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 //-  -?     ///1  /0"  -/  /0-" -/  /0/" -0  0    ; -2  0-( <  -9  0/*  -:  $%,&6.7%61*@  -   -=  / .;' ->  0 &  ->  0-&  /?  0/ /?  2&    /-  2- /-  2/ //  3.  //  3-.'   /0  3/.'  /=  30Comparison of mean scores and t-scores of the 2 tests of the two groups 00    -1A 03  /" 03  0$  09      0=  !!#$%  &'( )  !!#*%+, -.,(  )       +,  ,  !  - .'  /0  / $ ' /2  0 &';  /2  2 '  /9  3 '   /:  9 .'  /=  : $ '  />  = &';  />  > '  0-  -? '   0/    $      '   /    /  00  -/ $1'' / ,/  Table 13 '/ 00        #                  '       '  <     6         7 +  *      &   *, +   *- *  * - -*  ( * *-,  +   +   .+ - &   ;'              5&1''       INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Vocabulary is an important language element that links four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing together and makes communication flow smoothly. Reality shows that many students have fairly good knowledge of grammar but are hardly able to express themselves properly because of their vocabulary deficiency. Vocabulary learning, therefore, becomes central to language acquisition, and interest in its role in second language learning has grown rapidly in recent years. Specialists now emphasize the need of systematic and principled approach to vocabulary by both the teacher and the learner (Decarrico, 2001; Nation, 1990). One of the concerns in vocabulary is how to help students increase their retention of learned vocabulary items. Many Vietnamese students experience considerable difficulty retaining English words that they have learnt in their previous lessons. Long lists of words noted down from reading texts, listening passages, vocabulary or grammar sections in the course books are of limited help to them if they do not know how to learn, remember and use these words. That most words which have been learnt are forgotten soon and then become dead is one of the reasons for students’ difficulty in communication, both in the oral and written forms. To ensure a good communicative task performance, the ground work is to ascertain a good lead-up and preparation for learners’ intake of vocabulary. So far there has been little empirical evidence about the effectiveness of meaningful practice in vocabulary retention, so whether meaningful practice increases students’ retention of vocabulary during the teaching and learning process is the question that the author tries to answer. Retention is defined as “an ability to recall or recognize what has been learnt or experienced; memory” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1992:773). Although I have not found any definition of vocabulary retention in the literature, I, for the purpose of this study, can define it as the “storage of vocabulary in the memory, which becomes available for use when needed”. So retention of vocabulary is the ability to recall words that have been learnt or encountered for online communication .    2. Aims of the study Given the role of vocabulary retention in helping students to communicate more effectively in English, I set out the aim of this study as to find out techniques or activities that can help ma\y students to memorize words better. These students are non-English major ones and have four class meetings a week. However, they cannot retrieve the words which they have learnt in previous lessons for online communication when needed. In other words, they soon forget words they have just acquired. The main aim of this study therefore is to investigate the impact of meaningful practice on vocabulary learning and retention, or to put it differently, the extent to which meaningful practice helps to retain vocabulary for my students at the university and provide some teaching implications. 3. Scope of the study There is a wide range of language activities which can be used to improve students’ retention of vocabulary. However, in the current study, I set the limit of investigating the impact of two meaningful activities of guessing new words through context and using dictionary on students’ learning and retention of English vocabulary because with the timeframe of 12 weeks it is supposed to be infeasible to conduct a research study on a larger scale which can produce very convincing results. Participants in this study were non-English major second year students of Hanoi University of Business and Technology who were considered at the intermediate level of English and working with Business English course book “Business Objectives” by Vicki Hollet. This study was implemented amongst 2 groups which included 4 intact classes with 111 students altogether for a duration of three months. 4. Method of the study This study was conducted by quasi-experimental method with 2 classes of the experimental group and two classes of the control group . It was quasi-experimental because the students of the experimental group and the control group were not randomly assigned, and therefore were not of equal proficiency levels of English. In fact, they were intact groups (Wiersma, 1995). The duration of the experiment was 12 weeks and 2 vocabulary tests were administered [...]... educational contexts Instead, a quasi-experiment is employed with the subjects for both the experimental group and the control group being the intact groups of students (Nunan, 1992; Wiersma, 1995) As this study was conducted on the students in 4 classes which were assigned by the university where the researcher was working, a quasi-experimental method was naturally chosen 3 Participants and treatment... cognitive (e.g., translating, analyzing) and metacognitive (e.g., planning, organizing) strategies Each scholar has his/her own point of view in grouping learning strategies basing on results of their research from a certain type of language learners, but it is clearly seen that when a learner consciously chooses strategies that fit his or her learning style and the L2 task at hand, these strategies become... target language facilitates language acquisition For example, when the second- year business-major students are introduced the topic “company”, they will be able to learn and use lexical items of headquarters, turnover, staff turnover, company strengths, running costs, subsidiary, take risk …, not vasectomy, molar, infections, uterine, complications, ectopic pregnancy, tease out… because the latter... background knowledge but to medical students’ in gynecology and business students do not have opportunities to engage these words in meaningful use English language learners in Vietnam do not have an adequate natural language environment to practice language skills that they have learnt or acquired This limitation actually hinders their language development; thus, when being in a real contact with the... that words are learnt by individual, but through memorable presentation, personalization tasks, so how lexicon is presented and activities are conducted in the class for practice is very important in anchoring new words into students’ memory (Hulstijin: 1997), especially when they do not have advantageous language environment outside the classroom In this case, classroom practice embeds both input and... additional information for the known words, and therefore, avoid forgetting and automize the existing knowledge (Moras: 2001) Brown (2000:83-84) describes meaningful practice as “a process of relating and anchoring new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structures” That is, meaningful practice is the practice with teacher’s guide aiming at increasing student’s retention and fluency development... Using dictionaries should be the main ways to deal with discovering meaning in cases that language learners do not have or are not fully aware of the language context of the words encountered With adequate training, dictionaries are a valuable tool for learners, giving them independence from the teacher As well as understanding meaning, students are able to check pronunciation, the grammar of the word... plurality, comparatives, etc.), different spelling (American versus British), style and register, as well as examples that illustrate usage Dictionary use teaches students about multiple word meanings and choose the appropriate definition to fit the particular context While consulting a dictionary, the learners have to keep it in mind that there is not much one-to-one correspondence between English and... rejects the null hypothesis, the tested hypothesis is naturally accepted and this means that meaningful practice does have impact on students’ retention of vocabulary, and vice versa 2 Rationale for using a Quasi- experimental method “Experiments are carried out in order to explore the strengths of the relationships between variables” (Nunan, 1992: 25) This study was aimed at exploring the relationship between... & Kupper, 1989; Chamot & O'Malley, 1994) Learners should be taught not only about learning strategies but also about when to use them and how to use them, or in other words, to be instructed on how to choose the best and most appropriate strategy in a given situation According to Chamot and O'Malley, using a combination of strategies often has more impact than single strategies Also, they need to know . study was conducted by quasi-experimental method with 2 classes of the experimental group and two classes of the control group . It was quasi-experimental. and the control group were not randomly assigned, and therefore were not of equal proficiency levels of English. In fact, they were intact groups (Wiersma,