Investigating EFL Students' Attitudes toward English Vocabulary Mastery in Learning Speaking

Abstract

The process of learning English holds significant meaning for Vietnamese students, and students from other countries in general. Starting from the very basic step of vocabulary acquisition, it serves as a foundational stage for developing English language skills. During the vocabulary learning process, speaking abilities are concurrently developed Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (2013). Developing communication competence for English learners has received a lot of effort from stakeholders such as teachers, students, educators, researchers, and policy makers. Learners frequently do not care about the strategies they use to improve their vocabulary mastery. On the other hand, having a strategy is important for learning and improving both vocabulary and the ability to speak English effectively. Therefore, the objective of this research is to find out students' interest in learning English and the strategies or methods that the students adopt to improve their vocabulary ability mastery. A survey method was used in this research. A questionnaire was used based on learner's strategies in their vocabulary mastery that is designed by Marita Safitri (2018). It consisted of 21 items. The present study aims to investigate EFL students' perceptions of vocabulary learning to achieve English speaking ability. Seventy students volunteered to participate in the study. The study used questionnaires as a data collection tool. The results show that EFL students agree that smarter vocabulary contributes to increasing their English speaking ability. In addition, the research results identify teaching methods or strategies that EFL students believe are effective in improving vocabulary certainty in speaking skills to inform teaching practice.