2008) referred to motivation as 18 desire plus effort and found that more motivated learners used learning strategies more often. Step five is preparing materials and activities which are interesting to the learners. Step six, “completely informed training” refers to informing the learners about the importance of the strategies and how they can be used in new language tasks. The seventh step, evaluating the strategy training both by learners’ own comments and teachers’ observations are useful for assessing the success of strategy training. After the evaluation, it might be necessary to revise the strategy training which is the last step of Oxford’s (1990) strategy training model. This research benefits from Oxford’s (1990) model of strategy training. After exploring learning strategies and models of strategy training, now is the time to focus on the main topic of this study: vocabulary learning strategies. Next section will explore the definition, classification and types of vocabulary learning strategies. 2.6. Vocabulary Learning Strategies Vocabulary learning strategies are one part of language learning strategies which in turn are part of general learning strategies (Nation, 2001). Intaraprasert (2004:9) defines vocabulary learning strategies as “any set of techniques or learning behaviors, which students reported using in order to discover the meaning of a new word, to retain the knowledge of newly-learned words, or to expand their knowledge of English vocabulary.” However, Nation (2001:217) finds it difficult to arrive at a definition and argues that to deserve attention from a teacher a strategy would need to: 1) Involve choice, that is, there are several strategies to choose from, 2) Be complex, that is, there are several steps to learn, 3) Require knowledge and benefit from training, 4) Increase the efficiency of vocabulary learning and vocabulary use. Schmitt (1997:203) adopts Rubin’s definition of language learning strategies: “The process by which information is obtained, stored, retrieved, and used” and emphasizes that here ‘use’ corresponds to the vocabulary practice rather than interactional communication. In the words of Schmitt (1997:203), vocabulary learning strategies could be any which affect this rather broadly-defined process. 19 A number of attempts have been made to classify vocabulary learning strategies. Instances of such classifications are the taxonomies proposed by Stoffer (1995), Gu and Johnson (1996), Schmitt (1997) and Nation (2001) which are briefly discussed below. Stoffer (1995, cited in Kudo, 1999) developed a questionnaire which includes 53 items designed to measure specifically vocabulary learning strategies and administered this Vocabulary Learning Strategy Inventory (VOLSI) administered to 707 students at the University of Alabama. At end of her study, Stoffer (1995, cited in Kudo, 1999) demonstrated that the 53 items on the VOLSI classified into nine categories by factor analysis as follows: • Strategies involving authentic language use • Strategies used for self - motivation • Strategies used to organize words • Strategies used to create mental linkages • Memory strategies • Strategies involving creative activities • Strategies involving physical action • Strategies used to overcome anxiety • Auditory strategies (Kudo, 1999: 6) After Stoffer, Gu and Johnson (1996) established two main categories of vocabulary learning strategies as metacognitive regulation and cognitive strategies and divided them into six subcategories: guessing, using a dictionary, note-taking, rehearsal, encoding, and activating, all of which were further subcategorized. A comprehensive inventory of vocabulary learning strategies has been proposed by Schmitt (1997) as a result of the survey study with 600 Japanese students learning English as a foreign language in Japan. His classification is partly based on Oxford’s (1990) classification scheme. However, it has been revised because Schmitt (1997:205) believes that Oxford’s classification system is unsatisfactory in categorizing vocabulary-specific strategies since initially Oxford (1990) has created it for describing learning strategies in general. According to Schmitt’s (1997) taxonomy, there are two main categories of strategies: 1) strategies for the discovery of a new word’s meaning, and 2) strategies for consolidating a word once it has been encountered. The former 20 contains determination and social strategies and the latter contains social, memory, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies. Schmitt includes social strategies in both categories since they can be used for both purposes. Schmitt defined each strategy as follows. Determination strategies are used when “learners are faced with discovering a new word’s meaning without recourse to another person’s expertise” (p. 205). The second way to discover a new meaning is through employing “the social strategy of asking someone who knows” (p. 210). Memory strategies involve “relating the word with some previously learned knowledge by using some form of imagery or grouping” (p. 211). Cognitive strategies are similar to memory strategies but are not focused on manipulative mental processing. They include repetition and using mechanical means such as word lists, flash cards, and vocabulary notebooks to study words. Finally, metacognitive strategies are defined as strategies used by learners to control and evaluate their own learning, by having an overview of the learning process in general. The following table (taken from Schmitt 1997: 207-208) illustrates the comprehensive taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies. Table 2.4: A taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies Strategy Group Strategy Strategies for the discovery of a new word’s meaning DET Analyse part of speech DET Analyse affixes and roots DET Check for L1 cognate DET Analyse any available pictures or gestures DET Guess from textual context DET Bilingual dictionary DET Monolingual dictionary DET Word lists DET Flash cards SOC Ask teacher for an L1 translation SOC Ask teacher for paraphrase or synonym of new word SOC Ask teacher for a sentence including the new word SOC Ask classmates for meaning SOC Discover new meaning through group work activity 21 Strategies for consolidating a word once it has been encountered SOC Study and practice meaning in a group SOC Teacher checks students’ flash cards or word lists for accuracy SOC Interact with native speakers MEM Study word with a pictorial representation of its meaning MEM Image word’s meaning MEM Connect word to a personal experience MEM Associate the word with its coordinates MEM Connect the word to its synonyms and antonyms MEM Use semantic maps MEM Use ‘scales’ for gradable adjectives MEM Peg Method MEM Loci Method MEM Group words together to study them MEM Group words together spatially on a page MEM Use new word in sentences MEM Group words together within a storyline MEM Study the spelling of a word MEM Study the sound of a word MEM Say new word aloud when studying MEM Image word form MEM Underline initial letter of the word MEM Configuration MEM Use Keyword Method MEM Affixes and roots (remembering) MEM Part of speech (remembering) MEM Paraphrase the word’s meaning MEM Use cognates in study MEM Learn the words of an idiom together MEM Use physical action when learning a word MEM Use semantic feature grids COG Verbal repetition COG Written repetition COG Word lists COG Flash cards COG Take notes in class COG Use the vocabulary section in your textbook COG Listen to tape of word lists COG Put English labels on physical objects COG Keep a vocabulary notebook MET Use English-language media (songs, movies, newscasts, etc. ) MET Testing oneself with word tests 22 MET Use spaced word practice MET Skip or pass new word MET Continue to study word over time In a more recent attempt, Nation (2001) proposes a taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies. He identifies three general classes of strategies: planning, sources, and processes. The first category (i.e., planning) involves choosing what to focus on and when to focus on it. The strategies in this category are choosing words, choosing aspects of word knowledge and choosing strategies as well as planning repetition. The second category in Nation’s taxonomy involves finding information about words. This information may include all the aspects involved in knowing a word. It can be obtained by analyzing the word, using the context, consulting a reference source like dictionaries or glossaries and using parallels in L1 and L2. Process is the last category in Nation’s (2001) taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies. It includes establishing knowledge through noticing, retrieving and generating strategies. After defining vocabulary learning strategies and giving information on different taxonomies, now it is time to examine closely the strategies focused on this research. 2.6.1. Memory Strategies In the words of Schmitt (1997:205), “memory strategies are approaches which relate new material to existing knowledge.” They improve remembering through the connection of new knowledge with familiar words and images. According to Thompson (1987: 211, cited in Atay and Ozbulgan, 2007: 41): Mnemonics work by utilizing some well-known principles of psychology: a retrieval plan is developed during encoding, and mental imagery, both visual and verbal, is used. They help individuals learn faster and recall better because they aid the integration of new material into existing cognitive units and because they provide retrieval cues. In other words, memorization strategies (traditionally known as mnemonics) play an important role in helping learners to commit new words into memory and in the whole process of vocabulary learning. Learners need to try different kinds of memory strategies to see which ones work best for them. In Schmitt’s 58-item vocabulary learning strategies taxonomy, there are twenty-seven memory strategies. Examples of 23 memory strategies include “study word with a pictorial representation of its meaning”, “image word’s meaning”, “use semantic maps”, “connect the word to its synonyms and antonyms”, “connect word to a personal experience”, or “use physical action when learning a word”, etc (See Table 2.4 above). Among the numerous mnemonics, “group words together to study them”, “image word form”, and “use Keyword Method” are chosen for the strategy training in this study. 2.6.1.1. The Keyword Strategy The keyword method is a mnemonic technique in which the keyword, an L1 word that bears a phonological and/or orthographic resemblance to the target FL word, plays a central role. This method divides word learning into two stages. In the first, one learns to associate the keyword to the target word. Next, the learner must create a mental image in which both the keyword and the L1 translation of the FL word interact. So, the keyword mnemonic establishes both a form and a semantic connection (by means of the image) between the target FL word and its L1 translation. When the FL word is later heard, the sound similarity evokes the created image which reminds the FL word’s meaning. For instance, for the word “black” (the dark colour of coal or night) “bilek” (wrist in English) can be chosen as a keyword. Then, a picture of a person who is shaking hands with another person with a black wristband on his/her wrist can be imagined. The keyword method was introduced to vocabulary teaching by Atkinson (1975). He defines it as follows: In general, the keyword has no relationship to the foreign word, except for the fact that it is similar in sound. The keyword method divides vocabulary learning into two stages. The first stage requires the subject to associate the spoken foreign word with the keyword, an association that is formed quickly because of acoustic similarity. The second stage requires the subject to form a mental image of the keyword "interacting" with the translation; this stage is comparable to a paired-associate procedure involving the learning of unrelated one's own knowledge. To summarise, the keyword method can be described as a chain of two links connecting a foreign word to its translation. The spoken foreign word is linked to the keyword by a similarity in sound (what I call the acoustic link), and in turn the keyword is linked to the English translation by a mental image (what I call the imagery link). (Atkinson, 1975: 821; cited in Yılmaz, 2007:24) Nation (2001) summarizes the general findings of the various researches on keyword method: 24 1. Ready made keywords and images which are recommended for younger learners seem to work as well as self created keywords and images. 2. The keyword method works with learners of differing achievement, learners at a variety of grade levels including both very young children and elderly learners and also with educationally disadvantaged learners. 3. It has been used with various languages: English speakers learning English, Spanish, Russian, German, Tagalog, Chinese, Hebrew, French, Italian, Greek, and Latin words, Dutch speakers learning Spanish and Arabic speakers learning English. 4. It can be used both in L1 or L2 learning. 5. It is better than other approaches such as rote learning, use of pictures, thinking of images or examples of the meaning, or added synonyms, etc. 6. It has positive effects on immediate retention, but it is not clear if it is effective for long-term retention. 7. The effect of the keyword method is not restricted to receptive recall of a synonym. It is also effective for recall of definitions, in sentence completion tasks, in story comprehension, in writing sentences using the words studied and in productive recall. 8. Learners think that it is an enjoyable method. 9. To be effective, learners need extended training with this method. Nation (2001:314) believes that the results of the experiments on keyword method are not unanimous, but there is a large amount of evidence supporting its use, and if it is fitted into a balanced programme any possible weaknesses, such as long-term retention and availability for productive use, will be lessened. 2.6.1.2. Image Word Form Imaging word form is another kind of mnemonic strategy which involves focusing on the target word’s orthographical form to aid recall. One way to apply this strategy is for learners to explicitly study the spelling of a word. Another option is to visualize the orthographical form of a word in an attempt to remember it. The initial letter of a word has been shown to be the most important feature in word recognition, with word shape being less important (Schmitt, 1997). This strategy is especially useful 25 for remembering the orthographically difficult words which require extra effort to spell correctly. 2.6.1.3. The Grouping Strategy Grouping is a kind of memory strategy which helps the retention of words by arranging them in meaningful groups based on type of the word, topic, function, similarity or dissimilarity, etc. According to Schmitt (1997:213), “people seem to organize words into groups naturally without prompting”. When the material to be memorized is organized in some fashion, recall is improved, because organized material is easier to store in and retrieve from long-term memory. Linguistic theory supposes that “the vocabulary of a language consists not of a long random list of words, but rather of many interrelating networks of relations between words” (Channell, 1981:117; cited in Hippner-Page, 2000:8). For instance, spoon, fork and knife are all words from one network that could be titled silverware. The suggestion is that the way language organizes words into groups helps the mind remember them. Words can be grouped thematically or semantically. Semantic clustering might involve a group of words which share a common head word or superordinate concept such as words for “clothes” [jacket, trousers and sweater], while thematic clustering might involve any number of words relating to a particular theme such as [shirt, changing room, try on, and wool]. 2.7. Vocabulary Learning Strategies Research Learning new vocabulary in a foreign language is a continuing process rather than a single event and researchers have always been interested in how learners manage this process. If teachers have knowledge about learning strategies, they can help learners acquire more useful strategies. The research which has been done on vocabulary learning strategies has dealt with vocabulary learning in different aspects. Some researches have tried to establish the overall strategy use of learners (Gu& Johnson, 1996; Schmitt, 1997; Kudo, 1999) while some of them have looked at the effectiveness of vocabulary strategies instruction (Rasekh & Ranjbary, 2003; Atay & Ozbulgan, 2007; Evcim, 2008) . Moreover, there are also some studies that have 26 investigated the reported and actual strategy use (Fan, 2003; Şahin, 2003; Tezgiden, 2006). Gu and Johnson (1996) carried out a research which aimed to establish the vocabulary learning strategies used by Chinese university learners of English and the relationship between the use of strategies and outcomes in learning English. The researchers correlated the results of a questionnaire with those of a vocabulary test and a language proficiency test. As a result, the participants generally reported using more meaning-oriented strategies than rote strategies in learning vocabulary. Self-Initiation and Selective Attention (the two metacognitive strategies studied) emerged as positive predictors of general proficiency and vocabulary size. At cognitive level, contextual guessing, dictionary use, note-taking and activation of new words correlated positively with the two test results, whereas visual repetition of new words was the strongest negative predictor of both vocabulary size and general proficiency. Finally, the cluster analysis identified five approaches to learning: 1) Readers believed that vocabulary should be learnt through natural exposure and careful studying but not memorization. 2) Active Strategy Users also believed in natural acquisition as well as careful study and use of new words, but they did not completely disagree with the memorization of words. They were willing to try new strategies. 3) Passive Strategy Users did not develop the basic idea of what a language is and how it should be learnt and relied most heavily on visual repetition. 4) Encoders seem to value vocabulary learning and to find shortcuts to vocabulary acquisition offered by mnemonics. 5) Non-Encoders do not believe in quick fixes and they have little motivation for learning English. The results of the study suggest that vocabulary knowledge should become integrated into discourse. Although the learners may use deep processing strategies while learning vocabulary, memorizing the new words without seeing them in appropriate contexts offers limited value. Therefore learners should use memory strategies as well as contextualized strategies. Schmitt (1997) conducted a large-scale study surveying 600 Japanese students from four different age levels: junior high school students, high school students, university students and adult learners. He implemented a questionnaire to assess which vocabulary learning strategies the learners actually used and how helpful they believed 27 them to be. According to the results of the survey, bilingual dictionary was the most used strategy of all with 85 percent of the sample giving a positive response. Verbal repetition and written repetition were the other two most-used strategies, probably owing to the fact that Japanese school system encourages students to memorize English grammar and vocabulary usually through repetition. When the most used strategies were compared to the most helpful ones, six strategies were found to be in common. They were ‘bilingual dictionary’, ‘written repetition’, ‘verbal repetition’, ‘say a new word aloud’, ‘study a word’s spelling’, and ‘take notes in class’. On the other hand, four strategies (‘study synonyms and antonyms’, ‘continue to study over time’, ‘ask teacher for a paraphrase’, and ‘use picture/gestures to understand meaning’) had high helpfulness ratings but they were not used relatively frequently by the learners. Schmitt (1997:221) believes that this might depend on the fact that “learners can see value in strategies which they do not currently use” and “learners may be willing to try new strategies if they are introduced to and instructed in them”. Schmitt’s research (1997) also showed that more advanced learners tended to use more complex and meaning- focus strategies than less advanced learners. Another large-scale study was carried out by Kudo (1999) whose purpose was to describe vocabulary learning strategies and to systematically categorize them. Before conducting the main study, Kudo (1999) piloted the study with 325 Japanese high school students. A questionnaire whose items were mostly chosen from the one used in Schmitt’s (1997) study was implemented to measure the frequency of the vocabulary learning strategies. The main study was conducted among 504 Japanese high school students. Contrary to the participants in Gu and Johnson’s (1996) study, the learners in this study reported using rote learning more frequently than the strategies that required deeper cognitive processing, such as the keyword method and semantic mapping. In terms of classification, Kudo’s study supported Oxford’s (1990) classification schemes. Four types of strategies (social, memory, cognitive, metacognitive) were found and validated in the pilot study. Those strategies were classified into two larger categories: direct and indirect strategies. In addition, the study empirically provided evidence that strategies were not culture-specific. Finally, this research suggests that learners should be exposed to many strategies. 28 There are a number of studies investigating the effectiveness of vocabulary learning strategies instruction. The research conducted by Rasekh and Ranjbary (2003) investigated the effect of metacognitive strategy training through the use of explicit strategy instruction on the development of lexical knowledge of EFL students. The results of the study indicated that explicit metacognitive strategy training had a positive effect on the vocabulary learning of EFL students. In other words, the explicit instruction and practice the experimental group received about planning their vocabulary learning, setting specific goals within a time frame, selecting the most appropriate vocabulary learning strategy, monitoring strategy use, using a combination of strategies, self-testing degree of mastery of the new vocabulary items after meeting the words for the first time, managing their time by devoting some time during their study hours to vocabulary practice, and finally evaluating the whole process, contributed to this improved and expanded lexical knowledge. In their study Atay and Ozbulgan (2007) compared the effects of using memory strategies along with contextual learning on recalling ESP vocabulary among Turkish EFL learners. The research further looked at whether there was any difference in the use and choice of memory strategies of the learners as a consequence of such instruction. Data were collected by means of a multiple-choice vocabulary knowledge test and the experimental group students were given a frequently used memory strategies questionnaire as a pre- and post-test. The control group learned vocabulary only through contextual learning, while the experimental group students had memory strategy instruction in addition to the contextual learning. According to the findings of the study, the experimental group had significantly better vocabulary gain scores than the control group at the end of the research. The results of the questionnaire showed that there was an increase in the percentage of use and variety of strategies as a result of memory strategy instruction. In contrast with learners in other studies (Fan, 2003 and Schmitt, 1997), who considered semantic grouping and imagery strategies least useful among all other vocabulary learning strategies, the learners of this study used the strategies ‘connecting the new word to a previous experience’ and ‘using semantic maps’ more frequently than the other strategies. Atay and Ozbulgan suggested that “memory strategy instruction should be integrated into contextual vocabulary learning” 29 and “after discovering the meaning of a word through different contexts, students should be guided to recall it via different memory strategies” (p.47). Another study was carried out by Tezgiden (2006) which was concerned with investigating the effects of vocabulary learning strategy instruction on learners’ reported strategy use and their perceptions of usefulness with the participation of 24 preparation class EFL learners and their teacher. It also sought to determine learner and teacher attitudes towards instruction. The researcher conducted a three-week strategy training session on “guessing meaning from context, recording strategies and using dictionary”, and used classroom observation, questionnaires, interviews and learning diaries in order to investigate the research questions. According to the findings of the research, strategy instruction in vocabulary learning strategies had a positive effect on reported strategy use, but was not able to create a significant increase in the overall learner perceptions of usefulness. Nevertheless, both learner and teacher attitudes were positive towards strategy instruction. Şahin (2003) also researched the effects of instruction of discovery strategies on reported strategy use and learner beliefs. The six-week strategy instruction was given by the researcher on “guessing the word’s meaning from context” and “dictionary use” to pre-intermediate level 58 preparation class students at Uludag University. The data were collected through vocabulary learning strategies questionnaires and vocabulary tests. The results of the study demonstrated that strategy instruction had a positive impact on the strategy use and vocabulary learning. However, it did not change the beliefs of learners. Before the training, the participants believed that repetition was the best way to remember the words. They did not believe that memorizing the list of words was a good way for vocabulary learning. In addition to this, they did not agree with the idea that a word could not have another meaning in a different text. They believed that reading would improve vocabulary knowledge and guessing the meaning of a word from context was one of the best ways to learn words. They thought that words were learnt after they had been used. Furthermore, they believed that using the words in listening, reading, speaking and writing was more important than memorizing them. Their ideas about vocabulary learning did not change after the strategy training. 30 Finally, Evcim (2008) conducted a research to determine the language learning strategies used by prep class students and their effects on the retention of vocabulary. The six-week strategy instruction was given to the experimental group by the researcher. In order to determine the language learning strategies of the groups Strategy Inventory for Language Learning developed by Rebecca Oxford (1990) was used before and after training. In addition, determining their vocabulary proficiency, a vocabulary test developed by the researcher was applied before and after training. According to the results of the study, there was not a meaningful relationship between the pre and post Strategy Inventory for Language Learning test results of the experimental group. In other words, the six-week training slightly increased the strategy use of the experimental group but it was not meaningful. In addition to this, there was not a meaningful relationship between the post Strategy Inventory for Language Learning test results of the experimental group and control group. The other two results concerned the vocabulary test. A meaningful relationship between the pre and post vocabulary test results of the experimental group was found. After training there was an increase in the experimental group’s vocabulary learning. Moreover, a meaningful relationship between the post vocabulary test results of the experimental and control group was found. In other words, the experimental group which had strategy instruction in language learning strategies was more successful in learning new words than the control group. Being an investigation of vocabulary learning strategies in the Turkish EFL context, this study will build onto the existing research in this field. However, as the researches are limited to descriptive studies exploring the existing strategy use by using a common instrument “a questionnaire”, this study will fill a gap in the literature by using a different strategy assessment instrument “ a strategy checklist” in order to measure the strategy use. The design of the strategy checklist and the fact that it will be given immediately after the task of learning target words may provide retrospection and more reliable results on strategy use of the learners. In addition to this, measuring the language performance of the learners by using both receptive and productive vocabulary tests is another superior point of this research. Finally, small number of strategies 31 chosen according to the needs of the learners will lead to more focused training on target strategies 32 CHAPTER 3 METHOD This chapter consists of five sections. In section 3.1 information about the participants, in 3.2 an overview of the data collection procedure, in section 3.3 information about the pre-testing procedure, in section 3.4 explanations about the strategy training session, and finally in 3.5 information about post-tests has been presented. 3.1. Participants The participants of this research were 48 female students studying at a state Vocational and Technical High School for Girls in Turkey. The study was carried out in two classes in the first term of the 2008-2009 academic year. As all of the participants were in 11th grade, they were assumed to be at a pre-intermediate proficiency level in the English language. Their ages ranged from 17 to 18. The students were at the Food and Beverage Service Department and were being trained to become chefs, bartenders or waiting staff. They received 5 hours of technical English every week. All of the students were Turkish with similar backgrounds and they did not receive any formal or informal instruction in the field of language learning strategies before. The classes were already existing groups of students, therefore no random selection or any other statistical sampling method was implemented. Technical class which consisted of 19 students was chosen as the experimental group and Vocational class which consisted of 29 students was chosen as the control group. Allocation of groups to experimental and control conditions was random. Each class was taught by the same teacher. The teacher was at the same time the researcher in order to eliminate the variable in teacher instruction. 3.2. Procedure All data were collected during the first semester, in a six week period. Table 3.1 presents the weekly procedure for the treatments. 33 Table 3.1: Research Procedure Weeks Treatments 1st Week Pre-test 2nd Week Training 1: Keyword method 3rd Week Training 2: Image word form 4th Week Training 3: Group words together to study them 5th Week Learning of target word list Strategy checklist Post-tests (Turkish-English Translation test, English-Turkish Translation test) 6th Week Post-tests (Turkish-English Translation test, English-Turkish Translation test) In the first week, both groups were given the pre-test to determine the previous knowledge of the target words. In the second week, the cycle of strategy training began with the experimental group of students. One class hour was devoted for each strategy training session for three weeks. While the experimental group was receiving the trainings, the control group was following the syllabus. After the trainings came to an end, the target word list was given to both groups and they were required to study it in 20 minutes as there were 19 target words, roughly one minute was given for each word. The students were told that they were going to be tested on those words. In the same session, the checklist for determining the strategies they used while learning the target words was administered to both experimental and control group of students. Right after the checklist, a Turkish-English Translation test and an English-Turkish Translation test were applied to both groups. The fifth week applications were conducted in two class hours’ time. In the sixth week, both groups were given the same translation tests. 3.3. Pre-Testing 3.3.1. Target words 19 words were chosen from the students’ course book “Highly Recommended” (Stott & Revell, 2004) (cf. Appendix I). Single words which were believed to be 34 unknown to the students were chosen. 14 of them were nouns, 3 words were verbs and two of the target words were adjectives. Initially, 25 words were selected, but after the application of the pre-test, 6 words were eliminated. Words were chosen from the later units of students’ course book so that the research would not interfere with the curriculum. It was predicted that the students would easily apply the target strategies (keyword method, imaging word form and grouping strategy) while learning these target words. For instance, the students can learn the words such as minestrone, risotto, roulade or meringue by grouping them together as all of them are names of meals. Also the words related to wine such as frascati, zinfandel and chardonnay can be studied under the label of wine and cheddar, manchego, gouda and camembert may be learnt under the category of cheese. Imaging word form strategy can help the students remember the long words such as conversation, minestrone and chardonnay by studying the orthographical form more carefully. For the keyword method, Nattinger in Carter and McCarthy (1988; 66 cited in Yılmaz, 2007) states: “Concrete words which one can easily form an image of seem to work best, bizarre images make the most effective associations, keywords can be invented by the student”. As the target words chosen for this study are mainly concrete words, the students can form a picture in their minds with ease. For example, for the word “roulade” (roll of meat), the students may find the keyword “rulet” (roulette in English). Then they may imagine a man eating roulade while playing roulette. The target words were only used in the pre-test and the post-tests. The words used in the strategy training sessions were different from the target words. 3.3.2. Pre-test The pre-test was administrated to measure the knowledge of the target vocabulary items prior to the treatment (cf. Appendix II). The pre-test included 34 items. 25 of these were the potential target words described above. 9 previously studied words were added to 25 target words to prevent the students from frustration with unknown words. In the pre-test, the students were required to write the Turkish equivalents of 34 English words. Before the test, the students were warned about the words in the test as some of the words might not have exact Turkish equivalents such as 35 zinfandel, frascati or chardonnay. They were told to write synonyms, paraphrases or close answers. The pre-test was given to both groups a week before the strategy training and it took 10 minutes to complete. The correct answers were counted and the words that the students had already known were deleted from the list of target words. Even only one student’s correct answer of a word was enough for it to be accepted as a “known” word. The criteria for accepting a word as “known” were not only giving the exact answers but also the synonyms, paraphrases or close answers as stated above. For instance, for the word “soft”, one student wrote “yumuşak”(not hard, firm, or stiff, but easy to press) and another student wrote “alkolsüz”(without alcohol). Both of the answers were accepted as correct. For the word “fridge” a student wrote “derin dondurucu” (deep freeze). Although that was not the exact meaning, it was accepted as correct. Another example is for the word “sherry” (a pale or dark brown strong wine, originally from Spain). Some of the students wrote “şarap çeşidi” (a kind of wine) which was also accepted as correct. 3.4. Strategy Training For the strategy training, Oxford’s (1990) strategy training model (see Chapter II, p.18) was used. First step of the model is determining the learners’ needs and the time available. The needs of the learners were determined according to their proficiency level, background knowledge and the context of learning. As stated above, the participants of this study were at a pre-intermediate proficiency level, so strategies neither too shallow nor too deep were chosen for training. Shallower strategies and activities such as word lists may be more suitable for beginners, because they contain less material which may only distract a novice, while intermediate or advanced learners can benefit from the deeper strategies such as forming associations which enhance retention of target (Schmitt, 1997). The learners had technical English lesson course, so they needed to learn the orthographically difficult words which were in their course book. In addition to this, they hadn’t been informed about vocabulary learning strategies before, so they needed to be aware of vocabulary learning strategies to deal with those words. Therefore, keyword method, grouping and word form strategies which are neither too shallow nor too deep and suitable for studying orthographically difficult 36 words are chosen for strategy training. The training was limited to three sessions because of the heavy load of the current syllabus at the institution and the time allotted for this study, so three strategies (one for each week) were chosen and only one lesson was devoted to strategy training in each week in order not to interfere with the curriculum. The second step of Oxford’s (1990) model is selecting strategies well. The target strategies (keyword method, image word form and grouping words) were selected according to the needs of the learners as stated above. Third step is considering integration of strategy training. Strategy training was integrated with the objectives and materials used in the regular language training program. As stated before, words were chosen from the later units of students’ course book. The strategy training was conducted in parallel with the syllabus among the experimental group of students. The sequence of strategies was decided randomly. Fourth step is considering motivational issues. The students were motivated by emphasizing that by the help of strategies, they were going to learn new words easily, which would help them to get better grades in the exams. Fifth step of the model is preparing materials and activities. The materials and activities which were suitable for the teaching of each strategy were prepared beforehand. Sixth step is conducting “completely informed training”. The students were informed about the importance and aim of strategy training and each strategy was explained to the students. The seventh step is evaluating the strategy training. After each strategy training, the students were asked to evaluate the strategy training. They talked about whether they found the strategies useful or not. In addition to this, the teacher observed them while they were doing the exercises of each strategy training session. The last step of the model: revising the strategy training could not be achieved due to the limited time allotted for this study. 3.4.1. Target strategies Target strategies were chosen from Schmitt’s taxonomy (1997) of vocabulary learning strategies. They are: • Keyword method • Image word form 37 • Group words together to study them The students were not familiar with these strategies, which was an essential condition to carry out meaningful experimental strategy training sessions. The strategies were determined mainly according to the teacher’s perceptions. As mentioned before, the teacher who has been teaching the subjects of the research for three years was at the same time the researcher in this study, so the researcher knew the general profiles of the students and had not carried out a strategy training session on vocabulary learning strategies before. In addition, the students were asked whether they knew any vocabulary learning strategies or not. Therefore, the strategies were initially unfamiliar to the students. They are suitable for strategy training and also the students can easily use them while studying vocational English words. Vocational English words are orthographically difficult words, and usually semantically related words are presented together in units. So the students have the most difficulty in remembering the form and then relating the meaning to the form. The strategies chosen for the training are mainly useful for focusing on the form, relating the meaning to the form and organizing the words in related categories to facilitate recall. For instance, classifying language material into meaningful units, either mentally or in writing is an important way to aid recall and people usually organize the words into groups based on type of the word, topic, function, similarity, dissimilarity or opposition naturally. So training the students on grouping strategy is beneficial for making them aware of this strategy. The strategy of image word form involves focusing on the target word’s orthographical form to aid recall. Making a mental representation of a word’s letters in mind is an important attempt to remember orthographically difficult words. Finally, the keyword method combines the phonological forms and meanings of L1 and L2 words (Schmitt, 1997). In keyword method, the learners associate the target word with a keyword in L1 with an acoustic similarity and form a mental image of the keyword interacting with the translation so that they can more easily relate the meaning to the form and remember the new words in the target language. 38 3.4.2. Training 3.4.2.1. The Keyword Strategy In the first week, keyword method training took place. Before the training, a short explanation was made about the benefits of vocabulary learning strategies in general and the students were informed about the three-week strategy training cycle. To present and explain the keyword method, a PowerPoint presentation (cf. Appendix III) was used. The first 12 slides were prepared to explain the steps of the strategy and give three examples on how to use the keyword method. For the first example, 4 slides were used. The first two slides which are shown below in Figure 3.1 explained the first step of the keyword method, that is, find a keyword in your own language that resembles the English word you want to learn. Figure 3.1 First Step in Explaining the Keyword Strategy. Figure 3.2 illustrates the other two slides which were prepared to demonstrate the second step of the keyword method. The point of this step is to imagine a picture that connects the keyword and the word that you want to learn. Figure 3.2 Second Step in Explaining the Keyword Strategy. 39 For the word “cardigan” (a sweater similar to a short coat, fastened at the front with buttons or a zip), “gardiyan” (prison guard in English) can be chosen as a keyword. Then, a picture of a prison guard wearing a cardigan can be imagined. For the other two examples, the teacher stated the steps orally while the keywords were being shown and the pictures that were prepared to show the connection between the keyword and the target word were being presented to the students. The explanations and the steps of the keyword method were written in students’ native language as the students’ level of English was not enough to understand those complicated explanations. Another twenty slides (between 13- 33) were prepared to practise the strategy. Ten words were chosen for practice (cf. Appendix IV). For the first 5 words, the keywords were provided. The students tried to imagine pictures and they noted down the pictures they imagined. After they shared their ideas with the classroom, the teacher showed the pictures she prepared for those words. The next step was to present the second five words one by one. This time, the students were asked both to find out the keywords and imagine the pictures that connect the keywords and the words they want to learn. After each word was given, the students wrote down their keywords and the pictures they imagined. Then they talked about their ideas in the classroom. Then, the teacher showed the pictures she prepared for those words. The students were very creative and found different keywords and imagined very creative pictures. For instance, for the word “soar” (to go quickly upwards to a great height), one of the students found “soğan” (onion in English) as a keyword. Then, she imagined a picture of onion skins soaring with the wind. Another student found the keyword “minik” (toddler in English) for “mingle”. Then, she imagined a picture of a toddler mingling his/her toys. One more interesting example is the keyword “far” (headlight in English) for “fear”. A picture of a woman who feared when she suddenly saw the headlights in the dark was formed by one of the students. The subjects found the keyword method useful for remembering new words. The keyword session lasted 30 minutes. 40 3.4.2.2. The Word Form Strategy In the second week, word form training was carried out. 10 words were selected for this training. 4 nouns, 4 verbs and 2 adjectives in different lengths were chosen from the list of the most frequent 6000 words (0-6000) (Nation, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation.aspx) randomly (cf. Appendix V). The reason for choosing the words from the sixth 1000 word frequency band was to ensure that the students had not seen those words before. The shortest word had 3 letters and the longest word had 11 letters. The rest of the words had 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 letters. The aim of choosing the words in different lengths was to make the students practice the word form strategy not only with the words easy to remember but also with the words which were difficult to remember. The training for this strategy took the form of a competition in pairs. The materials used for word form training were colourful word cards. Those words had been written on small and big cards by the researcher before the class. For each word, two small cards were prepared to give to the competitors of both groups and one big word card was prepared to show the whole class after each pair competed. Every small word card set was put in different envelopes. Totally there were 10 envelopes. To motivate the students it was told that the winner group would be given a prize. At the beginning of the session, the strategy was introduced to the students and the aim and the benefits of the word form strategy training were explained clearly. Then, the classroom was set out for the competition. Two desks were put in front of the board and a screen of cardboard was put between the desks so that the competitors could not see each other while writing the words. The students were divided into two groups and the group names were written on the board. One of the students was chosen for keeping the score. The rules of the competition were explained. In each turn, one student came from each group to compete. The competitors agreed on a word envelope together and chose it to study the small word cards in given time. The time allotted for each word was determined according to the length of the word. For the short words which have 3 to 6 letters 10 seconds; for the medium length words which have 7 to 8 letters 15 seconds; and for the long words which have 10 to 11 letters 30 seconds were given. While those students were competing, the rest of the students were sitting at their 41 desks and watching them. They gave back the cards when the time was over and tried to write the words on a paper correctly. After that, the answers of the competitors were shown to the rest of the class and they were compared with the correct answers written on big word cards. That process was repeated for all pairs and all the students had a chance to practice this strategy. The group which wrote the words most accurately won the competition and a box of chocolates was given to the winner group. 3.4.2.3. The Grouping Strategy In the third week, the training for the grouping strategy took place. The materials used for grouping session were a PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet and a vocabulary test. At the beginning of the lesson, the strategy was presented in slides (cf. Appendix VI) by using PowerPoint. The PowerPoint presentation was prepared in students’ native language for better understanding. That presentation lasted 5 minutes. Three slides which are shown in Figure 3.3 below explained the grouping strategy. Grouping strategy is one of the techniques which enables the learner to remember the newly learnt words easily. In grouping strategy, semantically related words can be categorized under one label. Or thematically related words can also be studied by grouping them. Figure 3.3 Explanation of the Grouping Strategy 42 Semantic clustering is a group of words that are semantically and syntactically similar such as eye, mouth and nose are all body parts; often the term lexical sets is also used (Tinkham, 1997, cited in Hippner-Page, 2000). In semantic clustering, it is important to know how words are related to one another in terms of their meaning; how similar or how different they are to one another; and how they may or may not substitute for one another. In other words, there are sense relations between the words such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy. These are respectively relations of sameness, oppositeness, and inclusion (McCarthy, 1990). Thematic clustering is a group of words that fit into one theme but nouns, verbs and adjectives are all represented such as dog, run, hairy (Tinkham, 1997, cited in Hippner-Page, 2000). Thematic clustering involves psychological associations between clustered words and a shared thematic concept whereas, semantic clustering is based on semantic and syntactic similarities (Morin & Goebel Jr, 2001). There is a difference between the presentation of new words in semantic sets and presenting them in thematic sets. As shown below in Figure 3.4, in the first slide, there are four semantic clusters involving groups of nouns such as dishwasher, grill, oven, stove with a super-ordinate term “appliances”; milk, cheese, yoghurt with a super- ordinate term “dairy products”; coffee and tea with a super-ordinate term “drinks” ; and finally strawberry, apple, grapes, cherry, banana with a super-ordinate term “fruit”. On the other hand, the words in a thematic group are all related even though they do not form a proper semantic set with a super-ordinate term and co-hyponyms. In the second slide in Figure 3.4, three thematic groups are given. The words “bartender, serve, table” form a thematic group with a restaurant scene; the words “new, swim, hotel, holiday” form another thematic group with a holiday scene and finally, the words “school and students” form a thematic group with a school scene. These words can also be grouped in different thematic clusters as it depends on the learners’ psychological associations between these words. 43 Figure 3.4 Semantic and Thematic Clustering Like the word form training, the grouping practice had been planned in a competition form to generate enthusiasm among the students. So, the next step was to divide the students into groups to set the competition. As there were 19 students in the experimental group, the students were divided into five groups. So four groups had 4 members and one group had 3 members which were reasonable numbers for group work. Then each group was given a worksheet on grouping strategy (cf. Appendix VII). All the groups had the same worksheet. The worksheet included 4 exercises. In exercise 1, the students made semantic clustering with the words they knew and they found labels for each group of words. In exercise 2, the students made thematic clustering with the words they knew. The known words were chosen because of the fact that the students would feel more comfortable by applying the newly learnt strategy to the words they had already known. It took 10 minutes to finish exercises 1 and 2. After they finished the exercises, the groupings were done together on the board. All the groups took part in grouping the words on the board. After that, the students looked at the second page of the worksheet. In exercise 3, the students were asked to make semantic clustering with 17 previously unknown words and find labels for each group. In exercise 4, the students made thematic clustering with 15 previously unknown words. Turkish meanings of the words were provided and the students were required to learn those words while doing the grouping. They were told to try and learn those words in 15 minutes as they were going to have a test on those words. While the students were 44 working in groups, the teacher walked around and checked if they were forming logical groups of words. They were successful in working together and arranging the words in groups correctly. After 15 minutes, the worksheets were taken back. Then, a translation test was given to each group and the students wrote Turkish equivalents of English words (cf. Appendix VIII). The grouping session lasted 40 minutes. The teacher scored the translation test at break time and announced the winner in the following lesson. The exact meanings which were provided in the worksheet were accepted as correct answers while doing the scoring. The winner group recalled 26 words (81%) correctly. 21 words (66%) were remembered correctly by two groups. Group 4 recalled 19 words (59%) and the last group only recalled 13 words, that is, 41% of the words correctly. According to those results, the students were successful in using the grouping strategy as among the five groups, four groups managed to remember more than half of the words correctly. 3.5. Post-tests 3.5.1. Word Learning A week after the training sessions ended, the students were given the list of target words for studying. The students were not reminded to use the strategies and they were not told that they were going to have a test on those words because it was aimed to observe the natural behaviour of the participants. As mentioned before these words were chosen from the course book of the students and determined according to the results of the pre-test. In the word list, Turkish equivalents of the target words were provided. As there were 19 words in the list, they were asked to learn those words in 20 minutes; roughly one minute was given for studying each word which was determined according to the experience of the teacher. Without taking back the target word lists, the students were given the checklist. 3.5.2. Strategy Checklist The aims of the checklist (cf. Appendix IX) were to learn which strategies the students used while learning the target words and to find out whether there was a difference between the students who had memory strategy training and those who did 45 not have in terms of their strategy use. A short explanation about the aim of the checklist and an instruction on how to tick the checklist were written in students’ native language above the list of the target words. The students were required to tick a strategy for each target word. The checklist included three columns of strategies that were used in the strategy training and also “learning by using another strategy” column was added as the students might have used different strategies. The students who ticked the option of “learning by using another strategy” were required to write down the name of the strategy they used. As the control group students did not know those strategies, instead of just providing the names, explanation of each strategy in learners’ L1 was given in each column so that the students could understand them before ticking. For the grouping strategy, “I learnt by grouping” was written. For the keyword method, “I learnt by making a connection between the target word and a Turkish word that resembles this word and imagining a picture in my mind” was written. Finally, for the word form strategy, “I learnt by imaging the spelling of the word” was written. The checklist was given to both experimental and control group students after they had studied the target words. It took 10 minutes to complete it. The trained strategies which were ticked by the students were counted for each student by the researcher. 3.5.3. Vocabulary Tests Most vocabulary researchers distinguish between receptive and productive knowledge of a word (e.g., Meara, 1990 ; Nation, 2001; cited in Laufer & Goldstein, 2004). Receptive knowledge is the ability to supply the word meaning for a given form and productive knowledge is the ability to supply the word form for a given meaning. In order to be able to describe aspects of a learner’s lexical competence along the receptive-productive dimension, test batteries must naturally include both productive and receptive tasks focusing on the same lexical items. Melka (1997) argues that it may be extremely difficult to find tasks that are adequately suited for testing both reception and production. Takala (1985, cited in Henriksen, 1999) used translation from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1 to measure differences in the size of learners’ productive and receptive vocabulary. Webb (2005) investigated the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary sizes by using translation tests at three word frequency levels. He 46 claimed that translation tests might provide a more accurate measurement of receptive and productive vocabularies because they have an equivalent test format. In the light of those studies, two vocabulary tests designed as translation tests from Turkish to English (cf. Appendix X) and English to Turkish (cf. Appendix XI) were applied to both experimental and control group students as post-tests in this research. Turkish-English Translation test, which aimed to measure the productive knowledge of the target words, required the students to write English equivalents of Turkish target words. English- Turkish Translation test, which aimed to measure the receptive knowledge of the target words, required the students to write Turkish equivalents of English target words. The same words were used in both vocabulary tests. Those words were the same as the words in the checklist and the students had studied before. The sequence of the words in post-tests was different from the sequence in the target word list used in the learning session in order to avoid any recall caused by the same word order. In addition to this, the sequence of the words in English-Turkish Translation test was different from the sequence in Turkish-English Translation test to ensure that there could not be a learning effect from seeing the same target words in both the receptive and productive tests. Usually, all productive tests need to be completed before receptive tests to avoid a learning affect. (Webb, 2005) Therefore, in both of the administrations, Turkish-English Translation test was given first and then English-Turkish Translation test was applied to avoid the risk of earlier test affecting answers to later test. The vocabulary tests were administrated twice. The first administration took place immediately after the word learning session and the application of the checklist. The aim was to find out whether there was a difference between the students who had memory strategy training and those who did not have in terms of their success in learning vocabulary. One week later, the translation tests were applied again. The purpose was to learn whether there was a difference between the students who had memory strategy training and those who did not have in terms of their success in retaining vocabulary. The rationale for using exactly the same test after a week interval was to assure exactly comparable tests. The students were not informed of the second administration in order to prevent any attempt to study those words. The students finished each test in seven minutes. Because the aim of Turkish-English Translation test 47 was to determine whether the learners could link the L2 form of the target words with their L1 meanings and to write the target words correctly, spelling was the determining factor for a correct answer to a certain degree. Spellings that demonstrated that the learners could link the L2 form with its L1 meaning were marked correct. Responses with minor spelling mistakes such as chaddar for the target response cheddar, conversetion for the target response conversation were marked as correct. However, similar spellings that were real words such as conservation for the target response conversation or semantically similar responses such as red wine for zinfandel were scored as incorrect. In the receptive test, the L2 forms of the target forms cued responses of the L1 form. For example, the participants were required to write the Turkish translations of cheddar, conversation and zinfandel on a blank next to each printed word. The method of scoring the responses was not so strict as in the productive test. Responses that demonstrated L1 knowledge of meaning were marked as correct. For instance, the target meaning for the cue risotto was Italyan usulü tavuklu, peynirli ve sebzeli pilav (an Italian meal made from rice mixed with chicken, cheese and vegetables). In several cases, the participants responded with tavuklu, sebzeli pilav (rice with chicken and vegetables) , sebzeli pilav (rice with vegetables), and pilav (rice) which were scored as acceptable responses. Another example is for the target word minestrone (a type of Italian soup containing pieces of meat and vegetables) which means etli ve sebzeli Italyan çorbası in Turkish. The students responded with Đtalyan çorbası (Italian soup), etli, sebzeli çorba (soup containing meat and vegetables) and sebzeli Đtalyan çorbası (Italian vegetable soup) which were marked as correct. 48 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS This chapter analyzing the data has been divided into two parts. In the first part, the analysis of quantitative data gathered through the strategy checklist has been presented. The second part of this chapter analyzes the quantitative data obtained by the Vocabulary Tests. The analysis has been made in two sections. Section 4.2.1 introduces the results of English to Turkish translation post-tests. Section 4.2.2 demonstrates the findings of Turkish to English translation post-tests. To analyze the results, the data gathered from the vocabulary tests and the strategy checklist was entered to the computer program called Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS 13.0). Means and standard deviations for the strategy checklist and vocabulary tests were calculated separately for the experimental and control groups. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare the scores of the two groups. 4.1. Strategy Use In this section, the quantitative data obtained by the strategy checklist were presented. The results from the checklist data are given in Table 4.1 below. In order to see whether there were any differences between the experimental and control groups in terms of their strategy use, several independent samples t-tests were applied to the checklist scores of the students in the two groups. Table 4.1: Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups’ Learners in Terms of Their Checklist Scores Strategy Experimental Group Control Group (N:19) (N:29) t p Mean SD Mean SD Keyword Strategy 5,00 4,91 3,93 6,19 ,66 .510 n.s. Word form Strategy 5,16 5,11 5,14 7,10 ,01 .991 n.s. Grouping Strategy 1,05 2,95 ,10 ,40 1,71 .093 n.s. Other 7,47 6,98 9,83 8,47 1,00 .319 n.s. Overall (trained) 11,21 7,5 9,17 8,47 ,85 .399 n.s. Overall(trained+other) 18,68 4,54 19,0 ,00 ,376 .709 n.s. 49 The trained strategies were used while learning 11 (58 %) out of 19 of the target words on average by the experimental group students. Taking into consideration the intensive and focused training in addition to the carefully chosen target words suitable for strategy use while learning, this percentage rate (58%) was not very high. Still, overall mean scores for strategy use (Experimental Group: M:11,21 SD:7,5 ; Control Group: M:9,17 SD:8,47) showed that the experimental group of students who received strategy training used the target strategies more frequently than the control group while learning the target words. But the p value equals to .399 (p>0.05) so this difference is considered to be not statistically significant (equal variances assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). In all three strategies, the experimental group outperformed the control group but none of these differences are statistically significant. For the keyword strategy use, the experimental group (M:5,00 SD:4,91) outperformed the control group (M:3,93 SD:6,19).But p value is .510 (p>.05) which shows that the difference is again statistically not significant (equal variances not assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). While the experimental group used the word form strategy more frequently with a mean of 5,16 than the control group (M:5,14), this difference is not statistically significant as p value equals to .991 (p>0.05) (equal variances not assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). For the grouping strategy use, the experimental group (M:1,05 SD:2,95) outperformed the control group (M:,10 SD:,40). But p value is .093 (p>0.05), which shows that the difference is not statistically significant (equal variances assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). In both groups, the mean scores of the keyword (Ex: M: 5,00; Con: 3,93) and word form strategies (Ex: M:5,16 ; Con:5,14) were higher than the mean scores of the grouping strategy (Ex: M:1,05 ; Con:,10). It showed that the keyword strategy and word form strategy were much more preferred than the grouping strategy among the experimental and control group students. In other words, the grouping strategy was the least used strategy in both groups when compared with the keyword and word form strategies. 50 The mean scores of other strategies (Experimental Group: M:7,47 SD:6,98 ; Control Group: M:9,83 SD:8,47) showed that the control group used other strategies more frequently than the experimental group while learning the target words. But the p value equals to .319 (p>0.05) so this difference is considered to be not statistically significant (equal variances assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). 4.2. Vocabulary Learning 4.2.1. English to Turkish Vocabulary Translation Test In this section, quantitative data gathered by English to Turkish Vocabulary translation test were explained. Table 4.2 presents the mean scores, standard deviations, t and p values of the experimental and control groups for English to Turkish immediate post-test and the delayed post-test. Table 4.2: Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups in Terms of Their English to Turkish Vocabulary Test Scores Experimental Group Control Group (N:19) (N:29) t p Mean SD Mean SD Immediate 16,26 2,35 10,59 3,33 6,91 ,000* Post-test Delayed 12,68 4,90 7,66 2,83 4,51 ,000* Post-test Immediate post-test mean scores (Experimental Group: M:16,26 SD:2,35 ; Control Group: M:10,59 SD:3,33) showed differences by about 6 words between the experimental and control groups. Independent samples t-test calculations were carried out in order to test for the significance of the difference between the means of the two groups. According to the t-test results for the immediate post-test, p value equals to .000 (p<0.05). By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant (equal variances not assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). It showed that the subjects in the experimental group learnt receptively 51 more words than the subjects in the control group. The delayed post-test applied to both groups a week after the application of the immediate post-test (Experimental Group: M:12,68 SD:4,90 ; Control Group: M:7,66 SD:2,83) still showed differences between the experimental and control groups although the scores of both groups declined. T-test calculations were carried out in order to see the difference of the means of the two groups. According to the t-test results for the delayed post-test, p value equals to .000 (p<0.05). By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant (equal variances assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). This finding permits the conclusion that the experimental group remembered receptively more words than the control group after a week interval. When the mean scores of immediate post and delayed post- tests were compared in experimental and control groups (Experimental Group: M (imm.post):16,26 M (del.post):12,68 ; Control Group: M (imm.post):10,59 M (del.post):7,66 ) it can be seen that some forgetting occurred . The forgetting rates were almost the same in both groups (Ex: 22% , Con:28%). 4.2.2. Turkish to English Vocabulary Translation Test In this section, quantitative data obtained by the Turkish to English Vocabulary Test were explained. Table 4.3 shows the mean scores, Standard deviations, t, p values of both the experimental and control groups for the Turkish to English immediate post- test and delayed post-test. Table 4.3. Differences between the Experimental and Control Groups’ Learners in Terms of Their Turkish to English Vocabulary Test Scores Experimental Group Control Group (N:19) (N:29) t p Mean SD Mean SD Immediate Post- 11,37 4,23 7,17 3,24 3,67 ,001* test Delayed 7,26 3,52 2,69 2,17 5,57 ,000* Post-test 52 Immediate post-test mean scores (Experimental Group: M:11,37 SD:4,23 ; Control Group: M:7,17 SD:3,24) showed differences between the experimental and control groups. Independent samples t-test calculations were carried out in order to see the difference of the means of the two groups. According to the t-test results for the immediate post-test, p value equals to .001 (p<0.05). By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant (equal variances not assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). It revealed that productively more words were learnt by the experimental group than the control group. The delayed post- test applied to both groups a week after the application of the immediate post-test (Experimental Group: M:7,26 SD:3,52 ; Control Group: M:2,69 SD:2,17) still showed differences between the experimental and control groups. Independent samples t-tests were carried out in order to see if the difference between the means of the two groups was significant. According to the t-test results for the delayed post-test, p value equals to .000 (p<0.05). By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant (equal variances not assumed according to Levene’s test for Equality of Variances). It can be concluded that the experimental group remembered productively more words than the control group after a week interval. When the mean scores of the immediate post and delayed post- tests were compared in experimental and control groups (Experimental Group: M (imm.post):11,37 M (del.post): 7,26 ; Control Group: M (imm.post):7,17 M (del.post):2,17 ) it can be seen that some forgetting occurred. The forgetting rate in control group (63%) almost doubled the forgetting rate in the experimental group (37%). 53 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION The preceding chapter presents an overview of the quantitative data obtained by vocabulary tests and strategy checklist. This chapter draws upon the findings to address the three research questions involved in the current study. Section 5.1 answers the first research question of this study and discuss the related findings, whereas section 5.2 presents the answers to the second and third research questions and interpret the findings. 5.1. Strategy Use The first research question asks if there will be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their strategy use. The analysis of data gathered through the strategy checklist indicated that the experimental group of students who received strategy training used the target strategies more frequently than the control group while learning the target words. But this difference is considered to be not statistically significant. The experimental group students used the trained strategies while learning 11 (58 %) out of 19 of the target words on average, which was not a very high percentage. This might be caused by the fact that strategy training sessions were carried out in three weeks and students had one hour training in each week. This period might be too short for them to understand and use the target strategies. The findings of a similar study conducted by Evcim (2008) supported the view that strategy training sessions which were carried out in a limited time did not make statistically significant changes between the control and experimental group students’ strategy use. Furthermore, the studies of Şahin (2003) and Tezgiden (2006) indicated that short time training on strategy use did not lead to any meaningful change in learner ideas about the overall usefulness of strategies. Therefore, it will be more useful to carry strategy training in a long period of time. In addition to this, it is very difficult to change the learning habits of students in a three week period. The fact that there is no statistically significant difference between the control and experimental 54 groups in terms of strategy use can be explained by the idea that behaviour and attitude can not change in such a short period. Another factor affecting the outcomes of this study might be the fact that the students had five hours of English lessons every week, so they had limited time to practice the strategies during the course. They had to move on to another strategy before studying the newly learnt one thoroughly. But from this point, it can be concluded that one of the indirect aims of strategy training: ‘making the learners realize that they can check their own learning’ could not be achieved. In other words, the experimental group students could not gain competence in controlling their own learning. The control group students used the trained strategies while learning 9 (47 %) out of 19 of the target words on average, which was a very high percentage, as they did not have any training on those strategies. This might be caused by the fact that the strategies were explained briefly to the students in the strategy checklist. Therefore, those explanations might have helped the control group to understand the strategies and they might sound familiar to them. If only the names of the strategies had been given, students might not have ticked those strategies. Another reason might be the fact that the strategy checklist did not include “no strategy option”. Therefore, the control group students might have ticked the strategies randomly without understanding them. Word form strategy is the most preferred strategy among the trained strategies in both groups. This might have several reasons. First of all, word form strategy might be the easiest strategy to use among them, because it requires neither extra mental effort to form links between the words as in the keyword method nor extra time to form meaningful groups of words as in the grouping strategy. Students only have to study the spelling of the word. Secondly, the words given in the list are technical English words and they are orthographically difficult as it was mentioned before, so students might find this strategy the most appropriate one to use while learning those words. Finally, in the other strategies column, both groups wrote “learning by writing” and “learning by reading” strategies. These strategies are not different from word form strategy, so the students have already known word form strategy, that is why they used it more frequently than the other strategies. The experimental group used the word form 55 strategy more frequently than the control group. However, this difference was not statistically significant. After word form strategy, keyword method is the second mostly used strategy in both groups. Again the experimental group outperformed the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant. Although the word form strategy involves very little cognitive processing, the keyword method requires deeper cognitive processing, so this might be the reason why it comes after the word form strategy in usage. Grouping strategy is the least preferred strategy in both groups. This might be because students were given a list of words to learn in a limited time so they might choose easier strategies to use. Writing those words in groups might sound a long and difficult way to learn. In addition to this, grouping strategy can be more useful when the students know some of the words’ meaning and when they are adding a few more words to this group. It might be difficult to form groups when all the words are new. In the strategy checklist, there is one extra column that students can write their own strategies apart from the given strategies. According to the results of this column, the self-strategies used by experimental group are “learning by writing, reading, comparing the similar letters of the new word and its Turkish translation, making a joke with the word, and relating the word with an item used in an advertisement”, while control group uses the strategies such as “learning by writing, reading and studying the word with a friend. This seems to be in line with one of the major findings of Schmitt’s research (1997): As in his research, the verbal repetition and written repetition were among the most frequently used strategies. This might result from the fact that both Japanese and Turkish school systems encourage learners to memorize English grammar and vocabulary usually through repetition. The experimental group used other strategies while learning 39% of the target words, whereas the control group used them while learning 52 % of the target words. The reason that the experimental group used other strategies much less than the control group might be the strategy training they had. The last point to be mentioned in this section is about why strategy training did not work in our study. While strategy instruction might be effective in some studies (Avila & Sadoski, 1996; Rasekh& Ranjbary, 2003; Atay&Ozbulgan, 2006; Tezgiden 56 2006), it did not change the strategy use of the participants in other studies (Nunan, 1997; Evcim,2008). For instance, Nunan (1997), who investigated the effect of strategy training on four key aspects of the learning process: student motivation, students' knowledge of strategies, the perceived utility of strategies, and the actual deployment of strategies by students, found that the experimental groups significantly outperformed the control groups on motivation, knowledge, and perceived utility, whereas there was no significant difference in the area of strategy use. Analysis of results on individual strategies revealed that the effectiveness of strategy training was neither uniform nor consistent across all strategies. So, this might be one of the reasons for failure in our research: strategy training might not succeed in all strategies. Another reason might be the limited time dedicated for the training as mentioned above. The studies conducted by Şahin (2003), Tezgiden (2006) and Evcim (2008) supported the view that longer-term trainings have been more effective, whereas one- time trainings should not be abandoned at all. Motivation might be another key factor in successful strategy training. In Atay and Ozbulgan’s study (2007), the participants were Army Aviation pilots who had limited time to learn the Air Traffic Terminology and Phraseology required for a pilot to take part in international operations, which would also bring monetary benefits. Thus, the experimental group students were highly motivated to learn and use the memory strategies as they felt that these strategies would help them to achieve their aims. Therefore, strategy instruction made significant changes in the vocabulary gains and strategy use of the experimental group. By contrast, the participants in this study were at the Food and Beverage Service Department as mentioned before. They might not have immediate needs to learn English words and their only aim might be to pass their exams, so they might not be motivated enough to learn the strategies. Another factor affecting the success of strategy training might be contextual learning. As mentioned before, Atay and Ozbulgan (2007) claimed that strategy training should be integrated into contextual vocabulary learning. After the students have seen the meaning of a word through different contexts, they should be guided to remember it via different memory strategies. However, in present study, strategy training was given in separate sessions apart from the regular course. It was paid no special attention to 57 whether the words chosen for strategy training were included in the course book or not. So, the students did not have a chance to see those words in meaningful contexts. This might adversely affect the success of strategy training. Another reason might be the fact that, the participants were trained in three memory strategies. The students might find them not suitable for their own learning or they might have some difficulties in understanding them. Therefore, rather than providing the learners with one or two strategies, strategy instruction should focus on the whole group of strategies and students should be given freedom to select the ones that are appropriate to their learning styles. One final point to remember is that only a checklist was used for the assessment of strategy use, so this study had to rely on the learners’ report of strategy use. However, most of the strategies require a mental process. Therefore, the results of the strategy checklist only give information on the quantity of strategy use, not the quality. 5.2. Vocabulary learning 5.2.1. Success in learning vocabulary The second research question of the study is if there will be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their success in learning vocabulary. Although there is no statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group in terms of strategy use, the subjects in the experimental group learnt both receptively and productively more words than the subjects in the control group. This might have several reasons. First of all, strategy training might have an indirect effect on their success in learning words. Experimental group students might become aware of the vocabulary learning strategies and try to use their own strategies to a greater degree. Secondly, the experimental group might become conscious of the importance of vocabulary in learning a language after strategy training. Therefore, they might be more careful while they were studying the words. Finally, once the strategy training began, the teacher emphasized other vocabulary learning techniques in English lessons apart from strategy training sessions while teaching words in the coursebook. So students might benefit from those 58 techniques. The result of the vocabulary test in this research is in line with the result of Evcim’s (2008) research. In his research, strategy training did not make a statistically significant difference between experimental and control groups’ strategy use but experimental group was more successful in the vocabulary test after training. 5.2.2. Success in retaining vocabulary The third research question is if there will be a difference between the students who have memory strategy training and those who do not have in terms of their success in retaining vocabulary. As the experimental group was more successful in learning the words receptively and productively, it is not surprising that they retained more words in receptive and productive tests after a week interval. According to the results of English to Turkish Vocabulary Translation Test, the experimental group remembered 78 % of the words they learnt, whereas the control group remembered 72 % of them. Although the difference in retaining rate between the two groups is low in the receptive test, it grows higher in the productive test. The experimental group retained 63 % of the words they learnt productively, while the control group retained 37 % of them. The forgetting rates were almost the same in both groups (Ex: 22% , Con:28%) in the receptive test, but the gap between the two groups increases in the productive test, as the forgetting rate in control group (63%) was higher than the forgetting rate in the experimental group (37%). This might have several reasons. First reason might be the effect of the strategy training. Since two of the target strategies (keyword and word form strategies) emphasize orthography and productive retention requires recall of written form, the experimental group students who received training on those strategies remembered more words productively which showed that strategy training was effective. As the control group did not focus on form, they forgot more words than the experimental group. Secondly, the control group did not have any training in vocabulary learning strategies and during the course the importance of vocabulary was not emphasized as much as in the course with the experimental group so the attention of the control group was not on vocabulary learning. This might cause a higher forgetting rate in the control group. However, the experimental group did training for three weeks on vocabulary learning strategies, so after the training they might be more careful about vocabulary 59 learning. Thirdly, the experimental group students might become aware of the vocabulary learning strategies they owned and try to use them, which might lead to better word retention. Finally, during the week between the two tests, the experimental group students might come across the target words in their coursebooks because their attention was on word learning, they might be interested in looking at the new words in their coursebooks. So this might be another reason for better word retention of the experimental group. 60 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION 6.1. Conclusions This study investigated the effects of memory strategy instruction on Turkish EFL learners’ strategy use. It also sought to find out whether memory strategy training made a difference to EFL learners’ vocabulary learning levels both immediately and after one week. To restate the answer to the first research question, there was a difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of their strategy use. In other words, the experimental group of students who received strategy training used the target strategies more frequently than the control group while learning the target words but this difference is considered to be not statistically significant. This shows that the strategy training is not totally effective because it does not make statistically significant difference between the two groups. However, if the success of strategy training is examined in terms of learning and retaining vocabulary, it can be said that strategy training is effective because the experimental group learnt both receptively and productively more words than the subjects in the control group, and they were more successful in retaining words both productively and receptively after a week interval. The experimental group may not have used the strategies to a greater degree than the control group, but they seem to have used them more effectively as they learnt more words and remembered them longer. It can be said that the experimental group’s success in vocabulary tests depended on the strategy training they received because both groups had been learning English for three years with the same teacher, same course books and same curriculum at the same school, so there was no difference between the two groups in terms of their proficiency levels. In addition to this, the experimental group students became aware of the importance of vocabulary in learning a language and the role of the strategies in learning vocabulary during the training, so instruction in vocabulary learning strategies has an important part in the Turkish high school-level 61 EFL context, as it raised consciousness and equipped the learners with the essential tools to facilitate vocabulary learning. Being an investigation of vocabulary learning strategies in the Turkish EFL context, this study offers an insight into the effects of training in memory strategies among high school-level Turkish students. Both at the global and local level, vocabulary learning strategies research generally focuses on the overall strategy use of learners or the difference between the reported and actual strategy use of learners. However, this study examined the effectiveness of strategy training by looking at the change in the language performance of students by comparing two groups. Building onto the research on vocabulary learning strategies, this research gave the opportunity for students of English to meet and practice new strategies which was a good way to gradual learner independence. Finally, this research offers a useful view about the situation of high school students’ vocabulary learning and can therefore serve as a helpful material for teachers in order to contribute to second language learning and teaching. 6.2. Limitations of the Study There are certain limitations of this study. First of all, the time was limited for carrying out this research, so the sample size had to be small. If there had been more time, the number of the participants could have been larger and if the population could have been larger, the results might have been more valid as the hypotheses of this research could be tested on a larger sample. Another limitation which was caused by lack of time was the small number of strategies chosen for training. If the trainings were given in all groups of strategies, a more comprehensive picture could have been taken into the effects of instruction in vocabulary learning strategies. In addition, the follow- up study to determine the change in the vocabulary levels of the participants could be carried out only after a week. If there had been more time, another follow-up study might have been conducted after a month interval. Another limitation is the fact that all of the participants in this study were female students, so gender factor was not taken into account in this research. 62 One final limitation is about the assessment of strategy use. Only a checklist was used to assess the strategy use of the participants in this study. As most strategies require a mental process which can not be observed, it is difficult to assess strategy use and the researchers generally have to rely on the learners’ report of strategy use. So, this lack of information prevents the study from giving a complete picture of strategy use because it only deals with the quantity of strategy use, not the quality. 6.3. Suggestions for Further Research Based on findings and limitations of the study, it would be useful to make some suggestions for further research. Firstly, a larger number of participants and equal number of females and males can offer more accurate data and results. Secondly, strategy instruction should be given in a longer time frame with a large number of strategies. 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Unpublished master’s thesis, Selçuk University, Konya, Turkey. Zhang, W. (2008). In Search of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers’ Knowledge of Vocabulary Instruction. PhD. Thesis, Georgia State University. 72 APPENDICES Appendix I WORD LIST (Target Words) Minestrone : etli ve sebzeli Đtalyan çorbası Risotto: Italyan usulü, tavuklu, peynirli ve sebzeli pilav Meringue: Krema Roulade: Et sarması Cheddar: Yumuşak bir cins Đngiliz kaşar peyniri Manchego: Đspanyol koyun peyniri Gouda: Hollanda’ya ait sarı renkli inek peyniri Camembert: Fransız krem peynir District: Yöre Improve: Geliştirmek Produce: Üretmek Smooth: Tadı hoş (şarap) Region: Bölge Frascati:Meyveli Đtalyan şarabı Zinfandel: Kırmızı şarap Chardonnay: Beyaz şarap Conversation: Sohbet Delay: Ertelemek Patient:Sabırlı 73 Appendix II WORD TEST (PRE-TEST) Write the Turkish equivalents of the words below. District: ……………………… Chardonnay:………………. Wine:…………………………. Conversation: ……………… Chilli : ………………………. Produce: ……………………. Zinfandel:……………………. Fridge:……………………….. Patient:……………………… Dash:………………………… Customer:………………………… Minestrone :…………………. Measure:…………………… Flour:………………………… Delay: …………………………. Camembert:………………… Basil: ………………………….. Smooth:……………………… Cloakroom:………………………. Frascati:…………………….. Improve:……………………. Rice:…………………………. Sherry: ……………………… Risotto: ………………………. Meringue:…………….. …… Roulade:……………….. ……. Sweet:………………………… Soft:…………………………… Gouda: ………………………. Cheddar: ……………………... Sparkling:……………. …….. Region: ……………………… Manchego: …………………… Oven:………………………….. 74 Appendix III POWERPOINT PRESENTATION FOR KEYWORD STRATEGY 75 76 77 78 Appendix IV WORDS USED FOR EXERCISE IN KEYWORD PRESENTATION Terrible-(KW:Ter) Goal-(KW: Gol) Cry-(KW: Kırılmak) Mingle-(KW:Mangal) Corner-(KW: Korner) Fear-(KW:Fare) Drench-(KW: Direnç) Detect-(KW:Dedektif) Flee-(KW: Fil) Soar-(KW:Soğur) 79 Appendix V WORDS USED IN WORD FORM TRAINING Hag (n) Stunt (n) Crest (n) Butler (n) Roar (v) Applaud (v) Prohibit (v) Disqualify (v) Indigenous (adj) Therapeutic (adj) 80 Appendix VI POWERPOINT PRESENTATION FOR GROUPING STRATEGY 81 Appendix VII WORKSHEET FOR GROUPING WORDS EXERCISE 1: Group the words and give labels for each group. tomato peel breakfast cloakroo m cucumber bar bake dining-room lunch add celery shake dinner mix onion cook pastry-section …………………………………………… …………………………………………… …. ….. …………………………………………… …………………………………………… ….. ….. EXERCISE 2:Group the words. vo lleyball warm restaurant spring summer modern children flo wers beach pasta garden hot green sea sunbathing 82 EXERCISE 3: Group the words in list 1 and give labels for each group. List 1 1.Nutmeg : Hindistan cevizi 2.Trout : Alabalık 3.Casserole: Güveç 4.Date: Hurma 5.Sole: Dil balığı 6.Thyme: Kekik 7.Fig: Đncir 8.Ladle: Kepçe 9.Prune: Kuru erik 10.Dill: Dere otu 11.Mackerel: Uskumru 12.Raisin: Kuru üzüm 13.Colander: Kevgir 14.Clove: Karanfil 15.Salmon: Somon balığı 16.Sieve: Elek 17.Cinnamon: Tarçın EXERCISE 4: Group the words in list 2. List 2 1. Greed: Açgözlülük 2. Audience: Dinleyiciler 3. Accident: Kaza 4. Poem: Şiir 5. Crowd: Kalabalık 6. Steal: Çalmak 7. Underground: Metro 8. Creative: Yaratıcı 9. Valuable: Değerli 10. Gig: Konser 11. Publish: Yayınlamak 12. Clap: Alkışlamak 13. Jewellery: Mücevher 14.Hit: Çarpmak 15. Dangerous: Tehlikeli 83 Appendix VIII TEST FOR GROUPING WORDS Aşağıdaki kelimelerin Türkçe karşılıklarını yazınız. 1. Jewellery: ……………………… 2.Nutmeg : ……………………………. 3. Greed: …………………………. 4. Creative: …………………………. 5.Trout : …………………………………. 6.Casserole: ……………………………… 7. Underground: ………………………………. 8. Dangerous: ……………………………….. 9.Date: ………………………………… 10.Sole: …………………………………… 11.Hit: ………………………………….. 12.Thyme: …………………………………….. 13. Clap: ………………………………….. 14.Fig: …………………………………………. 15.Ladle: ……………………………………….. 16. Accident: ……………………………………. 17.Prune: ………………………………………. 18.Dill: ……………………………………………. 19.Mackerel: ………………………………………… 20. Crowd: …………………………………… 21. Publish: …………………………………………… 22.Raisin: …………………………………… 23. Gig: …………………………………………. 24.Colander: ………………………………………. 25. Steal: ………………………………………. 26.Clove: ………………………………… 27.Salmon:.......................................................... 28.Sieve: …………………………………………… 29. Valuable: …………………………………….. 30.Cinnamon: ………………………………………. 31. Audience: …………………………………………. 32. Poem: …………………………………………… 84 Appendix IX STRATEGY CHECKLIST Aşağıdaki tablo size verilen kelimeleri öğrenirken hangi stratejiyi kullandığınızı tespit etmek amacıyla hazırlanmıştır. Lütfen her kelime için kullandığınız stratejiyi işaretleyiniz. Eğer 4. sütunda işaretleme yapacaksanız kullandığınız stratejiyi kısaca açıklayınız. Bu kelimeye benzeyen Türkçe bir Başka bir kelime öğrenme Gruplama yaparak kelimeyle bağlantı Kelimenin yazılışını stratejisi kullanarak öğrendim. öğrendim. kurup kafamda bir hayal ederek (Kullandığınız stratejiyi kısaca resim canlandırarak öğrendim. açıklayınız.) öğrendim. (anahtar kelime yöntemi) Minestrone Risotto Meringue Roulade Cheddar Manchego Gouda Camembert District Improve Produce Smooth Region Frascati Zinfandel Chardonnay Conversation Delay Patient 85 Appendix X KELĐME TESTĐ (Turkish-English) Aşağıda verilen kelimelerin Đngilizce karşılıklarını yazınız. Italyan usulü, tavuklu, peynirli ve sebzeli pilav:…………………………………… Fransız krem peynir:………………………………. Yöre:…………………………………….. Et sarması:…………………………………….. Yumuşak bir cins Đngiliz kaşar peyniri:………………………………….. Geliştirmek:…………………………………. Krema:………………………………………. Üretmek:………………………………………… Tadı hoş (şarap):…………………………………….. Bölge:……………………………………………. Meyveli Đtalyan şarabı:……………………………… Đspanyol koyun peyniri:…………………………………….. Kırmızı şarap:………………………………………… Sohbet:………………………………………….. Ertelemek:……………………………………… Sabırlı:……………………………………… Beyaz şarap:…………………………………… Etli ve sebzeli Đtalyan çorbası:……………………………………. Hollanda’ya ait sarı renkli inek peyniri:…………………………………… 86 Appendix XI WORD TEST (English-Turkish) Write the Turkish equivalents of the words below. Delay: …………………………. Cheddar: ……………………... Risotto: ………………………. Roulade:……………….. ……. Manchego: …………………… Gouda: ………………………. District: ……………………… Improve:……………………. Region: ……………………… Meringue:…………….. …… Chardonnay:………………. Conversation: ……………… Patient:……………………… Zinfandel:……………………. Produce: ……………………. Minestrone :…………………. Camembert:………………… Smooth:……………………… Frascati:…………………….. 87 ÖZGEÇMĐŞ 1984 yılında Bandırma’da doğdum. Đlkokul eğitimimi 1995 yılında Balıkesir Edremit Cumhuriyet Đlkokulu’nda tamamladım. 1995-2002 yılları arasında eğitimime Balıkesir Edremit Anadolu Lisesi’nde devam ettim. 2006 yılında Uludağ Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Đngilizce Öğretmenliği Bölümü’nden mezun oldum. 2006-2010 yılları arasında Bursa Osmangazi ĐMKB Kız Meslek Lisesi’nde Đngilizce öğretmeni olarak çalıştım. 2007 yılında Uludağ Üniversitesi Đngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bölümü’nde yüksek lisans eğitimime başladım. Halen Bursa Yıldırım Merkez Anadolu Đmam Hatip Lisesi’nde Đngilizce öğretmeni olarak görevime devam etmekteydim. 88