RATIONALE OF THE STUDY WILKIN (1972

1. Rationale of the study Wilkin (1972: 110) states that “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. This means that to be a competent English communicator, one must acquire a good knowledge of English grammar and have a rich amount of English vocabulary as well. Vocabulary is an essential element of language. Whether in speaking or writing, learners need vocabulary to communicate and understand others. However, for many students at Le Quy Don gifted high school in Dien Bien, learning vocabulary is really a hard job. As a result, many students often ask their teachers the same question about how they can learn vocabulary effectively. As a matter of fact, what students are wondering is also a big question that always bare in the teachers’ mind which urges them try to find a suitable solution to better facilitate both the teachers’ and students’ vocabulary teaching and learning process. The idea of using visual aids to better aid students learn vocabulary has been conducted at LQD gifted school by many teachers including the researcher and all agree that visual aids are of great use to aid both the teachers and their students in teaching and learning vocabulary. Many students admit that they can remember new words more easily by both listening to their teachers and looking at the visuals. They also get involved to the lesson more actively by guessing the words’ meaning through the visuals, describing the visuals, asking and answering questions related to the visuals, etc. Therefore, students gradually retain more words and can better communicate in the target language. For teachers, many agree that they can reduce their talking time of explaining new words in stead of introducing words directly through different types of visual aids. From what the teachers and students have mentioned about some of benefits of visual aids, the researcher can partly know about their attitudes towards the use of visual aids in teaching and learning vocabulary. This inspires the researcher to conduct the study entitled “An Investigation into Teachers’ and Students’ Attitudes towards the Use of Visual Aids in Teaching and Learning Vocabulary at Le Quy Don Gifted High School, Dien Bien.” with hope of understanding more about not only the teachers’ and students’ attitude towards the use of visual aids but also the overall problems faced by them in teaching and learning vocabulary through visual aids. Hopefully, this study will be of some values to those who want to improve their vocabulary teaching, especially by means of visual aids.