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A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING VOCABULARY
THROUGH PICTURES
BY
MISS WATCHAREE PAISART
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
Ref. code: 25605521320019PXY
A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING VOCABULARY
THROUGH PICTURES
BY
MISS WATCHAREE PAISART
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
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Dissertation Title A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING
VOCABULARY THROUGH PICTURES
Author Miss Watcharee Paisart
Degree Doctor of Philosophy
Major Field/Faculty/University English Language Teaching
Language Institute
Thammasat University
Dissertation Advisor Assistant Professor Watjana Suriyatham, Ed.D
Academic Years 2017
ABSTRACT
This research is a mixed-method case study aiming to investigate if
pictures help students remember words and how students remember words by
learning through pictorial input. The study consisted of seven volunteers who enrolled
in an ESP course in a Thai university. They were required to learn vocabulary in a
specific course for 45 words via a pictorial teaching material. The pretest and posttest
scores of the study were compared by T-test from Wilcoxon sign-ranked test. The
result showed that the posttest scores were significantly different from the pretest
scores at the 0.05 level. This showed that the use of picture had an effect on word
retention. However, the data derived from the main tool of the study, stimulated recall
protocol showed interesting findings which discovered another aspect of vocabulary
learning through picture. Cognitive process of students’ vocabulary learning which
were unrevealed was discovered vertically to open to broader perspectives of how
picture use in vocabulary teaching and learning affects students’ word retention. The
qualitative inquiry from the stimulated recall protocol showed that apart from picture
use, students employed variety of strategies to help them remember words.
Keywords: Pictorial input, Word memory, Stimulated recall protocol
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could not be successful in my Ph.D study without many people
surrounding me. First of all my greatest supports for my study are my mom, my dad,
and all family members. With their great care, support and understanding, I could get
through difficult time. Apart from my family, my moral supports are from my beloved
friends. One of them has just passed away during my study who I felt so deeply
depressed for she could not have a chance to see my graduation like today but I am
certain she must be smiling somewhere in heaven for my success. I also appreciate
my Ph.D classmates who have shared my every moment during our study. Special
thanks to Ajarn Duangta Jaipetch; who arranged to push me on the Ph.D program
registration in the very beginning. Additionally, I would like to thank all lecturers in
the Ph.D program who teached me during the course. Many thanks to my supervisor,
Asst. Prof. Dr. Watjana Suriyatham who leads me to the appropriate direction so I can
walk along to the correct path until the end, without her support I could not make this
happen. Also, I have to say thank you Ms. Kobkorn Panmuang and the LITU staff for
facilitating me throughout the semester. Moreover, thanks to my KMUTNB
colleagues who had to work hard for me when I took leave to pursue my Ph.D study. I
also have to give credits to all my experts (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Piyatida Changpueng,
Asst. Prof. Dr. Supalak Nakornsri, Asst. Prof. Dr. Paradee Praphruetkij, Asst. Prof.
Dr. Raveewan Wanchid, and Dr. Karnchanoke Wattanasin) who helped comment on
my research materials. Besides, thank you to Dr. Ariyadhorn Fongpaiboon who stands
by me all the time and also helped me check some part of the research. My heartfelt
gratitude is to the proposal defense and final defense committee who tried to help me
find the very best solution for my full research dissertation. Last but not least, the
other groups of people who I could not forget are the volunteers from both the pilot
and the main study who are willing to participate in the research conduction. Without
their participation, I could not get useful and interesting information for the study.
Miss Watcharee Paisart
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT (1)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)
LIST OF TABLES (7)
LIST OF FIGURES (8)
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (9)
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of the Study 1
1.2 Statement of Problem 3
1.3 Purpose of the Study 4
1.4 Significance of the Study 5
1.5 Research Questions 5
1.6 Research Design 6
1.7 Theoretical Framework 6
1.8 Limitation and Scope 6
1.9 Definition of Terms 7
1.9.1 Stimulated Recall Protocol 7
1.9.2 Word Retention 8
1.9.3 Picture Use 8
1.10 Summary 9
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CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 10
2.1 Introduction to Language Learning, Vocabulary, and
Acquisition
10
2.1.1 Why Learn a Language? 10
2.1.2 Importance of Vocabulary 12
2.1.3 How to Learn Vocabulary 19
2.1.4 Vocabulary Strategies 20
2.1.5 Picture Use in English Teaching 23
2.2 Language Learning and Acquisition 26
2.3 Cognitive Processes 35
2.4 Memory / Retention 47
2.4.1 Types of Memory 48
2.4.2 Pattern of Memory Processes 53
2.4.3 Memory Problem 57
2.4.4 Memory Support 59
2.5 Metacognitive Process 61
2.6 Previous Studies of Picture Use on Word Retention 62
2.6.1 Critique of Studies 62
2.6.2 Research Gap 71
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 73
3.1 Research Design 73
3.2 Participants 76
3.3 Material and Tools 78
3.3.1 Teaching Material 78
3.3.2 Pretest 83
3.3.3 Posttest 84
3.3.4 Stimulated Recall Protocol 84
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3.4 Methodology 87
3.5 Data Analysis 89
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 91
4.1 Results on the Effect of Picture Use on Students' Word
Retention
92
4.2 Results on How Students Learn to Remember Words with the
Support of Pictorial Material Input
94
4.2.1 What Kinds of Pictures Best Affect Memory 95
4.2.2 What Factors or Cognitive Processing Strategies Involved
in Remembering Words with the Support of Pictorial
Material Input
104
4.3 Discussion 117
4.3.1 The Effect of Picture Use on Vocabulary Teaching 117
4.3.2 Cognitive Processing Strategies Involved in
Remembering Words
121
4.3.3 False Memory or Falsely Recalled
126
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 128
5.1 Conclusions of the Research Results and Findings 128
5.1.1 The Quantitative Data 128
5.1.2 Qualitative Data 130
5.2 Recommendations of the Study 132
5.2.1 Limitation of the Study 132
5.2.2 Recommendation for Further Study 134
5.2.3 Contribution to English Language Teaching 135
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REFERENCES 137
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A Example of Pretest 144
APPENDIX B Example of Teaching Material 145
APPENDIX C Example of Form for Expert to Check 146
APPENDIX D Example of Transcription 147
APPENDIX E Example of Transcription (translated version) 148
APPENDIX F Consent Form 149
BIOGRAPHY 150
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LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
1 The comparison of the means for the pretest and posttest 93
2 The comparison of pretest and posttest scores 93
3 Kinds of pictures that best affect memory 96
4 How far and how close each category is to the target number 100
5 Kinds of pictures that best affect memory for stronger and weaker
volunteers
102
6 Frequencies of the time each volunteer used to get the correct
meanings of words
105
7 The final findings of words that volunteers could recall 109
8 Total findings with frequencies and percentages of occurence and
examples of excerpts from the stimulated recall protocol from
volunteers
109
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figures Page
1 Cognitive process 43
2 Information processing model 44
3 The multi-component conceptualization of Working Memory (WM) 46
4 Working memory model 55
5 Memory process model 56
6 Steps of preparation of the picture use in the study 83
7 Steps of research implementation 89
8 Graphs representing how close each type of picture is compared to
the target number (or expected number)
101
9 The comparison of patterns the strong and weak volunteers have on
types of words they applied to recall words correctly
103
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Symbols/Abbreviations Terms
WM
STM
LTM
Working Memory
Short Term Memory
Long Term Memory
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
English is one of the most popular and widely used languages in the
world (Prentice, 2016), although, according to Ethnologue (2017), it is ranked third in
terms of number of users, after both Chinese and Spanish (ranked first and second,
respectively). English seems to be the medium language or a language used to widely
communicate apart from those languages mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, many
countries incorporate English in their educational curriculums for their students to
study and accomplish proficiency in the language. We find a similar situation in
Thailand, where English is a core subject in the national curriculum and many stake
holders have tried to seek for practical approaches to make learning effective.
Recently, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) came into effect and
incorporates 10 member states including Thailand. English is considered as a working
language for each ASEAN member state to use when communicating. As a result, a
large number of educational institutes, companies, and organizations have been
encouraging their students or their workforce to make significant gains.
The importance of English, as well as its necessity, has influenced society
in various aspects, such as education, economy, and tourism. In education, for
example, English has been promoted in many schools and universities around
Thailand: English programs, international programs, and bilingual programs have
been created and implemented with a view of making learning more efficient and
effective, with the aim of ultimately serving the need of using English well in society.
Regarding the Thai economy, English plays an important role in organizational
communication, especially when contacting foreign organizations and exchanging
goods, services and information. However, possibly the strongest area of influence is
tourism in Thailand. The English language is like a link that brings people together
from different places to meet in the same place and understand each other. All in all,
the influence of English and its importance to Thai society cannot be overlooked.
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Although English has been prominent in Thai education for a number of
years, proficiency in the language remains a problematic issue. Many Thai students
are not fluent in English, and most Thai students seem to have problems in using
English in all skills. As Fredrickson and Mala (2016) mentioned in Bangkok Post
online, citing EF (English First) English Proficiency Index 2015 “Thailand is a non-
English speaking country with very low English proficiency”. From the previous
reference, there are 70 countries around the world which are included in the study.
Out of 70 countries, Thailand is in 62nd place and 14th out of 16th place in Asia for the
level of English proficiency. From this information, it can be inferred that Thai people
still have some problems when it comes to learning and mastering the English
language. Therefore, government and people have been trying to find appropriate
ways to support more efficient and more effective English language learning.
Learning a language involves mastery of many elements for a language
learner in order that they are able to use and understand the language to a satisfactory
level. These elements include grammar, expressions, vocabulary as well as general
language skills (e.g. reading, writing). Vocabulary is clearly one that seems to play an
important role in becoming proficient in a language. Schmitt (2000) also mentioned
that vocabulary is central area for language making it fundamentally important for
language learners. If a language learner has sufficient vocabulary knowledge, he or
she is better able to utilize this knowledge alongside the four language skills (reading,
listening, speaking, writing) in a more communicative way (see Nation, 2001).
Naturally, language teachers tend to be driven to increase and improve
vocabulary knowledge among their students. However, a motivated language learner
ought also to be continuously trying to find an effective way to increase their
vocabulary knowledge. A number of research studies on vocabulary learning have
been conducted, often with a different focus and topic, and from different viewpoints
(i.e. from both the teachers’ and language learners’ perspective). It appears, therefore,
that research on vocabulary learning and usage remains an interesting and practical
area of study to some extent.
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1.2 Statement of Problem
From the above section, it discussed about the importance and necessity
of English use and the focus of the learning narrows to vocabulary which seems to be
a vital element that affect the use of four skills of English.
English teachers have to find effective and appropriate ways and
techniques to help students learn English, especially vocabulary due to the reason
stated above. There are many strategies which were discussed to be effective in
teaching, learning and memorizing vocabulary.
Nation (2001) introduced a taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies
which separates knowledge of vocabulary aspects and deals with the learning process
for each vocabulary learning steps. Nation reports three general classes of strategies:
Planning (choosing what to focus on and when to focus on it); Sources (finding
information about words); and Processes (establishing knowledge). Schmitt (2000)
proposed a long list of vocabulary learning strategies, which he categorized in two
ways: (1) the list is divided into two major classes which are strategies useful for
initial discovery and useful for remembering words once they have been introduced,
and (2) the strategies are classified into five groupings; namely, Determination
strategies (DET), Social strategies (SOC), Memory strategies (MEM), Cognitive
strategies (COG), and Metacognitive strategies (MET). In another study, conducted
by Stoffer (1995; cited in Kudo, 1999) categories on vocabulary learning strategies
were introduced: (1) strategies involving authentic language use, (2) strategies used
for self-motivation, (3) strategies used to organize words, (4) memory strategies, (5)
strategies involving creating activities, (6) strategies used to overcome anxiety, (7)
strategies involving physical action, (8) auditory strategies, and (9) strategies used to
create mental linkages. In Yothasamutr’s work (2006), five common strategies were
revealed, as follows: (1) analyzing affixes and roots, (2) analyzing available picture or
gestures, (3) using bilingual dictionaries, (4) asking the teacher for first language
translation, (5) and asking classmates for meaning; whereas Jivanuwong’s study
(2006) showed similar strategies to those presented in Schmitt. She reported two
categories of strategies: social discovery and social consolidation. A variety of
strategies for vocabulary learning were presented under each category.
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Enhancing vocabulary knowledge, as mentioned earlier, is very important
for students. They can find their own path to increase such knowledge by themselves
or with the support of teachers through class lectures or input activities. However,
finding ways of increasing long-term retention of this knowledge is still a major-focus.
Given the need to find effective ways of increasing long-term vocabulary
retention for English language learners, the present research focuses on the use of
pictures. After reviewing some literatures, it is interesting to study in details if the use
of picture can really help the students to remember words. Therefore, this study has
been put in a focus.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study is to systematically investigate the use of pictures
in promoting long-term vocabulary retention. Many research studies have reported the
usefulness and the effectiveness of picture use in vocabulary learning. However, very
few studies to date have attempted to elicit students’ thoughts on how they could
remember new words. Students may have some important insights to share about this
process. Given this study aims to investigate the underlying factors on word learning
and retention, variables are not strictly controlled in the study because the researcher
would like to explore what is involved in the students’ learning and memorization
process.
For the population of the study, the researcher used a group of students
who study English for a specific purpose. These students reported that they need to
study as many words as possible because they need to use the word they learn in the
course in their career paths in the future. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge, for them
is highly necessary and the words they learn in the course are practical for them.
The location of the study was a university setting, in Prachinburi Province,
because there is a course which can be managed to suite the research plan there. The
students who enroll in this course are the selected population of the study because
their desire to learn vocabulary in a specific purpose is much higher than students who
study several English courses in Bangkok according to their designated careers, which
tends to require daily English usage mainly. Their scope of English use is for working
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in international service industries directly while other students tend to work in other
fields which are not mainly about English environment. Then, their needs to learn
ESP vocabulary for this group of students are likely to be stronger than other groups
of students.
1.4 Significance of the Study
The contribution of the study’s results can be drawn to incorporate in the
teaching plan for vocabulary learning. At the very least, the findings should help
teachers understand more about the use of a new resource (namely pictures), in
vocabulary teaching to see if they really help students retain words over the long-term
as mentioned previously in the discussion of the effectiveness of pictures for
vocabulary learning. Additionally, some useful information that can be found may
help teachers to focus on or make use while planning to teach vocabulary for their
students.
1.5 Research Questions
The study seeks to answer the following questions:
(1) Do pictures help students to remember words?
(2) How do the pictures help students retain words in memory?
• Are there any other factors involved?
• What kinds of pictures are most memorable? (e.g. drawing,
realistic, cartoon, pictures with text, and outstanding pictures)
• Are there any differences between good and weak students in
using types of pictures to remember words?
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1.6 Research Design
The research design of the study was mixed-method case study since
aspects from both quantitative and qualitative approaches are deemed supportive of
each other. The use of a case study provided the necessary focus on a specific area of
study in order to facilitate scrutiny of the underlying factors which cannot be easily
noticed or observed. Many studies have investigated the effectiveness of picture use
for word learning and the effect on students’ memory, yet. Very few studies have
actually provided any insight into the details of students’ thinking processes. It is
therefore timely and useful to gather qualitative data about the use of pictures on word
retention by focusing on the students’ thinking process. This study hopes to reveal a
clearer picture and more detailed information about how pictures help in long-term
word retention. Finally, while other research studies have tended to show the positive
side of picture effects on word memory, the present study should help to explain how
pictures influence memory or how students learn vocabulary through pictures.
1.7 Theoretical Framework
The researcher aimed to study the processes underlying the influence of
pictures on learning and remembering words. The technique employed in order to
elicit the required information is very important. “Stimulated Recall Protocol” is the
technique employed in the current study and will be applied to all subjects who
volunteer to take part in the study. Further details regarding this technique will be
provided in Chapter 3.
1.8 Limitation and Scope
Due to the limited duration of the study and the feasible design of the
research, it is plausible that there are several limitations of the study. These will be
discussed in turn below.
The first limitation concerns the limited scope of the vocabulary that was
learnt. As a result of subject selection, which was focused only on students who were
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enrolled in the English for Service Industry course, the vocabulary items were mainly
about English for a specific purpose (i.e., English for the Service Industry). Hence, the
vocabulary items in the current study are not particularly diverse in nature.
The second point concerns subject selection. Since the study focuses on
the group of students who are “Tourism and Hotel” fields, the characteristics of the
subjects may be different from other students, such as students from the faculties of
engineering, science, technical education, and so forth. Thus, the result of the study
might be used to explain the phenomenon for students in this field or students who
have similar characteristics rather than students from other fields.
Another limitation concerns the parts of speech for vocabulary use. Only
nouns were focused on in the current study because it is easier to find pictures that
match with this particular part of speech. Other parts of speech were not included
because of this practical reason. It might be argued that the use of these specific words
in the current research were not sufficiently various in type. It might be more
interesting if further research could be done into different types of word or parts of
speech, so different angles can be discovered.
The final limitation is the duration of the study. Since the study was
focused on word retention, the impact of picture use on word retention was researched.
However, due to the time constraint in the dissertation timeline, the researcher could
not spend much time to measure students’ memorization as long as expected. A
semester is the most feasible time for the study. Therefore, it might be more
challenging and interesting if the study time could be prolonged in order to measure
students’ retention over a longer-term period than the one used currently.
1.9 Definition of Terms
There are a number of important and relevant terms used throughout the
study. These are defined below.
1.9.1 Stimulated Recall Protocol
This is employed as a framework, and the instrument for the data
collection of the research. This was done with the volunteers of the study, who were
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trained fairly informally with the “Stimulated Recall Protocol” technique. The
volunteers finished their posttest for the course, with the researcher then checking
their answers. Following this, they were asked questions on how they could remember
words or what might be reasons why they could not remember words. The stimulus of
the study would be pictures that they had in their posttest. The volunteers would have
pictures in hand as a stimulus to think about their reasons why and how they could or
could not think about matching the words to the pictures.
1.9.2 Word Retention
Due to the time constraint in the study as discussed earlier in the
limitation of the study, word retention defined here refers to one complete semester.
The researcher aimed to find out how the students could remember word after they
have studied the English for Service Industry course. While the students would study
naturally without any other treatment except the use of pictures to explain about the
vocabulary they need to know in each unit.
1.9.3 Picture Use
Picture use mainly focused on nouns for practical reasons. This
aided-stimulus selection and aided the researcher to find pictures that more easily
matched the words. The pictures were employed in the pretest and posttest of the
study. Also, they were presented while studying in each unit in order to be inputs for
students while they studied the course. The pictures consisted of a total of 45 words (5
words x 9 units). They were categorized into five different kinds of pictures:
(1) Cartoon or animated pictures
(2) Realistic pictures
(3) Outstanding pictures
(4) Drawing pictures or Line drawing pictures
(5) Pictures with words or texts written on or Pictures embedded with
words
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1.10 Summary
This research study was designed to cast more light on qualitative data
with the mixed method of both quantitative and qualitative inquiries on the use of
pictures on word retention with a group of volunteers from the Tourism and Hotel
Department, in a university in Thailand. The duration of the study was one semester
due to the time constraint in research conduction. “Stimulated Recall Protocol” was
applied to collect data of the study. This study aimed to get deeper and clearer details
or information on the effect of picture use on word retention.
In the next chapter, a survey of relevant theories and previous research
findings are presented. Following this, Chapter 3 provides details of the methodology,
Chapter 4 discusses the results and discussion, and Chapter 5 provides conclusion and
recommendations of the study.
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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 Introduction to Language Learning, Vocabulary, and Acquisition
2.1.1 Why Learn a Language?
It is hard to dispute that knowing many languages nowadays can be
an advantage in many fields or careers. For example, if someone works as a tour
guide, to be able to communicate in many languages would help facilitate his or her
job because of the greater opportunities for guiding tourists from many different
countries and understanding them better than if the guide used only one language
(e.g., English). If someone works as a doctor, he or she could help his or her
international patients better than if he/she used only one language. As a teacher, if he
or she could understand many languages, that teacher would be able to work
coorporately with many schools or build academic networks from various
organizations around the world. Knowing many languages could contribute to
receptive and productive activities which could enhance efficiency, not only for
educational aspects but also for various additional purposes. As Merritt (2013)
discussed in The Telegraph on 19 June 2013, "Learning a foreign language is more
than just a boost to your CV or handy for travelling. It will make you smarter, more
decisive and even better at English."
Merritt also mentioned about the benefits of knowing many
languages as explained in the items below.
2.1.1.1 Being smarter
When someone learns a language, he or she has to do many
things so as to remember things in the language, then they have to negotiate the
meaning, and finally communicate by the language. Therefore, their brains would be
practiced to do many things to accomplish these steps. These steps lead to skills that
they could apply to be used in other problem-solving tasks which they could transfer
afterwards.
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2.1.1.2 Building multitasking skills
From a study of the Pennsylvania State University on
children to let them switch tasks from two systems of speech between writing and
structure, it was revealed that they could do both activities. They could switch easily
between each different structure. Moreover, in one study, an interesting result was
revealed in that people who used a driving stimulator (who speak more than one
language) produced fewer errors while driving.
2.1.1.3 The relation of the average age and Alzheimer’s disease
and dementia
It was mentioned in many studies about the average age of
people who speak one language comparing to who speak more than one language on
the ratio to have Alzheimer or dementia. The findings suggest that onset of
Alzheimer’s disease is around 71.4 years for people knowing only one language,
while people who speak more than one single language have a later stage onset of
Alzheimer’s disease, around 75.5 years.
2.1.1.4 Memory improves
It was mentioned that when people learn a language, they
need to remember the language rules and vocabulary. This leads to the exercise of the
brain and causes memory improvement. Many studies showed the results that people
who learn many languages would be able to remember shopping lists, names, and
directions somewhat better.
2.1.1.5 Becoming more perceptive
From a study at Spain’s University of Pompeu Fabra, it was
found that people who learn an additional language are better at observing things in
their surroundings. Moreover, they could easily and more quickly spot irrelevant
information.
2.1.1.6 Decision making skills improve
A study from the University of Chicago showed that people
who know many languages were found to be more confident in making decisions, and
that the same decisions were also more rationale. It was believed that language
learning causes people to face more complicated things in the language, so this in turn
influences the ability of the judgment.
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2.1.1.7 Improving English
To learn a language (this article raises English as an
example), people would focus more on grammar, conjugations, and sentence
structure, in addition to other important things in order to learn a language well. Thus,
they pay more attention to the language and are more likely to have more awareness
regarding it.
From the above description on the importance of learning a
language, it is obvious that there are many beneficial and positive points in learning a
language. When learning a language, there are many aspects to study and explore,
such as grammar, sentence structure, parts of speech, idiom, stress and intonation,
tenses, and vocabulary, which will be focused in the following part.
Although vocabulary does not represent the whole things or aspects
in learning a foreign language, it is considered very important to having a
communicative conversation (Wallace, 1982). The next part discusses the importance
of vocabulary and shows how it plays crucial role in knowing a language and what
contribution that could lead to.
2.1.2 Importance of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is considered an important aspect of language learning,
especially in learning English. It helps in communication. People rely more on
vocabulary than grammar when they want to communicate. As Wilkins (1972, p. 111-
112) argues, “without grammar, little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing
can be conveyed”. From only a few words in a sentence, people can guess what the
sentence will be about. Sometimes, only a single word can show what the speaker or
the writer wishes to express. Thus, it can be said that vocabulary is one of the most
crucial elements in English of all skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Vocabulary is certainly be used to present or convey ideas in both
receptive and productive aspects of English language learning. The spoken or written
language is understandable if people select the correct or appropriate words for their
sentences. At the same time, in reading and listening, if the words employed are
known or meaningful for the readers or listeners, communication is more likely to be
successful.
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In speaking, people need to communicate or present their ideas to
others. It can be imagined that even if the grammar is incorrect, but with the link of
vocabulary used in presentation of sentences, listeners should be able to guess what
the speakers are trying to convey. To do this, it can be said that vocabulary promotes
communicative language which is an important and necessary aspect of speaking
skill.
On the other hand, listening performance may fail if listeners have
very limited or no knowledge about any single word in the sentences that are
delivered in speech. This skill is considered somewhat difficult for people who lack
skill in listening practice, especially in English language. Therefore, if they have
difficulties catching what a speaker is trying to say, they have little chance of
understanding the idea presented. However, it can be imagined that if a listener does
not even know what the words are in a single sentence the speaker is saying, this
would mean that he or she is unable to identify the words that he or she hears,
producing a communication problem. It can be concluded that vocabulary plays a
very important role in this kind of skill also.
Apart from that discussed above, focusing on reading skills also
shows an important role for vocabulary. Knowing words can make readers understand
a text or a passage. Of course, key vocabulary would be important and necessary to
understand the reading but some words which are not key words may also have some
effect on the meaning of the sentence. The more words the readers know the more
they are likely to understand the reading. As Alsaawi (2013) mentioned people with
limited vocabulary may not be able to read with understanding. This is still a crucial
problem for readers if they do not know the meaning of a word and try to find the
appropriate meaning of a single word, they may find it difficult to select which
meaning suit the context the most. The study of Paisart (2004) about the Dictionary
Use to Facilitate Reading Comprehension found that many students chose the first
listed meaning they find in the dictionary. However, they still could not fully
understand the sentence they tried to translate since they lack strategies to choose the
most appropriate meaning from the dictionary. Therefore, as long as the students
could not get the meanings of words they need to know in order to understand a
reading text or passage, they would find themselves in a problematic situation since
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they would be blocked by unfamiliar language and they could not communicate to
others nor could they understand what others would like to express to them. This
situation is probably quite frustrating. The more meaning readers know about words,
the better the overall comprehension can be made.
Finally, writing skill which is considered the most difficult
productive skills in English. As Tangpermpoon (2008) states, it is the most difficult
skill of English for language learners to perform because it is not only about one or
two aspects to be able to write but it consists of many things such as vocabulary,
background knowledge and so on. However, in order to transfer the writers’ idea to
others, at least, the writer needs to have the ability to put words into sentences. It is
therefore difficult to discount the possibility that vocabulary is one of the main tools
to help writers present their ideas.
From those discussions about vocabulary knowledge and all four
English skills, it can be seen that vocabulary seems to play a larger and important
aspect to all. Without vocabulary, it may be impossible to perform those four skills. It
is important to know, therefore, how to increase vocabulary knowledge among
language learners is suggested to be studied in order to find more effective ways of
encouraging language learners to master or to improve their vocabulary knowledge. It
could be assume that after having better knowledge of vocabulary, they should be able
to perform all four skills better.
Mokhtar et al. (2010) has discussed how the lack of vocabulary
knowledge can cause several obstacles in learning English. This research explained
the negative aspects of having inadequate lexical knowledge that would create
problems in reading comprehension. Problems in reading, would lead to bad reading
habits meaning that learners might not be attracted to reading and therefore do not
read often. It was mentioned that the students who could read and understand the
reading would read more and become good readers; while the students who have poor
ability in reading would read less and became poor readers. Thus, it can be seen that
inadequate vocabulary or lexical knowledge can have a negative effect on learners
reading habits. Additionally, for poorer reader, they may struggle when they need to
produce some pieces of writing, because of writing difficulties related to their poor
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reading habits. Keener writers, on the other hand, would perform better at writing
because they have done more reading.
How much vocabulary knowledge is needed to be able to effectively
perform each task? This question is interesting. According to Nation (1990), spoken
and written English were discussed to link with listening skill for English because
when listening skills were measured, they would be measured via the spoken
language and sometimes written language was a source to be produced before a
person would listen to something. Thus, both spoken and written English were
discussed to see vocabulary produced for measurement of listening skills. A
comparison of counts of spoken English, studied by Schonell, Meddleton, and Shaw
(1956); and written English, studied by Kucera and Francis (1967) were shown that
there were headwords, word types, and tokens to present different kinds of words they
studied. For Schonell et al.’s study, 4,539 headwords, 12,611 word types, and 512,
647 tokens were mentioned; while Kucera and Francis’s study showed no headwords,
25, 203 word types, and 500,000 tokens. These numbers varied according to the types
of language use; for example, formal or informal language. Moreover, the level of
language use due to English proficiency could be a factor to make this different. Apart
from these aspects, the categories of how words were grouped; for example, by
headwords, word types, or tokens might make the numerical proportions different.
For speaking skill, the size of vocabulary required for adequate
skills was discussed by West (1960), who argued that around 1,200 headwords would
be enough for a simple presentation of ideas in English. Additionally, West (1953)
also recommended the General Service List for about 2,000 words that is the goal a
learner should try to reach. Nation (1990, p. 93) did not discuss such a large number
of vocabulary that is required to speak English:
Clearly, to speak English it is not necessary to have a
large vocabulary. In developing learners’ spoken English
vocabulary it is best to give learners practice in being
able to say a lot using a small number of words.
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Nation (1990) also discussed the appropriate size of vocabulary
which is required for suitable reading comprehension skills. He mentioned about the
levels of several simplified readings. The numbers of words were from 300 to 2,000
word level. There are six stages shown below:
Stage 1 300 words
Stage 2 600 words
Stage 3 1,000 words
Stage 4 1,500 words
Stage 5 2,000 words
Stage 6 2,600 words
These stages were taken from “The Newbury House Writers’
Guide”, which Nation discusses in his article. From this presentation, it can be seen
that the average number of words a reader needs to know when reading a text or a
passage which was considered the least difficult to the most difficult levels. This
implies that the low proficient students could be able to read text with lesser words
than high proficient students. This means the low proficient students tend to have
problem in comprehending the text comparing to those who are high proficient.
However, according to Nation, knowledge of 3,000 headwords is more than sufficient
to read and comprehend an unsimplified version of a text.
Writing skill seems to be the most complicated skill, at least
compared to the other skills: listening, speaking, and reading. According to Nation
(1990), writing involves many factors; for example, spelling, word use in a sentence,
organization, and signaling in written text. Moreover, to be able to write well, there
should be enough input in head so as to be able to present attractive idea or discuss
some idea interestingly. He also suggested that around 2,000 – 3,000 headwords were
adequate for writing a text or a passage. With this amount of words, he said that many
ideas could be effectively presented.
In conclusion, he recommended that a language learner who would
love to improve himself or herself to be able to use English as well as a native English
speaker should learn about 1,000 words per year. After this, they should try to make
up the 2,000 to 3,000 word gap. Nation mentioned around 2,000 high-frequency
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words were necessary for a productive vocabulary, but also the learners need to know
how to deal with unknown words. In addition to Nation (1990), Carter (1987) has also
suggested learners know around 2,000 words having drawn this number from corpus
of 2 to 5 million words. Bongers (1947) also mentioned that the 2,000 word list here
would be found in about 80% of any written texts. The learners would be motivated to
learn these words because they might see them often.
Strategies to tackle low-frequency words should be taught to the
learners so they can cope with unknown vocabulary. Learners who have special goals
(e.g., university students) may need around 1,000 words more so that they can deal
with academic reading; a usual university requirement.
However, students find it is very problematic to learn and remember
words to be used when they need to perform each skill. Wallace (1982) mentioned
eight problems in leaning vocabulary, which are discussed below. Knowing these
problems, awareness and preparation to teach vocabulary could be put into
consideration.
1) Inability to retrieve vocabulary that has been taught
This item was said to be basic of when students learn
vocabulary, they would always forget the vocabulary when they need to use it. As a
result, they need to use other strategies (so called “repair strategies”) to accomplish
their immediate activities when they could not recall the words they need.
2) Use of vocabulary inappropriate to the given situation
Many times students know the meaning but somehow use
vocabulary items in an inappropriate context or situation because they have not
learned or been concerned about the culture or limitation of the vocabulary item’s use.
3) Use of vocabulary at the wrong level of formality
This item is similar to the above but different in the sense of its
formality. Some words are used exclusively in spoken language rather than in written
language. The level of language use could be an obstacle for the students because
sometimes they do not know what words are used in formal or informal application.
Some words can be used only with people at the same level; some should be used
only with those at the senior level. This issue is very important as well.
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4) Possessing the wrong kind of vocabulary for one’s needs
A student has his or her own interest or individual scope in
learning vocabulary; while some students need vocabulary for easy communication,
the other ones may need it for reading an academic book. Medical students may need
to learn different vocabulary from Hotel and Tourism students. Thus, if the teachers
try to teach vocabulary with no regard to this issue, it may be a waste of time for
students to learn the vocabulary that the teacher prepared.
5) Using vocabulary in an unidiomatic way
Students use vocabulary in a sentence which they should use
the correct word or words that go together as an appropriate idiom or phrase or
sentence; but they use inappropriate words instead. This could be from a problem of
idiom usage.
6) Using vocabulary in a meaningless way
When learning vocabulary, it seems that students did not learn
the vocabulary. There might be activities they need to deal with and they could use
strategies to cope with vocabulary problem so as to accomplish the tasks. For
example, when they read a passage and there were some unknown words in the
passage, they did not even have to understand the passage but they could answer
questions correctly. This is because they just identify where the answers are and use
that part to answer the questions. It was mentioned that in a traditional class where the
teacher always asks questions and needs the students to answer, this problem always
occurs. The students will just scan or try to answer the questions but tend not to be
concerned about actually learning the vocabulary.
7) Incorrect use of a dictionary
Students always stop and consult a dictionary to find words’
meanings. They ignore the strategies they need to apply when reading, such as
guessing from context, analyzing affixes, and so on. Therefore, excessive use of
dictionaries could lead to problems in learning vocabulary.
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8) Use of incorrect grammatical form, spelling, pronunciation, or
stress
In learning vocabulary, it is also important and necessary to
consider which words should be only recognized or which words should be studied
(for spelling, grammatical form, collocation of words, and so on). Therefore, in
learning about vocabulary, the teachers should help identify which words students
should learn to know clearly while some words should be taught focusing only on the
meanings.
To sum up, vocabulary knowledge is very important. The more
vocabulary the students know, the more likely it is that they can communicate and
understand the language. However, if they do not have adequate vocabulary
knowledge, strategies to cope with unknown words should be introduced to them so
they can find to deal with their limitations in vocabulary. At the same time, these
vocabulary strategies could reveal some useful learning strategies which encourage
them to learn and remember the new words. The discussion below now turns to the
type of vocabulary strategies that have arisen in the research literature.
2.1.3 How to Learn Vocabulary
Carter (1987) explained about how vocabulary is learned. He
categorized two methods: (1) direct method and (2) indirect method. In order to learn
words either direct or indirect methods, there are two approaches introduced. The first
approach is “productive approach” which can help students activate and retrieve items
of vocabulary from memory. The second approach is the “receptive approach” which
involves strategies that help students to understand and store lexical items in their
memory. The receptive approach is likely to help students comprehend the language
while the productive approach tends to encourage students to use or apply the
language. Nation (1990), in addition, explained about these two approaches. He used
the term “receptive learning” for “receptive approach” and explained that it is the
ability to recognize words and can recall their meanings. For the “productive
approach”, certainly he called, “productive learning” and tend to focus on the ability
to speak out or write the needed vocabulary which they have learned from the
receptive learning and apply it in an appropriate time. He also stated the number of
necessary words required in each application. According to Nation (1990, p. 5), "He
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says, “If learners need to cover the whole range of language skills, then a productive
vocabulary of around 3000 base words and larger receptive vocabulary is needed.”
From this statement, receptive vocabulary should be acquired or
learned more than the productive vocabulary which is said to be 3000 words.
Therefore, this implies that the vocabulary used for reading and listening or receptive
learning should be more than this number. However, in order to learn a language, two
approaches should be met, as stated by Nation (1990, p. 6), “Real vocabulary learning
comes through use, both receptive use and productive use.” So, if students do not have
a chance to cover both applications, vocabulary learning might not be successfully
learned.
2.1.4 Vocabulary Strategies
From the previous discussion, it is obvious that vocabulary
knowledge is very much important and that it should be learned by both receptive and
productive approaches. Therefore, vocabulary strategies have been continuously
promoted not only by teachers, lecturers, tutors, but also by students or learners
themselves. Many scholars have suggested a variety of strategies or ideas to help
learners increase and improve their knowledge of vocabulary. Some of them are
discussed next.
Nation (2001) introduced the taxonomy of kinds of vocabulary
learning strategies which separate knowledge of vocabulary aspects. He also
mentioned about the vocabulary learning process for each step. There were three
general classes of strategy: Planning (choosing what to focus on and when to focus on
it); Sources (finding information about words); and Processes (establishing
knowledge). These steps are likely focused on students or learners having to manage
their own vocabulary learning. They need to set goal in their minds such as what do
they need to know, like what kind of vocabulary they intend to study (e.g. general
vocabulary, or academic vocabulary, etc.). Then, when they are clear what type of
vocabulary they want to learn, they could find a resource to get the words, study them
from various aspects (spelling, meaning, usage, examples, etc.). The final step, after
they studied about an individual word, requires them to actually try to use the words.
The last step involves evaluating themselves in term of how well they have learned
the word and what they need to do to improve their self-learning.
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On the other hand, when comparing to the strategies Nation (2001)
mentioned above, Schmitt (2000) proposed a long list of vocabulary learning
strategies. The list is categorized into two ways: (1) the list is divided into two major
classes which are strategies useful for initial discovery and useful for remembering
that word once it has been introduced, and (2) the strategies are classified into five
groupings, namely Determination strategies (DET), Social strategies (SOC), Memory
strategies (MEM), Cognitive strategies (COG), and Metacognitive strategies (MET).
From what Schmitt suggested, it depends on how the vocabulary would be presented
or what to focus on when teaching or learning the vocabulary. In other words, (1) the
first way focuses on the discovery aspect (useful for initial discovery): how to get to
know words (e.g., meaning, spelling, etc.); or remembering aspect (useful for
remembering): how to help transfer words in memory. In addition to the first way,
another way (2) categorizes into five items:
• Determination strategies (DET) – this item refers to strategies
where learners try to identify the meaning of the word by themselves without support
from teachers or friends (they may guess the meaning of words by using context or
surrounding known words).
• Social strategies (SOC) – this item refers to strategies where
learners try to get some help to know words from other people (they may ask or
observe their friends or ask their teachers).
• Memory strategies (MEM) – this item refers to mental
strategies that the learners use to try to remember words they are learning or transfer
words to their memories (they may link their ideas of background knowledge to help
remember the new words).
• Cognitive strategies (COG) – this item refers to more
mechanical strategies which are not relevant to mental processing. The learners need
to study in order to learn the words (they may write the words many times until they
can remember the words, like rote learning).
• Metacognitive strategies (MET) – this item refers to
manageable strategies and similar to what Nation (2001) introduced to promote the
idea that learners need to monitor, make decision, and evaluate their learning (they
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need to choose what to learn, decide how to learn and then finally test themselves
about what they have learned).
The study of Stoffer (1995) introduced nine categories on
vocabulary learning strategies which were partly similar to Schmitt (2000). The
strategies are likely to link to the idea of multiple intelligence of Gardner (1983)
which views that people learn differently according to their individual preferences.
The strategies proposed by Stoffer are (1) strategies involving authentic language
use: learners learn to remember words by using them in their actual application, (2)
strategies used for self-motivation: learners need to find their own motivation to learn
the words well, (3) strategies used to organize words: learners need to manage to learn
the words to make them easy to remember, (4) memory strategies: learners need to
find ways to help transfer words to their memories, (5) strategies involving creative
activities: learners have to generate activities to be involved in word learning, (6)
strategies used to overcome anxiety: learners also have to find ways to manage their
anxiety to use the words they learned or their worries for not being able to learn the
words, (7) strategies involving physical action: learners may need to involve action so
as to remember words, (8) auditory strategies: learners need to hear sound while
learning the words, and (9) strategies used to create mental linkages: learners link the
words they learn to some internal image they have in mind. Those strategies show
individual differences in learning vocabulary which can be found in a student. So, it
could be considered that individual vocabulary learning strategy might be one factor
that involves in learning vocabulary.
Finally, many studies have reported about vocabulary learning
strategies. The study of Yothasamutr (2006) revealed five common strategies used
which are analyzing affixes and roots, analyzing available picture or gestures, using
bilingual dictionary, asking the teacher for first language translation, and asking
classmates for meaning; whereas the study of Jivanuwong (2006) showed similar
strategies presented in Schmitt (2000). She presented two categories of strategies:
social discovery and social consolidation. A variety of strategies for vocabulary
learning were presented under each category. Similar results were obtained in
Nillaphan’s (2006) study of Schmitt’s taxonomy about the vocabulary learning
strategies. She categorized learners’ levels into three levels to see their strategies
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according to their levels. The frequent use of strategies among these three groups was
determination strategies, social (discovery) strategies, social (consolidation)
strategies, memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and metacognitive strategies.
Apart from these vocabulary learning strategies that have been
discussed, there are still many more useful and practical strategies which language
learners could apply to learn a foreign language and to master vocabulary. One of the
strategies which are especially focused in this study is the use of pictures to help in
learning vocabulary. This idea is very popular and interesting because the use of
pictures in English language learning and teaching seems to be promoted in many
commercial books used in class. As seen from English books used in class in many
universities at the moment, it is difficult to argue that there are not that many
attractive and colorful pictures in every page at least, compared to English books used
in the past which were mostly textual with some books in black and white. From this
change, it might be claimed that pictures have influenced much on teaching and
learning a foreign language nowadays. Moreover, pictures have been widely used in
some present class activities to attract students’ interest and to focus them in on to
what they are going to learn; to elicit students’ background knowledge; to make the
lesson more interesting; to entertain students; and sometimes to promote and support
students’ memory. Additionally, many research studies (Carpenter & Olson, 2012;
Hashemi & Pourgharib, 2013; Hazamy, 2009) aimed to investigate the use of pictures
on word learning by comparing picture use to other strategies. The results of using
pictures from the studies tend to be the same direction which was positive and
effective in memorizing words. In the current study, the use of pictures is the major
focus for vocabulary learning.
2.1.5 Picture Use in English Teaching
Grainger (2013), in his presentation about “Power of the image – 10
ways to use photographs” in January, 26, 2013 claimed that, “we process visuals
60,000 times faster than text”. He reported that from seeing pictures, people could
understand what the aim of the message being delivered, with understanding
occurring very quickly and far above simply getting the gist of what to communicate
via a text. Berger (1972; cited in Rose, 2016, p. 3) states, “seeing comes before
words”. He explained that children who are born normally (not blind), learn things
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from what they see before they are able to speak out. Their learning arises from what
they look at and later they come to recognize it. This process of learning is mainly
from pictures (or other objects in the world), rather than text. In conclusion to this, it
could be mentioned that pictures have many benefits. Therefore, it would be
interesting to make use of pictures or visual input in teaching and learning instead of
studying via text only, in order to make a practical and effective contribution to
education. The use of pictorial and visual input could make lessons more attractive
and expose students to something closer to the real world.
The application of visual input in teaching and learning is promoted
not just only in a language class but also in many subject fields. In an engineering
class, visual input was delivered to support learning and teaching. For example, the
study of Felder and Silverman (1988) mentioned about teaching techniques to address
all learning styles on the use of visual input that before, during, and after the content
was verbally delivered, the pictures, schematics, graphs, and simple sketches liberally
would be presented. Therefore, when students learned via the use of verbal material,
they would be supported with pictorial or visual input at any time of learning (it could
be before, during, or after depending on the lesson plan). Sometimes, films,
demonstrations, or hands-on activities were implemented in class to encourage
learning or make the lessons vivid. So, this could show that picture use could help
drawing attention of students. Another example of using picture or visual input in
learning is from the study of Mason, Pluchino, and Tornatora (2013) about the online
and offline of science reading text with the use of abstract and concrete illustrations.
They use “Eye-tracking” as the methodology to study the text tracing and picture
processing. The finding of this study revealed that students who learned with the use
of picture labeled with text outperformed the students who learned without labeled
pictures. So, this could reveal that picture use has some benefit to support reading.
For English language teaching, pictorial or visual input has widely
been used as material to help teachers motivate students, such as being used as a
stimulus for a conversation class, an example for vocabulary lesson, a supporting
picture for a reading passage, and so forth.
Pictures have also been investigated in many research studies.
Schmitt’s taxonomy (see Lohasheewa, 2011) described the use of word meaning
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imagination as one of the memory strategies that could be used to learn vocabulary.
Schmitt (2000) reported an explicit learning technique on a technique called
“Keyword Method” where a learner who learns to remember a word would link the
word’s phonological form with a mental image. For example, he explained an English
speaker wanted to learn a Japanese word for sword (katana), he linked the similar
sound of “katana” to cat. Then, he formed a picture of a cat waving a sword. This
technique implies that it is easier to visualize the word. Another example is a study on
L2 vocabulary learning strategies of 4th year students, the Faculty of Fine Arts at
Rajamangala University of Technology Tawan-Ok Chakrabongse Bhuvanarth
Campus which showed that most students loved to learn new English words from
advertising board, brochures, documents, newspapers, magazines, and media. Clearly,
such sources of learning are highly visual and include many images full of pictures
(Kongthong, 2007). Whereas Poomwongpituk’s (2008) study revealed similar results
in that her subjects often read English newspapers, magazines, novels, and books;
17.39% (exposure to text more than pictures) comparing to 39.13% of those who
watched movies and other TV programs (provided more exposure to pictures). These
studies support the idea that the use of pictures and other images could motivate
learners to learn vocabulary and the materials that contain pictures could be
interesting so that teachers could adapt pictures for use as teaching materials in class.
As the preceding discussion has shown, the importance of learning
languages, the importance of vocabulary, vocabulary strategies, and picture use in
English language teaching are of fundamental importance at a practical level.
However, it is equally important to better understand how languages learned or
acquired so as to have deeper insight into how pictures influence different stages of
obtaining language competence. Relevant ideas or theories about language acquisition
will be discussed in further detail in the next section.
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2.2 Language Learning and Acquisition
This section aims to discuss about how a language is learned by
mentioning about some relevant theories which explain about this. Moreover, some
factors involve in learning a language would also be stated. The following linguists,
psychologists, and other scholars discuss “SLA or second language acquisition” at
length. The discussion here would review some of the important aspects.
Bloomfield (1933; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 24), a structuralist
explained that we learn language by separating the language into elements: phonology
(sound), morphology (words), syntax (grammar), semantics (meaning), and lexicon
(vocabulary). Therefore, in learning or teaching a language, repetition of each element
may be required.
Subsequently, the very famous theory of behaviorism was proposed
(Skinner; 1957 cited in Saville-Troike, 2006), which was an influential cognitive
model focused extensively on “habit formation” (p. 25). Some of the factors involved
in habit formation are: stimulus, response, and reinforcement. With respect to
language learning, Mitchell and Myles (2004) explained that children would copy and
memorize behavior they noticed in their surrounding environment. Therefore, it can
be said that children would learn language by imitating what their caretakers
(typically parents) would say.
Behaviorism was later heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, a linguist.
Chomsky (cited in Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 12) argued that learning a language
was so complex it was impossible that it could be learned through input or imitation
alone; instead language learning or acquisition was based on something more
fundamental and biological than simple imitation and reinforcement. Chomsky states
(as cited in Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 12):
Human language is too complex to be learnt in its
entirety, from the performance data actually available to
the child; we must therefore have some innate
predisposition to expect natural languages to be
organized in particular ways and not others.
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Chomsky stated that learning languages is too complex to master the
differences of rules in each language and that the language itself is difficult to learn.
This implies that a language has its own specific characteristics. Chomsky went on to
propose the idea of “parameter-setting” which refers to the different aspects of
learning a language. However, children could still discover the rules in the language
even though each language has its own specific rules, so he thought that there might
be some kind of core in learning a language. This core is referred to “core of abstract
knowledge about language form, known as Universal Grammar.” Children learn a
language by utilizing their innate language learning ability and they also need to
interact with the language through environment factors.
Another theory about second language acquisition was introduced by
Krashen (cited in Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 44). This is referred to as “Krashen’s
Monitor Model.” Krashen states five hypotheses in learning a language, as discussed
below:
(1) Acquisition-Learning hypothesis
Krashen claims that learners would have learnt the rule but they
would not acquire it and that learning cannot turn into acquisition. He says that
acquisition was considered a subconscious process that children use in order to
acquire their first language. Moreover it is reviewed as the result of the natural
interaction with the language through the use of communication which has to be
meaningful. On the other hand, for learning, it is said to be a conscious process that
results in “knowing about”; in addition, it is the result of “classroom experience”
which requires learners to focus on form and learn the linguistic rules of the target
language. So, for this hypothesis, he sees acquisition and learning as two different
aspects: naturalistic environment which refers to language acquisition and classroom
environment which refers to classroom learning.
(2) Monitor hypothesis
Krashen devised the monitor hypothesis to explain about the
differences of individual learners in learning a language. This hypothesis mentions
about the use of monitor which could alternatively be called an editor process. It is
said that learning has only one function which is to monitor or edit. As a result of this
via learning, there would be a change to an utterance after it has been produced.
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Learners acquire the language, then they produce utterances so as to communicate
what they want. From the utterances the learners produce, finally, it leads to fluency
in using the language. However, as the monitor or editor function, it would influence
the output of the learners. Utterances would be changed before or sometimes after
they are written or spoken. There are three ways in which hypothesis can be applied:
over-user, under-user, and optimal-user. The following explanations help to make
these three types clear: over-user refers to learners who are afraid of making mistakes
all the time so these learners will block themselves from producing the language
because they are too afraid of making mistakes. On the other hand, the under-user
refers to learners who do not care much about the rules of the language and would
produce utterances or language with fluency and high speed because they do not
worry about making mistakes so they do not block themselves from using the
language. However, they might be more likely to be careless with rules. The type of
learners which seem to be ideal is “optimal-user”. This one means that monitoring is
done appropriately. Optimal users do not worry too much when it comes to making
mistakes. At the same time, they are prudent in being aligned with the language rules,
so that they can produce the language in appropriate way. What should be put in
consideration is that if the learners are producing utterances in real-time, how can the
monitor hypothesis be employed?
(3) Natural Order hypothesis
To acquire the language rules or grammar, it is said that there is
“natural order” which represents different orders to acquire the language and these
orders are various depending on each individual learner. Some learners acquire some
rules earlier than the others. In addition, some rules are acquired later and some rules
are acquired earlier.
(4) Input hypothesis
This hypothesis is linked to item 3 above, Krashen sees “Input
hypothesis” as the center of his “Second Language Acquisition” theory. He argues
that language learner development will occur if the learner receives comprehensible
input that is beyond their current linguistic competence for one step, as explained by
the “i + 1” idea. The idea of comprehensible input has been criticized because it is
unclear to judge if the input that is occurred is called “comprehensible” or not.
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(5) Affective Filter hypothesis
Learners’ attitude in learning is raised and discussed in relation to this
hypothesis. As mentioned with the “Input hypothesis”, the learner’s attitude is
considered central in learning a language, so this type of hypothesis is relevant to the
input idea. It focuses on the thins the students have to face with when learning. To
extend this idea, comprehensible input is suggested to be used in teaching or learning
a language, but if the learners do not open their mind to learn, it may not cause any
useful or effective learning.
Krashen believes that learners need to receive
comprehensible input for language acquisition to take
place. This is not sufficient, however. Learners also need
to ‘let that input in’, as it were. This is the role of the so-
called Affective Filter, which supposedly determines
how receptive to comprehensible input a learner is going
to be.
(Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 48)
Apart from the theories discussed above, there are some more aspects that
influence learners in learning a language. These aspects concern individual
differences and reflect factors such as age, sex, aptitude, motivation, cognitive style,
personality, and learning strategies. Each will be discussed in turn below.
(1) Age
There has been considerable discussion about the appropriate time to
learn languages. Children are likely to acquire languages better than adults. Once a
child passes a specific time, it may be difficult to learn or acquire another language.
This critical time with regards to language learning is referred to by scholars as the
“critical period.” It was said that after this period when the learners get older and pass
this period to acquire languages, their brain might lose the capacity to learn a
language. However, there are some arguments somewhat against this idea because, in
some cases, adults can quite clearly learn second languages very well. In fact, adults
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who pass this critical period stage for language learning might even be able to achieve
“native-like” proficiency.
Lenneberg (1967; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 83) claims that
language learners could produce “foreign accent” if they learn the language within the
“cut-off age.” Later than that, they could not imitate the foreign accent. Saville-Troike
(2006) compared the advantages of both younger learners and older learners in
learning languages. This comparison reveals the advantages of both types of learners
in learning languages so it could be said that no matter what age the learners are, they
could learn and acquire the language and perform well. The findings revealed that
young learners would learn “native-like” grammar with intuition because they are
very young and they have to do relatively little analytic processes when learning. This
may not block them from learning and improving the language. Moreover, they would
be more successful in informal and naturalistic learning. They tend to get simplified
input which helps facilitating them for learning. On the other hand, for older learners,
they are said to have greater learning capacity. This may be because they are more
mature when initially learning the language (i.e., some language learning stages
require greater maturity). In addition, it was said that they need formal instructional
settings to learn the language. Another point is that older learners, can more easily
apply knowledge of L1 to help them support the learning of an L2. Besides, with
greater knowledge of the real-world, they can make use of this additional knowledge
to perform things in L2 more easily, even if these aspects appear more complex.
(2) Sex
Females might be better when it comes to learning languages. As
Saville-Troike (2006, p. 84) states, “There is widespread belief in many western
cultures that females tend to be better L2 learners than males.” Some research reveals
real sex differences in language learning. Females appear to be better at learning
verbal fluency and in memorizing complex forms (e.g., lexicon and grammar). On
other hand, males appear to be better at speech and they have better performance in
computing compositional rules. In addition, Mack (1992; cited in Saville-Troike,
2006, p. 84) considered these differences from two sides; while females were said to
have better semantic or interpretive skills, males appear to have better automatized
skills.
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(3) Aptitude
This item is about the ability of each individual learner to learn a
language. In many years, there has been a talent for language learning which focuses
on four components. Carroll (1965; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 85) discusses an
aptitude test which involves these components:
• Phonemic coding ability
• Inductive language learning ability
• Grammatical sensitivity
• Associative memory capacity
The first component, the “phonemic coding ability” should arise in the
early stage of learning and that input should be clear, not blurred or partially
processed so as to be worthwhile for processing in learning. The next component,
“inductive language learning ability” and “grammatical sensitivity”, were mentioned
together in that these two were concerned with central processing. These two aspects
are involved with segmenting auditory input to infer structure, identify patterns, make
generalizations, recognize the grammatical function of elements, and formulate rules.
The last one, “associative memory capacity”, refers to the storage of what has been
learned, to recall it, and the ability to use it in the output.
In conclusion, aptitudes vary according to individual learner and it
does not guarantee L2 acquisition success. Skehan (1988, cited in Saville-Troike,
2006, p. 85) claims that this theory is not different from cognitive abilities.
(4) Motivation
Motivation can lead to the success in language learning. If learners
have high motivation, they tend to make more effort to learn a language. Oxford and
Ehrman (1993; see also, Dörnyei, 2001; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 86) outline
the components of motivation as follows:
• Significant goal or need
• Desire to attain the goal
• Perception that learning L2 is relevant to fulfilling the goal or meeting
the need
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• Belief in the likely success or failure or learning L2
• Value of potential outcomes/ rewards
Apart from the components outlined above, the next part discusses
different types of motivation. There are two main types of motivation: integrative and
instrumental motivations.
1) Integrative motivation
This one is based on the interest in learning L2 or concerns the desire
to learn a language. Emotional or affective factors are likely to be more involved with
integrative motivation.
2) Instrumental motivation
Instrumental motivation refers to the perception of value in learning a
language. Learners would use this motivation to push themselves to things like
occupational or business opportunities for example.
(5) Cognitive style
Two types of learners can have different cognitive styles. One type of
learners could be dependent in learning while another is independent. It has been
discussed that the dependent learners would achieve more in learning a language if
they learn by using contextualized interactive communicative experience (Saville-
Troike, 2006). They would apply the rules they know from learning a language to
input. This is the deductive processing, a top-down process. Moreover, they would
focus more on the meaning of language use rather than the form. For independent
learners, they would learn well from the decontextualized analytic environment and
formal instruction. They would learn more by bottom-up processes which means they
use the language, then get the rules of the language afterwards. Moreover, opposite to
meaning-focused learning, bottom-up learners focus on language form. Rather than
the cognitive styles discussed here, there is an argument about the processing input
used for learning also. It was mentioned that the input could have some effect on the
cognitive learning style because it influences sensory preference. The examples of
different types of input are visual, auditory, kinesthetic (movement-oriented), and
tactile (touch-oriented). Overall, however, there is no definitive answer as to which
type of language learners learning style is best. Both types of learners have a chance
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to learn well or improve in the language. It depends on each individual cognitive style
and also other factors might be involved in the learning proficiency of those learners,
namely, cultural background, prior educational experiences, possibilities of change
over time, and stages of language learning.
(6) Personality
Personality factors can also be counted into the cognitive styles
discussed above because it explains about the characteristics of the language learners.
These tend to describe learners in terms of opposite personality traits; for example,
anxious and self-confident, risk-avoiding and risk-taking, shy and adventuresome, and
so forth. Some of these traits are discussed further here. Anxiety causes problems in
learning a language because too much anxiety is likely to block learners from
successfully learning. Other scholars discuss “extrovert” characteristics in relation to
learner and how these might lead to language learning achievement. However, there
appear to be no clear evidence to support this claim. At the end of the discussion for
this item, it was mentioned that there are limited studies about the personality factors
on L2 learning outcomes so it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about this.
However, it was stated that being imaginative or creative, empathetic, and tolerant of
ambiguity are mentioned as factors that support good L2 learning.
(7) Learning strategies
Language learners may be different in L2 outcomes because of many
factors. One of those is learning strategy. Individual learning strategies may have an
effect on the learners’ motivation, cognitive styles, personality, or specific context of
use and opportunities for learning. Beside these factors, there might be age, sex, and
aptitude involved in selecting strategies. However, each learner has his or her own
learning style. Thus, it might be difficult to highlight which strategies are superior to
the other ones. O’Malley and Chamot (1987; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 91)
discussed the language learning strategies which have been claimed to be the most
widely used in second language acquisition. There are three types: metacognitive,
cognitive, and social or affective strategies.
• Metacognitive – The strategies used to control language
learning by monitoring and planning. Learners apply metacognitive strategies to
manage their learnings, for example, to rehearse linguistic components required for an
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upcoming language task; explore their own progress in learning the language and
managing how to improve it.
• Cognitive – This strategy requires learners to make use of
direct analysis of the linguistic material to learn the language. Learners would use
tasks or activities to learn or improve their language learning. Some relevant
examples are to remember a new word in L2 by linking it to the sounds of the same
item in L1; to translate from L1 to understand the L2, and so on.
• Social/ Affective – This strategy makes use of what has been
learnt in order to interact with other people or with society; namely, seeking a chance
to speak to native speakers; working with other people so as to get feedback from
others on language performance and ability.
Apart from these three strategies, age and sex have been mentioned in
influencing learners to learn a language or to perform it better than before or not. As
Saville-Troike (2006) argues younger learners may have to do the repetition to master
the language while older learners could analyze or synthesize the language rules and
make use of the language better. Regarding sex, it is likely that females are able to
perform better using social or affective strategies compared to males. In listening
activities, in particular, they tend to perform well.
In the variety of learning strategies which depends on each individual
learner, Ellis (1994; cited in Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 92) discusses about the major
characteristics of “good learners”.
Good learners should have these characteristics, as outlined below:
• Concern for language form (but also attention to meaning)
• Concern for communication
• Active task approach
• Awareness of the learning process
• Capacity to use strategies flexibly in accordance with task
requirements
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The above section discussed what have been involved in learning a
language. Then, in the next section, it is interesting and practical to discuss further
about how language learners learn and understand the language.
2.3 Cognitive Processes
Cognitive processes are involved in language acquisition. In order for
language learners to learn or acquire a language, there are many theories and
approaches which lie beneath the teaching. Cognitive theory is one of those beliefs.
According to Standage and Trappenberg (2012), cognitive neuroscience is relevant to
the process of thought. When human beings employ thinking processes, it means they
may use their brain to do things such as: (1) problem solving, (2) decision making,
and (3) recall of personal memories.
The purpose of cognitive neuroscience is trying to bridge the gap between
brain activity and cognitive functioning with the structural or mechanistic properties
of the brain. From this objective, investigations into the models of how the brain
works when performing activities are relevant to language learning, for example, it
would be interesting and practical to know which levels of the brain or cognitive
functioning or structural properties of the brain when language learners learn things or
complete certain tasks.
Mitchell and Myles (2004) explained that there are two main groups of
cognitive theorist. These two kinds of theorist and each group has different beliefs
about cognitive functioning. One group believes in innate language learning ability,
while the other does not. Instead, the theorists who do not believe in innate language
learning focus on the process of learning languages and how this leads to language
ability. Those two groups mentioned can be divided into two main ideas about how
languages are learned: (1) Processing approaches, and (2) Emergentist or
Constructionist approaches.
At the core of the processing approach is the belief that the ability to learn
a language is innate. This approach considers that language knowledge might be
special in some way. This approach investigates how second language learners learn a
language with the use of their ability to acquire or learn the second language. Their
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competence in learning the language would be examined to see how it develops
during the process of learning. Universal Grammar (UG) proposed by Noam
Chomsky (1957; cited in Michell and Myles, 2004, p. 33), is important to the idea of
innate language learning. In other words, UG means that “children have an innate
faculty that guides them in their learning of language.” Chomsky believes that a child
has their innate ability to acquire a language and that it is called ‘Language
Acquisition Device (LAD)’.
An alternative approach to the “processing approach” is the “emergentist
or constructionist approach.” This approach does not make a distinction between
competence and performance. It is believed that language use and analysis of its rules
happens at the same time. This is in contact to the processing approach which claims
that language learners analyze language rules from the production of the language
itself.
In addition to the above two approaches, Larsen-Freeman (1991)
discusses her own work in Breen (2001) about the revision of the results of the
experiments in the last decade about the learner’s contribution via the cognitive or
affective aspect. The three items mentioned below are discussed in relation to how
language learners learn the language and make themselves successful in learning.
She proposed three factors to be discussed: attribution, conceptualization,
and action. To make this easy to understand, the following parts are presented:
(1) Attribution (who the learners are)
Attribution focuses on who the learners are with information like age,
aptitude, personality, learning disabilities, and social identity.
According to the age, what has been discussed is the critical period
hypothesis and puberty. The critical period hypothesis (CPH) explains about the
period language learners should learn the second language because if it exceeds this
period, then language learning is unlikely to develop afterwards. Regarding puberty,
this is the period of age which is believed to be the most appropriate time for language
learners to learn a second language. Any later than puberty, learners would not
manage to achieve native speaker competence. However, from the studies of many
researchers (Larsen-Freeman, 2001) about these two periods to learn language, it was
found that there is no consistency in the view the second language should be learned
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with the belief of the CPH and the age of puberty as dominant factors predicting
success. While these two ideas explain the period the language should be learnt so as
to achieve effectiveness in language learning, there are some results regarding
learners who learn a second language when they are an adult. Some of these learners
can still pronounce English with an accent close to a native speaker. Therefore, it
cannot apply the above discussion about the CPH and the puberty age as the pinpoint
about the language acquisition or native-like pronunciation for language learners.
From the recent hypothesis on successful L2 learning, there are many other factors
involved in learning a language, not just a focus on the periods that are believed to be
critical. Additional factors include things such as brain organization, high motivation,
training, access to abundant and authentic L2 input, training in speech perception, and
multiple explanations (with sociocultural factors and auditory perception).
For the aptitude aspect, there are two profiles of aptitude mentioned:
analytic aptitude and memory-oriented aptitude. These two kinds of the aptitudes are
like different routes towards language learning success. Gardner, (1983; cited in
Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 16) also discussed “multiple intelligences” which also have
relevance to language learning. He grouped human capacities to learn language into
seven items: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, body-kinesthetic,
musical-rhythmic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
Personality is also one of the aspects of a learner’s contribution to
language learning. It was mentioned in Larsen-Freeman (2001) that there are
individual personality traits which help encourage second language acquisition. These
traits are: self-esteem, extraversion, anxiety, risk-taking, sensitivity to rejection,
empathy, inhibition, and tolerance of ambiguity. In addition, the willingness to
communicate is another trait but it is not included in the previous one. Later, Charos
(1996; cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 17) also discusses personality items which
are called the “Big 5”. These traits are: extra-version, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to new experiences.
The next aspect concerns learning disabilities. Learners may find
some obstacles in learning a language which can bring about difficulties in acquiring
the language. In cases such as these, instruction should be modified to help learners
learn the language.
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Social identities are very necessary and important which can help
learners to improve their performance in using the language. Charos (1996) also
suggested that the learners should use the language between language learners or with
native speakers. This can enhance the chance for them to use the target language to
interact with people in society.
(2) Conceptualization (how the learners conceptualize L2 acquisition)
This item is concerned with learner motivation, attitude, cognitive
style, and a learner’s belief in their language learning.
The first item in this topic is motivation which is said to have an
effect on second language acquisition. This is to say if learners have motivation to
learn the language, it is more likely to be effective. Schumann (1998; cited in Larsen-
Freeman, 2001, p. 19) reported that there are five stimulus appraisal patterns: novelty,
pleasantness, goal/ need significance, coping potential, and self and social image.
Therefore, if language teachers could consider these items as input in the process of
language learning, learners’ motivation can be increased and leading to more
advantageous learning language. Dörnyei (1998 cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 19)
discussed some of the personal factors which could have some effect on language
learning, rather than the stimulus proposed. Those personal factors are connected with
the need to be successful in learning and having more confidence. Additionally,
situational factors also play an important role in learning motivation; for example, the
learners’ interest in learning the subjects. Noels, Clément and Pelletier’s (1999; cited
in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 19) claimed that students’ perception of their teachers’
style of communication in class may have an effect on learners’ intrinsic motivation;
that is, the more controlled and less informative learners they are, the lower intrinsic
motivation they tend to have.
Attitude of language learners is also important and influential in
language learning. However, it is mentioned that rather than the learners’ attitudes
alone, there are also other influential attitudes in a learner’s life; namely, the attitudes
of parents, peers, and teachers. These attitudes may have an effect on learners; for
example, parents of Hong Kong society would like their children to be educated in
English-medium schools in order to fully realize their career prospects in the future
(Flowerdew, Li, & Miller, 1998; cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 20). In this case,
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learners may have to follow their parents plan and their attitude to English learning
could have been different from other learners who live in different status and society.
Another aspect for a learner’s conceptualization is the cognitive style.
This refers to the factors, strategies, or techniques which learners apply to learn the
language effectively. It is believed to be correlated with language learning success.
For this, there is one test mentioned to be used to measure for the cognitive style
factor. Articles by Chapelle (1992), Chapelle and Greene (1992), Griffiths and Sheen
(1992), and Sheen (1992) cited in Larsen-Freeman (2001, p. 21) all reported use of a
test which has been used to examine the cognitive aspect (i.e., the Group Embedded
Figures Test [GEFT]). However, some also argue that this test may not actually test
cognitive style but might be an ability test instead.
The last item is belief. Learners’ beliefs can have an influence on
learning and comprehension. The beliefs could be about the nature of the language as
well as the nature of the language learning itself. Individual beliefs are likely to differ
across learners. Mori (1999b; cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 22) mentioned that
learners who believe that learning a foreign language is not difficult to master, tend to
perform better than learners who think that it is not easy to learn. Therefore, learners’
beliefs are very important and can have effect on acquiring and learning a language.
(3) Actions (what they do)
The action here consists of only one aspect to be discussed: learning
strategy. This is to see how the learners use their learning strategies to apply to their
language learning. Greene and Oxford (1995; cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 22)
studied the use of strategies in language learning and found that strategies were used
by learners of high proficiency. Moreover, they also found that the more strategies the
learners use the more successful the language learners are. The interesting point for
this is that females tend to use more strategies than male learners. However, Huda
(1998; cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 23) reported different results. He found that
good language learners are likely to use fewer strategies compared to weaker learners.
Thus, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions regarding the relationship between
language learner proficiency and language learning strategy from these findings.
There may well, be other factors involved. Oxford (1996a; cited in Larsen-Freeman,
2001, p. 23) agrees with this more tentative conclusion. He says, “…..strategy use
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does not relate strongly to proficiency.” It is said that the proficient learners should be
able to use strategies in appropriate ways (Vann & Abraham, 1990 cited in Larsen-
Freeman, 2001, p. 23).
When learning or acquiring a language, learners are believed to
participate in a learning approach or theory which has been proposed as a variety
throughout decades. This cognitive process or theory was introduced by Cognitivists
who believe that language acquisition and language learning involve the process of
thinking. Cognitivists view the mind as an information-processing device. They
believe that if language learners could not remember things, repetition may not be an
answer. This belief is certainly different from Behaviorists who believe that learners
learn a language and acquire the language by doing things relevant to their behaviors
with no thinking process but those learners can use the language.
One of the most influential proponents of behaviorism was Skinner.
He conceptualized language learning in relation to three main elements: Stimulus (S)
– Response (R) – Reinforcement (R). At the early stage of language learning, ‘habit’
was seen is as thing that can be formed to learn things. Then the behaviorists proposed
the previous pattern of learning. By learning things from the variety of ‘stimulus’,
learners would then ‘respond’ to the stimulus. The response to the stimulus would be
reinforced if it was considered successful. From this pattern, it could be expected that
learners would use language with their best effort because they desire have a need for
reinforcement. Mitchell and Myles (2004) explain that this pattern is forming habits.
Habit formation proceeds in the first language. Then, when learners begin second
language learning, this pattern is applied to new circumstances. It is like a problem
solving task. Learners learn to receive the new stimulus and respond to the new
stimulus. If the response is good, then, reinforcement would be provided. Mitchell and
Myles (2004, p. 31) also state that if L1 and L2 have similar structure, it would be
easy for learners to apply the learning pattern. However, if they are different, learners
may find it difficult to learn the new language. They say, “If structures in the second
language are similar to those of the first, then, learning will take place easily. I,
however, structures are realized differently in the first and the second language, then
learning will be difficult.”
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There are two implications for language teaching by this theory:
(1) This theory believes in “practice makes perfect” because learners do
things as in the “Stimulus – Respond – Reinforcement” pattern. Learning a language
is forming “habits” so it means learners have to practice doing tasks or performing
activities in order to learn a language. The activities they do so as to learn a language
is to imitate or repeat the same structure of the language many times until those
structures are remembered or mastered.
(2) As seen from the above item, it seems that “structure” is likely to be
focused. Structure in language learning is said to be difficult (Mitchell & Myles,
2004). Due to different structures of L1 and L2, no matter if they are similar or
different; learners tend to do the “drilling” exercise to master the structure of the
target language.
Therefore, it could be implied from the above paragraph that when people
need to interact with others and they stick on the structure, they may not produce
natural language because sometimes structure can be drilled and it might not suite
natural context in some case. Suppose the language learners speak with some native
speakers and that the conversation use or pattern use is different from what the
learners practiced in class. What should they do to carry on the conversation? Next,
the cognitive approach is introduced. This approach concerns the thinking process
about language use so the conversation or the language use becomes more natural.
Mitchell & Myles (2004), mentioned an influential cognitive
psychologists for language learning. This psychologist is Anderson who proposed that
in order to learn a language, learners need to have access to declarative knowledge.
This knowledge refers to the ability to “know what or know that.” This compares to
the knowledge of something the learners just know but are unable to consciously
access knowledge about what is actually known. On the other hand, “procedure
knowledge” is equally important and this refers to “knowing how.” From what the
learners know (about rules of the language), then, they need to apply those rules in
real life. The last concept in relation to the above two items is the “automatization.”
Learners who have passed the previous two steps to the last one, the automatization,
should be able to use the language without thinking or considering what to say. This
aim is so natural that learners would be expected to use the target language in various
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situations with several people on different topics with very few constraints. Anderson
(1983, 1985; cited in Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 102) encouraged language learners
to practice what they have learned about the target language so from the regular
practice, it could lead to “automatization.”
Macphail (1998) stated that there are two relevant phenomena for
language learning from a cognitive psychology perspective: (1) selective attention
and, (2) short-term memory.
For selective attention, this concerns a person’s interest. When they face
many sources of simultaneous input, a person is able to focus solely on one source
without paying attention to the other sources of input. They can also shift to another
source if they decide that the input is not interesting for them. This phenomenon is
known as the “cocktail party effect.”
The second phenomenon is short-term memory (STM). This is the start of
how people derive information and lead to it being stored in long-term memory
(LTM). Suppose a person needs to remember digits, it is said that 6 digits at a time
would be recommended. More than this number could be possible but they need time
for repetition.
Cognitivists or cognitive psychologists have views on language learning
that are different from behaviorists. They see the mind as an “information-processing”
device. Their view is to see that a piece of information enters, then, it continues on
track of this processing to a different stage, and then this process is concerned about
the flow of information and how it transforms from stage to stage.
From these two phenomena, it can be concluded that cognitive processes
happen when a person feels he or she needs to know something more strongly than
others. The sources of input could be selected according to each individual high-
priority source to a low-priority source. When they pay attention to a particular source
(high or low-priority), it means the information goes through a filter each person has
considered as incoming sensory information. After that, the information passes short-
term memory. This piece of information would be treated as new information but to
make this remembered, it needs to be rehearsed sufficiently until the information is
suitable for passing through to and storing in long-term memory. To help illustrate
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this process, the following chart shows in diagram form what has been discussed
above.
Information from high priority sources to low priority sources
(depends on individual preference)
Individual filter
Incoming sensory information
Enter short-term memory
Rehearsed sufficiently in short-term memory
Pass to long-term memory
Figure 1: Cognitive process
Figure 1 above refers to two kinds of memory; namely, short-term
memory and long-term memory. The differences between these two kinds of memory
need to be mentioned briefly. Short-term memory is said to have limited capacity of
about 7 items but long-term memory has unlimited capacity. Moreover, the
information in the short-term memory can rapidly decay while information in long-
term memory is likely to be stored permanently.
In terms of remembering, when people learn something or know
something, they are better able to remember things at the very beginning of the
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derived information. The rest might be forgotten or recalled less easily. This is called
the “primacy effect.” On the other hand, when people learn something and they can
only remember the last part of the information, this is called the “recency effect.”
Memory appears to be poorest for information that is presented in the middle.
What has been proposed to help memory is repetition. When learning
things and people have not had any chance to use it or review it again, it could
increase a chance to forget that. Therefore, it is believed that the more repetition and
rehearsal a person has, the greater likelihood that a person will retain things in their
long-term memory. For newly learnt information, it was mentioned that a few items
(two or three) that were presented could be rehearsed when a person is waiting for
new input to be derived but if there are about more than seven items, it might not be
possible to rehearse while waiting. What can increase the efficiency of the superiority
of primacy effect is that item presentation should be a little slow for a person to have
some effective time to rehearse derived things before the new items of the input are
presented. Delaying presentation could help on this effect and it should reduce the
recency effect. So, it could be concluded that repetition or rehearsal is very practical
and it could help protect “rapid decay.”
Randall (2007, p. 14) discusses a cognitive model which has several part:
sensory register, working memory or short-term memory, and long-term memory.
This model sees working memory (WM) and short-term memory as the same element.
The chart below refers to this model.
Figure 2: Information processing model (adapted from Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968)
Input from environment
Sensory Register Iconic/ Echoic
memory
Working Memory
(Short-term memory)
Verbal Visual
Permanent/ Long-term Memory Semantic Episodic
Procedural
attention
Control Processes Plans and strategies for processing
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From the above model, it can be seen that the information derived would
come from the environment and will pass through sensory memory which is related to
imagery (iconic) and sound (echoic). Attention from learners would help to select the
required input for working memory or short-term memory, but this type of memory
has a capacity and limitation. The next part of this review provides and understanding
of second language processing; while the experience each learner has would help
them retain the information in their long-term memory.
The above model sees the working memory and the short-term memory
as the same things, however, Gathercole and Alloway (2008) explains that they are
different. The short-term memory is like the sub-set of the working memory. While
the working memory refers to the process which is more complex in manipulating
both the storage and the mental process, the short-term memory refers to the ability to
store something in head without any mental manipulating for a short period of time,
for example, to remember someone’s telephone number, a list of things to buy, and so
on.
Ranganath, Libby, and Wong (2012) mentioned discuss another cognitive
process model, originally proposed by Baddeley. In this model, there are two separate
channels to derive information; namely, phonological information via the
“phonological loop” and visual information via “visuospatial sketchpad”. The third
innovation of the working memory model has been proposed afterwards with the new
element which is called the “central executive”. This central executive helps in
mediating the selection, inhibition, and manipulation of information in working
memory. Later, Baddeley (2000) added one more element into the model. He called
this the “episodic buffer”, which deals with temporary retention. To illustrate this
particular model see Figure 3 below (see Mackey, 2012, p. 95).
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Figure 3: The multi-component conceptualization of WM (from Baddeley, 2000:
421)
To identify how many words, sentences or pieces of information learners
can remember or should be used to present in learning a language. Cognitive span
concerns the limitations of human performance. The magical number of 7 plus-or-
minus 2 of Miller’s (1956) was mentioned here. As same as the well-known Braille
alphabet which was applied to be used that a six-point configuration was considered.
Many studies mentioned that only 6-7 items (unrelated ones) can be reproduced and
kept in mind at once. According to Blumenthal (1977, p. 89), “Then, too, there are
seven primary colors, seven notes in the musical scale, seven days in the week, and a
preponderance of “sevens” elsewhere in human history, according to Miller.”
Therefore, the number of seven could be applied in teaching and learning
because it could be said that too many pieces of information would not be able to help
in learners’ memory because the average number should be about seven plus-or-
minus two (or between 5-9 items). Randall (2007) says that the number of seven plus-
or-minus two chunks of information is effective for remembering.
Cognitive process explains the steps how learners learn something which
involved thinking process and this process cannot be noticeable like behaviors that
show out. This has just been discussed above. Memory is mentioned as a part of
cognitive process, the following discusses working memory, short-term memory, and
long-term memory in more detail.
Central executive
Visuospatial sketchpad Episodic Buffer Phonological loop
Visual semantics Episodic LTM Language
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2.4 Memory / Retention
Memory is the behavior which is affected by “experience.” The
psychologist also uses the term in another way to refer to something more scientific.
Wickelgren (1977: p. 6) stated about memory that:
The term ‘memory’ has many different uses. In common
parlance memory usually refers to a conscious
recollection of some prior experience, but psychologists
use the term more broadly, to refer to a wide variety of
changes in the nervous system that result from
experience and that can affect behavior.
In Ranganath, Libby and Wong’s article on human learning and memory
cited in Frankish and Ramsey (2012), there were three main approaches mentioned
about the study of human memory.
At the very beginning, the study of human memory was very scientific.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885; cited in Ranganath, Libby & Wong, 2012, p. 112-113)
studied nonsense syllables and this study revealed about the memory process which
contributed to the standard of list-learning paradigms for how memory has been
studied. Later on, Frederick Bartlett (1932 cited in Ranganath, Libby & Wong, 2012,
p. 112) studied something more meaningful and found that the memory consisted of
“imaginative construction”. This leads to the practical contribution in learning that
blanks of knowledge-based inferences could be applied. The third one which was
considered the “breakthrough” in the memory study came from the study of Brenda
Milner (stated by Scoville and Milner, 1957; cited in Ranganath, Libby & Wong,
2012, p. 112) who studied memory on amnesic patients and found that if the brain
was damaged in certain areas the formation of new memories was impaired for new
events, yet new knowledge and skills in other cognitive domains could still be
developed. This shows that there might be some parts of the brain involved in some
types of memory and other parts of the brain involved in other types of memory.
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Milner’s findings were pioneering for future investigations in the neuroscience
research.
The above three approaches of memory studies show how different each
research is focused. The very first one aimed to see the memory in the veridical way
just to see how things go when trying to remember something in a person’s head. The
second one developed to be more meaningful for memorizing and this is a facilitating
approach in learning something. The last one was geared to focus on scientific study
or can be said that it was on neurobehavioral data which was more reliable to explain
about what is going on in memory while trying to remember something. The next
paragraph discusses about memory.
Memory, as mentioned before, is the ability to remember what have been
learned or experienced in life. There are many kinds of memory defined by different
experts. This part will identify each type of memory and will explain how people deal
with some input and store that input in memory. Baddeley (1990) mentioned that one
characteristic of human memory which is not the same as computer memories is that
it can be forgotten. When humans learn something and store that in their memory, the
representations of this memory in their head cannot disappear. This condition will be
mentioned and discussed the next part.
Before explaining how people learn things and store the things they
learned in their memory, or pattern of memory process, the following part would
discuss about the different types of memory that were mentioned by experts.
2.4.1 Types of Memory
Memory can be classified into many types depending on the
characteristics that each expert focusses on. Some of the definitions are now
mentioned and discussed.
Tulving (1972; cited in Kimble, 1979, p. 102) distinguished
between two types of memory: episodic memory and semantic memory.
Episodic memory is memory for personal experience. It is the
memory for past events (memory which is for remembering). Events in life that
happen in every day are reflected in this type of memory. Malim (1994) magnifies
Tulving’s point about this kind of memory that each person has his or her own
experiences and that there were events occur with them, this kind of memory would
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focus on the link or relationship among these events or experiences of each person as
episode so it is described as episodic memory. Gathercole and Alloway (2008) added
that episodic memory would cover the details of life; for example, what did you eat
for breakfast, where did you park your car today, and so forth. This memory can be
stored in long-term memory for a specific event which is important or notable features
of the events. However, retrieving such memories can be difficult at time, especially if
they are not retrieved or rehearsed or discussed about. The duration of retention for
this kind of memory is from hours to days (Malim, 1994).
On the other side of the distinction, we have “semantic memory.”
Semantic memory refers to the knowledge we have about the world. Malim (1994)
mentioned that this one is the memory for making knowledge more permanent. It lasts
for a lifetime but with regular exposure. This one is the memory of “knowing” (while
episodic memory is said to be “remembering”). Semantic memory contains
information about personal fact. It keeps the knowledge that a person acquires about
the world throughout his or her life (Gathercole & Alloway, 2008). Malim (1994, p.
103) gave some examples of this type of memory for clearer understanding as in the
following:
(1) It is usually warmer in the summer than in the winter
(2) A starling and a robin are birds, but a bat is a mammal which
flies
(3) 2 + 2 = 4
From the above examples, semantic memory involves knowledge of
the world which a person learns to know throughout his or her life. This kind of
knowledge may be useful for a person to apply to their study or work. As Malim
(1994, p. 103) mentioned about the distinctions of the episodic memory and the
semantic memory which Tulving (1983) stated. He said, “semantic memory tends to
be more useful to an individual than episodic memory.”
Apart from the “episodic memory” and the “semantic memory”,
another area of memory research that is similar is “autobiographical memory.” Malim
(1994) explained that this type of memory is related to episodic memory. It is about
the events that happen a person’s life. Greene (1987) added that it is the events in the
past life and also the recent and the current episodes. According to Gathercole and
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Alloway (2008), autobiographical memory refers to personal fact (e.g. name, family
information). What is different from episodic memory is that this autobiographical
memory lasts for a lifetime while the previous one last about hours to days.
Yet another kind of memory is “flashbulb memory.” Greene (1987)
stated that this type of memory can be triggered by important and salient events. He
explained that most people alive at the time can even remember what they were doing
at the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This event was a very shocking one
and also very important too. Malim (1994) added that such surprising or vivid events
were likely to be rehearsed leading people to remember what activities they were
doing at that specific time. Brown and Kulik (1977) mentioned in Malim (1994: p.
119) stated that, “…what determined the triggering of flashbulb memories included
first and foremost a high level of surprise, a perception of the importance of the event
and the high level of emotional arousal which accompanied it.”
Declarative and procedural memories are the other types of memory
considered by researcher. Declarative memory is knowing “that” while procedural
memory is knowing “how”. Ranganath, Libby, and Wong (2012) explained that
declarative memory involves the memory system that works temporary so as to
transfer what has been learned into a more complex system so that it can be stored for
longer. Squire and Zola-Morgan (1991) cited in Frankish and Ramsey (2012, p. 121)
discussed in detail the technical aspects of this proposed memory system.
Frankish & Ramsey (2012, p.121) state that:
…declarative memory represented a collection of
abilities dependent on the ‘medial temporal lobe (MTL)
memory system’ an anatomically connected set of
structures that includes the entorhinal, perirhinal and
parahippocampal cortices, and the hippocampus.
According to their model, these structures mediated
acquisition of new memories for facts and events in a
manner that could support conscious recollection. The
MTL memory system was proposed to play a temporary
role in the storage of new declarative memories, whereas
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more remote memories could be accessed without the
involvement of this system. They also proposed that
‘nondeclarative memory’, a collection of abilities
including skill/habit learning (procedural memory)…
Having known about these two kinds of memory, it seems that they
present steps of how people learn something. When knowing something for the first
step, they know only what that is or its theory, then, later they practice doing that
thing. Doing these steps regularly, people could employ things they just only know
into practice with the expectation that they could reach automatization at the end
(Mitchell & Myles, 2004). Gathercole and Alloway (2008) added an interesting point
for the procedural memory that it lasts for a lifetime once the skill is established. This
procedural memory refers to any skills that a person can implement automatically. So,
this kind of memory tends to be more practical than a person can make use of than
declarative memory.
Considering the time sequence in learning things, both retrospective
memory and prospective memory have been discussed by scholar. Greene (1987)
gave brief descriptions of these two types of memory: prospective memory refers to
memory for future intentions while retrospective memory refers to the memory for
past events. Malim (1994) added more about these two types of memory in that
retrospective memory has been investigated in research studies and that this memory
relates to things that have been previously learned. On the other hand, prospective
memory has been investigated much less than retrospective memory. Prospective
memory concerns future plans or actions which have already been made before.
If mentioning about the delay of things in memory, short delays
which refer to “a few seconds” and long delays which mean “minutes, days, or longer
than that”, the primary and secondary memories are relevant. Ranganath, Libby, and
Wong (cited in Frankish & Ramsey, 2012, p. 113) explained that “primary memory”
involves previous experiences which a person has had and these experiences still
remain active the memory. On the other hand, “secondary memory” refers to events
that have faded from memory or consciousness. However, this type of memory can
still be recovered. To the idea of the “primary memory”, there was a study relevant to
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this as Miller (1956; cited in Ranganath, Libby, & Wong, p. 113) that there is a limit
number for a person to remember. This one has been known as Miller’s Magic
Number, which is a person could remember things in a limit of “seven minus and plus
two (7 ± 2)” items.
Greene (1987) discusses active memory and passive memory.
Passive memory refers to the knowledge which is said to be locked up in mind. It
could be experiences, knowledge, or some other type of input which has been stored
inside the brain, and might not be activated or in use. It is suggested that this kind of
memory should be activated and transformed into active memory. Conversely, active
memory refers to the ability to recall facts when needed. Blumenthal (1977) stated
another term to refer to active memory which is very well-known. He mentioned that
in the twentieth century, many terms were used to describe the short-term memory,
such as temporary working memory, surface memory, operational memory,
immediate memory, and active memory.
Referring to the previous paragraph, short-term memory has already
been mentioned. However, it is interesting to discuss short-term memory from a wider
perspective as it typically discussed in parallel with long-term memory. Considering
the name used, short-term and long-term, this is quite clear that the distinction
between the two types of memory is on the duration of information held in memory.
Blumenthal (1977) stated that the short-term memory could hold information for
about 10-15 seconds; Greene (1987) mentioned that after a person’s learning of words
or pictures when asking to recall them, it takes about a few seconds for the short-term
memory but if that information could last longer for after half an hour, it could be said
that the information is in long-term memory. Malim (1994) added that the short-term
memory could retain information for not longer than 30 seconds but according to
Peterson and Peterson (1959; cited in Malim, 1994, p. 100) short-term memory can
hold the information for about 6-12 seconds if the information is unrehearsed; while it
is permanently stored for more durability in long-term memory.
These two terms are likely to be mostly seen and they are included
in cognitive or memory process model which will be explained in the next part. Short-
term memory is considered one component of the cognitive process (Blumenthal,
1977) and it was said to be the continuous link between the psychological present and
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the permanent memory (James, 1890). At the end of the cognitive process or the
memory model, long-term memory is seen as the final stage (Malim, 1994).
The following section presents the pattern or the model of the
memory process which could help reveal some cognitive approach where short-term
memory and long-term memory are involved.
2.4.2 Pattern of Memory Processes
In this part, memory processes will be described and discussed.
There are two models involved in this part. The first one is the “working memory
model” and the second one is the “memory processing model.” Working memory
(WM) is a small element in the memory process but it is very important. Thus,
providing a clearer picture of how students learn information and transfer it into their
memories is interesting to know. Working memory therefore also needs to be
discussed even if it is just part of the whole picture. The overall process of memory
would be mentioned as a conclusion to see how the process works.
Short-term memory (STM) is very important to discuss about
because input derived and put into this short-term memory, then, would be stored and
rehearsed until it can be passed to long-term memory. If there is some problem occurs
with this type of memory, the complete input might not be delivered to the long-term
memory.
Working memory is another important element. Greene (1987)
explained that working memory works as a way of linking new knowledge to old
knowledge. Both new and old knowledge interact with each other. Working memory
is said to be an essential element of the cognitive process.
Working memory, according to Gathercole and Alloway (2008), is
the term used by psychologists to describe the ability a person has to hold information
over a short period of time. Randal (2007) mentioned that the working memory is
another term for short-term memory. It refers to more function of the memory. Any
sounds, words, or phrases that were put into the short-term memory or working
memory would be held for a short time. According to Gathercole and Alloway (2008),
when a person needs to transfer something to their long-term memory that person
would repeat it many times until they can remember. It is also said that the
information derived would be stored in the working memory for only a short period of
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time and it has its own limit if it exceeds the limit the information could be forgotten.
The average units of input stored in this working memory is about 6-7 items. Most
people can remember for about 6 words. However, if they need to remember
something meaningless, even nine letters could be said to be difficult. On the other
hand, if the words or phrase were formed with meaningful patterns, this helps them to
remember the words or phrases easily. Therefore, it could be finalized that whatever
is meaningful for them seems to be easier to remember. Rehearsal is stated as a way
of helping to boost recall. Longer words or phrases take a longer period to rehearse
compared to short words. Recall can be more accurate if it is spoken than just read. It
is mentioned that if a person needs to remember something in a short time, he or she
is required to read or say out loud rather than to read silently. If a list of words needs
remembering, it is suggested that the words should be different so that they are more
distinct and easier to remember than if they are similar. Similar words may bring
competition because of sound. For recommended atmosphere to try putting things in
the working memory, it is said that to stay in a silent place is better for the working
memory. Moreover, developing a strategy also plays a vital role in memory. Memory
strength can be derived from developed strategies. On the other hand, strategies
developed and practiced can help people remember things more effectively.
Information retained in working memory could be easily lost in a
few seconds. If the information in working memory has been lost, it is unlikely that it
can be recovered. Therefore, in order to protect the loss of the information, attention
needs to be involved. While there are three main components for the “working
memory model”; namely, (1) central executive, (2) visuo-spatial short-term memory,
and (3) verbal short-term memory, the central executive is said to be the controller of
attention selection. Attention is a very influential factor for working memory and also
in second language development (Mackey, 2012). Gathercole and Alloway (2008, p.
25) underlined the importance of this point. They say, “The capacity to hold
information in working memory is closely related to paying attention.”
Figure 4 below shows the three components in the working memory
model. From the figure, it could be seen that how those three components interact to
each other.
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Figure 4: Working memory model
Figure 4 represents the three components of working memory. Visuo-
spatial short-term memory would hold information like images, pictures, and
information about locations, whereas verbal short-term memory which is found in on
the left hemisphere of the brain holds information derived from spoken language such
as numbers, words, and sentences. The final component, the central executive,
involves all processes involved in mental tasks. As discussed before, this part relates
to the attention aspect. Successful long-term memory storage cannot be accomplished
if there are issues with memory processes. In relation to increasing students’ learning
and memory, many factors need to be involved and focused upon; for example, the
classroom activities, the teachers’ instruction, and the class duration.
Discussing working memory in the previous paragraphs shows how it
works at a low level, but in fact working memory has a big impact on the whole
memory process. The next part of the discussion focuses more on the whole retention
process, and the role which working memory plays in this.
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) presented a modal model of memory with
three main components: immediate memory, short-term memory, and long-term
memory. Immediate memory is like inputs which are from visual and audio sources,
called sensory stimulus. Neisser (1967) introduced two terms: iconic memory and
echoic store which represent both the visual and audio sources of input in the
immediate memory. Then, the information derived via this sensory stimulus “sensory
buffer” would be sent to “short-term memory”. Figure 5 illustrates an overview of this
model of memory.
Central executive
Visuo-spatial short-term memory
Verbal short-term memory
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Figure 5: Memory process model
The above chart explains how information is stored in long-term memory.
It can be seen that after getting input from the learning environment, the information
will be sent to the short-term store as if this is kept in storage and it will be forgotten
if it is not rehearsed. As also seen above, rehearsal can help prolong the information
derived transfer into the memory. The information which can be held in retention
could be kept in the long-term memory and it should be available when needed, which
can be called retrieval. Malim (1994) suggested that there are three stages in this
process: (1) the learning input stage – deriving information from various sources; (2)
the storage stage – retaining information; and (3) the retrieval stage – recalling
information and making use of it in real life. This process has been confirmed with
Wickelgren (1977), who states that there must be three functions included when
talking about memory: acquisition, storage, and retrieval. If these three functions are
involved, it means psychological function was evoked.
To process memory, input derived can be in iconic or echoic exposures.
Iconic material relates to visual exposure; while echoic material concerns auditory
exposure. Sperling (1960) mentioned about the capacity of the echoic memory that
there are about five items and for nine items for iconic memory. These inputs would
pass to the “immediate memory” and then to the short-term memory where the
capacity is limited to the 7±2 (can be 5 – 9) items. Malim (1994, p. 99) discussed this
as follows:
Input
(Visual/ Audio) Sensory Buffer
Short-term store Long-term store
Forgetting (unless rehearsed) Rehearsal = to prolong retention
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Most people find that their memory span for digits is
somewhere between five and nine (that is, seven plus or
minus two). This holds good for groups or ‘chunks’ of
numbers, letters or even larger units of information like
words or phrases.
In conclusion, by studying the model of working memory, it can be seen
how short-term memory works. The inputs derived into this type of memory are from
two sources: visuo-spatial short-term memory and verbal short-term memory. These
two sources of input interact with the central executive which is like the center of
working memory and how attention selection becomes involved. This is only a partial
component found in the bigger components of memory (see Figure 5: Memory
Process Model). However, the final path of the memory processing is long-term
retention which is said to be permanent in the brain and should be ready and available
any time it is needed. According to Gathercole and Alloway (2008), long-term
memory consists of four main kinds: episodic memory, autobiographical memory,
semantic memory, and procedural memory. These kinds of memory have been
discussed at the beginning of this section.
The next section discusses issues related to memory problems. Certainly
in learning, there are many obstacles that contribute to poorer memory functioning.
The following sections describe some of the possible problems that occur with
memory.
2.4.3 Memory Problem
As seen from the above discussion, working memory plays a very
important role in retaining and storing information and is crucial for longer-term
retention. If information is not fully processed in short-term memory, a loss of content
in memory will occur. The proceeding section discusses some of the possible causes
of working memory loss.
There are two factors that can cause memory problems. The first
one is “distraction.” Many things that are not directly relevant to learning may come
to mind or occur during the process of information transfer from working memory;
for example, the sound of the phone ringing, the crying of children in the surrounding
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area, interruptions from other people, and so on. The second factor is “doing
something else at the same time.” Attention may then be switched from one activity to
other things that are being performed at the same time. Doing this, may prevent the
necessary focus required to inspect information that is in working memory, which
would lead to rapid decay. Finding ways to eliminate the influence of these two
factors can help working memory to operate more optimally (Gathercole and
Alloway, 2008).
Another factor important for how people remember things was
proposed by Ranganath, Libby, and Wong (2012), on the topic of forgetting. They
discussed two kinds of theory: consolidation theory, and interference theory.
Consolidation theory is based on the strengths of connection in specific regions within
the brain. This concerns the idea of synaptic plasticity, which depends on the change
in protein synthesis occurring during a critical period of time after initial learning.
Consolidation theory proposes that after encoding or learning, there is a period of time
(e.g., the first twenty four to forty eight hours) that is required for memory to become
stabilized. However, this theory inadequately explains which type of memory would
be retained for a long period of time or which memories are likely to be lost.
Interference theory, on the other hand, is concerned more with the moment when
people retrieve information. Two possible sources of interference are described in this
theory: proactive interference, and retroactive interference. Proactive interference
refers to the information that has been learned before. A learner might get confused
with previous information when they are trying to retrieve particular knowledge. By
contrast, retroactive interference refers to the confusion which may arise from
information that has been learned subsequently.
Gathercole and Alloway (2008) describe the connection between
working memory and learning. Poor working memory is likely to have a negative
bearing on learning, but for subjects which require practical activities there may be
relatively little effect on their progress. What is said to cause problems for most poor
working memory students is the teacher’s instruction. It is mentioned that the
instruction which is long and complex will be considered problematic for poor
working memory students.
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There are some signs that are related to the failure of working
memory:
• Incomplete recall – the child forgets some or all of the
presented information
• Failure to follow instructions – the child cannot remember the
instructions given or can remember only a part of them
• Place-keeping errors – the child cannot remember what has
been done or what needs to be done
• Task abandoned – the child leaves the task without complete it
The above items are signs that might suggest that a child’s working
memory is problematic. Nevertheless, there are some factors that influence the
effectiveness of working memory. The first one is the length of sequence, which
might exceed a child’s capacity. It was mentioned that a child under ten years could
remember about 3 or more related items. Any more than this may exceed a child’s
working memory capacity. The more items that are processed, the greater the capacity
that working memory needs to have. The second factor relates to unfamiliarity which
makes the material to-be-learned less meaningful. The last factor is the need for
mental processing activity. It is recommended that when assigning an activity, be sure
to have only one, it is likely to exceed child’s working memory capacity.
2.4.4 Memory Support
In order to improve working memory effectiveness, some
recommendations are proposed. Changes can be employed in two main aspects:
lesson plan and task. There are four suggestions to help reducing working memory
overload, as proposed by Gathercole and Alloway (2008):
• Reduce the amount of material – the material employed needs
to be reduced to simplify the information and reduce the steps of
implementation
• Increase the meaningfulness and familiarity of material – use
topics that correspond to what the children have already acquired.
Another strategy is to review the topics of the task before
implementing them
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• Simplify mental processing – most activities require both
mental processing and the ability to remember information. To help
facilitate the learning activities in class, language or instruction
should be modified or simplified
• Restructure complex tasks – if the tasks need to be performed
in class are very complex, there are two suggestions: the first one is
to break down the steps of implementation so when students are
involved, they feel more comfortable with the activities; the second
one, if breaking down is not practical, is to find ways to present the
activities or tasks as sub-activities and plot their progress by using
external aids (or teachers can do the activities together at the same
time)
In addition, there are many aspects that help to support memory.
One of those is repetition. Repetition is useful and helpful for children who have poor
working memory. Aids are also recommended to support memory. The aids that are
widely used in classrooms are: writing aids, mathematical aids, audio devices, and
computer software. Moreover, there are strategies that can be used to support
memory. Some strategies are: (1) request help – this one is to provide an opportunity
to ask for help when they forget important information; (2) rehearsal – this requires
full attention and is practical for short-term memory; for mental processes, it is less
effective. There are also two aspects for repeating a limited amount of verbal material:
silently and loudly; (3) note-taking – children are encouraged to write important
information that needs to be memorized. They may use symbols or invented spelling.
However for poor working memory children, the teacher may need to apply some
helpful strategies to facilitate their learning; (4) using long-term memory – some
mental process activities could help students encode material into long-term memory;
and (5) place- keeping and organizational strategies – for the children at age 8 or
below, it may be difficult to manage their own learning. They may find it confusing to
remember what activities they did or what needs to be done, because they need to
utilize metacognitive strategy to do this. Thus, it is recommended that the activities or
the tasks should be divided into small ones to accomplish it step by step. For older
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children, who perhaps already have ability to manage this, they can use a flow chart
or diagram to help manage their learning.
2.5 Metacognitive Process
Wenden (1998b) cited in Breen (2001, p. 45) briefly mentioned about
metacognitive knowledge in that it is a part of long-term memory. It is also
considered a special part of knowledge which learners acquire. Metacognitive
knowledge could be acquired unconsciously by observation or imitation. However, in
some cases, it might be acquired consciously. This is, under some circumstances,
learners can remember what their teachers and parents tell them about how they
should learn. Metacognitive knowledge sometimes also reflects the beliefs of learners.
For the type of the metacognitive knowledge, the focus is on three items:
learner, task, and process variable. Flavell (1979, 1981 mentioned by Wenden, 1998b,
cited in Breen, 2001, p. 45) used some other terms which are person, task, and
strategic knowledge. Person knowledge refers to knowledge that may influence
learning. There are two factors involved: cognitive and affective factors. The next one
is task knowledge which refers to what learners know about the task and the
expectations they have regarding their language learning needs. The last one, strategic
knowledge refers to general knowledge about the strategies that can be used as a
specific knowledge of when and how to apply them in learning.
Metacognitive knowledge is considered very important for self-
regulation. From the cognitive aspect, it explains “self-regulation”, that is the process
that learners plan to complete the task. There are three strategies involved in this
knowledge: planning, monitoring, and evaluating. The self-regulatory processes
consist of task analysis and monitoring.
Task analysis is to:
(1) consider about the task’s purpose – the learners have their own
objectives or expectations regarding the tasks or the activities they
need to perform
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(2) classify the task type – analyse about the nature of the tasks or the
activities, then, think about the similarity the tasks or the activities
have with previous learning
(3) assess the task’s demands – evaluate the difficulty of the task, what to
do to accomplish the tasks or activities, how to get them done, what
knowledge needs to be employed or what skills are needed
Monitoring consists of five sub-processes:
(1) self-observation – the learners know about themselves; that is, what
they like to do in learning, what they perform well or not quite well
(2) assessment – the learners can make judgments, for example, the
preferences they have regarding learning
(3) deciding to take action – the learners can think about what they have
to do to get the task or the activities done
(4) deciding how and when to take action – the learners make decisions
about what to do to perform the task or activities
(5) implementing the action – the learners take action on the activities or
tasks
In conclusion, the metacognitive approach is very useful for facilitating
and managing learning. However, not any one learner is the same; learners may differ
on individual characteristics and their ability to self-regulate. Thus, in learning,
learners would have their own reasons to choose what they want to learn, they would
employ appropriate strategies to perform the tasks or activities, and they would have
their personal manner in the way they approach learning in order to complete the tasks
or activities.
2.6 Previous Studies of Picture Use on Word Retention
2.6.1 Critique of Studies
There are many research studies relevant to the use of pictorial input
to support English language learning, such as reading comprehension, vocabulary
learning, and vocabulary retention. Each study focuses on different aspects, for
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example, purposes of the study, materials employed, subjects of the study,
methodology, and so on. The following section presents a survey of the relevant
literature of this topic. The discussion is organized chronologically according to year
of publication. As presented, this organization aims to show the concerns and the
perspectives of pictorial input and the relevance to English language learning.
The first one reviewed the study of Hsiu-Chih (2008, p. 51), which
concerns the use of English picture story books among 10 teachers in Taiwan. The
findings showed positive results regarding the value of English picture story books.
One of the teacher’s view was mentioned as follows:
Pictures arouse their learning interests. If you give them
a pictureless book, they would say they don’t understand
the story. However, if you give them a picture book: on
the right page, it says a book: on the left page, it has a
picture of book, they can understand it very easily. It
motivates their learning.
This study shows the views about a book with picture use that can
be attractive and interesting for readers. If they use the book and find that a page is in
text and another page in parallel has picture, they can understand the text they read
easily. Therefore, it could be claimed that pictures in books could help facilitate
reading and also attract a reader’s interest in the book.
However, the above views are only focusing on the use of pictures
in a story book from the teachers’ perspectives. There are not many details relevant to
specific learning ability that picture use involves. Clearly, it would be more
interesting to consider studies that show some language learning development on
students’ performance or competence.
Nemati (2009) investigated students’ memory strategies, by
grouping, making acronyms, and using imagery. This study aimed to find the effect of
using memory strategies in both storing and retaining vocabulary items for a longer
period of time. The result showed that the experimental group outperformed the
control group with regards to both short-term and long-term retention. Three main
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activities mentioned as important for supporting long-term memory were (1) chunks
of information transfer to long-term memory by applying visual images; (2) visual
images that aiding recall, and (3) applying memory strategies.
This study is practical in the way that it employed a scope of
strategies into only three items to focus the study on. This is a positive point for the
researcher who would be able to focus on each strategy while teaching at the same
time; that is, not to feel hurried to employ another strategy. Moreover, the sample size
employed by Nemati was large (around 310 participants). This helps with
generalizability and reliability of the results and prompts the gathering of useful and
interesting data in further studies. Self-report questionnaire, vocabulary knowledge
scale, and treatment material were used as instruments of the study. There were
pretest and also posttest to measure subjects’ vocabulary knowledge before and after
the treatment of the study. The very interesting point in this study was that the
researcher did the pilot study before the main study. This could guide the main study
to follow the correct way to get the data the researcher aimed to investigate.
However, the research design which required the grouping of
subjects into control and experimental groups meant that the method of teaching
vocabulary in each class would be different. One would be under the method of the
research; another would be learned in the traditional way. It is difficult to be certain
about the vocabulary strategies that were used by subjects, since only three strategies
were employed in the study. In real life, students may employ various strategies to
cope with vocabulary or to learn vocabulary. Additionally, doing and experiment with
teaching and learning can be unavoidably claimed about the assessment bias.
Another study related to the current aims was conducted by Joklová
(2009) for her Bachelor’s thesis. The topic of her study was “Using pictures in
teaching vocabulary.” The thesis was divided into two parts; namely the practical part
and the theoretical part. The subjects were from primary school, with an age range
from 8-11 years old. However, after going through the whole study, it focused mainly
on the practical methodology which lesson plans, materials used in the lessons,
follow-up activities, and evaluation were clearly mentioned. Even if the aims of the
study were to show how pictures can be employed in lessons; why they work; and in
what way exactly they help retaining the memorized words, it was not mainly
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discussed as a clear methodology in relation to other studies. It can be said that this
research study aimed to show how pictures could be implemented in class to help in
studying vocabulary. Sometimes, picture use was done in conjunction with other
activities, such as songs or games. Therefore, if the information about how to help
students retain word was needed, it was suggested to conduct a research focusing
deeply on this with the clear methodology, materials used, and research design.
There are still many more studies which were relevant to the use of
pictures and vocabulary retention. In a study entitled “Are Pictures Good for Learning
New Vocabulary in a Foreign Language? Only If You Think They Are Not”,
Carpenter and Olson (2012) investigated how pictures paired with vocabulary items
can be used to learn Swahili and English words. Materials shared among the four
experiments consisted of Swahili translation, English translation, and black-and-white
pictures. The aim of the study was to see if pictures resulted in better learning for new
foreign language words over direct native language translations. The overall results
found (aggregated over four experiments) were as follows:
• Swahili words were learned just as well from pictures they
were from English translations. In other words, there was no
difference between learning Swahili words from pictures and
English translations.
• The overconfidence was found in the participants who learned
from pictures not from the translation.
• Swahili words were found to be recalled easier when paired
with words than when pictures were paired with the English
translation.
• If the teachers warn the participants about the overconfidence
bias on the picture, their learning of Swahili words from
pictures was better than from translations.
From reviewing this research study, it is likely that it is a series of
study to find details about pictures and foreign language vocabulary study, focusing
on Swahili and English. The four experiments were well designed to support each
other and the answers to research questions in each item.
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However, the study focuses mainly on quantitative data rather than
qualitative data, as seen from the method of analysis which depends on statistical
formula. It might be very interesting if another aspect of information, qualitative data,
could be considered and evaluated. The next paragraph discusses a study conducted
with Thai participants (i.e., a local context) which is interesting because the
characteristics of the participants, relevant stake holders, and learning atmosphere
tend to be quite similar in many organizations in Thailand.
This study is presented in an article which is about “An
Examination of the Usage of Vocabulary Retention Techniques (VRTs) of Thai
Undergraduate EFL Students” by Jenpattarakul (2012). It aimed to (1) study the usage
of vocabulary retention technique of second year university students; (2) compare the
usage of vocabulary retention techniques between achievers and underachievers; and
(3) compare the usage of vocabulary retention techniques of the second year students
having different reading behavior outside of class. A questionnaire and in-depth
interview were employed as the research instruments. The results showed that the
three most frequent uses of the vocabulary retention technique were grouping and
making acronyms, word associations, and pronouncing the word correctly. However,
the students also preferred making visual pictures which was ranked fourth as an
overall 4th strategy. This was because it was simple and effective to remember words.
For the comparison of the achievers and the underachievers, it was found out that both
groups had a medium level of vocabulary retention technique usage but the achievers
employed techniques more often than the other group. For reading behavior, outside
of the class, it was revealed that the students who read often outside class tended to
have a more extensive level of vocabulary retention techniques at their disposal; those
who sometimes or never read outside of the class were likely to use fewer techniques.
From the in-depth interview result, it was interesting to discover that pictures were
reported to be useful by the underachievers in helping them remember words easily.
They believed that pictures could help them store the vocabulary in long-term
memory.
This study was very interesting in many aspects, as it directly
focused on the way in which Thai students learn to retain words in long-term
memory. It is a good point that the numbers of participants in the study was large.
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This could help generalizing the result of the data. Moreover, the study employed a
variety of methods to elicit data: questionnaire and in-depth interview. The use of
these research instruments meant that the data could be triangulate in both a
quantitative and qualitative sense. The most interesting aspect of the study was to
compare between the achievers’ and underachiever’s techniques.
One criticism of the study was that the presentation of the
qualitative data was limited. There was very little information reported from the in-
depth interview. This could be promoted in the next study to reveal more information
from this part to make it clear for others about what the participants had in their mind
when they employed the various vocabulary strategies.
In another study conducted by Saeed Al-Ja’afari (2012), he used
pictures to teach vocabulary to grade 5 and grade 6 students (27-30 students,
respectively). Observations and interviews were used as the research instruments in
the study. There were two teachers responsible for teaching each class. They may
have different teaching strategies or techniques in each class since these were not
mentioned as being controlled. The researcher observed the classes and interviewed
teachers and students from both classes. The results showed positive points of using
pictures to teach vocabulary. Moreover, both teachers and students from both classes
reported that they had positive attitudes towards using pictures.
What is interesting in this study is that the researcher was not
responsible for the teaching himself. He acted as an observer in class and ran the
interview with the teachers and students from both classes. This is good practice
because the researcher was able to focus on what was going on in the class during the
teaching and learning. If he was required to teach and observe at the same time, he
may have become confused and some important information and details may be
missed. The use of both the observation and interview as instruments were expected
to uncover details which would not have been possible from a survey questionnaire.
Nevertheless, the observation employed may alter what exactly
occurred in classes since the teachers and students in both classes may over act in
teaching and learning. As long as the research included VDO record, still some parts
of the classroom would surely be ignored. Another aspect about this study which was
likely to be weak point was that the data derived was analyzed by only the researcher.
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That means the researcher did the coding by himself. There was no inter-coder
reliability analysis conducted in the study. Thus, we might ask questions regarding the
reliability of the data analysis. One more interesting point of discussion concerns the
number of participants. One group consisted of 27 students while another was about
30 students. It seemed that the total number of participants was too small to represent
the whole group of Grade 5 or 6 students. The number was also too many students to
be a specific case study since the interview was in very deep details with these
numbers may need too much time. So, these discussions should be considered for
further studies.
Anderson (2012) conducted a research study on the topic of
“Utilizing Student-Generated Pictures for Formative Vocabulary Instruction.” In this
study, the researcher let the subjects draw pictures to represent their ideas on the
words being learnt. It was found out that this technique helped the university students
learn vocabulary and aided in their recall, thus prompting vocabulary acquisition. This
kind of research needs to comprise many skills of the participants, one of which is the
drawing skill. Moreover, time allocation for learning words would be used to spend
on trying to remember words, drawing pictures, and may be many more. To do this,
research planning should be considered well so as to conduct an effective and valid
study, in order to address proper research questions.
The study of Munsakorn (2012) on “Mental imagery: Is it worth the
Endeavour?” mentioned about mnemonic device which is effective in learning
vocabulary and is widely used. Munsakorn also states that it is the strategy leaners use
to encode things they learn from a variety of stimuli (e.g., images, colors, models) and
transfer to their memory. To do this, they need to picture things in their minds and
remember those things they create with pictures and try to memorize them. Data
collection in this study was elicited by questionnaire, with most participants
mentioning that they had high satisfaction with this technique. They said that it helped
them in memorizing and recalling vocabulary.
The next study was “The Effect of Visual Instruction on New
Vocabularies Learning” was conducted by Hashemi and Pourgharib (2013). The study
aimed to find the effects of visual treatment (using pictures, real objects, and flash
cards) on vocabulary learning for better retention and learning. The participants were
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grouped into control and experimental groups. As normal, the control group was
presented with a traditional way of teaching, while the experimental group was
presented with the three items above. Pretest and posttest questionnaires were
employed as instruments of the study. The results were as expected, showing that the
experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of vocabulary retention.
This suggests that visual input had a positive effect on vocabulary retention. The
contribution of this study could be employed in language learning setting by using
pictures in class, especially for vocabulary learning, as they seem to be effective to
help support students’ memory.
One strength of this study was that it employed a variety of visual
input help encoding: pictures, real objects, and flash cards. An additional strong point
was the use of statistical analysis to interpret the data from the pretest and posttest.
This supports the reliability of the findings.
However, as mentioned earlier, the result of the study could be
predicted or can be expected before actually obtaining the findings. The use of only a
pretest and posttest did not show new or in-depth details of the experiment. It could be
more interesting if some unrevealed information could be studied and discussed.
Besides, the ethical issue about having one group being taught traditionally while the
other group benefits from a different style of teaching could affect the students’
learning and motivation. This was very sensitive to design for the study.
Çetin and Flamand (2013) showed that learners studying in a
classroom decorated with posters did better in a vocabulary test as posters encouraged
students to learn English words incidentally. As discussed earlier, it was found out
that the test scores of vocabulary test of the experimental group which had posters in
their class, compared to those students in the control group where no posters
decorated in the class, were significantly different. The class with posters could
enable students to remember words and did better in the test than the class with no
pictures associated with.
This finding revealed the idea to use posters to attract students’ and
enhance their learning. It appears that the poster can help in learning effectiveness as
can be seen by comparing the scores from the posttest and pretest. However, this
assumption should be proved in another study focusing on retention on a specific
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aspect of the language learning, such as vocabulary, to determine whether the use of
posters can be effective in word learning and see if retention can be supported.
The final research study reported here was conducted by Rokni and
Karimi (2013) on the “Visual Instruction: An Advantage or a Disadvantage? What
about its Effect on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning?” This study was a mixed-
method study, and the aim was to investigate the effects of visual materials on EFL
learners’ vocabulary learning. There were 46 females, at an intermediate level of
English in the study. Those participants were randomly assigned to be two groups:
control group and experimental group. The control group learned by textual
instruction and the experimental group learned by visual instruction. The research
instrument was a pretest and posttest. The treatment delivered was implemented in
eight sessions. During each session, there were seven words to be studied, so the total
course contained 56 words. The results of the study revealed that the posttest scores of
the visual instruction group were higher than the pretest. Thus, it can be concluded
that the visual instructions lead to better retention than the textual instruction. In
addition, an open-ended questionnaire was implemented to obtain qualitative data on
perspectives of the visual instruction use. The results from this questionnaire showed
that the students were satisfied with the use of the visual instructions. They reported
that they could learn words by visual instruction better than textual instructions and
they could also remember the meanings of words better.
The current study is very similar to the research study reported
above and also aims to see whether pictures could influence vocabulary retention in a
positive way. The results of the research discussed show that the picture affects the
retention of learners. To make this clearer, the researchers also use the questionnaire
to add more about perspectives from participants on the use of picture in word
learning and the results confirm to the same direction of the picture use that
participants are satisfied with the use of picture to help on word retention and that
they could also remember words in their memory. However, the data from the
questionnaire may not be the main data on word retention by picture use. It might be
only some part to show additional perspectives on picture use to help confirm the
main study from the pretest and the posttest.
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Given the review of literature above, there are still some research
gaps that could be studied further to see different aspects of vocabulary learning and
retention by using pictures as learning support. The final section of Chapter 2
discusses the research gap most pertinent to the current study.
2.6.2 Research Gap
In light of the previous studies discussed above, some points were
identified as both practical and beneficial to the purposes of the current research.
There are two main aspects that will be maintained in this study.
The first one is the use of the mixed-method design. Quantitative data is presented
and in order to make the study more interesting, qualitative data will be elicited in
order to consider the data from another aspect to triangulate the results of the study.
Another point of consideration is the comparison of pretest and posttest scores which
would still be in process. Even though, there are many studies mentioned the benefit
of the picture use on word learning or retention, to prove this point is still be
suggested. So, the discussion about this can be done to see some useful, practical, or
interesting points further.
Some gaps in the research were identified during the review of
recent studies. This research study was designed to fulfill some aspects which were
not covered in other studies so as to see some learning aspects from other
perspectives.
As seen in many studies, there are many positive results showing
that pictorial input benefits English language learning, or vocabulary learning more
specifically. Even if there are some open-ended parts to confirm the good points of
using pictures, the comments mostly support the results. It would be interesting to
discover some other factors or strategies which are involved in remembering words
apart from the use of pictures. It is important to study cognitive processes which are
employed while learning words because these are more difficult to observe in regular
experimental studies where only pretest and posttest were compared. While picture
use was claimed to be beneficial for word memory, it would be very interesting to
discover the processes that occur when learners are encoding or decoding words.
Randall (2007, p.55) stated some point with regards to the gap in studying the process
of learning words. He says, "As these concepts are so powerful in thinking about
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visual word access and about the process involved in moving from visual features to
meaningful word recognition, it is worth examining them in some depth.”
Therefore, the present study aims to investigate these processes to
determine whether findings derived show any confirming details or any additional
interesting results. Stimulated recall protocol, a very interesting introspective data
collecting method, will be used to examine a learner’s thought processes. To date, it
appears that no other previous study has employed this method. There might be a
limited number of using this method as the main data collection. Most studies use it
with other kinds of data collection such as triangulation (Gass & Mackey, 2000).
However, this study would use this type of data collection as the main method to
examine learning perspectives from the participants. It was also suggested by Yoshii
and Flaitz (2002) that there should be another study which offers new insights by
using a more qualitative approach to investigate learners’ cognitive processes.
In conclusion, this research study aims to investigate the effect of
pictures on learning words. Different aspects of data would be revealed by the use of
stimulated recall protocol. It would be interesting to understand the cognitive or
thinking process of how participants learn to remember words by the support of
pictures. To avoid ethical issues as seen from some of the studies discussed above, the
researcher did not group the participants into: control and experimental groups. All
participants experienced the same material, and the same evaluation outcomes.
However, one key difference was that a number of students (i.e. the volunteers) were
requested to do a special interview, which would be called “stimulated recall
protocol” (as mentioned before) after class. This was one of the main tools to gather
information from this study. Further details regarding this tool will be discussed in
Chapter 3.
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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter explains how the researcher designed the study; how the
participants were chosen; what materials and tool were employed, what the research
methodology for data collection was; and how the data derived were analyzed.
Before implementing the main study of this research, a pilot study was
conducted in the early part of the semester. The pilot study was conducted one year
before the main study because the course which the researcher collected data from
was only opened once a year. A number of steps were employed, with a variety of
materials, and a similar sized group of volunteers to the main study. The following
details the main study.
3.1 Research Design
The research design of this study is a mixed-method case study. There are
two phases of the study: the quantitative and the qualitative.
Quantitative and qualitative research designs have both positive and
negative aspects. However, applying both designs as a mixed-method could help
conducting research which supports all aspects of a study. It could help discover more
perspectives of the phenomenon of interest, much, like seeing two sides of a coin.
Therefore, the mixed method case study was used as the research design
of this dissertation. The study aimed to focus on the use of the pictorial material and
how it affects students’ vocabulary retention. Quantitative data was collected by
applying the pretest and posttest to determine whether the scores of these tests differ
after the use of the material. Following this, the participants were interviewed (using
stimulated recall protocol) which yielded the qualitative data. This aspect of the study
was designed to revealed information about using and remembering the material that
the students learned during the ESP course.
Stake (1995, p. 3) explained about three kinds of case study: intrinsic case
study, instrumental case study, and collective case study. The first one focuses on an
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intrinsic interest in the case which the researcher may need to learn to understand
such a particular case; the second one focuses on the use of some instrument to be
applied for accomplishing something; and the last one focuses on several entities to
study. The current study, would best be considered as an instrumental case study, as
explained in further detail below.
For example, Swedish precollege teachers have a year to
begin using a new student marking system passed by the
Parliament. How will that work? The system is to have a
criterion-reference orientation; will that orientation
change the way teachers teach? We may choose a
teacher to study, looking broadly at how she teaches but
paying particular attention to how she marks student
work and whether or not it affects her teaching. This use
of a case study is to understand something else. Case
study here is instrumental to accomplishing something
other than understanding this particular teacher, and we
may call our inquiry instrumental case study.
From this explanation, the case study in this research could be categorized
into this type of the case study because it aimed to understand about the use of the
pictorial material and whether it really helped students to remember words they had
learned in the ESP course.
Furthermore, the case study aimed to study a small group of subjects for a
specific topic. According to Stake (1995, p. 6), to select a case we can take balance
and variety into account, “…opportunity to learn is of primary importance”. The case
study does not focus much on generalization but instead seeks to understand a
particular case. Therefore, a group of volunteers were considered to be the
participants of the study.
This research conducted aims to address a particular question: “Do
pictures help students remember words?” The highlight of this study would be on the
data derived from the qualitative method which the researcher collected using
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stimulated recall protocol. Ethical issues were considered in this process. If the data
collection was done in a natural set, it is suggested that treatment or intrusion should
be minimized. So, the information from the study could be real or likely to be the
most natural one.
We try to observe the case in its ordinary activities and
places. We try to minimize our intrusion, avoiding
special tests and assignments characteristic of survey
and laboratory study. We recognize that case study is
subjective, relying heavily on our previous experience
and our sense of worth of things. We try to let the reader
knows something of the personal experience of
gathering the data. And we use triangulation, to
minimize misperception and the invalidity of our
conclusions.
(Stake, 1995, p. 134)
To explain and discuss more about the research design in wider points,
there are still a number of topics to discuss further: participant selection, material use,
procedure, data collection, and data analysis. These topics will be described in detail
later.
It can be concluded thus far that it is important and necessary to employ
more than one method when conducting research of this nature. This way, the results
can be compared with other different results from both quantitative inquiry and
qualitative inquiry to uncover interesting information that may have otherwise been
missed had only one method been employed.
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3.2 Participants
Convenience sampling (opportunity sampling, or grab sampling) is one of
the most basic ways for a teacher or a researcher to find his or her sample. In the case
of classroom research, convenience sampling is straightforward because the teacher or
the researcher has the opportunity to meet the students in class and can explain to
them about the study. From there, the students might be asked to join in the study as
volunteers or participants of the study. This sampling method has been widely used in
the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, and various other fields (Holt &
Walker, 2009).
Convenience sampling was appropriate for the current setting because the
researcher wished to elicit information from the students that had taken the course.
The aim was to try and uncover what the students had in their minds and was willing
to share to determine whether this supported how well they remembered new words.
Stake (1995) mentioned that the case that the researcher chooses should be able to
participate in the study and could give sincere comments or information regarding the
study. This sampling strategy is mentioned to be the least desirable but the most
common. However, it is said that its redeeming feature of this sampling is about the
willingness of the participants who are able to contribute to a rich dataset (Dörnyei,
2007). A group of participants would be appropriate for providing the required
information, not a very large scale of data collection but small scale as a case study in
order to derive deeper details. Therefore, the researcher decided to recruit a small
group of participants that did not exceed ten people. The participants were people who
were willing to participate in the study as volunteers. Prior to taking part in the study,
the volunteers were asked for their consent to participate. They were informed that the
participation rules to be in the study until the end process or they could drop out
anytime if they felt uncomfortable at any stage of the process. However, all volunteers
were happy to join in the study until the end of the process. Many of them were still in
touch with the researcher in case any additional information might be needed.
In this study, the researcher (also the teacher in the ESP course) was
responsible to teach students in this course. This ESP course (English for Service
Industry) was opened once a year and only in one of the two semesters. It was one of
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the core English subjects that second year Tourism and Hotel Department students,
from the Faculty of Industrial Management Technology, in a university in Thailand,
were required to complete in order to complete their degree and graduate in future.
The course was opened in Prachinburi campus. The description of this course is to
promote English use in various service industries. Apart from some language points in
each unit (such as pattern, listening practice, communicative activities, and practical
content), vocabulary is one aspect that is focused upon in this course.
There were 7 participants in the study: six females and one male. Even if
there was a level of attrition among their participations, there would still have
sufficient participants remaining. Additionally, Holt and Walker (2009) suggested that
the number studied should be manageable. They mentioned, “In everyday research,
people more often choose their sample sizes based on how much time and money they
have available, and how easy it will be to find participants……..” (p. 31). In this
study, seven participants were appropriate because while collecting data by using
stimulated recall protocol with each one, the researcher had to spend time after class
with all of them. So, if there are more participants to join in this study, the researcher
may need to spend more time on the data collection and the longer time could be
burden for the participants who wait to give information to the researcher. This might
not be practical to collect data. So, seven volunteers are proper numbers for this
practical reason.
Holt and Walker (2009; p. 29-30) supported the above point. They say:
But, in practice, when you are deciding how many
people to study in your sample you need to strike a
balance between various factors: studying more people
helps ensure more representative samples, as we have
seen; but the more people you study, the more time and
money it takes. The number of people you test in any
given study will be a compromise between wanting the
largest possible sample and practical constraints.
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Their abilities were mixed. Two of them were at an advanced level, while
the rest were at the intermediate level. The scores from the test and grades were used
to classify them. The volunteers were drawn from the same class from one section.
They were also taught by the same teacher, used the same course book, studied with
the same duration of time, applied the same criteria for grading, used the same forms
of evaluation, and were treated with the same techniques and methods. In other words,
they were given the same input throughout the course. Throughout the course, they
were taught using video clips, written texts, pictures, and worked on tasks either
individually or in groups.
3.3 Material and Tools
To get information for the study, a teaching material was employed as
input of the course while pretest, posttest, and stimulated recall protocol were used as
tools to collect the data. All material and tools will be described in detail below.
3.3.1 Teaching Material
This course, English for Service Industry, uses a material the
teacher prepared because it is very difficult to find a single textbook that covers the
course description in its entirety. Moreover, an ESP coursebook tends to be
expensive; therefore, it is not practical for students to buy many coursebooks in order
to learn a subject only in a semester. As a result, the teacher needs to prepare teaching
material which covers every point of the course description and syllabus. This
consists of language points, exercises, and vocabulary. The topics covered during the
semester were: Operator, Hotel Receptionist, Housekeeper, Waiter, Tour Guide, Spa
Therapist, Bank Teller, Air Ground Staff, and Flight Attendant. Throughout the
course, the teacher always heard comments from students that there were many words
that they needed to learn and remember and actually found that it was one of the most
difficult thing they had to do. On a number of occasions, the students would ask for
the teacher’s suggestions or techniques to help them remember words they were
learning in the course.
As a language teacher and a researcher, it is challenging and
interesting to help those students find out techniques that best support their learning.
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The use of pictures has been tried in a number of previous studies and the benefits for
word retention have been discussed in Chapter 2. Therefore, in every unit that
vocabulary has been introduced, pictures would also be presented throughout the
course in this study.
There were a total of 45 vocabulary items in focus this study.
Actually, there were 135 new vocabulary items in total during the previous semester,
but in this semester this was considered too many to focus on for the research study
since the participants needed to do stimulated recall protocol for data collection. This
can be supported by Miller’s magic number of seven (± 2). One can hold about 5-9
words at a time in working memory, which comes from seven minus or plus two as
mentioned here (Miller, 1956). Therefore, the researcher chose to have only five
words for a unit or 45 words to focus in the study. The students are expected to know
both the meanings and the spelling of the words. Another practical reason for having
only 5 words per a unit is because the total vocabulary of the research would be 45
words which are not too many for the subjects to be elicited by “Stimulated Recall
Protocol”. So, to make this feasible and reduce the burden on the participants, 45
words were deemed appropriate.
In conclusion, in the material there would be nine units and each
unit would consist of five words as a highlight with the support of picture use. So, the
total of the course, there would be 45 words the teacher expected the students to be
able to remember not only their meanings, but also their spellings. The question was
how to choose for those five words in each unit.
To ascertain the most useful and valuable 45 words, the researcher
asked all the students in the previous semester vote for five words in each unit that
they thought were useful or most interesting to know. It can be said that those 45
words were selected with good reasons for students who were taking this particular
course. They voted for this at the end of the course as a course suggestion advice for
further development. They would be requested to help voting this for the next
semester development so the result obtained is valid because the students who helped
on the vote would not receive any benefits for doing so in the forthcoming semester.
They helped the teacher vote by selecting words they found useful for their career
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(e.g., words they found in other subjects, words unknown but interesting for them,
words useful for their future career).
After the 45 words were chosen, pictures were also selected that
could suitably match the words. The pictures were selected from the Internet and they
were categorized into five types:
(1) Cartoon or animated pictures
The “cartoon pictures” were pictures selected to be colorful, or
black and white cartoon or comic style that looked interesting or attractive.
Example: cash
(2) Realistic pictures
The “realistic pictures” were pictures or photos selected that
showed real places, people, actions, or subjects. These selected pictures are as colorful
as the real things they depict.
Example: rejuvenation
(3) Outstanding pictures
The “outstanding pictures” were any kinds of picture or photo
that seemed to be impressive, strange, or otherwise interesting. They were selected on
the basis that they should not be normal; that is, there should be something attracting
feelings towards the pictures.
Example: condiment set
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(4) Line drawings or Drawing pictures
The “line drawings” were pictures selected that were drawn
with lines mostly in black and white. They are not realistic and instead appear like
sketched images.
Example: ashtray
(5) Pictures embedded with words or Pictures with words or
texts written on
There are two kinds of pictures in this category: pictures with
the exact vocabulary item inside the picture and pictures where there is specific word
inside. Two examples are given below:
Example: debt
Example: postponement
To make equal numbers of each type of picture used, the researcher
identified nine pictures for each type. Pictures were randomly interspersed throughout
the nine units. However, even though there were five vocabulary items to be studied
with the word “debt” inside
without the word “postponement” inside
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in each unit, each item was not always represented by a different type of picture.
Some types of pictures may have occurred more than once in each unit. Nevertheless,
from the pool of 45 words, there were certainly an equal number of each type of
picture used (9 units x 5 words = 45 words).
Next, the selected pictures were matched with words and, then,
checked by five experts to determine whether each picture matched each word
appropriately. The five experts were KMUTNB lecturers with Ph.Ds, who had
significant experience in teaching students, especially the target group for the current
study. They had high expertise in English conversation, writing, reading, and English
for Tourism and Hotel courses; in other words, courses in which the content and
characteristic would be similar to that found in ESP course being taught by the
researcher. The expert judges were asked to decide if each word-picture pair matched.
If any of the experts disagreed, with any of the proposed word-picture matchings, the
researcher proposed a new set of choices to be considered again until the finalized
version was eventually accepted.
Most of the words and pictures that the researcher chose were
acceptable to the experts but there were also some pictures that most of the experts
did not agree that they were a good match. The researcher then chose new pictures to
match the word and presented them to the experts one more time, until the finalized
version of the pictures was approved by the experts.
Once the finalized version of the teaching material was approved by
all experts, it was used in the pilot study with a group of students who had a similar
background to the main participants. Those students who helped in the pilot were the
students who used to study English for Service Industry course in the previous
semester. They were shown the pictures and asked to recall the English vocabulary
that corresponded to each picture; they could also use some words or phrases that
reflected conceptual meanings of the pictures. For cases where it was difficult for the
students to think of appropriate vocabulary or if the students came up with incorrect
meanings, those pictures were removed and replaced by new pictures. Therefore, the
teaching material was considered practical and finally implemented in class with the
students in the main study. Figure 6 depicts this process graphically below:
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Figure 6: Steps of preparation of the picture use in the study
3.3.2 Pretest
The pretest consisted of nine pages, with one unit a page and five
words per page. Heading each page, there was a topic informing the test takers what
career or occupation the words in each following unit were related. The pretest
contained those 45 pictures that were mentioned above. Only the corresponding
pictures were used in the test and these, were exactly the same as in the teaching
material. The pictures were presented with a blank space for each picture so the
students could write down the word that they thought of after seeing the pictures
under the given topic for each unit. The reason to put “topic” for students in the test
was that they could narrow down or scope down words they know or could think of
those words in a limited area. The teacher provided an hour for the pretest to be done
but most students spent about 30-45 minutes in average to finish the pretest.
Participants were instructed to write the corresponding English word in the given
spaces, or they could write down Thai words if they did not know how to write the
words in English but needed to show they understood the picture. If a particular
Have experts studied those 45 words
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picture did elicit any word for them or they had no idea what concept the pictures
depicted, they were instructed to leave the spaces blank.
This test was told to be free of scores or points so students would do
the test by themselves without any eagerness to cheat. So, the results from the pretest
were quite reliable and should reflect the students’ real abilities.
3.3.3 Posttest
The posttest was the same form as in the pretest. It consisted of 45
words as in the pretest with nine pages; one unit per page and five words a page. The
pictures were identical to the pretest but the order was randomized and the set (one set
consisted of five words, in a unit, the same pattern as in the pretest). The time
allocation was an hour as in the pretest. Students were instructed in the same manner
as in the pretest; that is, they were told to complete the test to the best of their ability
without worrying about their scores. They were informed that the results would help
the teacher to know how much progress they made. There were no scores or points for
the grading.
3.3.4 Stimulated Recall Protocol
Gass and Mackey (2000) describe the “Stimulated Recall Protocol”
method in detail. The researcher considers this is an interesting method to be used in
the study because it is quite new as a means of eliciting information from the
participants. Therefore, stimulated recall protocol was employed as the main tool to
elicit the main information in the study. It was implemented at the end of the activity
so as to avoid interfering with students’ thinking processes while performing the task
(do the test). It is a kind of introspection report. This introspection is used to trace
back to the cognitive processes that were present at the time of learning. This method
is to ask questions to subjects in order to get what is in their mind while doing the
task. Here in the study, pictures were used as stimuli to help the participants link the
stimuli to the task they performed. Gass and Mackey recommended that the
stimulated recall protocol should be done as soon as the activity has finished so as to
obtain more fresh and complete information about the task that has been performed.
Gass and Mackey (2000) suggest that if recall is done within 48 hours, 95% of the
information derived would be accurate. However, it is also important to consider
participant fatique during the process. The interview should not take too long
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otherwise the participants might feel tired to join in the process. It was also
recommended that stimulated recall protocol should be piloted so as proper plans
could be made about the main study with regards to time allocation, the questions
used, and the type of probes implemented.
For this study, the researcher also did a pilot study with the
implementation of the stimulated recall protocol since this data collection method was
not quite familiar to the researcher. After the pilot had been done, many things were
taken into account while performing the main study. Those points were time
allocation; places to be used for interviewing the participants; probes and feedback
delivered during the stimulated recall protocol; vocabulary list used; instructions used
with the participants; the equipment that facilitated data collection, and management
of the steps while interviewing. In order to make the participants feel relaxed and
provide detailed information, Thai was used as the language when asking and
answering questions. The following parts described each point mentioned. The
purpose of the pilot is to ensure that information is obtained to answer the research
questions.
3.3.4.1 Time allocation
The time used for stimulated recall protocol for each
volunteer was approximately 30 minutes. The time taken typically depended on how
many items each volunteer answered. The more they answered (completed the words
they could remember for each picture on the posttest), the more time the researcher
spent on asking questions.
3.3.4.2 Place
According to the limitation of the place in that campus that
the researcher went to collect data, there was no available room where stimulated
recall protocol could be conducted privately. Therefore, the classroom was used. The
researcher travelled to the upcountry campus once in a week and the volunteers were
free to join the stimulated recall protocol only after the class because they had to
study another subject in the afternoon; in the evening some of them were not free.
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3.3.4.3 Probes and feedback
The main questions the researcher used in the stimulated
recall protocol were: “how did you remember this word?”; “why did you forget this
word?”; “what made you remember this word?” From the pilot study, the participants
often gave short answers and sometimes only gave the English words to match the
pictures given in the posttest without saying elaborating further. The researcher tried
to support them by encouraging them to think further about the reasons they had or if
anything could help them recall the English words. The researcher was careful to
avoid were leading questions, like: “how did you remember this word, was that
because of the picture?” If the researcher asked the leading questions, the participants
were likely to answer in the same direction as him or her. Moreover, the researcher
kept the feedback short and precise.
3.3.4.4 Vocabulary list
The researcher had a vocabulary list at hand while doing the
stimulated recall protocol with the volunteers. This was to help the researcher keep
track of all of the words used throughout the semester. It was easy to become
confused because volunteers occasionally suggested words that had close meanings or
were similar in concept to the actual answers.
The vocabulary list also helped the researcher check if each
volunteer gave information for all the needed words.
3.3.4.5 Instructions
The instructions explained to the volunteers were brief and
clear. Whatever was allowed or not allowed should be understandable and also
repeated for clarity. Since the volunteers were interviewed one by one, the volunteers
who were interviewed later might want to know what questions the researcher asked,
and how many questions were asked. Then, if the steps or instructions on what was
going to happen could be briefed to all the volunteers, they could imagine what they
would face and feel more comfortable while waiting to be interviewed.
3.3.4.6 Equipment facilitating data collection
While performing the stimulated recall protocol, it was
necessary to prepare some equipment to assist with the data collection.
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3.3.4.7 Management of the steps while interviewing
The steps involved in doing stimulated recall protocol should
be managed well including the order of volunteers. After the volunteer came in the
room, the researcher showed the results of the posttest, then began asking questions.
The interview was recorded by the two devices mentioned above. When this step was
complete, recording on the data collection devices was stopped and each file was
named. If there were no other issues, the volunteer was permitted to leave the room
and the next volunteer then came in, with the process starting again.
3.3.4.8 Language use
Thai language was used to manage the stimulated recall
protocol data collection process because all the volunteers were native Thai speakers
and able to clearly understand. It was anticipated that the volunteers would feel more
relaxed if they could be asked questions and also answer in Thai.
The next section explains in details the tools and material
described above: pretest, posttest, teaching material, and stimulated recall protocol
were applied to collect data from the participants for this research study.
3.4 Methodology
In a semester, there are about 15 weeks. Data collection covered the entire
semester. The researcher started implementing the pretest in the first week of the
semester so as to measure the students’ background knowledge of the vocabulary they
knew before taking the course. The students were permitted up to an hour to take the
test. The students sat in individual seats which were arranged separately as in
traditional test classroom pattern. Each student was distributed the pretest paper as
explained earlier in Chapter 3. In the test paper, students were provided a blank space
next to each picture so that they could write the English vocabulary they thought of
for the pictures provided. In cases where they could not think of an English word,
they were instructed to write in Thai, but the scores would be surely different from the
English words.
After the pretest was organized in the beginning of the course, the
students studied normally in the following weeks. There was no control or
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experimental group, or any other treatment because the researcher did not want to
make any difference among the students. The researcher believes that human have
many varieties and it is hard to control a classroom environment in the same way as in
a laboratory experiment where most factors could be controlled. As a result, the
natural environment with natural setting for the study was implemented. All the
students studied normally with the use of the PowerPoint presentation via a projector.
Audio and multimedia were also sometimes used in class. Besides, useful
experiences, examples, and stories which were relevant to the study were shared
throughout the course. The course was organized every week. It took about three
hours per class time. During the study, English and Thai were used in class because
the students were mixed-ability levels in proficiency. For the course requirements,
quizzes, exercises, and some self-study were also assigned.
The posttest was implemented in the last week of the semester with all
students participating. The posttest resembled the pretest but the pictures were now
presented in random order throughout the test. Students were permitted up to one hour
to complete the posttest. English was the priority to give scores to the correct version,
but Thai was also accepted if it was the correct answer for the particular picture.
The specialty for the posttest was that the volunteers who would help in
the research study would be separated later on to participate in an individual interview
which the researcher would call this process “the stimulated recall protocol”. This
process was the main tool for the data collection in the study. Pictures in the posttest
would be used as stimuli to encourage students to reflect upon why they had given
specific words as their answers. At the end of all courses, of course, students should
be able to mention something they had learnt or did not know before. Then, running
an experiment, it was likely that the scores of the pretest and the posttest would show
some difference in this sense. However, during the way or the process along the way
how to struggle to make the new things familiar inside the memory or deep in the
cognitive process, it was amazed to know. The “stimulated recall protocol” approach
should help the researcher to understand this circumstance in the human brain to
understand how learners recognize new things that they learn. They were required to
answer questions like “how do you get the meaning of this word?”, “what do you
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have in your mind when seeing this word?”, and the like (as mentioned before in the
previous section).
Prior to taking part in the study, all of the participants were told about
what they would have to do and asked for consent to join in this study. They
understood the process and were willing to help in this study. Each of them would
join in the individual interview, with the provision of the posttest that they did and the
researcher had checked for the answer. Figure 7 below provides a diagram of the
study procedure.
All students did the vocabulary pretest
Figure 7: Steps of research implementation
3.5 Data Analysis
The data analysis was categorized into two types: one for quantitative
data and one for qualitative data.
For the quantitative data, the comparison of the pretest and the posttest
scores were analyzed by Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test because this statistical formula is
suitable for a small number of subjects in a non-parametric test. The statistical
significant level would be found and interpreted to see if the result of the comparison
is significant or not.
All students studied the course with the provision of “Vocabulary Teaching Material”
At the end of the course, all students did the vocabulary posttest.
The volunteers would be requested to do the posttest separately. Then, the scores would be checked. After that, they would be elicited for data by
the “Stimulated Recall Protocol”
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The rest of the data, which is from the stimulated recall protocol, is
considered as qualitative data. It was like interview data in that, the data were derived
from utterances. Thus, these data needed to be transcribed before they could be
analyzed. After the transcription of all volunteers was finished, coding was done by
two intercoders: one was the researcher; another one was an expert who could help on
this and she supervised on this research study so she could understand the rationale
and the objectives of this study quite well.
To do the coding, two copies of transcriptions were distributed to two
intercoders. Each coder read the transcription one by one and focused on the words
the participants answered, reasons given as to how they tried to remember words were
noted down as one finding. At the end, two findings from both coders would be
compared to see how many items were similar and different.
In addition to the “intercoder” process, the researcher planned to have an
“intracoder” as well. This meant that the coder may discover new findings from the
volunteers’ transcriptions, then leave them for a while, after a break (it might be a
month, a few months, half a year or whenever), then, come back to do the coding
again. These findings (from the first and the latest time) would be compared to see the
similarity and the differences were the same as occurred in the “intercoder” process.
The comparisons from both “intercoder” and “intracoder” were compared
and then put into specific formula to calculate for the “Reliable Value” of the coding.
Apart from the above data analysis, from the stimulated recall protocol,
some parts of the findings could be compared by using the frequency derived and also
calculated into percentage; namely, the comparison of kinds of picture that resulted in
the kinds of pictures that best affect memory, the comparison of the patterns of picture
use in recalling words by weak and good students, and the findings of how the
participants remember words.
The next chapter will present the results from the quantitative aspect of
the study; namely, the comparison of the pretest and the posttest scores. In addition,
the findings from the qualitative study using the stimulated recall protocol technique
will be revealed and discussed. Finally, the factors or cognitive processing strategies
underlying the reasons why participants could remember words will be also discussed.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter, the key findings will be analyzed, presented and discussed
according to the research questions outlined in Chapter 1. The data were drawn from
the pretest and posttest with more insightful qualitative information being derived
from the stimulated recall protocol part of the study.
The results are organized according to the research questions posed in
Chapter 1.
1. Do pictures help students to remember words?
To answer this research question, the scores of the pretest and posttest
were computed and then compared to see whether there were any differences in
participants’ proficiency before and after studying words with the pictorial material
support. Statistical tests were then conducted to determine whether there was a critical
difference between the pretest and the posttest scores and whether the null hypothesis
could be rejected. Rejection of the null hypothesis would mean that picture use had
some effect on word retention; however, failing to reject the null hypothesis would
mean that picture use did not have any effect on word retention.
2. How do pictures help students retain words in memory?
Focusing on the “how” question, this intends to get into deep
information about the thinking process or cognition of how participants remember
words with the support of the pictorial material input. Assuming that “pictorial input”
did influence word retention in the students, it would be interesting to know if there
are any factors involved in the process that help encode those words in memory and
which lead to longer term retention. Information expected to be derived from this item
would be from the stimulated recall protocol “interview”, which was detailed in
Chapter 3. After each volunteer provided information through the stimulated recall
protocol during the posttest at the end of the course, those talks (interviews) were
transcribed into original versions or Thai versions and then analyzed using both inter-
coding and intra-coding techniques.
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For the inter-coding, participants’ answers were grouped into categories
of how students remember words. There were two inter-coders in the study: one was
the researcher and another was an expert who knew the study well and understood the
objectives of the study. The coding took place separately. The two coders, the
researcher and another expert coded all the transcribed versions of all volunteers to
see how many categories got from the interviews or in this study called the stimulated
recall protocol. The other coder then randomly coded one volunteer to see if the
findings derived were in the same direction and to determine whether there were any
differences among the categories.
Another aspect of this coding process concerned intra-coding. This kind
of the analysis aims to measure the reliability of one single coder to see if the coding
done at the first time would be as same on a subsequent occasion. For this study, the
researcher did the initial coding then left it for a period of time (about 10 months) and
then completed the same process again. The final coding was compared to the initial
coding to determine whether there were any changes after a length of time had passed.
Reliability values were computed.
Each category of the findings from each volunteer would be computed
into percentages to determine the frequency with which each volunteer used specific
categories during their word recall. Only correct words were taken into account.
In addition to these aspects of the data outlined above, some interesting
information did arise from the findings. For example, the types of picture that best
affected retention; and the effect of picture use on word retention were some
particularly interesting aspects.
The next section reveals the main findings from the study and they are
presented according to the order to the order of research questions.
4.1 Results on the Effect of Picture Use on Students' Word Retention
The scores of the pretest and the posttest were compared to see the
change after the study with the use of pictorial material input. The finding was to
answer research question number 1 as seen below.
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Research question 1: Do pictures help students to remember words?
The table below summarizes the results of the pretest and posttest scores
on picture use.
One-Sample Statistics
N Means Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean
Pre 7 23.57 7.807 2.951
Post 7 99.29 24.095 9.017
Table 1: The comparison of the means for the pretest and the posttest
This table shows the differences between the mean () of the pretest and
the posttest. The mean of the pretest was 23.57 and the posttest was 99.29. The
following table shows the significant level of the pretest and posttest comparison.
The participants of the study are in a small group of volunteer, so it could
be appropriate to use the “Wilcoxon sign-ranked test” to compare the pretest and
posttest scores to see the obvious result of the comparison. The next table shows this.
Hypothesis Test Summary
Null Hypothesis Test Sig. Decision
1 The median of Pre equals
4
One-Sample Wilcoxon
Signed Rank Test
.018 Reject the null
hypothesis
2 The median of Post
equals 4
One-Sample Wilcoxon
Signed Rank Test
.018 Reject the null
hypothesis
Asymptotic significances are displayed. The significance level is .05.
Table 2: The comparison of pretest and posttest scores
This table shows the comparison of the pretest and posttest scores of
those 7 volunteers. According to Wilcoxon and Wilcox (1964, p. 441) the critical
value of the two-tailed test, for 7 participants, should be 2. They say, "To reject the
null hypothesis at the level of significance α, the critical value of T provided in the
table must be greater than the computed value of T."
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From this statement mentioned in the above paragraph, the significance
level in the table should be more than 2 so the null hypothesis would be retained.
However, as can be seen here in the table, the pretest and posttest scores were
significantly different at .018 which was less than the critical value stated to be more.
So, it was quite clear that this result rejects the null hypothesis.
The “reject the null hypothesis” here means the hypothesis that pictures
do not have any effect on word retention is rejected. This is not true according to the
result derived in the study. In the opposite, pictures do have some effect on students’
word retention. Therefore, the results of the study were quite clear that pictures could
really help students to remember words because the results after the study of words
using pictures were quite efficient.
Analyzing by this comparison would not be able to assure if pictorial
material input alone can support students’ word retention. Nor it could reveal the
inside phenomenon of how the pictures were remembered; what kind of pictures were
remembered better than the others; and were there any differences between the
proficiency levels of participants on the picture use.
Then, the study on this information was carried on and some interesting
points were discovered. The below part was to present the information found in
further detailed study.
4.2 Results on How Students Learn to Remember Words with the Support of
Pictorial Material Input
The results in the previous section showed clear evidence that picture use
supported vocabulary learning and remembering as evidenced by the statistically
significant different between the pretest and posttest scores. However, it is important
to ascertain whether there is anything involved in remembering words in memory
apart from pictures. This section discusses the variety of findings on “how” students
learn to remember words with the use of pictures.
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Research question 2: How do pictures help students retain words in
memory?
4.2.1. What kinds of pictures best affect memory?
To study the kinds of pictures that participants remembered most
might show the tendency of characteristics of pictures that a language teacher should
consider employing in a class while teaching vocabulary. The findings in this part are
selected from the posttest data and stimulated recall protocol interview, to see what
kinds of pictures the participants could remember the best and those words should be
recalled accurately both in terms of spelling and meaning.
The following presents the results regarding the “kinds of picture”
that best affect memory of words. There are two sub-questions to be presented and
discussed in this part. The first one concerns the overall kinds of picture that best
affect memory for all participants. The second one concerns the kinds of pictures that
best affect memory for participants in relation to their level of English proficiency.
(1) What kinds of pictures best affect memory overall in the study?
This sub-question aims to find the overall kinds of picture that
best affect memory of all participants. Certainly, picture use has some effect on
memory as confirmed with the test result found in Table 1 in the above part. There are
many kinds of picture use in English language teaching. However, in this study, there
are five kinds of picture that were employed.
The following shows the table of kinds of picture that best affect
memory. Frequencies of picture types which the participants recalled the correct
meaning for the corresponding words would be counted and also calculated into
percentages.
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No Types Frequency Percentage
1 cartoon or animated pictures 20 15.39 %
2 the pictures with words inside 39 30.00 %
3 realistic pictures 33 25.38 %
4 drawing pictures 25 19.23 %
5 outstanding pictures 13 10.00 %
Total 130 100 %
Table 3: Kinds of pictures that best affect memory
Table 4 shows the kinds of picture used in the study with the
frequency of times that each subject mentioned when they remembered a word
correctly, both the meaning and the spelling. The frequency was counted from the
stimulated recall protocol (which was done after the posttest). Therefore, the posttests
from each volunteer were checked, together with the confirmation from the stimulated
recall protocol.
This explanation of the derivation of times and percentage in the
table help to clarify the number involved. As mentioned before, the pictures used in
this study were 45 words. They were grouped into 5 categories. So, each category
consisted of 9 words (5 types x 9 words = 45 words totally for each person to
remember). At the end of the course, with the posttest, all volunteers were expected to
remember as many words as possible. The full scores of each category mentioned
above (if all volunteers could remember all words correctly) would be 63 (7
volunteers x 9 words = 63 words in each type). All in all, the full scores of all
categories with all volunteers would be 315 (63 scores in a type x 5 types = 315
scores).
The findings show that the pictures with words inside or can also be
called pictures embedded with words were the most helpful for the volunteers to
remember the words. There were 39 times or about 30% of correct words that were
mentioned in the posttest. This might be because the volunteers could remember that
the words they saw in the pictures were the target vocabularies. In this item, actually
it was hard to conclude that they could remember the word because the words were
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written down in the pictures. When the volunteers saw the pictures, of course, they
knew that the words in the pictures were the words they need to remember. In this
case, they did not have to remember the spelling of the words because they could
copy directly from the pictures. What they had to remember were only the meanings
of each word. The realistic pictures were in the second rank the volunteers could
remember. There were 33 times (25.38%) that the volunteers mentioned when they
answered correctly. Ranked in third place were the drawing pictures or also called line
drawing, which were mentioned about 25 times (19.23%). Following that, cartoon or
animated pictures, and outstanding pictures were mentioned around 20 times (15.39
%) and 13 times (10%), respectively.
From this result, it is hard to say that “pictures with words inside”
could affect memory most because it is not clear if the participants remember the
words in their memory with all the meaning and the spellings or if they remember
only the meaning but copy the spelling from the pictures. The following was in
evidence from participants’ answers.
[the word: turbulence]
“I remember this word ‘turbulence’ from the picture. I only
remember the letters of the first syllable. I think I can
remember all the spelling but as I remember there is the
word with the spelling inside the picture so I did not
remember it.”
[Volunteer 2]
The above example shows that the participant remembered only the
meaning of the word but its spelling did not appear to be encoded in her memory. She
stated that she could remember only the meaning because she remembered that the
spelling would be found in the picture. The interesting point here is that she
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mentioned that she could study and remember all the spelling but she did not do that
because she was certain that the spelling of the word would be shown in the picture.
In this case, she decided to omit encoding spelling in her mind but chose to encode
only the meaning or words represented by the picture. Even if she had the ability to
remember both the meaning and the spelling but she left the spelling over because she
is sure that she can find the spelling in the picture. This is an interesting and
outstanding point to be discussed or studied further. In this case, the student has the
ability to remember the word’s meaning and spelling but she did not choose to do that
but instead just remembered only some part of the word because she knew it would be
contained within the picture. This implies that when selecting the pictures to be used
in class, the teacher should have clear objectives what he or she needs the students to
do. If the objective is to learn a word, then this kind of picture may not be appropriate
because it decreases the tendency to remember the word’s part, such as the spelling.
However, the problem as mentioned in the above paragraph may not
be generalized because, in some cases, the students may not take this into account.
They could focus on the word’s meaning and spelling with no regards to the word
stated in the picture. The following example supports this idea.
[the word: vacancy]
“This word I remember it by studying it very often until I
could remember it. I did not know this word before. I
spent time remembering the word before taking an
examination and finally I remembered it."
[Volunteer 3]
The above case shows that even if there is the word or the family
word displayed in the picture, it is not always the case that the students would not
study the spelling of the word. They may try to remember both the meaning and the
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spelling of the word without really concerning themselves with whether there is a
word in the picture or not.
Overlooking the problem discussed above, if teachers do not
employ the ‘pictures with words inside’, it is quite clear that another type of picture,
‘realistic picture’ is quite effective to support the participants’ recall of words. The
participants seem to apply the realistic pictures to memorize words better than other
types of word regardless of the previous one. This might be because when learning
the words, they look at the pictures presented and understand the pictures are trying to
communicate. Thus, they can encode the words more easily. This might be explained
by “schema” theory or pre-existing knowledge that a person has. Greene (1987, p. 54)
discussed the relationship between schema and the ability to switch from newly
learned items to the schemata:
If a person needs to think about something, he or she should be able
to link what they have seen or learned at that time to the background or experience
they have before. For clearer understanding, Greene (1987, p. 55) added, “For pattern
matching to occur, there must be two representations to match, one representation of
inputs from the actual environment and the other a mental representation of a concept
or schema.”
This is obvious that in order to learn or understand new things or
new items, a person needs to be able to interpret those things, as can be seen from the
above quote. Moreover, Greene (1987) added that experience a person has could aid
recall. Therefore, linking to this study for the use of “realistic pictures”, it is more
effective to use the pictures that look more realistic for learners because when they
are processing these at the encoding stage, they need to learn the new word and at the
same time consider the pictures presented. If the pictures look realistic, they might
link or match the words they are learning with the schema they have known with the
support of pictures which look so real for them.
The above part mentioned types of words that best affect memory.
Five types of words were studied, presented, and discussed. The most interesting and
outstanding points about the use of “pictures with words inside” and the “realistic
pictures” are mentioned with brief discussion for both types of words. Relevant theory
and literature were included to understand the phenomenon. However, the number
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found and discussed could not help to see how far each type of word go beyond the
start of the learning and how close it is to the target number of words. The following
analysis was conducted to try and reveal this information.
(2) How far or how close from the target number are the different
types of picture?
This question aims to present another aspect of the effective use
of different types of pictures on word retention. While the above part reveals
frequency information about word retention for each type of picture, this part of the
presentation focuses on the same study but in a different aspect. It aims to reveal how
far or how close each type of picture helps to support word memory. The researcher
compared the frequencies of each type with the full score (target number). Following
this, the percentage of each item was calculated and presented in the Table 4 below.
No Types Frequencies/
Expected frequencies
Percentage calculated
from 63 words
1 cartoon or
animated pictures
20/63 31.75%
2 the pictures with
words inside
39/63 61.90 %
3 realistic pictures 33/63 52.38 %
4 drawing pictures 25/63 39.68 %
5 outstanding
pictures
13/63 20.63 %
Total 130/315 41.27%
Table 4: How far and how close each category is to the target number
The information in the above table is parallel with the
information presented in Table 3. However, it is presented differently. As seen from
the Table 4, the two types of pictures that were more than half of the percentage to
help the participants remember words in their memory were the pictures with words
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inside (61.90%) and the realistic pictures (52.38%). The rest are less than half, namely
cartoon or animated pictures (31.75%), drawing pictures (39.68%), and outstanding
pictures (20.63%). Only two types of word affect participants’ memory for more than
50% retention. The discussion of this phenomenon can be explained as were the
results seen in Table 4. The following chart may help to present these data more
visually.
Figure 8: Graphs representing how close each type of picture is compared to the
target number (or expected number)
Regarding the use of picture types, there is still a question of
how these picture types are related to students’ language proficiency. Will there be
any differences among students whose language abilities are especially strong
compared to those who are especially weak?
(3) Are there any differences on picture types used between good
and weak volunteers?
The researcher aimed to investigate whether there were any
differences between strong and weak participants with respect to their language
proficiency and their recall based on the type of pictures encoded. While stronger
20
39
33
25
13
31.75%
61.90%
52.38%
39.68%
20.63%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
cartoon or animated pictures
pictures with words inside
realistic pictures
drawing pictures
outstanding pictures
frequencies
expected frequencies
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participants may tend to remember well with the support of a specific kind of picture,
the weaker participants may find non advantage across the different picture types.
Table 5 summarizes the data from this analysis.
No Types High-proficiency Low-proficiency Frequency
1 cartoon or animated
pictures
11
(16.92 %)
9
(13.85 %)
20
2 the pictures with
words inside
20
(30.77 %)
19
(29.23 %)
39
3 realistic pictures 14
(21.54 %)
19
(29.23 %)
33
4 drawing pictures 11
(16.92 %)
14
(21.54 %)
25
5 outstanding pictures 9
(13.85 %)
4
(6.15 %)
13
Total 65 65 130
Table 5: Kinds of pictures that best affect memory for stronger and weaker volunteers
The patterns of picture types applying types that were revealed
in Table 5 showing potential differences among the strong and weak volunteers are
found largely similar. Both strong and weak volunteers could remember words with
the support of each type of pictures and in the same direction. For the strong
participants, pictures that best support their memory, ranking from the most effective
pictures to the least: (1) the pictures with words inside, (2) the realistic pictures, there
are two items with the same number of frequencies namely (3) cartoon or animated
pictures and drawing pictures, and (4) the outstanding pictures. For weak participants,
the orders are: (1) there are two items that best affect their memory, they are pictures
with words inside and realistic pictures, (2) the drawing pictures, (3) the cartoon or
animated pictures, and the least effective one is (4) the outstanding pictures.
Figure 10 below displayed these data in graphical form. The
inner donut represents the pattern of word types used from the stronger volunteers,
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while the outer donut represents the pattern of word types used by the weak
volunteers.
Figure 9: The comparison of patterns the strong and weak volunteers have on types of
words they applied to recall words correctly
The results from Table 5 and Figure 9 are similar. There are no
major differences of interest between the two groups. Looking at the donut chart, it
can be seen that some parts of both the strong and weak participants overlap one
another. The pictures with words inside (30.77 % for stronger volunteers and 29.23 %
for weaker volunteers) and the realistic pictures (21.54 % for stronger volunteers and
29.23 % for weaker volunteers) were the pictures that affected memory most for both
groups. The average effect was for cartoon or animated pictures (16.92 % for stronger
volunteers and 13.85 % for weaker volunteers) and drawing pictures (16.92 % for
stronger volunteers and 21.54 % for weaker volunteers); the types of picture that were
least effective was the outstanding pictures (13.85 % for strong and 6.15 % for weak
volunteers).
From these findings, it is clear that the pattern of word type for
both strong and weak participants did not reveal any prominent differences. Thus,
language proficiency level does not appear to make any differences on words recalled,
at least in relation to the picture type. Stronger and weaker participants do not tend to
16.92%
30.77%
21.54%
16.92%
13.85%
13.85%
29.23%
29.23%
21.54%
6.15% cartoon or animated pictures
pictures with words inside
realistic pictures
drawing pictures
outstanding pictures
high proficiency volunteers
low proficiency volunteers
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recall one type of word more than any other one. It is obvious that the four types of
words from both groups (strong and weak participants), which are overlapping each
other, and were considered to be the highest ranked items used for helping remember
the words were: (1) the pictures with words inside, (2) realistic pictures, (3) drawing
pictures, and (4) cartoon or animated pictures. The outstanding pictures were reported
to have been used the least for both groups of participant. This might be because the
characteristic of the outstanding pictures is not as normal as general pictures. It may
look not so usual for participants. When learning words with outstanding pictures,
participants may have found it difficult to interpret the picture. If they cannot
understand the picture or do not know what the pictures want to communicate, then
the pictures were meaningless for them. This probably meant that encoding was not as
successful as it was with other picture types.
4.2.2. What factors or cognitive processing strategies involved in
remembering words with the support of pictorial material
input?
This question is the most interesting part in this study. While
deriving the result that showed the comparison of the pretest and the posttest scores, it
was likely that pictures helped on word retention. The scores of the volunteers after
studying words during the semester increased. Even though there were only 45 words
to be remembered in this study, none of the volunteers could actually recall all of the
words. Moreover, from the findings derived, the volunteers recalled words with
variety of reasons or cognitive processing strategies not just only by using pictures.
Therefore, to make this clear how many reasons or cognitive processing strategies
they applied to recall words, it is necessary and interesting to know if there are any
other factors or cognitive processing strategies involved. The stimulated recall
protocol interview, used in this study, was employed separately only with those seven
volunteers. Detailed information about how the participants could remember words
will be discussed further below. In fact, there were also many factors or cognitive
processing strategies reported by the students that they used to remember the words
learned in class. These factors or cognitive processing strategies were identified and
are presented in Table 6 below.
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No Findings V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 Total 1 link the words to visual images 11 17 3 8 7 5 13 64 2 picture + studying 1 2 2 0 1 0 0 6 3** pictures + known 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 4* ** picture + L1 translation 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 5* L1 translation 3 0 3 2 1 0 8 17
6 reviewing after studying in class 4 4 14 3 8 0 4 37
7
known/seen from other sources or other subjects which were studied during the semester 11 10 10 16 7 11 8 73
8 imagination 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 4 9* interest 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 3
10 link the words to other English words with similar sound 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 3
11 link the words to one’s own experience 3 1 0 0 0 1 0 5
12 falsely recalled 4 4 0 5 8 4 4 29 TOTAL 40 42 33 35 33 22 38 243
* (items 4, 5, and 9) these items were not the same among the two coders. One got 12 codings while another one got 9 codings. ** (item 3 and 4) these items were not the same among the first and the second codings (intracoding). The first got 12 codings while the second got 10 codings. Table 6: Frequencies of the time each volunteer used to get the correct meanings of words
The findings shown in Table 6 above represent the various factors,
or cognitive processing strategies, participants reported using in order to memorize
words they had learned in the course. This finding is not the same as in the previous
part that focused on only the correct words the participants remembered. However, in
this part, all the words they mentioned (including mistakes) were analyzed to
understand which items they used to recall the words. The answers or the recall of the
words the participants mentioned were categorized to score as will be explained
shortly. The pretest and posttest used the same score criteria to calculate the average
points each participant scored on the pretest and posttest. Here below is the
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explanation of the scoring criteria that was used with the information derived from the
participants in both the pretest and the posttest.
The words the participants recalled were not always correct in all
aspects (meaning and spelling). Some words were partially correct, while some words
were written correctly but the meanings were not accurate. Some words could be
recalled only the L1 meaning. Therefore, in order to mark these words and considered
whether they are acceptable or not, the researcher set the scoring criteria to give some
points for each recalled word. Then all scores for each participant derived from both
the pretest and posttest were calculated as detailed below:
4 points = English word, both the meaning and spelling are correct.
3 points = The spelling is incorrect but the pronunciation can be
pronounced in that word or similar to that word.
2 points = Part of the word is mentioned and correct.
1 point = The correct Thai translation was mentioned
The comparison of the scores in both the pretest and the posttest
would show how well the participants could recall words. This part of score
comparison and data presentation will be shown and discussed later.
Explaining how to come up with the data derived in Table 6, then,
the findings in the table would be presented and discussed. It was obvious that not
only pictures influenced the recall of words from memory. There are many factors or
cognitive processing strategies involved in the process of memorizing. As seen from
Table 6 above, there were twelve cognitive processing strategies which were derived
from the data analysis; coding was implemented. The researcher employed both
“inter-coding” and “intra-coding” to determine the reliability of the current study.
For inter-coding, there were two inter-coders: the researcher and an
expert. The expert was selected according to the following criteria:
• He or she should understand the objectives of this study well.
• He or she should have some experience in conducting research
using these coding techniques.
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• He or she should have some experiences in teaching English at
the university level.
When an expert was found who met these criteria, the coding
method was discussed and it was explained what should be focused upon and what
would be ignored. This was designed to ensure that the two coders agreed on how to
make this happen with the same direction of understanding. After that, the
transcriptions of all volunteers were printed out for both the researcher and the expert
(another coder). These two coders did the coding separately within the committed
deadline they agreed with each other. Lastly, the two coders compared their results
From the separate codings, the researcher found 12 factors or
cognitive processing strategies while the expert found 9 factors that overlapped with
the researcher’s codings. The “Intercoder Reliability Coefficiency” formula by Holsti
(1969) was used to calculate for the reliability value between the two coders. The
following formula shows how the reliability value was derived.
Reliability = 2 M
Ni + Nj
M = the number of coding decisions on which the two judges are in
agreement
Ni = the number of coding decisions made by judges 1
Nj = the number of coding decisions made by judges 2
Reliability = 2 (9) = 18 = 0.857 or = 0.86
9 + 12 21
The above reliability value was derived from the intercoder as
explained; however, to confirm the reliability value in another way, the researcher,
also compared the codings twice (i.e., “intracoder” reliability). The researcher initially
analyzed the transcription and marked for the codings and then left the findings for a
while, a period of approximately ten months. After that, the researcher re-coded the
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data before comparing the initial codings with the final codings. On the initial coding,
the researcher found 12 factors or cognitive processing strategies, while on the second
occasion 10 factors were identified. The intracoder reliability test is displayed below:
Number of items coded the same in the first and second coding
Number of items coded in the first coding
= 10 = 0.83
12
It was mentioned in Lombard et al (2004) that there was no
standard for interpreting the level of reliability. However, Neuendorf (2002, p. 145)
stated that there are “rules of thumb” which have been applied to many
methodologies. A “coefficients of .90 or more would be acceptable to all, for .80 or
more would be acceptable for most cases and if it was below this point, there might be
some inacceptable points to be discussed.” In this study, the reliability compared
between the two coders or intercoders was 0.86 while it was 0.83 for the intracoder
reliability analysis. Therefore, this coding is considered as reliable with a high
coefficiency rating on both tests.
These codings were the findings of the research question on
“how” the participants could remember or recall words. From the inter-coding and the
intra-coding, the coders might not call a specific finding with the same thing, but
considering the concept of each item, the similar ones would be grouped and agreed
to call those findings from each coder or each intra-coding with the same thing if the
concept of each item goes in the same direction. These 12 items were the finalized
findings agreed by both coders.
From the above parts, the findings from both intercoding and
intracoding were checked for reliability and those finding were reliable. However, in
order to present the findings in a better comprehensible way, the researcher concluded
the findings from Table 7 again. Some items which have too small numbers of
frequency and that they overlap with some items, they would be put together and
calculated into percentage so as to make the findings more meaningful. Moreover,
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some finding in the table which is considered a different category (falsely recalled or
false memory = does not support vocabulary memory) would be separated to discuss
in a different part from all of the findings. Therefore, Table 7 in the following
presents the final findings from the stimulated recall protocol for cognitive processing
strategies involved in memory words.
No Findings V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 Total
1 link the words to visual images 11 17 3 8 7 5 13 (64)
29.90%
2 picture + studying 1 2 2 0 1 0 0 (6)
2.80%
3 L1 translation 3 0 4 2 1 0 8 (18)
8.41%
4 reviewing after studying in class 4 4 14 3 8 0 4 (37)
17.28%
5
known/seen from other sources or other subjects which were studied during the semester 11 10 10 16 8 11 8
(74) 34.57%
6 imagination 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 (4)
1.86%
7 interest 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 (3)
1.40%
8 link the words to other English words with similar sound 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
(3) 1.40%
9 link the words to one’s own experience 3 1 0 0 0 1 0
(5) 2.33%
TOTAL 36 38 33 30 25 18 34 214
Table 7: The final findings of words that volunteers could recall
The following table shows the 9 findings derived from the stimulated
recall protocol. The information in Table 8 would be shown in cooperate with the
examples of extracts from the volunteers’ answers for clearer understanding.
No Findings Total of frequency Examples
1 link the words to visual images
64 (29.90%)
[the word: boarding pass] “This word……I remembered from the picture here.” [V.1]
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No Findings Total of frequency Examples
2 picture + studying
6 (2.80%)
[the word: property] “This word should be….Ummmm…..Prop….Property….I remembered the picture of this word and I also studied this word when I prepared for the midterm test.” [V.2]
3 L1 translation 18 (8.41%)
[the word: taboo] “This word is Koh-Ham or Pid-Kod….Rabieab…. I could not remember English word. The English word sounds strange to me so I could not remember it.” [V.7]
4 reviewing after studying in class
37 (17.28%)
[the word: ashtray] “ I remembered this word by studying. I let my friends tell me the words, then, I write them on a paper. I write the word and say the words many times until I remember them.” [V.3]
5 known/seen from other sources or other subjects which were studied during the semester
74 (34.57%)
[the word: therapist] “I’ve studied this word in Spa subject also. So, when I found this word again in this subject, I could remember the word well.” [V.5]
6 using imagination
4 (1.86%)
[the word: transfer] “I imagined to when I wrote this word in my vocabulary notebook. I saw myself writing the word on a piece of paper. It is spotted on the page. I could see it clearly.” [V.2]
7 interest 3 (1.40%)
[the word: ashtray] “I remember this word because I used to wonder how this one is called in English. So, when I knew it, I remembered it quickly at that time without studying more on it outside the class.” [V.6]
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No Findings Total of frequency Examples
8 link the words to other English words with similar sound
3 (1.40%)
[the word: favor] “I remember this word because it is pronounced similar to the word I know, flavor. Then, when I heard this word in class while you were teaching, I could remember the word. [V.4]
9 link the words to one’s own experience
5 (2.33%)
[the word: gate] “I remember this word because I think back to when I were on board I had to stand by at a gate. I used the word ‘gate’ instead of Thai word, so I can remember the word when you firstly taught me.” [V.6]
TOTAL 214
Table 8: Total findings with frequencies and percentages of occurrence and examples
of excerpts from the stimulated recall protocol from volunteers
There were the 9 findings that volunteers disclosed during the stimulated
recall protocol interview. They applied these items when recalling the words. The
total frequency refers to the number of words recalled by that item from each
participant. Each item was provided with an example of word recalled in that specific
item and the excerpt of the participants’ answers. The nine items were:
1. Link the words to visual images
There were 64 words or 29.90% recalled by this item. The volunteers
linked the words they learned with the pictures they saw. Then, when taking the
posttest, they could link back from the pictures they saw with the words they could
remember.
2. Using picture and studying
There were six words or 2.80% recalled by this item. The volunteers
tried to remember the picture used with the studied words. However, when they had
time, they would try to remember the words using another strategy, such as writing or
saying the words many times, until they could remember the words.
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3. L1 translation
There were 18 words or 8.41% recalled by this item. The volunteers
mentioned that they could not recognize the pictures but they could remember what
the words were. However, only Thai vocabulary popped up in their memory. They
could not remember any English words.
4. Reviewing after studying in class
There were 37 words or 17.28% recalled by this item. The volunteers
spent time on studying the words they learned. Many of them wrote the words many
times until they could remember them. Some of the participants reported saying the
words many times until they could recognize them. Some participants reported
writing and saying the words. Therefore, this item means the students tried to study
the words when they had time in order to help them learn the words.
5. Known or seen from other sources or other subjects which were
studied during the semester
There were 74 words or 34.57% recalled by this item. This item is
similar to “Using pictures and the words were known or seen”, but there was no use
of pictures reported here that helped remember those words. The volunteers studied
this English course and learned the words in the course; while at the same time, other
subjects in the same semester also introduced the same words (only some words)
because of the relevant field of study. The volunteers have not known these words
before. They just studied in this semester but they found the words several times by
several subjects, repeated over and over. Then, when they saw the words they learned
in this English course, they might not remember them immediately but studying them
again, they could remember them and those words were finally known or seen.
6. Using imagination
There were four words or 1.86% recalled by this item. Some
volunteers used their imagination when they wrote the words in their vocabulary book
and they tried to remember the words this way. Subsequently, when they thought back
to some words, they imagined the page they wrote the words on and they could
visualize the words clearly.
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7. Interest
There were three words or 1.40% recalled by this item. Some
volunteers could remember the words because they were interested in those words
before. They may have been eager to know these words in Thai or in English before
studying. Once they studied these words in class, they said they could remember the
words immediately without studying the words or reviewing them regularly.
8. Linking the words to other English words with similar sound
There were three words or 1.40% recalled by this item. To remember
the newly learned words, the volunteers linked the words to the sounds of the words
they knew before. Thus, when recalling the words, it was easy for them to think of the
words.
9. Linking the words to one’s own experience
There were five words or 2.33% recalled by this item. While studying
the new words, the volunteers tried to link the idea of the words with their own
experience that they used to have so as to help them remember the words easily. This
depends on the general background or knowledge that an individual person has of the
world.
The above were the final findings found in the stimulated recall protocol
on how students learned vocabulary with the support of picture use. However, there is
also a finding which shows a mistake when they try to remember words. It is “false
memory” or could also be called “falsely recalled.” There were 29 words or 11.94%
of the words recalled represented a false memory recall. In other words, this means
that the volunteers misunderstood that the words they could remember were the
correct words. However, the words they thought were not correct but they just thought
about the words that looked similar to the concept of the words actually presented.
The words were wrong anyway.
The next section discusses the findings relating to what the students used
in order to remember words. Examples of the volunteers’ reasons in applying the
above findings would be presented in items in order to see the data more clearly.
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4.2.2.1 Link the words to visual images
While studying words, the students tried to link the words
with the pictures provided in the teaching material. They mentioned that they could
remember the words because they could remember the pictures.
[the word: boarding pass]
“This word……I remembered from the
picture here.”
[Volunteer 1]
[the word: call light]
“This word, “call light” I remembered the
picture you taught and you also showed a
video clip about this in class, so I could
remember the word.”
[Volunteer 3]
4.2.2.2 Pictures and studying
Students learned words with the use of pictures to
help remember the words. Additionally, they also studied the words by
themselves using their own various techniques.
[the word: property]
“This word should be…Umm..Prop…
Property….I remembered the picture of this word
and I also studied this word when I prepared for
the midterm test.”
[Volunteer 2]
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4.2.2.3 L1 translation
When encoding words, the students remembered the Thai
meaning. Thus, when they saw the picture in the posttest they could only think of the
Thai meanings, not the English meanings.
[the word: taboo]
“This word is Koh-Ham or Pid-
Kod….Rabieab….I could not remember English
word. The English word sounds strange to me so
I could not remember it.”
[Volunteer 7]
4.2.2.4 Reviewing after studying in class
Students learned words by applying their own techniques to remember the words.
[the word: ashtray]
“ I remembered this word by studying. I let
my friends tell me the words, then, I write
them on a paper. I write the word and say the
words many times until I remember them.”
[Volunteer 3]
4.2.2.5 Known or seen from other sources or other subjects which
were studied during the semester
This item does not necessarily mean that the students already
know the words they are studying. However, it was mentioned by some students that
the words they studied looked familiar to them, yet they still could not remember the
word. During the semester, they also studied some of the words in another subject.
While studying the words, it is likely that they had a chance to repeat the words again
which led to more successful remembering.
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[the word: therapist]
“I’ve studied this word in Spa subject also. So,
when I found this word again in this subject, I
could remember the word well.”
[Volunteer 5]
4.2.2.6 Using imagination
While studying the words, the students reported that they
formed images to other things they could link to the words; for example, a student
imagined a vocabulary book they used to write down the word. Then, when seeing
pictures and they would like to say the English words aloud, they imagined the
notebook again and were able to visualize the words they wrote in that imaginary
notebook
[the word: transfer]
“I imagined to when I wrote this word in my
vocabulary notebook. I saw myself writing the
word on a piece of paper. It is spotted on the
page. I could see it clearly.”
[Volunteer 2]
4.2.2.7 Interest
The students are interested in knowing the words, so when
they studied the words in class they can remember the words.
[the word: ashtray]
“I remember this word because I used to wonder
how this one is called in English. So, when I
knew it, I remembered it quickly at that time
without studying more on it outside the class.”
[Volunteer 6]
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4.2.2.9 Link the words to one's own experience
When learning new words, students link the words to their
own experiences; or when they studied the words, and later they have a chance to see
or explore the words in real life, they, were able to remember the words better.
[the word: gate]
“I remember this word because I think back to
when I were on board I had to stand by at a gate.
I used the word ‘gate’ instead of Thai word, so I
can remember the word when you first taught
me.”
[Volunteer 6]
4.3 Discussion
After the presentation of the findings in the above part, this paragraph
aims to discuss the main findings in more detail. These points are interesting and may
reveal some important issues that require further exploration.
4.3.1 The Effect of Picture Use on Vocabulary Teaching
As seen from the previous section about the result of the pictorial
input on word retention, it could be said that the pictures have an important effect on
remembering words. From the comparison of the pretest and the posttest in the current
chapter 4, the results clearly show that picture use affects students’ word retention in a
positive way. Similar results have been reported in literatures e.g. the study of Rokni
and Karimi (2013) which was discussed in Chapter 2 that the group of participants
who used visual instruction did better than the group using textual instruction in
learning vocabulary. Thus, it seems clear that picture use can help in word learning
and retention. Moreover, pictures can also encourage learners to pay more attention to
the lesson because they attract students’ interest in a much better way than studying
text in isolation. This could be proved by some studies, e.g. The study of
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Poomwongpituk (2008) showed that students preferred to learn with picture exposure
than text exposure.
As a result of the picture use, it is recommended that they be
implemented in classroom teaching or in foreign language learning. However, there
might be some questions about the kinds of pictures that should be used because there
are many kinds of picture available. Therefore, to explore the different types of
picture that could be presented to students in class is an interesting area to explore
further.
From the study, the different kinds of pictures that best support
students’ word retention was also investigated. Not in general, but the study focused
on the patterns of picture use to help word retention for both high proficiency and low
proficiency participants. It is interesting to see that the pattern of these two groups of
volunteers overlaps quite clearly, with most of the patterns going in the same
direction. Within all pictures studied in this research, the researcher can group them
into three categories by using the comparison of patterns displayed by the two groups.
(1) The most effective pictures
For this item, there are two kinds of picture that were reported
to be the best ones to affect students’ memory on words.
• The pictures with words inside
• Realistic pictures
The pictures which can be used to present in the vocabulary
lesson or to help teachers implement them to support students’ memory should be the
pictures which include a “word” or “phrase” inside. Students said that they could
remember the words in the pictures.
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[the word: turbulence]
“I remember only Thai meaning for this word but
for the English word and the spelling of the word, I
remember that it is written in the picture so I just
remember to look at the word on the picture.”
[Volunteer 4]
[the word: debt]
“This word I remember that it is written here in the
picture. I just remember you explained that it is like
a burden you put on your back. So, I remember the
picture here and remember what you explained in
the class but cannot remember the word and how to
spell it.”
[Volunteer 5]
However, a participant mentioned she did not remember the
words or phrases inside the picture. She used the picture to trigger her memory about
the word but did not remember that the word itself was shown in the picture.
[the word: turbulence]
“I did not focus on the word mentioned in the
picture. I just remembered that this picture means
the plane is flying and has problem because it is
shaking and shaking. So this word is turbulence.”
[Volunteer 1]
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[the word: vacant]
“I remember this word is vacant. I remember it is
similar to vacancy because I link to what you have
said in class. So I remember two times for vacant
and vacancy. And if you close this word, I can still
remember this word because I study on this word
before taking a test.”
[Volunteer 7]
Apart from the pictures with words inside, the “realistic
picture” is recommended to present to students while teaching since it helps them to
remember words. The realistic picture may have a special characteristic which looks
real and the participants can link it to their real life. Therefore, it is easy for them to
remember.
(2) Pictures that are quite effective
There are also two kinds of pictures that are effective to be
implemented in vocabulary lesson even though they are not considered the most
influential ones like the above items. Nevertheless, these pictures are also beneficial
on word retention. They are:
• Cartoon or animated pictures
• Drawing pictures
These two kinds of pictures share some common
characteristics. That is, they look attractive but not realistic. Cartoons, animated
pictures and drawings were created to attract people who like some kinds of artistic
features. These kinds of pictures would be useful especially, when realistic pictures
cannot be shown or found for some reason. Cartoons or animated pictures, and
drawings can help to fulfill any vocabulary learning objectives.
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(3) The least effective picture
The least effective type of picture was the outstanding pictures.
According to the “outstanding” characteristic, it might be difficult and abstract for
participants to interpret or understand the pictures. While this one is outstanding for
some persons, other people may not see such characteristics and feel that the picture
looks normal. It is hard to judge whether one picture is outstanding or not.
If the research study ends at this stage and the final conclusion
is made that the use of picture affects the students’ memory on words, then, some
unrevealed information which hides beneath the picture use and word memory would
be covered. Picture use would be reported to support students’ word memory whereas
some other factors which may be involved in learning and remembering memory
might be missed, even if they play an important role in memory.
The findings from the stimulated recall protocol were able to
reveal some of the underlying details of how students learn to remember words rather
than using only pictures as stated in the above part. The next section details some of
the underlying factors or cognitive processing strategies. Actually, nine factor or
cognitive processing strategies were discovered, as discussed earlier in this chapter,
but the proceeding discussion highlights a few key items to discuss further.
4.3.2 Cognitive Processing Strategies Involved in Remembering
Words
As stated before, there are nine findings that the researcher found
and that they were underlying students’ word memory. The following findings show
some special features that the researcher would like to draw attention to.
4.3.2.1 Link the word to visual image
This one is most relevant to the topic of the study that the
students use pictures to help learn words. It has been shown quite consistently in
Chapter 2 (topic 2.6) that pictorial input can help students remember words. The
difference in scores between the pretest and the posttest was statistically significant,
indicating that memory benefited from the pictorial input during the classes.
This result is compatible with the findings of Mason,
Pluchino, and Tornatora (2013) that the pictorial input had positive effect on the
students’ learning. For this study, it affects vocabulary learning while for Mason et
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al’s on reading comprehension. They conducted research on the “effects of picture
labeling on science text processing and learning. They grouped their participants into
three groups so as to assign them to read a text: (1) text with a labeled illustration, (2)
text with an unlabeled illustration, and (3) text only. The participants studied the text
with the random item which the researchers assigned. The data taken from the pretest,
immediate posttest and delayed posttest revealed that all students had equivalent
factual knowledge. No matter what groups they were in, they could read and get equal
knowledge from the reading. However, studying the results from both the immediate
posttest and the delay posttest, it can be obviously seen that the group which read the
text with the labeled illustration outperformed the rest of the groups, namely the group
with pictures but no label on the reading text and the group which has to read by text
only.
4.3.2.2. Known or seen from other sources or other subjects
which were studied during the semester
Students’ access to vocabulary is a strategy that is
unavoidable and cannot be controlled. As human beings are unpredictable and
uncontrollable, it is not like the scientific pure experiment in a laboratory which
everything can be controlled. Therefore, background knowledge or students’
accessibility to the vocabulary could have some effect on vocabulary retention. While
some students had greater exposure or more opportunities to learn English words,
some other students may have relied on quite limited prior knowledge.
In this study, there are other subjects which the students
have to participate in during the same semester. Those subjects may provide
additional exposure to the critical target words that are assigned for study in the ESP
course that the researcher teaches. Assuming, the students see the same words many
times in a week or frequently hear the words from each subject in the semester, their
memory may for certain words may become enhanced relative to other words.
Schmitt (2000) gives some strategies about vocabulary
learning which may help explain this phenomenon. He mentioned about memory
strategy which learners need to link their idea of background knowledge to help them
remember new words. The subject they are learning (ESP course) can be linked to
other subjects to help them activate some vocabulary knowledge in other subjects.
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4.3.2.3. Reviewing after studying in class
Students’ habits in reviewing or studying words are a factor
or cognitive processing strategy determined largely by individual differences in
learning styles and aptitudes. If this one is minimized in that it can be managed in the
sense that teachers assign students to spend time after class working on developing
their vocabulary knowledge. Reviewing enhances memorization. From strategies of
vocabulary learning proposed by Schmitt (2000) this could be the combination of
cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies to help themselves remember words.
The same points were supported by Stoffer (1995) on the strategies learners can use to
organize words and make themselves easy to remember words. Students who are
involved more in the vocabulary learning process remembered better. However, this is
not as easy as it sounds. It is not simply the case of letting students spend time
working on to-be-learned words; in fact, there are many things involved in learning
words, such as attention, motivation, and so on. Certainly, these things cannot be built
or put in students if they do not want to as Stoffer (1995) stated that learners should
employ strategies used for self-motivation to encourage themselves to learn well on
words. These factors are likely out of direct control of the teacher. The students who
spend more time on reviewing words they have studied in class tend to have more
chance to remember words compared to other students who do not.
4.3.2.4 L1 Translation
Many students remember the words they learn but only in
terms of Thai meaning. When seeing pictures that were used in class, they could think
of only the Thai meaning. English words were not recalled. In these cases, when they
were shown the pictures and when English words were presented at the same time,
they did understand what the pictures want to communicate. However, after they
interpret the meanings of the pictures, they tended to remember the Thai meanings for
the words. So, when seeing the pictures, they remind them Thai meanings which they
put in their storage system. This might be explained by “primary memory” of
Ranganath, Libby and Wong (2012) about their experience which influences new
knowledge. In this case, L1 has some effect on learning words. Therefore, in order to
help students remember English vocabulary, there might be other supporting
strategies involved.
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4.3.2.5 Link the words to one's own experience
It is difficult to argue against the notion that one’s experience
in life differs from person to person. While some students had the chance to travel
abroad and use English in different context, other students may have never had the
opportunity to go anywhere. In other cases, a student may enjoy surfing the internet to
read about things that they are interested in. This student is clearly aligning himself or
herself to the broader and wider world. He or she is exposed to many things that
cannot be learned or found in books only used in class. On the other hand, other
students may read many books, and gain experience that way. Overall, each
individual’s experience and knowledge of the world can differ and arise from
different sources and this kind of personal knowledge and experiences could affect the
vocabulary learning and retention. Actually, for language learners, the more they are
exposed to reading, the more they could learn vocabulary.
Therefore, when learning words, each student would link the
words to their own experience which the language teachers cannot control.
4.3.2.6 Using imagination
This item is interesting even if there was only one participant
in the study that mentioned this during the stimulated recall protocol. This is an
outstanding case because the participant could remember words because she linked
her memory back to the picture she imagined in her head to when she was working on
her vocabulary book and writing the words she learned in the notebook. When she
sees pictures, she could think of the words but they did not just pop up in her head
only, she could see the words she wrote, together with the spelling she noted down in
the notebook. So, this is not relevant to the pictures shown in class but about the
imagination the students have in their mind. This could be a kind of vocabulary
strategies which could be found in an individual language learner.
From the previous sections in 4.3.1, The effect of picture use
of vocabulary teaching and 4.3.2, Cognitive processing strategies involved in
remembering words, some results discussed in these two parts could be linked to a
literature presented earlier in Chapter 2. According to Gathercole and Alloway (2008),
they stated ways to support memory. One of the suggestions is to increase the
meaningfulness and familiarity of the material. From the previous discussion on the
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“pictures that best affect memory”, there are two types of pictures mentioned: (1)
pictures with words inside, and (2) realistic pictures. It could be seen that the pictures
with word inside are likely to be meaningful to the students because the words they
are learning are written inside the picture. For the realistic picture material, the
characteristic of the realistic picture are obvious that they look real for the students.
The reality of the picture helps the students to be familiar to the picture use. This kind
of familiarity characteristic also plays important role in the finding. Out of the nine
findings, one obvious vocabulary strategy shows that the students remember the
words they learn because those words were “known or seen from other sources or
other subjects.” That means when they learned the words at the very beginning of the
lesson, those words only look familiar for them but they still could not remember the
word. The familiarity would make the students focus on the words, then, when they
see the words again in class or any sources they are likely to remember that they have
seen the words before and this increases a chance for them to remember the words.
Additionally, other findings which could be linked to this theory of familiarity are the
use of L1 translation and the strategy that the students link the words they learn to the
similar English sound that they know. These strategies could also explain by their
familiarity to their native language, which is Thai so they remember the words they
learn with Thai meaning as their encoding step. When they see pictures, students
interpret what they are seeing at that moment in Thai so they remember Thai words
instead of English. This could be noticed when they see the picture or the pictorial
input again in the posttest and they could think of only Thai words or L1 translation
only, not the English words as expected. The same as when the students try to
remember words by linking the sound to the similar words. They also applied
“similarity” rules to aid their memory.
Therefore, the similarity or meaningfulness could be a factor
to help support the students’ memory.
From the theory of cognitive process, Macphail (1998)
mentioned about selective attention which is about individual interest. This could be
linked to many strategies found in the study which the students used to remember
words such as link to visual pictures, know or seen from other sources or subjects,
imagination, interest, and link to own experience. In addition, to put the information
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learned into long-term memory, the students need to rehearse many times until the
information is moved from the short-term memory to long-term memory. This is to
explain why some students spend time reviewing the words they learned after class in
order to remember them.
Personal experience is one factor that could be involved in
learning and remembering words. Greene (1987) stated about the old and new
knowledge interaction. He mentioned that the working memory works as a way that
links the new knowledge and old knowledge together. This could be used to explain
why the students use these strategies in learning words: (1) They have known or seen
the words from other sources or subjects, words that look familiar in a subject could
be learned and remembered if they are repeated again in another subject or source; (2)
They link to other English similar sound because linking the new words they learned
to the old words they know could facilitate their memory; (3) They link the words
they learned to their own experience, this is easy for students who have enough
background knowledge but might be unfair for students who do not have enough
background knowledge
The above discussions to some relevant literatures could help
explain the phenomena that were found in the study why employing such strategies
can facilitate learning and remembering the vocabulary. However, there could be
some mistake during the vocabulary learning and recalling as will be discussed in the
following part.
4.3.3 False memory or falsely recalled
When students are certain that they remember the correct words
from the pictures, it needs to be checked again if the words were correct or not
because sometimes the picture may be misunderstood among students. One picture
can be interpreted in many ways so during the time the language teachers give input
(pictorial input) to students; it depends on what the students keep in their memory
(what they were encoding while learning). As discussed above, when students are
exposed to the input, they would merge many strategies (background knowledge,
experience, L1 interference, and so on) to facilitate their actual learning and with their
actual learning and storage of vocabulary items into memory.
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The memory process mentioned by Malim (1994) about the stages
of memory process which consisted of three stages: learning, storing, and retrieving.
To move from each stage, there should not be any mistakes otherwise there might be
some problems in memory. The false memory or falsely recalled might result from
mistakes that occur during the process of memory in some stages. Therefore, it is
necessary for language teachers to find practical way to check for the correctness in
each lesson to avoid this problem.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter presents the conclusions and the recommendations of the
study. All the findings derived from the study have already been presented in Chapter
4. In this chapter, the main findings and results will be concluded and discussed as
highlights of the study and how the information can be contributed to English
vocabulary learning. Moreover, recommendations of the study are presented to show
what the limitations of the study are and in case interested people need to study
further, what aspects they should consider about.
5.1 Conclusions of the Research Results and Findings
In this part, a brief conclusion will be made to by drawing together the
findings presented in Chapter 4. There are two kinds of conclusion that the researcher
wishes to draw. These concern the quantitative part of the research study and the
qualitative part to be mentioned about. According to the research approach on the
mixed-method design, these two kinds of information reveal different aspects of the
study. While the quantitative data presents clear-cut results regarding picture use on
word retention, the qualitative data reveals more in-depth details regarding the
cognitive processes that were underlying this word retention. Taken together, these
two aspects of the research study are complementary and serve to provide more
complete conclusions to the study.
5.1.1 The Quantitative Data
As stated earlier, the quantitative data refers to the results regarding
the comparison of the pretest and the posttest. This comparison revealed a significant
difference between the two tests, with better performance observed on the posttest.
The derived critical value at .018 which is less than the set value at 2 for seven
participants shows the result that the null hypothesis is rejected. This result meant that
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the null hypothesis was rejected, leading to the conclusion that pictorial input
influences long-term word retention to some extent.
The present investigation did not only provide evidence for the
beneficial use of pictorial input on word retention. It was also able to ascertain what
types of pictures best affect memory. As discussed previously, the researcher
employed different kinds of pictures and these were grouped into five categories: (1)
cartoon or animated pictures, (2) the pictures with words inside, (3) realistic pictures,
(4) drawing pictures, and (5) outstanding pictures.
The findings of the study indicate that the pictures that best affect
participants’ memory belonged to two specific picture categories. Notably, these were
the pictures with words inside (with 30%) and the realistic picture category (with
25.38%). The category that was least effective on memory was the outstanding
pictures (with 10%). These items are interesting types of picture to be concerned with
while implementing lessons in class. While some should be employed with effective
reasons, in other cases one should be prudent when using them because it may not be
practical for the students to understand this particular kind of picture (i.e., outstanding
ones).
As the types of picture that best affect memory were studied, the
pattern use of types of picture among strong and weak students was explored.
However, similar patterns of types of picture use among these two groups of students
were found. There is no important difference among them. For this result, the
outstanding picture tends to be put aside while processing the word memory. There
were very few occasions that the participants come up with correct word when
associated with outstanding pictures. However, the most frequently used items or
patterns were from four items. They are the pictures with words inside, the realistic
pictures, and the drawings, cartoons or animated pictures. The strong and weak
proficiency students exhibited overlapping patterns of word retention for these four
items.
In addition to the results regarding the effectiveness of the use of
pictures on word retention, the different types of pictures that best affect memory, the
pattern of recall between the strong and weak students, another result regarding the
retention of words overall was discovered. This is to deal with the result of all
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obtained correct words to be compared to the rest of the words learned in the course to
see how much they could retain words from the course. It was found that even if there
were only 45 words to be studied in the course, the participants could not remember
all the words correctly. However, as discussed before about the scoring criteria to give
points for their answers, there are some words that the participants remembered which
are not all correct but still considered acceptable. Thus, these words were also
analyzed and considered as the words they remembered.
From the background of what words to be analyzed for the word
memory stated in the above paragraph, it links to the following topic to see what have
been involved in obtaining the words. The qualitative information derived from the
main data collecting tool, stimulated recall protocol, reveals some interesting points.
The findings from this part show factors or cognitive processing strategies involved in
remembering words.
5.1.2 The Qualitative Data
From the qualitative data, the researcher identified nine cognitive
processing strategies found to be factors that underlie students’ memory of words.
Picture use is one of them. However, beside the use of pictures, a larger variety of
factors or cognitive processing strategies were found.
(1) Link the words to visual images (29.90%)
(2) Picture and studying (2.80%)
(3) L1 translation (8.41%)
(4) Reviewing after studying in class (17.28%)
(5) The words were known/ seen from other sources or other
subjects which were studied during the semester (34.57%)
(6) Using imagination (1.86%)
(7) Interest (1.40%)
(8) Link the words to other English words with similar sound
(1.40%)
(9) Link the words to one’s own experience (2.33%)
These nine items were reported to be used to recall words. These
findings were obtained via the stimulated recall protocol approach, which was used to
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scrutinize participants’ cognitive processes while they were learning and also
remembering words. Among them, the first three items employed the most often than
the other findings were:
(1) The words were known or seen from other sources or other
subjects which were studied during the semester. The participants used this strategy
about 34.57% of the time to remember words. This item reveals the factors that could
not be controlled or are hard to control in real life. Among the participants in the
study, there are many things involved so it tends to be impossible to control factors or
variables that exist in participants in the same way as in an experimental study in a
laboratory. Holt and Walker (2009, p. 7) say: “…no matter how much you try to
anticipate the influences on people’s behavior, people will always find a way to
surprise you.”
From the above statement and also with this item of finding, we
might find it very difficult to control factors that may affect students’ word memory
because it is impossible to know what background or experience they have in their
lives before they study these words.
(2) The participants link the words they are learning with the visual
images. About 29.90% of the words were recalled by relating them to images. As
expected, this item was has expectedly been the main reason that helped participants
learn and remember words. From the findings, this item is ranked second overall in
terms of frequency.
(3) The next item concern reviewing after studying in class. The
participants tried to memorize the words after spending time studying them in class.
This strategy was employed in 17.28% of the cases. This item is relevant to individual
metacognitive strategies which each person would manage to study by their own.
Apart from the above three strategies mentioned, the rest of the
strategies that participants used were presented in the previous paragraph and also
discussed in Chapter 4. All of these were derived from the “stimulated recall
protocol.” The answers of all participants were transcribed from the audio source to
be in written transcription. The transcriptions of all participants were distributed to the
coders so as to analyze for the reliability of the coding. There were two kinds of
coding: (1) inter-coding, and (2) intra-coding.
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The findings highlighted in the current study were considered
“reliable” because the reliability values (R) from both the inter-coding and intra-
coding were greater than .80. The R value from the inter-coding was 0.86 and for
intra-coding it was 0.83.
The next section considers the recommendations arising from the
conclusions raised here. Recommendations are provided which should help some of
the concerned stake holders pay attention to when considering pictorial input in
foreign language teaching and learning. Finally, some suggestions for further research
will also be considered.
5.2 Recommendations of the Study
This section considers three items for the recommendations: the limitation
of the study, the recommendations for further study, and the contribution the study
makes to English language teaching. These three items should help suggest to any
interested scholar, researcher, teacher, and other people who are concerned about the
key findings and implications arising from the study.
5.2.1 Limitation of the Study
In conducting this research, there were clearly some limitations.
There are three items to be stated here.
5.2.1.1 The specific word area:
The word list used in this research is in the area of “hotel and
tourism” because to conduct the research, it needs to plan for the material use, the test
implementation, course syllabus, and the time table of the course. Therefore, there are
a number of things involved and which need to be managed. It is difficult using a
subject which involves many lecturers involved because when implementing the
teaching, there will be different steps which may affect the study. Due to this reason,
the range of the word list used in this is quite narrowly themed around hotel and
tourism. Use of other word lists use may reveal different results and findings to those
obtained in the current study. This point will be highlighted further in the
recommendations for further study in the next section.
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5.2.1.2 The time allocation in the study:
Since this course is available for students in a campus which
is far from Bangkok. The researcher also acts as a teacher who needed to travel up-
country to implement the study and the teaching. At the same time, the students have
limited time to study with the course at only three hours a time. Students naturally
study many other subjects. If stimulated recall protocol was required to do after class,
it could be done during the lunch time or in the evening where no people are in the
building. This time constraint may affect the focus or the attention in giving details
during the stimulated recall protocol because students may need to finish early so as
to prepare themselves for another subject in the afternoon, or sometimes in the
evening if it is not finished. Therefore, it might be more practical to have a class
where the process of teaching and collecting the data can be done more comfortably
so as reduce any anxiety that might exist when participating in the data collection
process.
5.2.1.3 The part of speech:
Since this course of the study consists of nouns most
frequently, the target words were primarily, nouns. Actually, there are nouns, verbs,
and some other types of word, but what was suggested during the proposal defense
was to find pictures to match with the word easily, which is necessarily easier with
nouns. Clearly, other kinds of word type may also be interesting to investigate.
To study this topic, the researcher needs to implement studying
materials which consist of word lists to be investigated. There is one course that the
researcher is responsible for in the teaching alone so this is easy to design for the
materials, the test, and the activities in class which support the research study. In a
subject that many teachers are involved, difficulty may occur due to the differences of
each individual teacher and constraint that each teacher may have. Therefore, only
one teacher who can manage only one course is so practical to investigate for the
study. As a result, this particular course is finally planned and managed so as to meet
the study objectives which have been set by the relevant people (academic committee)
of the faculty and the university. While designing the course so as to fulfill the
standard objectives which require students to have appropriate proficiency after the
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course, the researcher also needs to insert the design for investigating the current
research.
In conclusion to this limitation, it is hard to find a course that can be
managed and controlled with full design to cover the research objectives, and at the
same time also have to cover the subject objectives.
5.2.2 Recommendation for Further Study
There are four points to be suggested here for recommendations for
future studies.
5.2.2.1 As stated earlier in the limitation of the study section, the
word list of the current study was only focused on the theme of “hotel and tourism.”
Other types of subject-specific vocabulary, such as engineering, finance, or science
would also be interesting for researchers to focus upon. Moreover, the lower
frequency words or the academic word list could be considered to determine whether
participants who have relatively lower exposure to specific or groups of words would
be able to remember these words as effectively via pictorial input.
5.2.2.2 The study on other types of the parts of speech could reveal
some interesting or different findings. It can be challenging to find pictures that match
these types of word. However, it also needs the checking from the experts on the area
to help deciding on the matching so as to make sure that the word and picture use are
comprehensible and can be interpreted in the same direction.
5.2.2.3 This study found nine strategies which participants reported
employing to remember words. Thus, it might help to reveal some deep information
which is underlying into each type of items and how students use each item to encode
words in memory. To study only each particular strategy or some of them in class so
as to see if the students were randomly assigned to use each strategy to learn words,
they may show different aspects for the strategies. There might be some unrevealed
factors or interesting data inside these nine findings.
5.2.2.4 While implementing this research, the researcher found
some interesting findings where participants reported drawing picture by themselves
in order to memorize words efficiently. It might be interesting to design a lesson
where the participants were asked to draw their own pictures and see how they learn
to remember words. In doing so, such a study might reveal some different findings to
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those found in this study. On the other hand, some similar findings might be found
that are complimentary to those revealed here.
The next section focuses on the practical suggestions that can be made
regarding learning and teaching the English language with the use of pictures.
5.2.3 Contribution to English Language Teaching
5.2.3.1 Use of pictures: The main part of this research study was to
investigate whether picture use will influence word memory. The result shows that it
does help. However, scrutinizing the data more deeply, leads to the conclusion that
there are many more factors involved in learning words. The implementation of the
picture use in class should be planned well enough for clear objectives and activities.
Of course, they do help attract students’ attention and interest but it does not mean
that they will inevitably lead to the top performance of the students’ learning. One
particular research study mentioned the general ‘superiority of pictures’; while
pictures are believed to be beneficial to language classes, they might not be the most
optimal. To encourage students to learn effectively in class, there might be some other
individual factors involved, such as their background, their experience, their interest,
and so forth.
5.2.3.2 Words to be used to teach vocabulary: As seen in the results,
the types of picture that best affect word retention are the ‘pictures with words inside’
and ‘the realistic pictures’. These two types of picture should be encouraged while
teaching vocabulary. They tend to promote a good result in word memory. However,
it is not about the type of picture only. Other relevant factors, such as the activity and
clear objectives of the activity, the instruction use, the students’ attraction, attention,
interest will have some effects.
5.2.3.3 Picture to be used prudently: While the above section
suggests the types of picture to be used, this section focuses on the type of pictures
that should be avoided or not considered. The ‘outstanding pictures’ or pictures that
seem to be bizarre or strange for students should be used prudently. This is because
there might be more than one dimension in the picture. This is to say that when it aims
to be used for a reason, it might be interpreted using some other reasons because it is
hard to control the interpretation in this kind of picture. According to its special
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features, it should be explained clearly what it is used for and to what specific aspect
of knowledge.
5.2.3.4 Picture use to learn word can be more effective if used in
accordance with other factors: The results show that the participants remembered
words with other strategies or items. Those items are studying, knowing the word
before (or they have some background knowledge), and L1 translation. Thus, to make
the word learning more effective, the teacher could use pictorial material input which
include L1 translation, adding background knowledge for the words, and let students
practice doing some exercise or activity so they can rehearse the words and remember
them.
5.2.3.5 Studying the words after class: The item ranked third in the
findings reveals that ‘studying’ resulted in around 17.28% of the items recalled. It is
clear that practice or rehearsal helps students to remember words. This one is
confirmed by the memory theory that ‘rehearsal’ helps to remember things.
5.2.3.6 False memory leading to incorrect recall: When learning or
teaching about word retention, it is suggested that at the end of the class or when
finishing an activity, the teacher needs to make some conclusions again to determine
whether the students remember items correctly. If they remember incorrectly when
processing cognitive stages, they will tend to store items ineffectively. This could lead
to students misinterpreting things over the long term.
5.2.3.7 To teach vocabulary, some factors that are influential should
be considered: There are many more factors that are involved in studying, such as
sound, imagination, background knowledge or experience, L1 input, and interest.
These factors can have some impact on learning words. As a language teacher, one
needs to consider relevant factors and try to find ways of managing teaching with the
best consideration of these factors. They need to be accounted for in the lesson plan in
order to produce the most appropriate activity and teaching that stems from this.
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APPENDICES
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APPENDIX A
EXAMPLE OF PRETEST
080103021 English for Service Industry
Unit 1: Operator English word & Meaning 1
2
3
4
5
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APPENDIX B
EXAMPLE OF TEACHING MATERIAL
Vocabulary 1
2
3
4
5
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APPENDIX C
EXAMPLE OF FORM FOR EXPERT TO CHECK
080103021 English for Service Industry Unit 1: Operator O.K NOT
O.K 1
a favour ความชวยเหลอ
2
a transfer การโอนสาย
3
a dialing tone เสยงรอสาย
4
a repeat การทาซา
5
hold (the line) การถอ (สายรอโทรศพท)
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APPENDIX D
EXAMPLE OF TRANSCRIPTION
ฝน : จเนยร นะคะ โอเค อะ...จเนยร เรมเลยลก คาแรกจาไดยงไงวามนเปนคาน อะไรอยางนคะ
จเนยร : จามาจากแบบตอน..ตอนชวงสอบนะจะ..จะใหเพอนแบบ..ชวย..ชวยตวให..
ฝน : ตวยงไง..ใหเพอนตวยงไง
จเนยร : ก..ประมาณวาให..ใหเพอน..อาน..หนทองสะกดเองกอน แลวกใหเวลาหนประมาณหา
นาทสบนาทแลวแต
ฝน : คะ
จเนยร : แลวก..เพอนกจะเขยนเปนภาษาองกฤษไวให
ฝน : ออ
จเนยร : เขยนเปนภาษาองกฤษไวให แลวกใหหนเขยนคาแปล
ฝน : ออ
จเนยร :พอสอบกคอจะใหพด เพอนจะพด พอสอบเพอนจะพดความหมายแลวใหหนเขยนเปน
ภาษาองกฤษ
ฝน : ออ สลบ สลบกน
จเนยร : สม สม..สมคาไป
ฝน : ออ โอเค คะ แตคณ ออ..แตครอยากร เอะ แลวจายงไง ทาไมจาคานเปนแอชเทรย [ashtray]
จเนยร : ไมรเหมอนกน
ฝน : มวธการไหม หรอเปนเพราะ ใหเราทองเราเขยน
จเนยร : ใชเปนเพราะทองจะอาจารย
ฝน : ไมไดมวา เฮย โยงมนไปกบการออกเสยงหรออะไร
จเนยร : ใชครบ คอใหเพอนพดคาแลวทองแลวกเขยนหลายๆรอบจนจาได
ฝน : ทอง
จเนยร : ทองเอา
ฝน : กบเขยน คณเขยนกรอบ ลก
จเนยร : หนเขยนประมาณสามรอบ
ฝน : สามรอบ แลวทองละ
จเนยร : ทองก ประมาณ ประมาณสกสหารอบ ทองไปดวยเขยนไปดวยจนจาได
Volunteer 3
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APPENDIX E
EXAMPLE OF TRANSCRIPTION (TRANSLATED VERSION)
T: So…can we start? Can you tell me how you can remember this word, the first word?
S: I remembered when I would take a test. I had my friends tutored me.
T: How?
S: I had my friends said the words, then, I repeated the spellings by myself for 5-10
minutes depending to the difficulty of the words.
T: oh…o.k.
S: Then, the friends would write the words into English.
T: Ah…ha…and….?
S: Then, I wrote the translations of those English words.
T: I see.
S: Then, when I would have to take a test, I would let my friends say the words. The
friends would say the meaning, and I would write into English words.
T: Oh…you switched the role also.
S: Yes, then we did this by random the words.
T: Oh…well…I wonder how you could remember like…for example this word “ashtray”
[ashtray]
S: Well…I am not so sure!
T: Do you have any strategies?
S: I study the words. I say the words many times.
T: Did you match the pronunciation with anything?
S: I remembered this word by studying. I let my friends tell me the words, then, I write
them on a paper. I write the word and say the words many times until I remember
them.
T: So, you say and write the word many times.
S: Yes.
T: How many times did you say and write the words?
S: About three times of writing.
T: And how many times for saying the words?
S: About four or five times. I spend time studying the words, saying and writing until I
remember the words
Volunteer 3
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APPENDIX F
CONSENT FORM
เอกสารแบบแสดงความยนยอม ของอาสาสมครเขารวมการวจย (Consent Form)
โครงการวจยเรอง: A Case Study of Learning Vocabulary through Pictures (กรณศกษาการเรยนรคาศพทโดยรปภาพ)
ใหคายนยอม วนท……….. เดอน……………….……… พ.ศ ………………. กอนทจะลงนามในใบยนยอมเขารวมเปนกลมตวอยางหรออาสาสมครในโครงการวจยน ขาพเจาไดรบ การอธบายถงวตถประสงคของโครงการวจย วธการวจย และรายละเอยดตางๆ ตามทระบในเอกสารขอมลสาหรบผรวมโครงการวจย ซงผวจยไดใหไวแกขาพเจา และขาพเจาเขาใจคาอธบายดงกลาวครบถวนเปนอยางดแลว
ผวจยรบรองวาจะตอบคาถามตางๆ ทขาพเจาสงสยเกยวกบการวจยนดวยความเตมใจ และไมปดบง ซอนเรนจนขาพเจาพอใจ ขาพเจาเขารวมโครงการวจยนดวยความสมครใจ และมสทธทจะบอกเลกการเขารวมโครงการวจยน เมอใดกได การบอกเลกการเขารวมการวจยนนไมมผลกระทบตอ การเรยนการสอนหรอผลการเรยนของขาพเจาในวชา English for Service Industry ทขาพเจาจะพงไดรบตอไป ผวจยรบรองวาจะเกบขอมลเฉพาะเกยวกบตวขาพเจาเปนความลบ จะเปดเผยไดเฉพาะในรปแบบ ทเปนสรปผลการวจย การเปดเผยขอมลของขาพเจาตอหนวยงานตางๆ ทเกยวของตองไดรบอนญาตจากขาพเจา ขาพเจาไดอานขอความขางตนแลวมความเขาใจดทกประการ และไดลงนามในใบยนยอมนดวยความเตมใจ
ลงนาม ……………………………..……………………..ผยนยอม
(…………………………………………………….)
ลงนาม ………………………….……………………..…..พยาน (…………………………………………………….)
ลงนาม …………………………………………………...ผทาวจย
(………………………………………….………….)
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BIOGRAPHY
Name Miss Watcharee Paisart
Date of Birth August 31, 1978
Educational Attainment
1999: B.A in English Major (1st class honor)
Khon Kaen University
2004: M.A in English for Second Language
Teaching, King Mongkut’s University of
Technology Thonburi
Work Position Lecturer
King Mongkut's Univerisity of Technology North
Bangkok (KMUTNB)
Scholarship Year -: Scholarship title -
Publications
[1] “The Survey of Vocabulary Memorizing
Strategies”. Paper Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference on Language,
Literature & Society. (2017). International
Center for Research and Development (ICRD).
Sri Lanka.
[2] “A Mixed-Method Case Study: Is there Only
the Pictorial Input that Affects Word Retention?”
International Journal of Applied Linguistics &
English Literature. Vol. 7, No. 4 (2018).
Work Experiences Lecturer, Department of Languages
Faculty of Applied Arts, KMUTNB
Secretary of a French expert
Thai-French Innovation Center
