STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF FRENCH VOCABULARY AND THE EFFECTS ON THEIR CHOICE OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY COMPONENTS

53 International Language and Education Conference 2021 (iLEC’21) e-PROCEEDINGS

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF FRENCH VOCABULARY AND THE EFFECTS ON THEIR CHOICE OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY COMPONENTS

1Ajhar Ahmad.

French Collaboration Program, Universiti Kuala Lumpur ajhar@unikl.edu.my

2 Wan Iman Wan Salim.

English Unit, Universiti Kuala Lumpur waniman@unikl.edu.my

3 Shobehah Abdul Karim.

French Collaboration Program, Universiti Kuala Lumpur shobehah@unikl.edu.my

4 Akma Azlin Mohd Zain.

English Unit, Universiti Kuala Lumpur akmaazlin@unikl.edu.my

5 Faizahani Ab Rahman.

School of Education, Universiti Utara Malaysia faizahani@uum.edu.my

INTRODUCTION

The new era of technology and the industrialization of 4.0 insist many citizens in the world master at least one foreign language. The emerge of an interconnected and independent world urge more and more people to compete and succeed in the universal life by proficiency in a foreign language.

This regard is an opportunity for people to make a connection with others all around the world.

Considering of this situation, the higher institutions in all over the world has offered foreign languages subject to provide their students with competency skills in foreign languages and to prepare them to deal with the fast-changing world of globalization (Palaleo & Srikrajang, 2018).

However, learning a foreign language at university is not an easy task especially when students are far away from a contact linguistic of the target language or that language is not widely used in their country. This also applies to Malaysian students who take French language subjects in Malaysian universities. Many of the students face problems to proficient French whether due to that language itself or they have a negative self-concept towards French learning, a part of that, some of the students have lack of knowledge about French and did not have an opportunity to use the language regularly (Asbullah, 2016). The model adopted for this study was based on two main models; i.

Second Language Acquisition Model of Ellis (1994) and ii. classification model of Metacognitive Learning Strategies O'Malley and Chamot (1990). This is one of the interesting models that include learning strategy as a mediator between individual differences and situational & social factors and learning outcome. For the second part of the research framework, the metacognitive strategy taxonomy from O'Malley and Chamot (1990) was applied in this study. This framework is used to design the experimental study to generate learners' vocabulary learning during the interventions. A total of 45 students, age 19 to 21-year-old participated in this study, 24 students were in the control group and 21 students in the experimental group.

RESULTS

The findings from a qualitative analysis from questionnaire part one (before intervention) part two (after intervention) and interview (after intervention), followed by the findings from a quantitative analysis from the "Five Likert-scale questionnaires" (after intervention) The results obtained from

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this open format questionnaire on learners' vocabulary learning showed that almost all of the students (93%) agreed that vocabulary is important in learning a foreign language. The results also showed that students (42%) were not sure on how they should learn the vocabulary and when they were supposed to concentrate or learn vocabulary. From the "Affective States" factors, students' attitudes also influenced students' vocabulary learning, apart from their emotions such as anxiety, joy, and fear which accounted for difficulties in learning a vocabulary. Students claimed that they have no confidence to use the language and they were afraid to commit a mistake, which at the same time was caused by the oversight of the vocabulary. Therefore, learners' affective states such as emotion, joy, anxiety, and fears should be taken into consideration in learning vocabulary since it makes learning more meaningful. For the situational and social factors, the results from this

questionnaire showed 81% of the students believed that French is a difficult language and it was hard to learn, sometimes making them confused. Indeed, the French language is a new language, difficult to learn, and needs tremendous effort to master all the skill needed, including vocabulary. In the "Ethnic and Culture" factors, from the findings, it could be concluded that most of the students were interdependent students. They claimed that they were depending on the teachers and others in learning vocabulary. Some of them also depended on teachers to provide the meanings and also to inform which words that they should learn. Apart from a lack of knowledge of learning

vocabulary, the students were also too dependent on teachers, especially in learning vocabulary.

The majority of the students agreed that the French vocabulary is tough and challenging to learn.

Despite that, their perception, attitude, and belief about the language learning likewise, a target language itself will conduct to unsuccessfully learning condition which additionally hinders their vocabulary development. After the interventions, the findings showed about 81% of the students claimed they like they used the strategies used during the interventions.The questions for the interview were constructed based on the components inside the metacognitive learning strategies such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The responses for planning strategy showed that students are conscious of the use of planning strategies in learning vocabulary compared before the intervention. Students were also paying more attention to the vocabulary. For the monitoring strategies, the students' answers show that they have changed their way of learning to be more strategic by monitoring their learning. After studying vocabulary, certain students claimed that they tried to retain the words. In the evaluation strategies, the students claimed that they started to evaluate their learning even they realize their mistakes in their previous vocabulary learning. The findings of the questionnaire using descriptive statistics enable the researcher to make inferences and generalizations to this population regarding their learning French as a foreign language. In an overall finding, the higher mean came from question C5 (Evaluation - I often evaluate my

vocabulary learning and try to find out how to improve it) which is 4.29 and SD is 0.644 and the lowest score is from question B6 (Monitoring - I frequently discuss the learning experience (words learning) with the teacher) which mean is 3.43 and the SD is1.248 and for the whole finding, all scores were interpreted as below. In the Planning Strategies, the highest mean came from question A1- I think that vocabulary is important in learning a foreign language, where the mean is 4.19 and SD is 0.873, showing that almost all of the students unanimously agreed that vocabulary is

important in learning a foreign language in which the percentage is 95.2%

(42.86%+38.10%+14.29%). However, the lowest mean for the Planning Strategies recorded was from question A3 - I will spend some time memorizing vocabulary every day, where the mean is 3.52 and SD is 1.078 and the percentage is 76%. It showed that not all of the students will spend their time memorizing the vocabulary learned in the class. Under the Monitoring Strategies, the highest score is in B2 - Before, I did not know how to learn vocabulary effectively, where the mean is 4.10 and the SD is 0.768. The third part of the metacognitive strategy components is Evaluation Strategies. There are five questions in this section. The highest score is question C5- I often evaluate my vocabulary learning and try to find out how to improve it, mean = 4.29 and SD =

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0.644), and C1- I evaluate whether my present vocabulary learning is effective or not, mean= 4.10, SD= 0.831. About 95% of the students claimed they constantly review their learning progress after completing their vocabulary task, C4- After accomplishing a certain task in vocabulary learning, I will consider how to do it better next time with mean= 4.10 and SD= 0.889. 90% of the students always summarize their problems encountered in learning vocabulary, C3- I always summarize the problems encountered in learning vocabulary with mean= 3.86 and SD= 0.964 and 85.7% of the students evaluated their performance whether it progressed after using some strategies in the vocabulary learning task in the classroom, C2- I evaluate my performance whether it is progress after use some strategies in the vocabulary learning task in the classroom, mean= 3.76, SD= 1.221.

In brief, the comparison of the metacognitive strategies in vocabulary learning in terms of frequency used, the highest score strategies is from Monitoring Strategies (68.04%), as shown that in this study, the majority of the students claimed to use more monitoring strategies in their learning strategies compared to the two other strategies. The second metacognitive strategies which are preferred by students in this study are Evaluation Strategies where about 57.41% claimed that they use these strategies frequently in learning a vocabulary. The third strategies claimed to be used in this study are Planning Strategies where about 35.93% of the student agreed that these strategies are as important as other strategies. The overall findings showed that all of the strategies are considered important to the student as the percentage of utilization is about 53% on average.

Nevertheless, the use of Planning Strategies was the less preferred strategy claimed by the students. This is due to the perception that planning for vocabulary learning is a teacher’s responsibility; this concept has been long practiced in the Malaysian learning context. Since

students have been educated and trained with the traditional concept of learning where the teacher is the centre who provides information and referral if they have problems in their learning. The findings also show that the majority of students prefer a Monitoring Strategy as their preferred to improve their learning. The choice of this strategy demonstrates that the students have changed their attitude to be more responsible by taking some initiative to improve their vocabulary learning.

Apart from the monitoring strategies, the second strategy component claimed to be frequently used by the students is the Evaluation Strategy. The findings of this study prove the student’s awareness of metacognition has increased after using metacognitive strategies in their vocabulary learning.

Conclusion and recommendation

It can be said that every student has a different perception of foreign language learning. It is depending on the student’s experience and environment. The most important perception can be changed. It is therefore that is teachers’ responsibility to change the negative perception to a more positive perception. One of the strategies that can be applied, is to introduce metacognitive

strategies to the students. By taking into account students’ perceptions on learning a target

language, a teacher can determine the existing problems, and by integrating metacognitive strategy components in French vocabulary learning lessons and indirectly can create awareness of

metacognitive learning strategy in learning a target language. This awareness could be promoted by incorporating metacognitive strategy components in the teaching and learning in the classroom where it was noted that the teaching and learning which involve the use of metacognitive strategy components provide students with critical thinking on their learning process and lead them to become more autonomous.

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