*paper presented at the 5th LIA Research Colloquium, Jakarta, 28 September, 2012. Published

in LIA CAR Journal vol. 5 pp.220-229.

Enhancing students’ vocabulary acquisition through deep word processing strategy Rahmila Murtiana, LBPP LIA Banjarmasin

Abstract This action research was conducted based on the identified students’ difficulty in acquiring vocabulary, that is, remembering and understanding the meaning of words and using them appropriately. The aim was to examine whether deep word processing strategy can enhance students’ vocabulary acquisition. The data were collected during term II/2012 through questionnaire, observation, and test. The preliminary data showed that the majority of the students tended to apply rote learning or shallow word memorization strategy, which made them easily forgot what had been learned. The treatment or intervention was by assigning students to do deep processing strategies, as suggested by McLeod (2007) and Elder (2008). The activities included imagery (the use of graphic organizer) and reworking (putting into own words). The findings revealed that deep processing strategy led the students to better recall of vocabulary.

Background

Vocabulary is an important element in learning English. Having a great amount of vocabulary repertoire will enable learners to use English more confidently and communicate successfully. An empirical study conducted by Staehr (2008) revealed that vocabulary size and knowledge influenced language proficiency. In his study, he found that learners’ receptive vocabulary size was strongly associated with reading and writing skills, and moderately associated with the listening skills. Another study by Hilton (2008) suggested that vocabulary knowledge contributed to the spoken fluency. Meanwhile, Elder (2008) agreed that vocabulary helped learner to understand the listening task, comprehend a reading text, speak more precisely, and write effectively.

Unfortunately, for some students, acquiring vocabulary needs a great time and effort. What frequently happens is that students learn new words but then easily forget them. Besides, when students encounter unfamiliar words, they often rely on the teacher or the dictionary to find out the meaning, which could be an ineffective way of learning. This happened as well to my Intermediate 1 class term 2/2012. Based on my preliminary observation during the first week, I noticed that the students were still weak in vocabulary. Mostly they just relied on using electronic dictionary to check the meaning of the words instead of guessing from the context. They were also having difficulty in using the appropriate vocabulary either in spoken or written expressions. Explaining the meaning in details had also taken a great deal of time before the students really grasped and were able to internalize the word. On the next meeting, when I reviewed the words, the students forgot and needed to open their book to check the word meaning. This slow vocabulary acquisition influenced the pace and progress of the lesson.

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My assumption was that the students still used a rote learning strategy, that is, only memorizing without knowing the application, and in vocabulary memorizing strategy they still used shallow word processing, a process which only occurred at the surface such as knowing the pronunciation or the form, so they were unable to retain the words in their mind. Based on this, I planned to make a treatment by applying deep word processing activities. My purpose was mainly to increase students’ vocabulary repertoire, so that they would be able to use the words correctly, and able to retain the words in their long term memory. The research questions were as follows:

1. How will the application of deep processing strategy change the students’ habit in learning a new vocabulary?

2. How will the use of graphic organizer and reworking help students to memorize and retain the new learned vocabulary?

Theoretical Framework

The terms shallow word processing and deep word processing strategy have been proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972). Shallow processing takes two forms: structural processing and phonemic processing. Structural processing is related to the appearance or the physical qualities of something, such as the typeface of a word or how the letters look, while phonemic processing is related to the sound of the words. Shallow processing only leads to short-term retention of information (McLeod, 2007). That is why, when students only learn vocabulary by memorizing how the words sound or how it is written without knowing how to use it, they will easily forget it. Meanwhile, deep processing involves a more meaningful analysis, such as giving words a meaning or associating them with previous knowledge, and this leads to better recall (McLeod, 2007). In other words, it involves semantic processing, which happens when we encode the meaning of a word such as by making our own sentence.

A considerable amount of research concerning vocabulary memorizing strategies has been conducted by experts. For example, Cohen and Aphek (1980, as cited in Yang & Dai, 2012) found that making associations and keeping using them were helpful to recall the learned words. O’Malley et al (1985, as cited in Yang & Dai, 2012) did a study on the type of learning strategy used by beginning and intermediate level of students. The findings showed that the students mostly engaged in rote learning strategies such as memorizing lists of words, taking notes of new vocabulary items, repeating words, and reviewing words. In fact, the strategy which considered more effective is by making association between word form and meaning (Oxford, 1990). She proposed several ways of making association such as grouping language material into meaningful units, associating new language information to concept already in memory, placing new words into a context, conversation or story, using semantic mapping, or using mechanical techniques, such as writing words on cards and moving cards from one stack to another when a new word is learned (Oxford as cited in Yang & Dai, 2012)

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Association as one of the most useful strategies for vocabulary learning should be used by language learners in order to retain the words in their long-term memory. As previously explained, association is a deep word processing strategy since it involves semantic level. An action research conducted by Zhang (2010) on the use of deep word processing strategy proved that the teacher intervention affected the learners’ vocabulary competence and learners’ attitude toward word learning, and he concluded that deep word processing strategy can be a powerful tool in vocabulary acquisition.

Some deep word processing activities have been suggested by Elder (2008). First, processing a word through multisensory channels, which could be done in four ways: (1) Explain the term in our own words and write it down. This is to tap our linguistic understanding. (2) In our mind, create a picture of the word itself and a visual representation of what it means, or make some drawings and illustrations. This is to tap into visual understanding. (3) Associate the word to an emotional response or feelings, say the word and the definition with feeling. This is to tap into emotional understanding. (4) Represent the word physically, that is, make a physical symbol with hands or body that explains what the new term means. Say the word and the definition while making the facial expression or gesture. This is to tap kinesthetic understanding.

For another activity, Elder (2008) proposed to make a diagram or graphic organizer of a word, such as the one below:

The following section describes the data analysis and the results of how I applied the

theoretical framework above in my classroom.

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Data Analysis

The participants of my research were Intermediate 1 students at LBPP LIA Banjarmasin, which consisted of 12 students. The demographic background of the students was: one male, 11 females, 10 high school students (year 10 and 11), one college student, and one housewife. Four students started to study in LIA since Elementary 3, six students since Elementary 4, and two students were new.

In conducting this research, I followed an action research cycle: plan, act, observe, and reflect, as suggested by Burns (2010). The first stage was planning the action, in which I started to identify the problem, develop research questions, and consult relevant literature. The second stage was putting the plan into action, in which I started to collect data through questionnaires, observations, compilation of students’ works, and test. The third stage was observing the results of the plan, which included gathering the data, comparing, and making interpretation. The last stage was reflecting and planning for further action. The data collection and analysis lasted for 10 weeks in the period of April – June 2012. The 10-week period research plan was implemented as follows: Table 1. Research timeline

No. Activity Timeline

1 Observation Week 1-2

2 Questionnaire Week 2

3 Action 1: graphic organizer Week 3 – 5

4 Interpreting the result Week 6

5 Action 2: reworking Week 8

6 Interpreting the result Week 8

7 Test Week 9

8 Final analysis & reflection Week 10

After two week observation of the student progress in learning new vocabulary, I distributed a questionnaire at the end of week 2, in order to find out the strategies used by the students in learning new vocabulary. The questionnaire was a simplified form of a questionnaire developed by Yang and Dai (2012), who conducted a survey for students at a university in China. The students’ response to the questionnaire was presented in the following table.

Table 2. The students’ ways in learning vocabulary

No. Activities N R S U A

1 keep vocabulary cards 11

2 keep notes in margins of textbook 7 3 1

3 write down a new word to remember with Indonesian translation

6 4 1

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4 write down a new word to remember with English synonym

2 7 1 1

5 take notes of a new word to remember with examples in which it is used.

1 4 4 2

6 take notes of a new word to remember with its definitions.

2 3 5 1

7 associate an English word with another English word according to structure (e.g. root, affix).

4 1 4 1 1

8 associate the word with some physical sensation or activity

2 5 3 1

9 associate the word with the situation in which it appeared (e.g. which lesson of the text; who said the item).

1 5 4 1

10 associate the English word with my experience in the past

2 2 5 1 1

11 try to remember not only the word but also other words in context

3 6 1 1

12 try to remember the word by checking it in a dictionary 1 4 4 2

N = Never R = Rarely S = Sometimes U = Usually A =Always

Questions 1 - 6 and question number 12 are related to note taking and rote learning activity (shallow processing), while questions 7 to 11 are related to making association (deep word processing). As shown on the table above, it was evident that the majority of students did not use deep processing strategy in learning new vocabulary. They rarely learn the words by making associations. In an attempt to change the students’ habit, I made an intervention in the classroom activities by assigning them to do a deep word processing strategy, which was divided into two: imagery (making a graphic organizer), and reworking (putting into own words) as suggested by McLeod (2007) and Elder (2008). The making of graphic organizer was implemented in four different lessons. The first was when the students learned a lesson about Salim Bungsu (Lesson 3), a talented Indonesian actor. I assigned the students to make a graphic organizer on Salim Bungsu’s life, which included his family, his appearance, his talent, and his career. The second was when the students learned a topic on behavior (Lesson 4), in which the students had to be able to use vocabulary such as behave, address, favor, obey, queue up, disregard, and courtesy. The third was lesson about folktales (Lesson 5), with listening as the skill focus, and the vocabulary to be learned included goldsmith, swallow, gigantic, spoiled, and ungrateful. The fourth was lesson about graffiti (Lesson 6), the skills focus was speaking, and among the vocabulary to be learned were ban, mess up, damage, vandalism, pillar, gross, and sophisticated.

For reworking (putting into own words), the lesson where I applied an intervention was about Dolorosa Sinaga, an Indonesian sculptor (Lesson 8). The skills focus was reading, and the number of new vocabulary was quite a lot such as achievement, distinctive, display, eager, idle, generous, prolific, prestigious, privileged, and respectfully. The next section explains further about the results of the intervention.

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Result and Discussion

The result of the first graphic organizer was satisfactorily. The students worked in group and based on the drawing they created, I concluded that they were able to grasp the ideas on the reading text about Salim Bungu’s life. For the next graphic organizer, the students were assigned to create a drawing based on the folktales they had learned and combine the pictures with some new learned vocabulary.

In the other lessons, with the topics on behavior and graffiti, I assigned the students to create vocabulary cards using colored papers where the student drew a diagram, as shown in the theoretical framework above. I firstly showed the example of the diagram on the whiteboard, then I asked the students to pick a new learned word, and drew some pictures which symbolized the word, wrote the meaning of the word either in English or in Bahasa, and created sentence(s) containing the word. This was done individually.

The vocabulary cards created by the students came out quite well. Students were able to produce interesting diagram, complete with the meaning of the word and the example of sentence. The original diagrams made by the students looked like the example shown in the theoretical framework, but I extracted some examples of the students’ writing into the table below.

Table 3. The results from graphic organizer

Vocabulary Meaning Example of sentence

Address 1. place to live My address is on Jl. Pramuka no.12

2. call a person You have to address someone older with “Mr” or “Miss”

Courtesy 1. polite to our elder people

We need to show our courtesy to the elder

2. owner This video clip is courtesy by Youtube

lie 1. tidak jujur Don’t lie with me because I don’t like

2. rebahan Her mother lie at her bed

queue up mengantri I don’t like to queue up because it’s boring

ban melarang/larangan The headmaster should ban writing on the wall at school

mess up merusak/make dirty The people shouldn’t mess up with some pictures or whatever that can make dirty in the wall of people’s house

pillar Tiang The pillar beside my house is very gross

sophisticated advance I think most graffiti art is sophisticated

In the process of creating vocabulary cards and making diagram, I observed that the students were enjoying their time. The student who was absent from class and missed the activity even requested to do the same in the next meeting. I allowed the students to

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write the definition of the word in Bahasa, as it was easier to grasp the meaning. The students were able to understand the meaning. However, in creating own sentences. some students still had problem in applying appropriate form. This could be seen from the grammatical mistakes that appeared in their sentences. Beside that, the picture drawing had taken up a quite considerable amount of time during the class session.

For the last action: reworking or putting into own words, I did not ask the student to dram diagrams, but I just assigned the students to choose five new learned words, wrote the meaning along with the synonym and antonym, and created own sentences. Below is the results taken from some of the students’ works.

Table 4. The results of reworking

Vocabulary Synonym Antonym Example of sentence

astonishing surprising, unusual

ordinary They can make the music instrument are astonishing

distinctive unique ordinary The music is so funny and distinctive

eager enthusiastic little concern I am very eager to speak English well

gigantic very big small I want to make a gigantic cake for my sister’s birthday

generous like to give money

stingy They are generous community, so they always share what they have

prestigious reputable not so famous Reza continues his study at prestigious school

privileged lucky, fortunate

needy Those privileged children live in a big house

prolific productive unproductive He prolific the statue by himself

The table above shows that the students were able to develop their vocabulary repertoire by through synonym and antonym. However, it is evident that some students still had problems in applying appropriate part of speech as shown from the first sentence and the last sentence.

Toward the end of the term, I gave vocabulary test to see how the students’ vocabulary retention was after the lessons passed for a few weeks. The test was divided into two parts. Part A consists of sentences in which students had to identify whether the word is correctly used, whereas in part B students had to choose the correct word (see appendix). There were 25 items altogether and the score was 4 for each correct answer. The vocabulary test was participated by 11 students. The results were presented in the next table.

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Table 5. The results of vocabulary test

No Student name No. of mistakes Score

1 Alifia 7 72

2 Dijah 10 60

3 Ica 2 92

4 Mutia 8 68

5 Putri 6 76

6 Rifda 3 88

7 Rina 1 96

8 Sandra 7 72

9 Syifa 3 88

10 Shofi 5 80

11 Tazkia 11 56

From the scores above, it can be seen that the majority of the students were able to remember the vocabulary learned. Those who scored low might be caused by the number of absences from the class.

Conclusion

My overall reflections to the actions implemented are: first, the two deep word processing activities: imagery (the use of graphic organizer) and reworking (putting into own words), were able to change the students’ habits in learning vocabulary and able to enhance students’ vocabulary acquisition. Students no longer depended on dictionary or the teacher in finding the meaning of the new word.

Second, students were able to understand the meaning of the new vocabulary by producing own sentences, despite some problem in using the correct grammatical form. Third, the students were able to recall the previously learned vocabulary when given a vocabulary test by the end of the term. This means that deep word memorizing strategy or semantic level of processing as explained in the theoretical framework is proven more effective for vocabulary retention than shallow word processing.

Fourth, the activity of making vocabulary cards had taken up a considerable amount of time during the lesson, particularly because the students still students needed some extra help to generate ideas when creating sentences. As a result, some activities from the book had to be skipped. Therefore, for further action, it should be considered the time allotment for each activity as well the classroom arrangement whether it should be done individually or in groups, particularly when there is a large number of the students in the class.

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References

Burns, Anne. Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Elder, Janet. Entryways into College Reading and Learning. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc,. 2008, accessed 6 April 2012; available from http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073123587/student_view0/chapter4/deep_processing_a_vocabulary_word.html

Hilton, Heather. “The Link between Vocabulary Knowledge and Spoken L2 Fluency.” Language Learning Journal 36, no.2 (2008): 153-166.

McLeod, Saul. Levels of Processing. 2007, accessed 6 April 2012; available from http://www.simplypsychology.org/levelsofprocessing.html

Staehr, Lars Stenius. “Vocabulary Size and the skills of Listening, reading and Writing.” Language Learning Journal 36, no.2 (2008): 139-152

Yang, Wei-dong, and Wei-ping Dai. “Vocabularies Memorizing Strategies by Chinese University Students.” International Education Studies 5 no. 1 (February 2012): 208-215

Zhang, Limei. “An Action Research on Deep Word Processing Strategy Instruction.” English Language Teaching 3 no.1 (March 2010): 103-107

Appendix

VOCABULARY TEST

A. Identify whether the following vocabulary is correctly used. Write T or F.

1. A: Our new teacher is still vey young. How should we call her?

B: We still have to address her as “ma’am”.

2. You’ll have no friends if you don’t behave well.

3. Many people want to watch the football match. We have to mess up to buy the

ticket.

4. Can you do me a queue up? I need to move this table to the corner.

5. People in Indonesia are well-known with their friendliness and courtesy.

6. Graffiti is a sophisticated art but sometimes it can vandalism the wall.

7. Maya is a very unattractive student. She always pays attention to the teacher

explanation.

8. The storm has caused a lot of damage in the area.

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9. Some people felt disappointed since the police decided to favor Lady Gaga

concert.

10. Salim Bungsu may look attentive, but he has a great talent in acting.

11. You should not disregard your parents’ advice because it is for your own good.

12. Unlike other buildings which have small pillars, the Great Mosque has prolific

pillars.

13. Steven Spielberg is an outstanding movie maker who has received many

awards.

14. As a composer, Melly Guslow is vey gigantic. She has composed many popular

songs.

15. The mud flow in Sidoarjo has swallowed hundreds of villages.

B. Choose the correct answer:

1. The girl is such a/an (spoiled/ungrateful) child. She doesn’t thank the people who

have helped her.

2. I want to continue my study to a (privileged/prestigious) university.

3. My sister is (idle/eager) to speak English well. She practices everyday.

4. Look at that drawing on the wall! The house owner must be very angry because

it’s (intriguing/gross).

5. It is (obvious/generous) that the students feel very happy after passing the exam.

6. Dolo and her husband always treat the children (respectfully/impolitely) so that

the children love them.

7. The students’ works will be (displayed/concerned) at the school bazaar next

week.

8. Her (distinctive/weird) voice makes the producer interested.

9. When we go (achievement/abroad), we need to prepare some travel documents.

10. If you don’t (ban/obey) the traffic rules, you’ll be in trouble.

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