The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 1

THE IMPACT OF VOCABULARY PRE-TEACHING

The Impacts of Vocabulary Pre-teaching and Background Knowledge Pre-instructing in

Pre-listening Stage on EFL Listening Comprehension of My 20 First year Non-English
Majored Students at XXXXX
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 2

The Impacts of Vocabulary Pre-teaching and Background Knowledge Pre-

instructing in Pre-listening Stage on EFL Listening Comprehension of 20 First Year
Non-English Majored Students at Ho Chi Minh City College of Economics

Introduction
As being discussed in the literature review, we acknowledge that both of
vocabulary pre-teaching and background knowledge pre-instructing have certain effects
on learners’ listening comprehension. However, the previous research is conducted in
foreign countries with various features of the classrooms. Therefore, they could not prove
the similar effects in Vietnamese context, especially in my own classroom. For this
reason, it encourages me to do my own research in order to investigate this phenomenon
in my specific situation. This paper mainly make a plan for future action to examine these
following questions:
1. Does vocabulary pre-teaching assist learners in listening comprehension?
2. Does background knowledge pre-instructing assist learners in listening
comprehension?
3. Which one is more useful in enhancing students’ listening comprehension,
vocabulary pre-teaching or background knowledge pre-instructing?
In the follow-up parts, research method review is displayed to know how the
researchers carry out the studies. Then, I introduce a detailed plan about a
research type, data collecting methods, data analysis as well as trustworthy and
ethical issues.
Research Method Proposal
Research method review
I have consulted three studies relating to my current study; there is something in
common. All of them use large number of participants, but with wide range of ages. 120
language learners taking part in Farrokhi’s study are from 18 to 25 years old. Chang
(2007) uses 117 college students from 15 to 25 years old in his study. With a smaller
number, Kang (2009) uses 99 eight-grade students from 13 to 14 years old. The
significant similarity among three studies is the application of data collecting method,
experiment in all studies. Three researchers divide participants into three groups of
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 3

treatments. Chang (2007) bases on the length of preparatory time to split them into one-
week group, one-day group and 30-minute group. In studies of Farrokhi (2012) and Kang
(2009), vocabulary-support group, background-support group and no treatment group are
formed. In terms of data analysis, they use different tools that are SPSS 12.5 for Windows
in Chang (2007), one-way ANOVA in Farrokhi (2012) and one and two-way ANCOVA in
Kang (2009).
However, there are some strengths and weaknesses emerging from these studies’
methodologies. The first is Chang’s work that is about “the impact of vocabulary
preparation on L2 listening comprehension, confidence and strategy use” (Chang, 2007,
p.534). In term of research design, he realizes that the previous studies do not pay
attention to time factor in vocabulary preparation; therefore, it is good that he has
considered it in his study. He sets up “three different lengths of time” for vocabulary
preparation; that is one week, one day, and thirty minutes before the test (Chang, 2007,
p.534). Despite of varying lengths of time, actually he could not manage the time that his
students actually spend in studying the list of words. The group with one-week
preparation might not have more preparatory time than the one-day group. Although the
teacher let them the longest period of time, what if they just spend as much time as the
others. As a result, the finding is not at high level of worthiness. Furthermore, letting
students study the list of words by themselves is not controlled. Every student has his
own way and different effectiveness in learning the list of vocabulary. However, the
researcher is aware of these problems. They are informed that the words on list would
appear in the listening test; and the vocabulary test is organized to see how well the
students study vocabulary. In term of data collecting methods, he strengthen his study by
the application of triangulation including both quantitative methods such as experiments
and questionnaires, and qualitative method such as group interviews.
Unlike Chang’s study, Farrokhi’s one examines the impacts of two pre-task
activities across high and low levels of proficiency. It is good to see how much high and
low proficiency students benefit from them. Farrokhi (2012), however, use only one
method of collecting data. Doing an experiment provides him numeral results of the test
that the students do. It seems not successful in achieve the in-depth understanding of
students’ perspectives on the two supports. In addition, students receive the glossary of
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 4

unknown words and a written content of the topic, with no tools to check whether they
actually learn.
Kang (2009) applies quantitative method, i.e. experiments and open-ended
questionnaires to acknowledge how two pre-task supports affect the students’ listening
comprehension. Differ from the ways mentioned above, Kang do not just give
participants handouts to self-study. He uses main-scene summary sentences to provide
participants background knowledge of the topic. Then the usage of key-word flashcards
and key-word sentence practices to teach them unknown vocabulary. In my opinion, these
strategies are suitable to the young participants in the research. The content of topic and
unknown words are taught in class ensure all participants learn and arouse their interest
before the test.
Action research – type of the current research
Hinchey (2008) states action research “pursues improvement in practical
situations” (p.3). She also defines “action research is a process of systematic inquiry,
usually cyclical, conducted by those insiders a community rather than by outsider
experts” (Hinchey, 2008, p.4). Burns (2010) states action research involves taking a self-
reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts
(p.2). One of the most significant features of action research is insiders as subjects who
decide what is important to be improved and conduct this change. The insiders are the
ones who conduct daily activities. Only the teachers, not anyone else, know exactly what
is happening in their classes and with their students. Every teacher has different questions
and improvement to pursue (Hinchey, 2008, p.3). Through their observation, teachers
realize what should be improved and decide how to improve it. Then they start to make a
plan and collect data from participants. Basing on analyzed data, they change their
assignment and continue observing its effectiveness afterwards. Another characteristic
that makes action research differ from the others is cyclical. After finishing the process,
the same steps are repeated continually. Several models describing research cycle are
mentioned in Hinchey’s work. Stringer (2004) states look, think, act in action research;
Hendricks (2006) suggests reflect, act, evaluate while Schmuck (2006) points out
initiation, detection, judgment. Action research has four steps, i.e. planning, action,
observation and reflection (Burns, 2010, p.8). Planning means “identify a problem or
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 5

issue and develop a plan of action” (Burns, 2010, p.8). After considering carefully the
plan, action is a period of time when you put plan in action by using alternative
assignment (Burns, 2010, p.8). Then, you start doing an observation to check
effectiveness of the action and “documenting the context, actions and opinions of those
involved” (Burns, 2010, p.8). On the step of reflection, you reflect, describe and evaluate
the action to acknowledge its results and to understand the issue clearly. Then, you may
decide what your further research questions are and start the cycle of action research
again.
In fact, action research is just a formal type of process that teachers do every day.
For example, after a listening lesson, a teacher realizes some students seem to fail in
comprehending the spoken discourse, and then get bad results while others do not
encounter this problem. Basing on this fact, he formulates a hypothesis and tries to find
out evidence to support it by gathering information from his students. The information
can reveal him what causes this trouble and encourage him to think carefully about how
to overcome it. In follow-up lessons, he applies new strategy and continues examine
whether it is better or not. Apart from these characteristics, the goal of action research is
to improve a certain circumstance that is determined by a practitioner himself. Hinchey
(2008) states action research aims to “identify action that will generate some
improvement the researcher believes important” (p.4). According to Burns (2010), the
main aims of action research is “to identify a ‘problematic’ situation or issue” that the
participants “consider worth looking into more deeply and systematically” (p.2). Every
teacher has varied questions for their own classrooms. Only teacher is able to understand
the nature of his class. In addition, both teacher and his students will benefit from the
improvement that research work brings them. Therefore, action research can only be
conducted by the insiders, in his own classroom to change a specific issue.
The ineffectiveness of my current techniques arouses me the idea of changing the
way to teach listening skill to my students. However, I am not sure whether the new
strategies are better or not at applying to my classroom. I, therefore, do this research to
examine their effectiveness in this specific situation. Action research seems to be the
most suitable type for my purpose. In my study, I use the combination of both qualitative
and quantitative data collection techniques.
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 6

The combination of qualitative and quantitative data collecting methods

Qualitative data collection technique
According to Mutch (2005), qualitative research aims to explore “the unique lived
experiences of the participants to enhance understanding of particular phenomena” (as
cited in Le, 2009, p.29). It focuses on answering the questions ‘how’ and ‘why’.
Qualitative data are analyzed “without using numbers” (Burns, 2010, p.106). This type of
data collecting technique has a number of good points. One of the most crucial features of
qualitative methods is that researches can observe the objects and phenomena.
Observation can provide more detailed information that the written questions fail to
touch. It allows researchers attain deeper understanding of participants’ perspectives,
emotions and their interaction with each other. Another advantage of qualitative
methodologies is flexibility. Less-structured and probing questions clarify participants’
meaning and let them to use their own words in responses rather than choose fixed
answers. Besides those strengths, qualitative methodology also has some drawbacks.
First, it is impossible to analyze the data with statistic since we can not count the number
of participants with fixed answers. Second, it is difficult to interpret and reproduce the
findings. Third, a researcher is in charge of both colleting and analyzing data. Relating
too much on human can cause subjective and bias in judgment. Last but not least, time-
consuming is also a significant problem in qualitative method.
Quantitative data collection technique
One of the most useful features of quantitative research is the ease of analysis.
The whole of data is in numbers, so it is statistic, reliable and easy to generalize. In
addition, this type of research method allows us to get a great number of information in
the shortest time. It can also be less anonymous than qualitative research; therefore, it
makes participant more confident and safer. However, it also has some disadvantages
such as trustworthiness, lack of contextual information. With the high anonymity,
researchers may find it hard to clarify if participants have some confusion in wording.
More than that, since the information is only numeral, not contextual, researchers have
less chance to recording participants’ words.
Since no method is significantly better than the other; and both of qualitative and
quantitative methods have advantages and disadvantages, it is necessary to combine them
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 7

to strengthen the trustworthiness of the current study. I hope that they can supplement the
weak points of each other.
Data collecting methods
Trustworthiness
A good research always requires high trustworthiness. In order to collect
trustworthy data, researchers use triangulation which means “to collect three different
types of data relevant to the same question in order to increase the likelihood that
findings are not idiosyncratic or unreliable” (Hinchey, p.76). The strengths of
triangulation are apparent. One phenomenon proved by different sources increases
researchers’ confidence about the results. Burns (2010) states triangulation assists in
“explaining things that seem to contradict or not support each other” (p.97). If a variety
of evidence proves one issue, ambiguity will be minimized. Hinchey (2008) states “the
more evidence to support a finding, the more credible the finding” (p.96). Another benefit
of triangulation is discovering some aspects that a single method may be unable to
explore. In addition to using various data collection approaches, in preparation for
collecting data, well-designed questions should be simple, brief and open-ended to get
fullest answers. In addition, planning carefully and logic process are able to reduce
problems occurring during the research. During collecting data, interviewers and
interviewees should be comfortable. Hinchey (2008) suggests “useful interview technique
is asking probing, follow-up questions to clarify and deepen responses” (p.). During and
at the end of the interview, researchers should check whether the notes reflect correctly
what participants say. After the data collected, transcription must be done with caution. A
common saying is “something was lost in translation” (Hinchey, 2008, p.83). Therefore,
researchers should transcript accurately what the participants have said.
Experiments
A common sense is that teachers are usually interested in analyze issues and
exploring some teaching strategies in their classrooms. One of the best methods for
investigating causes and effects in these cases is an experiment. Experiment is a science
test in which researcher use variables and treatments. Participants in an experimental
research are always divided into an experiment group and a control group. A control
group receives no treatment while an experiment group receives one or some treatments.
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 8

In an educational experiment, a classroom is like a laboratory and students are the objects
examined. Students in a control group are taught as normal while ones in an experiment
group are taught with new strategies. By this way, experiment should be carefully
considered in planning to reduce risks. The crucial step of experiment is randomization
which means testing participants’ listening competence to make sure the equivalency of
groups. McGowan (2011) states “randomization of individual students is the best
procedure to ensure baseline equivalence of the comparison groups” (p.4). Obviously, it
can take an amount of time to conduct such a test and affect the progress of syllabus. In
my research, I use experiments to investigate the effects of vocabulary and background
knowledge preparation on my students’ listening comprehension and which one is more
helpful than the other.
Questionnaires
According to Burns (2010), we use questionnaires when we want to get responses
from several people but we do not have enough time to interview. Dörnyei (2003) states
there are three types of information that researcher can collect from the participants such
as “factual or demographic”, “behavioral”, and “attitudinal” (as cited in Burns, 2010,
p.81). Surveys on student’ “views on various aspects of language learning” provide us
“good sources of information” (Burns, 2010, p.54). On one hand, this type of collecting
data is very popular to most researchers since it has a number of advantages. First of all,
it is the fastest way to collect a wide range of data. We can distribute the questionnaires to
a great number of people, and then collect it after not a long time. In addition, we can
conduct it easily online that is cheaper than using paper questionnaires. Secondly, the
data is numerical leading to easy analysis. Lastly, participants may feel more confident in
case of less-identity. Participants do not need to provide their real names and other
personal information. On the other hand, it also has some restrictions. First, researcher
can not explore much feelings or emotion of participants. Second, because of the
anonymity, participants feel free not to give the truth if they mean to do so. In that case,
we can not check their honesty. Third, it is imperative to make clarity of questions and
choices so that participants do not face difficulty in understand what researcher wants to
ask. Unlike in interview, they have few opportunities to clarify questions in a survey. Last
but not least, it seems impossible to get original number of distributed questionnaires. For
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 9

some reasons, a number of participants are not willing to give the paper back to
researcher. In my study, I will use post-test questionnaires to investigate my students’
attitudes and opinions about the topic. My students and I are not allowed to spend much
time for this activity after the lesson finishes. In addition, we could not delay the survey
on the other day since it is hard to collect sufficiently and accurately what they think. In
terms of question design, a Likert-scale with numbers is used to categorize the levels of
agreements.
Semi-structured interviews
Interview has been considered as a powerful tool since it was explored. Burns
(2010) states that interview means “conducts a conversation to explore your focus area”
(p.74). It provides rich resource about the issues from participants’ opinions, feelings and
perspectives. Interviewers can also observe and record emotion, attitudes, and non-verbal
languages through talking face to face with interviewees. Therefore, “can reach the parts
which other methods cannot reach” (Wellington, 2000, as cited in Le, 2011, p.30). In
semi-structured interview, a set of questions are open-ended that allows interviewees
opportunities to add more viewpoint on the issue. Burns (2010) states this type of
interview is “structured” and “organized”, but still “open” (p.75). According to Hinchey
(2008), although interviewer asks interviewees some “predetermined questions”, he or
she also “allows interviewees time and opportunity to explore other areas they think
relevant” (p. 82). In a less structured interview, the role of interviewers is to guarantee the
conversation going in right direction, but also let interviewees express their own new
perspectives. In addition, face-to-face conversation provides chance to clarify wording
that causes confusion for interviewers or interviewees. It is imperative in case the bad-
designed questions make interviewees easily misunderstand. In other case, if
interviewees’ responses are not clear enough, interviewers can use follow-up questions in
order to reduce doubt about meaning.
Although interview is considered as a good data collecting method, it also has
some shortcomings leading to caution in using. First of all, researcher may interpret the
data basing on his or her own perception. Bias can influence the worthiness of data
analysis if researcher means to omit some information which againsts his or her
viewpoint on the issue. Second, imbalance power between researcher and participants
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 10

may influence interviewees’ responses. For instance, teachers are apparently more
powerful than students, so their power controls the situation and affects what students
say. Students may tend to say what their teachers wants to hear. Third, for the reason that
direct conversation does not remain anonymous, participants are not ready to tell the truth
especially with sensitive topic. For example, the topic is about cheating in examination,
then students may worry about their statements can harm them afterwards if they tell their
teacher his cheating in the recent exam. Last but not least, interviewing consumes a great
amount of time for interview and transcription. Therefore, the number of interviewees
and questions is always in limitation that restricts collecting wide range of data. In my
research, semi-structured interview is employed to discover effectively how other
teachers prepare for their students before listening tasks and what think about the effects
of two pre-listening tasks on their students’ listening comprehension.
Data analysis
After collecting data, researchers may be confused with a great amount of
information. Therefore, they need a tool to analyze the information. Hinchey (2008)
states “data analysis is the process of deciding what new information the collected data
provide” (p.86), while Burns (2010) states data analysis is the way of “analyzing,
synthesizing your data and making sense of the various types of information you’ve
collected”. According to Rubin and Rubin (2005), “data analysis is a process of moving
from raw interviews to evidence-based interpretations that are the foundation for
published reports” (as cited in Le, 2009, p.44).
To analyze qualitative data, thematic networks are employed. Thematic analysis is
a process of separate the information into different parts according to its themes. In order
to make analysis easier and more logical, networks are explored to illustrate types of
patterns. Thematic networks are “web-like illustrations” that organize the information
into groups basing on topics. (Attride-Stirling, 2001, p.385). This technique is a strong
tool for analyze qualitative data. It is “a robust and highly sensitive tool for the
systematization and presentation of qualitative analyses”. (Attride-Stirling, 2001, p.385).
Thematic networks aim to “seek to unearth the themes salient in a text at different levels,
and facilitate the structuring and depiction of these themes” (Attride-Stirling, 2001,
p.387). There are three levels of themes divided in the process of thematic analysis. The
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 11

smallest level is ‘basic themes’ which are the ‘most basic’ and ‘lowest-order evident’. The
group of basic evidence clusters together and form ‘organizing themes’. This ‘middle-
order themes’ are the general topic of small pieces of text. Then, the ‘global themes’ as
‘super-ordinate themes’ cover the whole text. All the patterns are represented like web-
like maps. Attride-Stirling (2001) suggests there are three main stages in the process of
analysis, i.e. breaking down the text, exploring the text and integrating the exploration
(p.391).
Category is a technique popularly used to code the data. “Categorizing is sorting
objects and information into logical groupings” (Burns, 2010, p.106). The way to build
categories is “scan the data” for several times, and choose particular features in common
that “emerge from the data” (Burns, 2010, p.107). In order to categorize data, we can use
two ways of coding, i.e. inductive coding and deductive coding. In inductive coding, the
data gives us categories that means some information has something in common coming
together to form one category. On contrast, deductive coding means “develop categories
from the literature”, then “look for instances in the data to match those pre-arranged
categories” (Burns, 2010, p.107). There are a number of coding techniques which base on
researchers’ interests. We can use different colors, numbers, folders etc. to classify data
into groups.
SPSS 16.0 for Windows is applied to support quantitative data analysis. SPSS
stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. I use this software to arrange and
analyze the data to increase confidence and trustworthiness for my study.
Procedures
Twenty non-English major freshmen at Ho Chi Minh city College of Economics
(HCE) will take part in my research. Before doing an experiment, they must take a
TOEIC test to assist students split into equivalent groups that are one control group and
two experimental groups. The control group (Group A) will be taught as normal, with no
treatment. The others are one vocabulary pre-teaching group (Group B) and one
background knowledge pre-instructing group (Group C). On the other day, before taking
the listening test, the teacher will teach them the meanings, pronunciation, and the use of
unknown words existing in the listening passages, and provide them background
knowledge of their content. After the pre-stage, students will do a listening
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 12

comprehension test. As soon as the test completed, they are asked to give responses to the
questionnaires. These papers will be collected after 15 minutes. Depending on the
schedules, I will make an arrangement to have semi-structured interviews with my five
colleagues who are experienced English teachers at HCE. The interviews will be taken
place in quiet and comfortable settings within half of hour.
Ethics
My research is about the impacts of two pre-listening tasks on EFL students’
listening comprehension. As data collecting methodologies, experiment, observation and
semi-structured interview are conducted to gather worthy information from my students.
Therefore, the thinking about ethical issues of harm, confidentiality and informed consent
are undertaken carefully.
The first issue is protecting participants from harm that includes both potentially
mental and physical harm. Both control group and experimental groups can be harmed
since the control group does not receive any knowledge before the listening task; while
the experimental groups receive some treatments, but without ensuring their effectiveness
because they are still under examination. The control group, which receives no treatment,
will also benefit from the effectiveness of the program afterwards. In addition, to ensure
equality, I will never use marks of participants in both control and experimental groups as
their real results. In interviewing, a lengthy interview can cause participants physical and
mental fatigue. Answering teacher’s questions can make them feel anxious and
embarrassed. Fortunately, my research topic is not so sensitive that it causes any pain. In
order to minimize harm, I will discuss all potential harm to my participants and let them
withdraw freely whenever they want. It is also essential to reduce as many risks as
possible and increase more benefits for students initially. I will conduct the interviews
sufficiently and shortly with positive attitude to avoid make the students tired and tense.
Another ethical issue is confidentiality, meaning to keep personal information in
secret. Human right of privacy should be highly respected in order to avoid any harm to
participants. Their identities and responses are not be publicized unless researchers have
permission from participants or their gatekeepers. Confidentiality is imperative especially
in sensitive topics; in those cases, participants may be harmed both mentally and
physically. To guarantee the participants’ confidentiality, I will not tell anyone who
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 13

participates in my research. Moreover, I will de-identify my participants by applying

pseudonyms or labels, meaning that I will change their names instead of using real ones.
The name of teacher his class will also not mentioned.
The last issue, informed consent, is also the most important ethical requirement.
“A consent form lays out what will be involved in the research, and the rights and
responsibilities each side has” (Hammersley & Traianou, 2012, p.7). Informed consent
also means assuring your participants about their rights (Burns, 2010, p.35). Participants
should fully understand the nature of the research, their rights and responsibilities in the
research, then sign in the informed consents without obligation. Researchers must state
clearly in consent forms purposes of the research, its procedures, potential benefits and
risks, confidentiality, participants’ roles in research and the right to withdraw. Be sure that
participants are voluntary to join in the research. It may be sensitive that students accept
to take part in the research because they are afraid that their refusing will displease their
teacher. Therefore, let them know about their rights to withdraw and voluntary to take
part. All participants should consent through informed consents before the data collecting
process starts. If participants are under 18 years old, researchers need to get their
gatekeepers’ permission. Young children do not fully understand what may be risky and
beneficial for them. Therefore, researchers have to “seek written permission from their
parents or others responsible for their welfare” (Burns, 2010, p.36). In my research, I will
use the format of informed consent suggested on page 49 in (Burns, 2010) (see Appendix
3).
Conclusion
I have made a plan as a guide for my next steps in action research. I combine
both qualitative and quantitative data collecting methodologies together to strengthen the
validity. By this way, a triangulation with three methods such as class-experiments,
questionnaires with 20 students and semi-structured interviews with 5 teachers are
employed. To analyze the qualitative data, I used thematic networks while SPSS 16.0
supports the analysis for quantitative data. In terms of materials, I will conduct a pretest
with TOEIC format and a listening comprehension test. In addition, some ethical issues
have also been carefully considered to avoid harms for my participants. After doing this
research, I may know whether these activities are good for assisting my students’
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 14

listening comprehension, which one is better and what other things I could explore to
enhance their listening competence. That is the most important things encouraging me to
continue doing the action research.
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 15

References

Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic networks: An analysis tool for qualitative research.

Qualitative Research, 1(3), 385-405.

Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for
practitioners. New York.

Chang, A. (2007). The impact of vocabulary preparation on L2 listening comprehension,

confidence and strategy use. System. 35, 534 – 550.

Farrokhi, F. (2012). The effects of two pre-task activities on improvement of Iranian EFL
learners’ listening comprehension. Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 2 (1), 144 –
150.

Hammersley, M. and Traianou, A. (2012). Ethics and Educational Research, British

Educational Research Association on-line resource.

Hinchey, P. H (2008) Action research. Peter Lang Primer. New York.

Kang, L. (2009). The effects of two enhanced pre-listening supports on Taiwanese junior
high school student’ listening comprehension: Background knowledge pre-instruction
versus vocabulary pre-teaching. National Taiwan Normal University.

McGowan, H. M. (2011). Planning a comparative experiment in educational settings.

Journal of Statistics Education. 19 (2).
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 16

Appendix 1
Research project informed consent
Topic: The impacts of vocabulary pre-teaching and background knowledge pre-
instructing in pre-listening stage on EFL listening comprehension.
XXXX is conducting research on above topic.

The aim of the research is to explore the effects of the preparation of vocabulary and
background knowledge on listening comprehension.
If you agree to participate in this study, you will be asked to join in an experiment and
give responses to the questionnaires.
Your participation in this research is voluntary and you can withdraw at any time. You do
not have to give a reason for withdrawing from the research and there will be no negative
consequences if you decide to withdraw. Before the final report for the project is
prepared, I will send you a summary of what I have written about the survey and will ask
you to comment on any descriptions or interpretations that you believe are inaccurate or
mistaken.
When I report on the research, I will ensure that you are not identified. No reference for
personal names will be used. I am the only person who will have access to the data
collected for the project. Any data I use in reports or publications will be for illustration
only.

Participant consent
The participant has been given a signed copy of this form to keep.

I agree to participate in this research.

Signed: ____________________ Date: ______________

Name of the researcher: _______________________________ Date: ________________

 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 17

Appendix 2
Questionnaires

Name: ________________________
Please circle the numbers from 1 to 5 to express how much you agree with the following
statements.
Notes: 1 = strongly agree; 2 = agree; 3 = neutral; 4 = disagree; 5 = strongly disagree

1. I have listened to this listening passage before.

1 2 3 4 5
2. I have been familiar with this topic before doing
the test. 1 2 3 4 5
3. I have known the vocabulary before doing the
test. 1 2 3 4 5
4. I like the pre-listening activity. 1 2 3 4 5
5. I think it very helpful for my listening
comprehension. 1 2 3 4 5
6. It makes me feel more confident to the test. 1 2 3 4 5
7. I can predict the topic through vocabulary. 1 2 3 4 5
8. I know some vocabulary through discussion 1 2 3 4 5
about the topic.
9. I tried to hear every word. 1 2 3 4 5
10. I tried to understand the general meaning. 1 2 3 4 5

Thank you!!!
 The Impact of Vocabulary Pre-teaching 18

Appendix 3
Interviews

Here are the guided questions, the follow-up questions can be added to probe
more information.
1. Do you think listening skill is difficult to your students? Why?
2. Is it necessary to prepare some knowledge before listening comprehension?
3. In your listening class, what do you usually do to prepare for your students’
listening comprehension?
4. How do they support your students?
5. What do your students react in these activities?
6. Have you ever taught unknown vocabulary for your students in pre-listening
stage?
7. How do you conduct this activity?
8. What effects does it have?
9. Have you ever introduced the topic of listening passage to your students in
pre-listening stage?
10. How do you conduct this activity?
11. What effects does it have?
12. In your opinion, what is more effective in preparing for your students before
listening, vocabulary pre-teaching or background knowledge pre-instructing?
Why?