INFLUENTIAL FACTORS TO STUDENT’S DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY AT NAMDINH UNIVERSITY OF NURSING

Tóm tắt

Mastering English vocabulary seems to be easy, however, it is actually more challenging than people think. This paper aims to explore the difficulties students encouter when learning vocabulary and also investigates the underlying reasons for their difficulties. The participants were 101 students in the second year at Namdinh University of Nursing. The questionnaire surveys, observation and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data for the paper. The findings showed that students faced some main problems like pronunciation, spelling, word meanings and memorization when learning new vocabulary. Besides, some factors causing difficulties in mastering vocabulary were also claimed by the students. These objective factors include the differences between the written and spoken forms in English, differences in English and Vietnamese pronunciation, an excessive number of new words in a lesson and a lack of practice during the lesson. Subjective factors consist of students’ limited time using new words, lack of knowledge of the equivalent topic in English, having difficulties in concentrating as well as absence of strategies for learning new words.