Using BookCreator Portfolios as a Vocabulary Recipe at Thai Nguyen University of Economics

Since 2015, students of the advanced program at Thai Nguyen University of Economics (TNUE) have been required to achieve the minimum score of 5.5 IELTS to be eligible for graduation approval. Meanwhile, the environment for vocabulary enrichment, both inside and outside EFL classrooms at TNUE, has shown poor prospect. This research inquiry presents an overall evaluation of the usability, adaptability and flexibility of employing BookCreator portfolios to develop EFL students’ lexis at TNUE. BookCreator recently has been praised as a fantastic educational app which well merges vocabulary learning in a visual manner. Nevertheless, this modern approach is refused and unwelcomed by a number of EFL students, for whom compiling a lexical portfolio with BookCreator is a demanding task which entails not only academic but technical proficiency. Besides, this also imposes huge pressure on EFL teachers as to figure out an appropriate and effective approach in terms of teaching vocabulary. The chosen participants experienced a 14-week period of BookCreator vocabulary portfolios application. On a weekly basis, teachers assigned their students 2-3 IELTS common topics and instructed them to develop a portfolio using at least 12 related vocabularies for each. Best portfolio samples with teacher’s remarks and peers’ comments were gathered for a gallery walk, using supportive websites like padlet.com or canva.com . Based on both summative and formative evaluation of the appropriateness of utilizing BookCreator portfolios in teaching and learning IELTS-oriented vocabulary at TNUE, the author pedagogically proposed recommendations for more effective application of this approach in the near future.