Teaching English has become a worldwide phenomenon due to the international expansion of English. In Colombia, the national government is developing several plans to extend quality education coverage to the majority of the population through different projects such as: La Revolución Educativa which claims that the coverage and quality of education are key factors to ensure the competitiveness of a country. (Ministerio de Educación Nacional, República de Colombia, Plan Sectorial 2002-2006, Marzo del 2003). The goal of this "revolution" is to transform and implement a system of continuous improvement that in ten years ensure universal coverage and locate the country at the top of the Latin American countries in terms of quality of the education.
One of the subprojects of the "Education Revolution" is Colombia Bilingüe (Bilingual Colombia) which highlights the importance of English in the times of competitiveness in the global market. Additionally, the General Education Act 115 (1994) states that one of the objectives of education should be the "The acquisition of elements of speaking, reading, understanding and ability to speak at least one foreign language" it means acquisition of communicative competence, making it the starting point for the creation of new regulations regarding the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Colombia.
Therefore, in 2004, the Colombian Ministry of Education (MEN) introduced The National Bilingual Program 2004-2019, aimed at offering all school students the possibility of becoming bilingual in English and Spanish, promoting an inclusive vision of bilingualism by requiring that by 2019 all school and university graduates should reach a certain level of bilingualism in English and Spanish, reaching either B1 or B2 level of proficiency in English at the end of their studies. Thus, the emphasis was mainly on the improvement of English language proficiency within a vision of global development.
Later, in 2006, the Ministry presented a document entitled The Basic Standards of Competence in Foreign Languages, based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The reasons given for adopting the CEFR were the fact that it was the result of ten years of research, and that it provided a common language to establish foreign language performance levels throughout the Colombian educational system, particularly in relation to international standards. Its goal was:
To have citizens who are capable of communicating in English, in order to be
able to insert the country within processes of universal communication, within
the global economy and cultural openness, through [the adopting of]
internationally comparable standards. (MEN 2006: 6)
Accordingly, Educational institutions from all levels and contexts, including private and state schools, accepted the proposal with the purpose of improving their pedagogical and administrative components to increase quality in the language learning process while reorganizing curriculum and syllabus and achieving national goals. Taking on this challenge, private as well as state schools that have different circumstances such as a diversity of learners' needs and interests, social and economic variables, large and small groups, lack of adequate or overload institutional resources among other, tend to find strategies which would facilitate the achievement of these goals.
Interested by this current circumstances and sustained by a systematic review of policy documents and literature produced locally and abroad, the researcher of this project, as school teacher, is concerned about looking for new methods and techniques in order to face these new challenges making a real and long lasting change in education and consequently providing students with appropriate strategies to become self-directed and lifelong learners and also contribute to improve teaching practice.
Training learners to help themselves to take a more active and autonomous attitude in their learning process is important to overcome the aforementioned particularities of the context. Thus, new approaches, methodologies and strategies should be considered to achieve this purpose. In this view, self-regulation conceived as an approach to teaching and learning, is seen as a way in which people learn to be aware and committed to participate in their own learning process (Zimmerman, 2002). Under this model, learners identify, manage, and evaluate variables affecting their learning process exercising some degree of control and managing the process on their own.
At the same time, this research study is meant to demonstrate that the objective of the National Bilingualism Project of improving the communicative competence in English as a foreign language is close related to vocabulary learning. Consequently, presenting vocabulary learning strategies should be the prime concern for course book writers, materials developers, syllabus designers, decision-makers and finally teachers.
The pedagogical circumstances that stimulated the present study are the EFL context at a private school which for a long time incorporate vocabulary in the design of accurate curriculum and syllabi has attracted a noticeable lack of attention by both teachers and students.
Nevertheless, school time is not enough to increase students' vocabulary at the same time that teachers work on listening, speaking reading and writing. The need for breadth and depth of vocabulary accelerates through the grades as students meet more challenging academic tasks.
Bearing in mind that one of the main goals at La Enseñanza School is to fulfill government requirements and population expectations in terms of bilingualism in which learners are expected to graduate with a minimum B2, researcher is challenged to find appealing and accurate ways to overcome failure in learners performance on national and international tests as well as to equip learners with vocabulary learning strategies that help them meet this goal successfully.
Following Corbin and Strauss (2008) qualitative analysis procedures, the results of the needs analysis stage (Annex C), evidences the lack of knowledge about vocabulary learning strategies and lack of self-direction and autonomous work which affect students’ performance in learning English and consequently in the development of advanced literacy levels required for success during scholar years, in the world of higher education and the workplace and beyond (Lubliner & Grisham, 2012). Likewise, it ratified learners’ need of more vocabulary collections and the importance to promote a lively interest in words through student expression and participation in a learning community that enjoys playing with words, in this way help students to feel comfortable when communicating in English.
From this point of view and in order to master vocabulary skills, academic curriculum has to include vocabulary teaching as part of comprehensive syllabus content, but, the inclusion of vocabulary into the curriculum arouses problems for both teachers and students for several reasons. For instance, students might simply feel put off by the overwhelming nature of vocabulary learning, whereas teachers might be very much heavy-handed with their approach of teaching techniques and interest generated and instilled amongst students, the questions then remains are why is vocabulary development such an important aspect of a student’s academic life and what really helps in teaching and learning of vocabulary?
Considering the problems above and the advantages of using VSS in improving the students’ vocabulary acquisition in which students could benefit from an experience that involved English language learning through a self-monitoring procedure aimed at improving their self-efficacy beliefs, this study will target how to improve the SDVL of EFL students by the implementation of self-collection strategy as a way to enhance students’ motivation and achievement in learning new words and facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary in and outside the classroom.