The effectiveness of five-minute vocabulary revision activities on every class session in the aim of enhancing word retention: a qualitative study

This research aims at enhancing word retention by using some games to apply for five–minute vocabulary activities on every class session at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry (HUFI). Doing this, the researcher asked students about the difficulties in language learning, most of her students at HUFI admitted that their lexicon was not sufficient enough so they had difficulties in presenting exactly what they thought of orally and in written form. They also stated that sometimes they found it challenging to reach adequate comprehension of some listening and reading texts due to the appearance of some new words which were beyond their lexicon. This fact has disclosed the importance of the mastery of sufficient vocabulary to help learners face with such challenge in language learning. As a result of recognizing the vital role of vocabulary in learning a language, Vietnamese students are taught lots of new words at school but the fact is that they forget lots of these words after a certain time. From the above problems, the researcher does this study with the hopes to enhance the effectiveness of using games and helps motivate NEM students in studying, for instance, listening, speaking, reading and writing and a number of other skills involved in the same game such as vocabulary and pronunciation (Lee, 2000). The process of experiment had supervised to remark the results of students" progress during 4 weeks. Based on the observation of a case study and findings from analyzing the questionnaire and interview, writing journals, the research makes recommendations for implementing the innovation of vocabulary games. The researcher has been the innovator and changed agent of innovation, 20 students in one experimental class were clients