Improving students’ vocabulary using the diglot - Weave technique

TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 43 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY 
USING THE DIGLOT-WEAVE TECHNIQUE 
Nguyen Thi Thu Huong
*
, Tran Thi Mai Huong 
TNU - University of Education 
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT 
Received: 03/3/2021 This study investigated the effectiveness of the Diglot-Weave Technique 
in helping non-English majors at Thai Nguyen University of Education 
improve their vocabulary. The research aimed at investigating the current 
situation of the students’ vocabulary, and the extent to which the Diglot-
Weave Technique improved the students’ vocabulary. There were 24 
participants who were non-English majors from 5 departments (Primary 
Education, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and Philology) at Thai 
Nguyen University of Education. Two data collection instruments were 
used, namely questionnaires, and tests. Before the study, most of the 
students did not have adequate vocabulary and they had some difficulties 
in learning vocabulary. The findings revealed the effectiveness of the 
Diglot-Weave Technique in enhancing the students’ vocabulary. The 
experimental group’s scores in the post-test were higher than those of the 
control group and there was a difference between the pre-test and the 
post-test scores of the experimental group. The majority of the students 
thought the Diglot-Weave Technique was useful for them to guess the 
meanings easier and remember words longer. 
Revised: 24/3/2021 
Published: 25/3/2021 
KEYWORDS 
Vocabulary 
Diglot-Weave technique 
English learning 
English teaching 
Non-English majors 
CẢI THIỆN TỪ VỰNG CHO SINH VIÊN SỬ DỤNG KỸ THUẬT CHÊM TỪ 
Nguyễn Thị Thu Hương*, Trần Thị Mai Hương 
Trường Đại học Sư phạm – ĐH Thái Nguyên 
THÔNG TIN BÀI BÁO TÓM TẮT 
Ngày nhận bài: 03/3/2021 Nghiên cứu này điều tra tính hiệu quả của kĩ thuật Chêm từ trong việc 
giúp sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Sư phạm – 
Đại học Thái Nguyên củng cố vốn từ vựng. Nghiên cứu này nhằm mục 
đích điều tra thực trạng vốn từ vựng của sinh viên và mức độ hiệu quả 
củng cố vốn từ vựng của kĩ thuật Chêm từ. Người tham gia nghiên cứu 
là 24 sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh đến từ 5 khoa (Giáo dục Tiểu 
học, Sinh học, Toán, Vật lý và Văn) của trường Đại học Sư phạm – 
Đại học Thái Nguyên. Hai công cụ nghiên cứu được sử dụng gồm 
phiếu điều tra và bài kiểm tra. Trước nghiên cứu, hầu hết sinh viên 
không có đủ vốn từ vựng và gặp khó khăn với việc học từ. Kết quả 
nghiên cứu khẳng định tính hiệu quả của kĩ thuật Chêm từ trong việc 
củng cố vốn từ vựng cho sinh viên. Điểm kiểm tra sau nghiên cứu của 
nhóm thực nghiệm cao hơn so với nhóm đối chứng và có sự khác nhau 
giữa điểm kiểm tra trước và sau nghiên cứu của nhóm thực nghiệm. 
Hầu hết sinh viên đều cho rằng kĩ thuật Chêm từ giúp họ đoán nghĩa từ 
dễ hơn và nhớ từ lâu hơn. 
Ngày hoàn thiện: 24/3/2021 
Ngày đăng: 25/3/2021 
TỪ KHÓA 
Từ vựng 
Kĩ thuật chêm từ 
Học tiếng Anh 
Dạy tiếng Anh 
Sinh viên không chuyên 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.4083 
*
 Corresponding author. Email: huongntt.flan@tnue.edu.vn 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 44 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
1. Introduction 
Vocabulary plays an essential role in helping learners learn a language. It is considered an 
important factor that connects four skills of English, namely writing, speaking, listening, and 
reading altogether. Learners need to be able to use a certain number of words to make their 
conversations go smoothly. They need to know words being spoken to understand the whole 
meaning of conversations. They need vocabulary to comprehend different kinds of reading texts 
they may be exposed to [1]. In addition, to express their ideas in writing, a proper amount of 
vocabulary needs to be used. Therefore, vocabulary is an indispensable factor in learning a 
foreign language [2]. 
A number of techniques have been applied to help English learners enhance their 
vocabulary. However, the researcher was particularly interested in the one called the Diglot-
Weave Technique. According to Azadel and Ensieh [3], Diglot-Weave is considered a 
breakthrough in learning a language. In Greek, “di” means “two”, “glot” means “language”, and 
“weave” means “blend two languages together”. Jingxia [4] indicated that the Diglot-Weave 
Technique is code-switching between the target language and the mother tongue, and this 
technique will be applied to build a bridge from the mother tongue to the target language. 
Elizabeth, Paul, and Stephen [5] defined the Diglot-Weave Technique as blending target words 
into passages or written dialogues in learners’ first language. This technique is also called by 
other names such as sandwich stories, the bilingual reader method, or substitution method. 
This is an example of a reading text with the Diglot-Weave Technique, where speakers of 
Vietnamese aim to learn English. “Một con sư tử rất cruel sống trong rừng. Hằng ngày, nó kill và 
ăn thịt rất nhiều loài vật. Muông thú afraid rằng sư tử sẽ kill và ăn thịt tất cả loài vật trong khu 
rừng. Chúng nói với sư tử rằng: Chúng ta hãy thoả thuận. Nếu ngài promise rằng mỗi ngày ngài 
chỉ ăn một con vật, thì hằng ngày một trong số chúng tôi sẽ tới đây nộp mạng. Ngài sẽ không 
phải hunt và giết chúng tôi nữa” [6]. In this case, teachers select a text and replace some 
Vietnamese words in the text with their English equivalents. The selected words are those whose 
meanings can be guessed through the context. Learners read the text in Vietnamese language 
with some English words in it. With this technique, learners learn new words in the target 
language while reading something in their mother tongue. 
Ji [7] conducted research using the Diglot-Weave technique to teach vocabulary to 
schoolchildren who are under 13 years old in China. She asked students to present some stories 
using both English and Chinese. She found that t ...  were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups. 
Two tools of data collection were used in this research, namely questionnaire and test. 
Bell [10] indicates that a questionnaire is the study instrument that composes of a set of 
questions with the aim to collect necessary information for the research to answer the research 
questions. A questionnaire can include two types of questions (open-ended questions and close-
ended questions). While close-ended questions give options for participants to choose from, 
open-ended ones require participants to answer from their own experience, opinions and 
thoughts. Researchers can easily gather information in a short period of time; therefore, they can 
save a huge amount of time. 
There was a pre-questionnaire and a post-questionnaire in the study. The researcher used the 
pre-questionnaire to collect the student’s general information (age, major, hometown and gender) 
and some specific information including their English proficiency level, their vocabulary size and 
their understanding of the Diglot-Weave technique). The post-questionnaire aimed to find out 
about the students’ understanding and attitude towards the technique. 
According to Wilson [11], tests are usually reliable and the data is easy to collect, so observer 
subjectivity is eliminated. The researcher in this study used pre-test and post-test to see the 
difference between before and after the participants used the Diglot-Weave technique and to 
compare the control group and the experimental group. This data collection instrument plays a 
crucial role in evaluating the effectiveness of the Diglot-Weave technique. The students took the 
vocabulary test in the format of Aptis test in both the pre-test and the post-test. The results were 
compared to see the difference between two groups. Besides, the researcher used a website called 
Myvocab to evaluate English vocabulary of the students from both groups. The website tests the 
spellings of words by asking test takers to click on the correct spellings. It also tests the meanings 
of words by asking test takers to click on the words that have similar meanings to the given ones. 
After the test, the website gives a final result according to IELTS classification. From the results 
of the test on this website, the researcher had an objective evaluation on the students’ vocabulary 
before conducting the study. 
3. Findings and discussion 
3.1. Current situation of the students’ vocabulary 
Figure 1 shows the students’ self-evaluation of their own vocabulary. It can be seen that the 
percentage of students with poor vocabulary ranked first with 58.3% (14 students) while the 
figure for very poor vocabulary followed with 33.3% (8 students). By contrast, the proportion of 
students with neutral vocabulary size just made up 8.3% (2 students). Especially, nobody chose 
fair, good, and very good in vocabulary size. This might explain why students admitted that they 
were not confident about their vocabulary and they had difficulties in learning other skills. 
The result of the test on the website Myvocab indicates that all of the students from both 
control and experimental group were at non-user level. The website explains this result as having 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 46 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
no ability to use the language except a few isolated words. This result confirms the students’ self-
evaluation on their vocabulary. 
Figure 1. Students’ self-evaluation of their vocabulary 
Figure 2. Students’ situations in learning English vocabulary 
From figure 2, we can realize that all students had problems in learning English vocabulary. 
With 41.7 % of students (10 students) choosing “No impression on the vocabulary learned”, 
which means most of the students did not realize they had already learnt a word when they 
encountered it again. A little more than a third of the students could not remember many new 
words because they are difficult to remember according to them. The figure for “You recognize 
vocabulary but do not remember its meaning” was 20.8% (5 students). 
The students took a vocabulary test in the format of Aptis to give the researcher data on the 
students’ vocabulary size. The full score of this test is 25. Question types of the Aptis vocabulary 
test include word definition, word pairs, word usage and word combinations. The results are 
shown in table 1. 
Table 1. Students’ vocabulary scores (pretest) 
The experimental group The control group 
Student Score Student Score 
S1 6 S13 7 
S2 7 S14 6 
S3 4 S15 6 
S4 5 S16 4 
S5 6 S17 7 
S6 5 S18 4 
S7 5 S19 6 
S8 7 S20 7 
S9 7 S21 6 
S10 7 S22 5 
S11 6 S23 4 
S12 4 S24 8 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 47 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
Nobody got the full score on the test. The highest score was 8, and the lowest score was 4. 
The researcher used paired sample t-test on SPSS to see whether there was a difference 
between two groups before the reasearch. Table 2 and 3 below show the results. 
Table 2. The mean score of each group 
Paired Samples Statistics 
 Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 
Pair 1 
the experimental group 5.7500 12 1.13818 .32856 
the control group 5.8333 12 1.33712 .38599 
It can be seen that the mean score of the experimental group was 5.7500 while the figure for 
the control group was 5.8333. These figures indicate that the experimental group and the control 
group had the roughly same vocabulary size before participating in the research. 
Table 3. The differences between the 2 groups 
Paired Samples Test 
Paired Differences 
t df 
Sig. (2-
tailed) Mean 
Std. 
Deviation 
Std. Error 
Mean 
95% Confidence Interval 
of the Difference 
Lower Upper 
Pair1 
experimental 
group- control 
group 
-.08333 1.78164 .51432 -1.21533 1.04867 -.162 11 .874 
Looking at the Sig. (2-tailed) with 0.874 which is larger than 0.05. Therefore, there was no 
difference between the two groups before the research. 
3.2. The effectiveness of the Diglot-Weave Technique in learning vocabulary 
The students took the vocabulary test in the format of Aptis as a post-test to give the 
researcher data to compare with pre-test. 
Table 4. Students’ vocabulary scores (post-test) 
The experimental group The control group 
Student Scores Student Scores 
S1 12 S13 7 
S2 13 S14 6 
S3 8 S15 6 
S4 7 S16 5 
S5 9 S17 8 
S6 9 S18 9 
S7 10 S19 11 
S8 8 S20 9 
S9 9 S21 6 
S10 7 S22 8 
S11 8 S23 6 
S12 9 S24 8 
As shown in table 4, the highest score was 13, and the lowest score was 5. 
Table 5 and 6 below show the analysis of SPSS. 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 48 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
Table 5. The mean score of each group 
Paired Samples Statistics 
 Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 
Pair 1 
the experimental group 9.0833 12 1.83196 .52884 
the control group 7.4167 12 1.72986 .49937 
We can see that the mean score of the experimental group was 9.0833 which is larger than the 
mean of the control group with 7.4167. This is the signal of a difference between the two groups. 
To be more exact, the researcher used SPSS to analyze to be sure whether there was a difference 
between the two groups after the research. 
Table 6. The difference between the two groups 
Paired Samples Test 
Paired Differences 
t df 
Sig. (2-
tailed) Mean 
Std. 
Deviation 
Std. 
Error 
Mean 
95% Confidence 
Interval of the 
Difference 
Lower Upper 
Pair 1 
experimental 
group- control 
group 
1.66667 2.46183 .71067 .10249 3.23084 2.345 11 .039 
On table 6, looking at Sig. (2-tailed) 0.039 which is smaller than the standard 0.05, it can 
definitely be indicated that there was a difference between the two groups. The Diglot-Weave 
Technique actually helped the students to improve their vocabulary. 
Figure 3 gives information about how students evaluated the effectiveness of the Diglot-
Weave technique through the post-questionnaire. 
Figure 3. Students’ evaluation of the Diglot-Weave Technique 
It can be seen that, regarding “Very effective”, the proportion of students choosing it 
accounted for half of the students (6 students). This opinion was also the most chosen as opposed 
to the others. Following “Very effective” was “Effective” with 41.7% (5 students). There were 
only 8.3% of the students (1 student) going with the opinion “Fair”. No students felt that the 
technique was of little or no effectiveness. 
Figure 4 illustrates the advantages of the Diglot-Weave technique. It can be seen that 66.7% 
of the students (8 students) which accounted for the largest percentage believed that they agreed 
with all three advantages when using the Diglot-Weave technique, including “Remembering 
words immediately”, “Helping me guess the meanings of the English words”, and “Remembering 
words longer than when I use the traditional teaching method”. The proportion of students 
choosing “Remembering words longer than when I use the traditional teaching method” ranked 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 49 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
second with 25%. Only 8.3% of students (1 student) went with “Helping me guess the meanings 
of the English words”. Although no student chose the option “Remembering words 
immediately”, that 66.7% of the students having chosen the options “All the answers above 
indicates that they found the technique helpful in remembering words immediately. 
Figure 4. Advantages of the Diglot-Weave Technique 
4. Conclusion and recommendations 
The essential findings discussed in the previous chapter help the researcher draw some 
conclusions for the study. 
The answer for the first research question was taken from the results of pre-questionnaire 
and pre-test. Most of the students did not have adequate vocabulary and they had some 
difficulties in learning vocabulary. In the Aptis vocabulary test, there was no difference 
between the vocabulary scores of both the experimental group and the control group and both 
of the groups had low scores. 
The answer to the second research question shows the extent to which the Diglot-Weave 
technique improves students' vocabulary. The conclusion was drawn from post-questionnaire and 
post-test. The experimental group’s scores were higher than those of the control group. There was 
a difference between the pre-test and the post-test scores of the experimental group. Therefore, 
the researcher believed that the Diglot-Weave technique had a positive effect on the student’s 
vocabulary learning. Most of the students thought the Diglot-Weave Technique was useful for 
them to remember words longer and guess the meanings easier. 
The findings of the research prove that the Diglot-Weave Technique is effective in helping 
non-English students learn more new vocabulary quicker and easier and remember vocabulary 
for a longer time. This technique is worth using for non-English majors who are at beginner level 
and whose vocabulary size is limited. Compared to reading texts which are written totally in 
English, this technique places less pressure on learners. They learn with ease, which helps to 
motivate them in keeping on learning. 
From the findings, it can be seen that the Diglot-Weave Technique has positive effect on the 
learning of vocabulary. For this technique to show better results, the researcher would like to 
make some recommendations. 
Firstly, although teachers always pay attention to the number of English words in a text before 
delivering to learners, this number should be adjusted after the first text was given to learners. 
This adjustment confirms the suitability of the reading texts and the success of the experiment. 
Secondly, English words should be selected in the order of difficulty. The first two or three texts 
may include easy-to-guess words. The difficulty of the English words increases as learners read 
later texts. Finally, the length of the texts should also be expanded gradually so that learners do 
not feel stressed with learning. 
TNU Journal of Science and Technology 226(03): 43 - 50 
 50 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
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