Abstract—This study aims at investigating the difficulties that face EFL Sudanese learners in the performance of vocabulary and comprehension. The study also aims at checking EFL learners’ grammar and writing. To fulfill the aims of the study, the researcher has designed a written test to check the situation of secondary school learners in vocabulary and comprehension to see to what extent they are able to perform the English language. Twenty of EFL students of secondary school were participated in this study as they have taken the test. Then the data were analyzed statistically. The results indicate that: (50%) of the students are weak in English language comprehension. (55%) of the students use incorrect English vocabulary items in written communication and only (55%) of students able to write correct grammar in writing composition.
Keywords— Importance of vocabulary, vocabulary master, academic level
1.Introduction
Communication in English Language requires an integration of many skills and one of which is vocabulary build-up. As such, vocabulary is an essential component of language, and one’s vocabulary repertoire can have a
direct link with the success of
communication(Nation:2000).Moreover, vocabulary is the knowledge of the meanings of the words. That is to say, words come in at least two forms: oral (words whose meanings we know when we read or speak orally) and print (word meanings known when we read or write silently). Knowledge of words also incorporates two forms: receptive, that we can understand or recognize, and productive, that we can write or speak.
2.Theoretical Background:
Vocabulary knowledge is of great significance for language proficiency as it pervades all language skills. According to (Coxhead: 2011),vocabulary knowledge consists of number of dimensions such as receptive and productive (Nation: 2001). Vocabulary knowledge is conceptualized not only as the numbers of words learners know i.e. vocabulary size, but also how well these words are mastered i.e. depth of vocabulary) and used i.e. productive vocabulary(Schmitt et al: 2010). Along with this enhanced understanding, the concepts of lexical competence and performance in second language have been prominent to describe this multi-dimensional nature of vocabulary knowledge (Webb: 2005). Through these umbrella concepts,vocabulary knowledge has been described from global perspective, examining different dimensions. Yet, the focus has been mostly on general vocabulary, particularly high frequent vocabulary that are more common in discourse with 2000th frequency band (Zareva: 2005).
In fact, for the higher education students, advanced students, academic vocabulary is critical for academic achievement as well as understanding the academic discourse at schools (Coxhead: 2001) but there is a paucity in the studies describing second language learners’, especially English as a Foreign language learners’, academic lexical competence and performance. These few studies have investigated the academic vocabulary from a limited perspective, focusing on only one or two dimensions.
According to (Zhou: 2010), it is essential to handle the academic lexical competence and performance combining all main dimensions, namely receptive (size; how many words), and productive (use) dimensions to reveal the academic vocabulary development of students at higher education in detail.
3.Academic Lexical Competence- Academic word list (AWL):
Academic vocabulary is defined as common across academic disciplines,(Coxhead: 2000:84).Referring the crucial role of academic vocabulary knowledge, variety of vocabulary lists have been compiled from corpora, or collections, of academic texts to identify the most valuable words in academic contexts. University Academic Word List (Coxhead: 2000) has been used as the most recent compilation in literature. The AWL contains 570wordsfamilies, beyond the first 2000 words of English in General Service List (GSL) described by
Investigating Difficulties that Face EFL Sudanese Learners in the
Performance of Vocabulary
(West: 1953). This list is accepted as contributory and even authoritative in academic vocabulary research. It has been agreed that academic vocabulary, specifically the ones from the AWL, has key role on the academic achievement for L2 students at the tertiary level. The students who could use academic vocabulary effectively, achieved good academic performance. Thus, to determine academic lexical competence and performance could be a valuable step forward to evaluate teaching and learning processes.
These words are important due to the role they play in defining, delineating, advancing and assessing abstract entities such as theories, arguments and hypotheses. However, academic vocabulary is widely considered to cause difficulties for ESL and EFL learners. Thefeatures of academic vocabulary, such as abstractness, polysemy (i.e. one form can have several meanings), and homonymy, (i.e. one meaning can be represented by different forms. (Nation: 2001) can cause troubles for L2 learners to learn and use the academic vocabulary. Especially, abstractness and polysemic nature of academic vocabulary can be problems. Specifically, regarding abstractness, the problem occurs when the meanings of new academic words do not match with the ones in L1, for which semantic representations have already developed. Additionally, the learners can have difficult to learn and use the academic words due to polysemy and homonymy. In spite of all these probable difficulties, learners attempt to build a repertoire of specialized academic words in addition to their existing basic or general service vocabulary for their academic achievement.
4.Vocabulary Mastery:
In order to understand the language, vocabulary is crucial to be mastered by the learner. Vocabulary mastery is needed to express ideas and to be able to understand other people's sayings.(Hornby: 1995)defines mastery as complete knowledge or complete skill. From that definition, mastery means complete knowledge or great skill that makes someone a master in a certain subject. The specificity of any individual’s vocabulary knowledge depends on the person and his motivation, desires, and need for the words (Hatch & Brown: 1995).
Vocabulary mastery refers to the great skill in processing words of a language. It is an individual achievement and possession (Rivers: 1989) For that reason, the biggest responsibility in increasing the knowledge is in the individual himself. The success in widening the vocabulary mastery requires their own motivation and interest on the words of a language. From the definition above, we can conclude that vocabulary mastery is an individual’s great skill in using words of a language, which is acquired based on their own interests needs and motivation. vocabulary mastery plays an important role in the four language skills and it has to be considered that vocabulary mastery is one of the needed components of language.
5.The importance of learning vocabulary:
Vocabulary, as one of the knowledge areas in language, plays a great role for learners in acquiring a language (Cameron: 2001) Vocabulary knowledge is often viewed as a critical tool for second language learners because a limited vocabulary in a second language impedes successful communication. (Schmitt: 2000:55)
emphasizes that “lexical knowledge is central to communicative competence and to the acquisition of a second language”. (Nation: 2001) further describes the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and language use as complementary: knowledge of vocabulary enables language use and, conversely, language use leads to an increase in vocabulary knowledge. The importance of vocabulary is demonstrated daily in and out the school. In classroom, the achieving students possess the most sufficient vocabulary.
(Marion: 2008) claims that the acquisition of vocabulary is essential for successful second language use and plays an important role in the formation of complete spoken and written texts. In English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) learning vocabulary items plays a vital role in all language skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (Nation: 2011), furthermore, argues that the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary is essential for successful second language use because without an extensive vocabulary, learners will be unable to use the structures and functions for comprehensible communication.
6.Teaching vocabulary:
Recent research indicates that teaching vocabulary may be problematic because many teachers are not confident about the best practice in vocabulary teaching and at times do not know where to begin to form an instructional emphasis on word learning (Berne&Blachowicz: 2008). Teaching words is a crucial aspect in learning a language as languages are based on words (Thornbury: 2002). It is almost impossible to learn a language without words; even communication between human beings is based on words. Both teachers and students agree that acquisition of the vocabulary is a central factor in teaching a language (Walters: 2004). Teaching vocabulary is one of the most discussed parts of teaching English as a foreign language. When the teaching and learning process takes place, problems would appear to the teachers.
argue that vocabulary is one of the most important-if not the most important- components in learning a foreign language, and foreign language curricula must reflect this. (Wilkins: 1972) states that: ‘‘There is not much value in being able to produce grammatical sentences if one has not got the vocabulary that is needed to convey what one wishes to say. While without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. On the other hand, vocabulary has been acknowledged as L2 learners’ greatest single source of problems (Meara: 1980). This remark may possibly reflect that the openendof a vocabulary system is perceived to be a cause of difficulty by learners. Another possible reason is that, unlike syntax and phonology, vocabulary does not have rules the learners may follow to acquire and develop their knowledge. In other words, it is not clear in L2 vocabulary learning what rules apply or which vocabulary items should be learned first. (Oxford: 1990)also claims that vocabulary is “by far the most sizeable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether a foreign or one’s mother tongue, because of tens of thousands of different meanings.
Despite these difficulties that language learners face in L2 vocabulary, they still have to deal with it in their examinations as ‘‘vocabulary has traditionally been one of the language components measured in language tests’’ (Schmitt: 1999: 189). Furthermore, many learners see second language acquisition (SLA) as essentially a matter of learning vocabulary and therefore they spend a great deal of time on memorizing lists of L2 words and rely on their bilingual dictionary as a basic communicative resource. As a result, language teachers and applied linguists now generally recognize the importance of vocabulary learning and are exploring ways of promoting it more effectively.
(Carter: 1998: 184) thinks that vocabulary was neglected in second language researches, as a result of syntax and phonology domination in this field. Moreover, vocabulary presentation seems to be difficult task for syllabus designers because of its infinite nature. But now vocabulary is in the top of second language research. (Jordensetal: 1996) believe that vocabulary is more important than grammar because people generally use vocabulary and reduce grammar particularly when getting a message across quickly and precisely and is of the utmost importance; like telegrams, panic situations or times when emotions are very high. Moreover, the number of ungrammatical sentences people speak and write is enormous, unless they need to convey complex messages precisely. It is clear that vocabulary has been recognized as a key area of language knowledge. However, the foreign language learner needs for lexical elements in early stage as well as in later stage of the learning process, is often far greater than the need for grammatical rules this why travelers take dictionaries not grammar books when going abroad. Vocabulary is central to English language teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understand or express their own ideas (Wilkins: 1972: 111) states: While without grammar very little can be conveyed without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”.
(Call: 1987) cited in (Jordens: 1996: 258) points out that we can give a clear image without using certain grammatical categories for example: storm fall tree dead,
this explain why text comprehension is determined to a large extent by vocabulary acquisition, A considerable amount of research has been devoted to second language classrooms in order to ascertain where the type of instruction has an effect on second language development and achievement. As (Ellis: 2012: 17) points out that this kind of research aims at the clarification of theoretical issues but above all aims at the improvement of language teaching by means of developing teachers' awareness of the nature of the input that learners are exposed to. In order to become proficient in a foreign language therefore, a learner has to learn thousands of words before taking care of grammar, and language teachers should spend considerable time on teaching vocabulary in their classroom, and examining the relationship between vocabulary teaching an
d vocabulary learning.
6.Understanding the Meaning of the Word:
It seems to be clear for the learner for the first time but it involves different ideas and points of view. (Finegan: 1994). Others stated that knowledge of a word exists on various levels. The answer to this question is not as easy as it seems. (Medani: 1994: 39) states that:
“knowing a word is knowing the lexical information or aspects that is related to it, and involves questions of whether the information about a particular
lexical item, is
available(easyaccessible)for both comprehension and production or whether it is only available for comprehension”.
A. Frequency:
“Frequency of a word in a language means the number of a linguistic item occurrence in a written or spoken form (Richards et al: 2001).
Frequency is not a simple matter as it looks, nor is it likely that any syllabus or course book would want slavishly to stick to what frequency lists tell.
Frequency is to know the degree of probability of encountering the word in speech or in print. It is noticeable that frequency also differs in speech and in writing. For an example“of course” or “actually” will occur very frequency in speech rather than in print form. The word “former” or “latter” may only occur in the written language (Taylor: 1990).
In teaching lexis of a language teachers should take into consideration that the most frequent words in any language will be the most useful ones for learners of that language. According to (McCarthy: 1990) it’s better to start with, the most frequent item in order to give the learner a basic set of tools for communication. Frequency of a word is therefore an important piece of information about the word in question although. (Taylor: 1990: 18) states:
acquired it easily of its high frequency”.
According to (Taylor: 1990), some text book writers have recognized the need to teach common classroom vocabulary which, though not particularly frequent in the language as a whole, is very prominent in an educational text. For an example the items chalk, desk and blackboard. It is known that frequent words are the very ones that native speakers of English never pause to consider. For an example the word (of) and the word (to). (Richard et al: 2001: 112) provides “the most frequent twenty words in English are, the, of, and, to, a, in, that, is, was, he, for, it, with, as, his, on, be, at, by, I”.
B.Register:
Register is also one of the most important information aspects that should be known by learners. (McCarthy: 1990), “So learning vocabulary choice is significantly governed by who is saying what, to whom, when and why. It is this relationship between the content of message its sender and receiver, of its situation and purpose, and how it is communicated which is often called register. There are three main components of situation of a word;they are the field, which presents the subject matter and the goal of the message, tenor or the relationship between the receiver and the sender and finally the mode or the tool or the channel of communication. According to (Taylor: 1990: 2), register is the knowledge of the limitation imposed on variations of function and situation.
C. Collocation:
Collocation is also another aspect that should be known about a new item, which is intended to be taught. (Taylor: 1990) argues that collocation means knowing the syntactic behavior associated with the word and also knowing the network of association between that word and other words in the language. It shows the relationship between words. (McCarthy: 1990) thinks that the relationship of collocation is fundamental in the study of vocabulary, it is a marriage contract between words, and some words are more firmly married to each other than others. For an example the relationship between “blond” and hair but not (blue) and hair although both (blond) and (blue) are names of colors. We can say “she has blond hair” but we cannot say “she has blue hair”. According to (Nation: 1990) learning a word involves learning its derived and inflected forms for example act, action, active, activate, activation, actively, actor and actress.
Morphology:
It is important to know the morphology of a new item. It is to know the underlying form of a word and the derivations that can be made from it. Teachers should aim at the relationships between parts of speech having a common root or stem. Knowing the patterns of a word will ease and facilitate understanding.
Denotation and Connotation:
Denotation is the basic or core meaning. Knowing firstly what the word means or “denotes” is semantics (Taylor: 1990: 2). It is relatively easy to teach a real object in the classroom by bringing it to the learners. For more abstract concepts, synonyms, oppositions, paraphrases or definition may be useful. (Taylor: 1990: 2) says:
“semantic knowledge involves knowing secondly what the word connotes.” Connotation is the additional meaning of a word.
It can be summarized that knowing a word requires having certain kinds of information, as what sounds a word contains and their sequencing then the meaning of the word both connotative and denotative meanings, what category or part of speech the word belongs to and how to use it in a sentence. Finally, how related words, including plurals and past tenses are formed. (Finegan: 1994) claims that knowing even simplest word requires that phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information be stored in the lexicon as a part of that words mental representation.
7. Vocabulary Learning in Sudanese Contexts:
Despite this importance, vocabulary is the most neglected aspect in teaching English in the Sudan. However, in Sudanese Universities and secondary schools’ Curriculum where English Language is designed as a foreign language, vocabulary knowledge could affect their English Language performance and teachers know that many problems face students involve word recognition and lexical access because of vocabulary lack. None of the teacher training courses includes a lexical component. Since the publication of the Junior Grammar book, by (Bright: 1945), The teaching profession in the Sudan has concentrated on syntax. (Bright: 1945) said in his introduction to the book that he based his choice of the components of the book on the common reported errors through the years by the teachers of English in the Sudan. English has become an international language and very important and compulsory subjects at schools. As a result, teaching English has become a compulsory subject at schools for many years.(Homidan: 1984) stated that Arab students encounter problems in the pronunciation of sounds which the students are not familiar with e.g., /v/, /p/, /ŋ/. Secondary school students face difficulties while learning vocabulary especially when they are alone, (Al Daw: 2010).(Nation: 2009) argues that, when some teachers and students complain about difficulties in speaking, they are often talking about pronunciation. Pronunciation also plays a very important role in learning a language, as(Derwing& Munro: 2005) claimed that, having good pronunciation of the language can help in normal communication, particularly intelligibility.
In the light of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), students are required not only to have good knowledge of vocabulary and eligible grammar, the four language skills, but also correct pronunciation. Accurate pronunciation is must be achieved in learning English process. Therefore, learning English pronunciation is of great importance to students, even for their exams or in general language communication. In addition, this will help them to have a good job in their future and enable them to communicate with foreigners successfully if they have a chance and the need. Despite realizing this importance, Sudanese students still cannot acquire correct English pronunciation. The main reason is that the traditional teaching laid the emphasis on grammar, which led to this problem and the teachers themselves participate in this problem.
problem that students meet when they learn English. This is happening at the most of Sudanese higher secondary school. Moreover, at University level many students who learn English as a foreign language face a problem of understanding and using correct and appropriate words when involved in communication activities. Specifically, they do not speak or write smoothly and spontaneously and in some instances, the situation become very frustrating for them when they discover that they do not have the required word or lexical phrase to convey what they want to say. Additionally, the students' performance in tests and examinations show that they have a problem in understanding and using the vocabulary of English in responding to questions because knowledge of words formation needs to use certain processes and techniques, they find it difficult to form derivatives from words' stem,(Lzubier: 2016).
The need to master English as a second language (ESL) is crucial for Sudan as it opens to the outside world. However, Sudanese students’ proficiency in English is still below expectation and is a cause of concern (Ministry of Education (MOE): 2012). Studies report that the majority of the Sudanese ESL learners might not be competent in communicating, specifically when writing (Alwasilah: 2006). Unfortunately, even graduates from Sudanese universities face difficulties in communicating in English (Yong: 2012).
Sudanese schools provide little opportunity for students to experience authentic ESL learning experiences (Alhaj: 2005).(Makki: 2005) attributes the lack of attention to ESL skills by both the teachers and the learners in the Sudanese context to the traditional methods of teaching
EFL.Hence, students lack of confidence in
communicating in English in situations outside school. In addition, most Sudanese students are given exposure to a model of writing by the teacher, which may be taken from the textbook, and are then asked to model exactly to produce a writing composition as the final product (Baffoka: 2012). The poor performance of students in writing ESL might be attributed to the deficiencies in the current Sudanese Integrated Curriculum for ESL (Saeed: 2012). The resource for implementing the English language curriculum in schools is a series of six textbooks known as the Sudan Practical Integrated National English (SPINE), which was developed by the MOE with the support of the British Council Khartoum (Arora: 2003). These textbooks are used for teaching English at both the basic and secondary levels. Traditionally, vocabulary has not been a particular subject for students to learn, but has been taught within lessons of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. During the lesson, students use their own vocabulary and are introduced to new words provided by the teacher and classmates which they apply to classroom activities. For many EFL learners, vocabulary learning means learning a list of new words withmeanings in their native language without any real context practice. In most of the EFL learning context, learners, thus, often have to deal with unfamiliar vocabulary during their language acquisition. During such encounter with new word, EFL learners look up the meaning of the word in a bilingual dictionary. Most of the time they write down lines of new words without any idea of the real use of them in context. However, there has been some contradictions on the suitability of these textbooks as some studies have
identified the curriculum used as a reason for the low ESL writing proficiency among Sudanese students, (Nur: 2012). Hence, other learning resources may be required to improve writing.
This Study:
The researcher in this paper aims at testing EFL students' performance in English language vocabulary through a written test to see to what extent they are able to comprehend the language. The test includes four areas of assessment which are: comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and writing.
Material and Method:
The participants of this study were twenty EFL students
at secondary schools in Hasaheisa
Locality,GeziraState,Sudan, they were chosen as a sample to take the test. They are given a text for reading comprehension and answering short questions. They are also given a written paragraph with empty spaces to write a suitable vocabulary and correct grammar or phrasal verbs that fit the context. The researcher used statistical analysis to know the variation of the statistical function between the samples. The following are results:
The Comprehension:
Table and diagram (4.21) EFL learners’ Comprehension
Options Frequency Percent
Comprehend the text and answer the
questions 10 50.0
To some extent 2 10.0
Fail to comprehend the text 8
40.0
Total 20 100.0
Table and diagram (4.22) EFL learners’ vocabulary
Options Frequency Percent
Usecorrect vocabulary 9 45.0
To some extent 4 20.0
Fail to use correct vocabulary 7 35.0
According to the statistical analysis of table (4.22), only (45%) of the sample use the correct English vocabulary items in written communication. The result shows that, (20) of the sample have few vocabulary items to use in their composition, while (35%) of the sample failed to write the suitable vocabulary.
Grammar:
Table and diagram (4.23) Writing correct grammar
Options Frequency Percent
Use correct
grammar 11 55.0
To some extent 4 20.0
Fail to use correct
grammar 5 25.0
Total 20 100.0
According to the statistical analysis of table (1.4), a gain most of the sample find difficulty in writing sequenced ideas. The analysis shows that, (6) students (30 %) of the sample miss some letters in their writing items. They commit spelling errors when they write. Only half (40%)of the sample written as a coherent text while (30%) of the sample fail in to write correct piece of writing.
Conclusion:
EFL learners need to interact in English language. This process requires the integration of many language skills. Vocabulary knowledge is an important skill that required in EFL classroom communication. This study aims at
investigating the difficulties that face EFL Sudanese learners in the performance of vocabulary and comprehension. A written test was designed by the researchers to measurestudents' abilities in vocabulary and comprehension of the English language. The participants of this study were twenty EFL students at
secondary schools in Hasaheisa
Locality,GeziraState,Sudan. The results lead to the fact that EFL learners need to improve vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. They also need to improve understanding of writing with correct grammatical structures.
Authors Bibliography
Abdallah Jalal Yaseen1
Doing his PHD in Applied Linguistics and ELT from Jezera University. He has been teaching at Taif, Saudi Arabia. He teaches courses in language and linguistics. His research interest lies in ELT and comparative linguistics.
Elhaj Ali Adam Ismael2
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Dept. of Foreign Languages, College of Arts, Taif University. He has published more than 40 researches in international journals and conferences.
Naji Mohammed Khalifa3
Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Dept. of Foreign Languages, College of Arts Gezera University, Sudan. He has published researches in international journals and conferences.
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