LEARNERS4 MOTIVATION IN LEARNING VOCABULARY
ESL Students and Vocabulary Problems
Tutoring students this quarter has taught me many things I hadn’t previously realized. I saw students who struggled with translation problems, memorization, and even culture barriers that impacted their ability to speak and write English correctly. From personal experience with my own individual tutees, I found that the greatest problem among them all was their ability to remember key vocabulary words in English. Most of my students had a firm grasp on the English language and could speak it fairly fluently, but they struggled when they were assigned to respond to an article, read a novel, or write their own essay. After doing some research, I came across a case study conducted by Rita Ray who studied the advancement of ESL students based on different vocabulary teaching strategies. Rita acknowledged in her report that, “the vocabulary that students encounter frequently prevents them from understanding reading material and test questions.” Although recognizing contextual clues and utilizing a dictionary or translator are always very helpful and appealing options to students, they are frequently very tedious and time consuming, which can also impact a student’s level of understanding if their time is limited. In her study, Rita decided that they best course of action would be to have assigned hour-long periods each day that were focused on direct study of vocabulary. Each session typically utilized a variety of different vocabulary strategies, such as flash cards, word games, and the study of word roots. The study and memorization of prefixes and suffixes was the main focus of the session whereas the games and flash cards provided secondary backup.
In one of my tutoring sessions I was working with my tutee on writing the initial draft of an essay about child discipline. She had already articulated her main points to me, but there was a final and most important one that she could not find the words to
Tutoring students this quarter has taught me many things I hadn’t previously realized. I saw students who struggled with translation problems, memorization, and even culture barriers that impacted their ability to speak and write English correctly. From personal experience with my own individual tutees, I found that the greatest problem among them all was their ability to remember key vocabulary words in English. Most of my students had a firm grasp on the English language and could speak it fairly fluently, but they struggled when they were assigned to respond to an article, read a novel, or write their own essay. After doing some research, I came across a case study conducted by Rita Ray who studied the advancement of ESL students based on different vocabulary teaching strategies. Rita acknowledged in her report that, “the vocabulary that students encounter frequently prevents them from understanding reading material and test questions.” Although recognizing contextual clues and utilizing a dictionary or translator are always very helpful and appealing options to students, they are frequently very tedious and time consuming, which can also impact a student’s level of understanding if their time is limited. In her study, Rita decided that they best course of action would be to have assigned hour-long periods each day that were focused on direct study of vocabulary. Each session typically utilized a variety of different vocabulary strategies, such as flash cards, word games, and the study of word roots. The study and memorization of prefixes and suffixes was the main focus of the session whereas the games and flash cards provided secondary backup.
In one of my tutoring sessions I was working with my tutee on writing the initial draft of an essay about child discipline. She had already articulated her main points to me, but there was a final and most important one that she could not find the words to