Dạy từ vựng tiếng Anh cho trẻ em ở Việt Nam hiện nay – dạy gì và dạy như thế nào?

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DẠY TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH CHO TRẺ EM Ở VIỆT NAM HIỆN NAY 
– DẠY GÌ VÀ DẠY NHƯ THẾ NÀO? 
Hoàng Thanh Liên 
Trường Đại học Hà Nội 
Tóm t
t: Cùng với sự phát triển của phương pháp 
dạy ngoại ngữ theo hướng giao tiếp và nhằm đạt được 
mục tiêu đề ra trong Quyết định 1400/QĐ-TTg ngày 30 
tháng 9 năm 2008 của Thủ tướng Chính phủ về việc 
phê duyệt Đề án “Dạy và học Ngoại ngữ trong Hệ 
thống Giáo dục Quốc dân, giai đoạn 2008-2020”, việc 
dạy tiếng Anh cho trẻ em đã có những bước chuyển 
biến đáng kể trong những năm gần đây. Vì vậy, dạy từ 
vựng tiếng Anh cho trẻ cũng khác nhiều so với trước. 
Bài viết này nhằm mục đích nghiên cứu và tìm ra thực 
tế hiện nay giáo viên ở Việt Nam dạy gì liên quan đến 
từ vựng và dạy từ vựng như thế nào trong lớp học tiếng 
Anh trẻ em. Nghiên cứu cho thấy trẻ em không những 
được dạy nghĩa mà còn được dạy hình thức của từ 
(cách viết và cách phát âm). Một số đặc điểm ngữ 
pháp của từ, ví dụ dạng số nhiều theo quy tắc và bất 
quy tắc của danh từ cũng được giới thiệu. Ngoài ra, 
nghiên cứu còn cho thấy giáo viên sử dụng những 
phương pháp khác nhau để dạy từ vựng cho học sinh, 
bao gồm phương pháp sử dụng hình ảnh và nhắc lại, 
phương pháp trực tiếp, phương pháp giao tiếp (CLT) 
và sử dụng cử chỉ, điệu bộ (TPR) cùng với phương 
pháp dịch Anh-Việt truyền thống. 
Abstract: Being affected by the development of 
Communicative Language Teaching approach and the 
goal stated in Decision 1400/QĐ-TTg dated 30 
September, 2008 of the Prime Minister on the Approval 
of the Project entitled “Teaching and Learning Foreign 
Languages in the National Education System, Period 
2008-2020”, English Language Teaching in young 
learners’ classes in Vietnam has undergone 
considerable changes for the past few years. Teaching 
English vocabulary to young learners is, therefore, 
different compared to that in the past. This paper aims 
at studying what to teach and how to teach vocabulary 
in young learners’ English classes in Vietnam at the 
present time. It is found that the children have been 
taught not only the meaning but also the form of the 
words (spelling and pronunciation). Certain 
grammatical features of them, for example regular and 
irregular plural forms of the nouns and past forms of 
irregular verbs have also been taught. In addition, the 
study reveals that teachers have used various 
techniques in teaching vocabulary to young learners, 
namely visualizing and repeating, direct method, Total 
Physical Response and Communicative Language 
approach along with the traditional method (English – 
Vietnamese translation). 
VOCABULARY TEACHING 
IN YOUNG LEARNERS’ ENGLISH CLASSES 
IN VIETNAM NOWADAYS – THE WHAT AND THE HOW 
INTRODUCTION 
English has been considered an international 
language because it is used in almost all ar eas of 
life, such as education, business, tourism, 
entertainment, and others. English language, thus, 
becomes the first foreign language that has been 
taught in primary schools since the early 1990s in 
many countries in the world. Along with this 
development, the National Foreign Language 
2020 Project of Vietnam which demonstrates the 
goal of the government to build the English 
capacity of its workforce in order to engage in the 
global economy and to compete and develop 
regionally and globally has been approved by the 
Prime Minister of Vietnam on September 30, 2008. 
One of the main objectives of the project is to 
thoroughly renovate English teaching and learning 
throughout the country and to implement a new 
program on teaching and learning English at every 
school level and training degree, so that by the 
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144 
year 2020 most Vietnamese graduates from 
vocational schools, colleges and universities will 
be able to well communicate in written and 
spoken English. Teaching English in primary 
schools, therefore, has undergone considerable 
changes. This also leads to an innovation in 
English vocabulary teaching at this school level. 
This study aims at studying what to teach and 
how to teach English vocabulary to young learners 
at primary schools in Vietnam in recent years. The 
paper will cover two parts, namely literature 
review of the study and findings of the research as 
well as discussion of these findings. 
LITERATURE REVIEW 
Young learners 
A young learner can be anybody aged three to 
eighteen. What a three-year-old child can do is 
much different from what a fifteen-year-old one 
can. Their development should be considered, too. 
Some children develop faster while the others 
need more time. It requires the teachers of the 
knowledge of all the development differences of 
the young learners. Understanding these 
differences can help a teacher to develop 
appropriate methods and techniques in their 
teaching for the right age group in general and a 
certa ... icance of use 
in the culture, for example giving presents on 
Christmas day or delivering milk. 
Ur (1996) states that the language learners 
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should be taught form of the words (spelling and 
pronunciation), then grammar (singular or plural 
form of the words), collocations (words that go 
together), meaning and word formation (like 
using prefixes and suffixes or hyphenated words). 
However, for him, collocations and word 
formation are either too difficult or not important 
to the children. Instead, it is more important to 
inform them of the meaning as well as the form 
and grammar of the words. Nation (2001) also 
states that knowledge of a word can be divided 
into knowledge concerning its form 
(spoken/written), its position (grammatical 
patterns/collocations), its function 
(frequency/appropriateness), and its meaning 
(concept/associations). 
Vocabulary presentation 
In his bachelor work, Přibilová (2006) suggests 
that the teachers should bear in mind the number 
of words to be taught during the lesson, the 
guidelines in presenting the words, and several 
techniques of presenting the new vocabulary items. 
Number of words to be taught 
In making decision about the number of words 
to be taught in one lesson, the teacher should 
consider the target language level of the students, 
their familiarity with the words, the word 
difficulty in terms of pronunciation, cultural 
features, spelling or concrete or abstract meaning 
of the words. The teacher should also care about 
ways in which the words can be easily 
demonstrated or not (by using realia or pictures or 
verbal explanation). 
Vocabulary presenting guidelines 
In Přibilová’s opinion, the vocabulary should 
be taught in spoken form first so that the students 
can avoid pronouncing the words in the form they 
are written. Then the new items should be placed 
in context, and revised later. 
Vocabulary presenting techniques 
In Přibilová’s (2006) study, the techniques are 
classified into the followings: 
Verbal techniques: using illustrative 
situations, descriptions, synonyms and antonyms, 
and using various forms of definition: for example, 
definition by demonstration, contextual definitions, 
and definition by translation. It is more difficult to 
give explanation this way at beginner level. 
Visual and repetition techniques: using 
pictures – flashcards, photographs and magazines 
pictures, wall charts, posters, blackboard drawings, 
word pictures, several realia that the teachers can 
hold up and point, and then they can say out the 
words for the children to repeat. To present 
actions and feelings, mime, actions and gestures 
can be used. Learners can then label the pictures 
or objects or act. 
Regarding visualizing techniques, Allen (1983) 
also says that there are several ways to show the 
meanings of an English word, through such aids 
as: (1) real objects (umbrellas, scissors, tools, 
buttons of many colors and sizes, etc); (2) 
drawings by the teacher or by the students; (3) 
demonstrations to show actions. He also 
recommends teachers to use the real objects 
whenever possible when presenting the meaning 
of an English noun. Real objects are better than 
pictures. 
Translation: This technique is quick and easy 
but not commonly used recently because it is 
proved to be discouraging for the learners. They 
can not interact with the words, and the learners 
will not have a habit of thinking in the target 
language and then producing the words and 
sentences in that language quickly. 
Choosing activities to teach vocabulary 
There could be a variety of methods and 
techniques to choose from in teaching vocabulary 
to young children; however, teachers should be 
realistic because of the possible noise of the 
language classrooms, the large size of the class, 
the shortage of teaching facilities like projectors 
or visual aids in the language class. As a result, it 
is the teachers to choose the right activities for the 
right class at the right time. The activities can be 
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148 
categorized into “settle-down” (to keep the class 
quiet and attentive) and “stir-up” activities (used 
to wake up the class). Some examples of the 
former are reading and drawing, whole-class 
listening activities, using stories or storybooks, 
arts and crafts activities. Some examples of the 
latter are oral work (songs, chants and raps), 
mingles or surveys, movement games, using 
drama or acting out, competitions which can 
engage children’s minds and keep them physically 
occupied (Clarke, 2008). 
METHODS 
Objectives, subjects and the instrument of the 
study as well as procedure of conducting the 
research will be described in this part. 
Objectives 
This survey aims at seeking the answers to the 
following questions: 
1) What related to English vocabulary do 
teachers of English teach at primary schools in 
Vietnam? 
2) In what way is English vocabulary taught in 
English classes at primary schools in Vietnam? 
Subjects 
The ninety teachers involved in this survey are 
all English teachers at primary schools in Vietnam. 
They all graduated from Foreign Language 
Teachers Training Colleges throughout the 
country and are teaching pupils aged 8 to 10 at 
primary schools of different provinces or cities. 
They were chosen as the population of the study 
based on convenience sampling. Most of the 
answerers (95%) stated they had taken training 
courses on how to teach English to Young 
Learners (YL) in the framework of the National 
Foreign Language 2020 Project of Vietnam, 
which works to renovate teaching and learning 
English throughout the country and implement a 
new program on teaching and learning English at 
every school level and training degree. Among 
those teachers who were trained on YL teaching 
methodology, only one person answered that he/ 
she had never applied these methods in his/ her 
English teaching. Just over half of the study 
population stated that they were now teaching in 
classes of 35-50 students or more than 50 students 
each. Only a mere 9% of those questioned were 
teaching in classes of under 25 students. Their 
teaching experience at primary schools also varied, 
as shown in the table below. 
Table 1: Participants’ years of teaching 
English at primary schools in Vietnam 
Years of teaching Percentage 
Less than 5 63.6% 
5-10 27% 
More than 5 9% 
Total 100% 
Instrument 
To collect the data for the survey on how to 
teach and what to teach about English vocabulary 
among primary school children, a questionnaire 
(see Appendix 1) and an observation note form 
(see Appendix 2) were developed based on 
relevant literature review discussed above and 
consideration for this English learning and 
teaching context at primary schools in Vietnam. It 
is noted that the observation note form, which was 
used to seek further information about methods, 
techniques and words as well as word-associated 
components being taught in classes, serves the 
purpose of supplementing the questionnaire in 
gathering all the information needed for the data 
analysis. The reason for this is the researcher 
wants to know if the answers from the 
questionnaire match with the information 
collected from the observation. 
Procedure 
The questionnaire was designed, piloted and 
then delivered to 90 primary school teachers in 
different provinces of Vietnam who were selected 
based on convenience sampling. Two of the 
teachers, however, did not give back the answers 
to the questionnaire. After that, the researcher also 
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observed ten classes in which vocabulary teaching 
is the focus of the class, using the observation note 
form. Then the data were collected and analysed 
on both qualitative and quantitative basis. 
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 
This part presents findings of the survey as 
well as discussion of the findings. The first part 
gives information about the methods of teaching 
English vocabulary, techniques of presenting 
English vocabulary adopted by the primary school 
teachers while the second part shows word-
associated components being taught by them. 
English vocabulary teaching methods at 
primary schools 
Figure 1: English vocabulary teaching 
methods at primary schools in Vietnam – 
frequency of use in percentage terms 
Figure 1 shows how frequently teachers of 
English at primary schools in Vietnam use 
different methods of teaching vocabulary. 
As can be seen from the figure, CLT was the 
most popular method with nearly half of all the 
respondents using it often and about another half 
using it at all time. This can be explained by the 
fact that the learners feel safe and motivated to 
learn in a CLT classroom where less emphasis is 
on error correction and the focus is on 
communication and fluency (Pawan, n.d.). 
TPR and visualizing were also chosen as 
common ways of teaching vocabulary by 77.2% 
and 67.7% of the study population respectively. A 
possible reason for using TPR is that the students 
do not have the stress of producing the language 
and TPR allows for low anxiety learning (Asher, 
1977, cited in Pawan, nd)). Likewise, visualizing 
is a favourite method among teachers who believe 
that the young learners prefer having realia or 
pictures in learning vocabulary related to concrete 
meanings because of their being imaginative 
(Charteristics of Young Learners). 
About half of the surveyed teachers said they 
often used direct method while teaching 
vocabulary and over 10% of them always used it. 
It can be also seen from the figure that 
suggestopedia was not favoured by many teachers. 
Only one in three teachers often used it in their 
class. This finding also goes with what stated by 
Přibilová (2006): suggestopedia has become less 
common now in language classes. 
English vocabulary presenting techniques at 
primary schools 
Figure 2: English vocabulary presenting 
techniques at primary schools in Vietnam – 
frequency of use in percentage terms 
Figure 2 gives information about frequency of 
using vocabulary presenting techniques at primary 
schools in Vietnam in percentage terms. 
It is clear that visualizing and repeating and 
TPR (acting, miming and drawing, colouring) 
attracted more of the teachers with a massive 
90.6% and around 70% respectively. Singing, 
chanting and contextual definition were also 
preferred by over half of the population. These 








 

 
  
 	 

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150 
figures indicate that the teachers care more about 
the children as well as their characteristics in 
learning English now. 
Only a quarter of the surveyed people chose 
translation as a frequent presenting technique. 
This helps to prove what Přibilová (2006) states 
about translation technique (being not commonly 
used recently because it is proved to be 
discouraging for the learners). 
English words and word-related components 
being taught at primary schools. 
According to the responses from the 
questionnaire and information from the 
observation, it can be seen that just over half of 
them chose grammatical features of the words and 
nearly half picked words in collections in teaching 
vocabulary. To this, Cameron (2001) also presents 
that the young learners should learn words as 
collections. From the survey, it can also be found 
that the majority of the study population (from 
90% to 95%) preferred meaning, spelling and 
pronunciation of the words. Likewise, Ur (nd) 
states that the young learners need to be taught the 
form of the word (spelling and pronunciation), 
then grammar, collocations, meaning and word 
formation. Yet, he also adds that collocations are 
still not very necessary and word formation was 
too difficult to learn among young learners. This 
also goes with the findings of this study: style, 
cultural aspects of the words, word formation, 
word collocation, dictionary skills and vocabulary 
learning strategies were only selected by small 
proportions of respondents (around 10% to 30%). 
CONCLUSION 
This study deals with the subject of teaching 
vocabulary to young learners in Vietnam at the 
present time. When teaching young learners, the 
teacher has to understand their characteristics as 
both children and language learners 
In the first main part of the study, the 
researcher has presented some background 
information about the children as language 
learners and their characteristics. Also there has 
been a description of vocabulary teaching methods 
and vocabulary presenting techniques. All these 
help to contribute to the questionnaire and 
observation note form designing part. The second 
main part shows the findings of the research as 
well as discussion of the findings. It is found that 
the children have been taught not only the 
meaning and the form of the words but also 
certain grammatical features of them. Regarding 
the techniques and methods used in teaching 
vocabulary to young learners, visualizing and 
repeating, direct method, TPR and CLT are more 
preferable than others. 
The study is significant in Vietnam’s 
innovation in language teaching in general and 
vocabulary teaching in particular because it has 
proved that the teachers are now more open to the 
new approaches and techniques of teaching and 
National Language Teaching Project 2020 of 
Vietnam has worked to some extent in achieving 
its objectives of renovating English teaching and 
learning throughout the country. 
However, this study has not yet found out if the 
methods and techniques adopted by teachers at 
primary schools in Vietnam contributed to the 
effectiveness of language learning among the 
children. Therefore, there should be another 
research aiming at measuring this. 
RERFERENCES 
1. Allen, V. F. (1983). Techniques in Teaching 
Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
2. Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young 
Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Characteristics of Young Learners. (n.d.). Retrieved 
August 1, 2014, from 
3. Clarke, S. (2008). Teacher and teacher-trainer. 
Coimbra: British Council. Retrieved August 20, 2014, 
from 
settlers-primary-classroom 
4. Herber, H. & J. Nelson-Herber. (1993). Teaching in 
Content Areas with Reading, Writing, and Reasoning. 
Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 
5. Moon, J. (2005). Children Learning English – A 
Guidebook for English Language Teachers. Oxford: