Sử dụng phương pháp đối chiếu trong việc dạy kỹ năng nói tiếng anh cho sinh viên không chuyên tại trường đại học lâm nghiệp

There is also the fact that, although Vietnamese learners of English now have many good opportunities to acquire this language, they still are not very successful, this can be clearly se

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It is obvious that communication among countries has greatly improved and become more important, and that one of the factors has contributed for this process and development is language Vietnam is not an exception for this, since the open door policy has been carried out especially, at the time of integration into the global development People and the government have been aware of the significance and necessity of foreign languages, especially English, an international language Teaching and learning of English in Vietnam has undergone changes

to find the efficient ways for the language learners It is also realized that there are many teaching methods, and it seems that no specific one has proved the best for all learners, and nowadays, the combination of different methods has been suggested for language teachers There is also the fact that, although Vietnamese learners of English now have many good opportunities to acquire this language, they still are not very successful, this can be clearly seen in their speaking skill This problem has raised a question for many linguists and teachers

to find the best solution to the language acquisition in general and speaking learning in particular

It is also said that one of the problems that cause difficulties for the learner is that there exist the difference among languages and these are what the contrastivists are concerned with And contrastive analysis (one of the linguistic branch) has proved its influence in language teaching

2 The scope of the study

This study focuses on the application of teaching based on contrastive analysis in teaching speaking skill to non-English majored students at Vietnam Forestry University under the light of communicative teaching Because of the limit of the thesis, it will mainly concentrate on how to apply contrastive analysis effectively as a supporting method to develop the student’s speaking skill in particular

3 Aims of the study

With the knowledge and experience of language teaching, and in an effort to find out

an appropriate approach and relevant techniques to help non-English majored students at the

VFU to be successful in learning speaking The researcher will go into the application of Contrastive Analysis on Teaching Speaking with theoretical background and practical techniques and activities Furthermore, the study also provides suggestions and recommendations for the teachers and learners at the university for the improvement of English language teaching

4 Significance of the study

This study may be useful to the teacher who teaches at the university and other institutes It is also helpful to those interested in this field of study

In order to achieve this aim, there will a brief analysis of different teaching approaches

to second language teaching by highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and then an overview of contrastive analysis study and the application of contrastive analysis on teaching speaking under the light of communicative language teaching (CLT) Finally, the research result of this application and recommendations and suggestions for teachers and learners for further study and research will be provided

5 Methods of the study

The major method of the study is qualitative, based on academic research and practical experience, the observation, survey questionnaire and discussion Besides, specific procedures are also taken into account, along with the valuable comments and suggestions and advices from my experienced and enthusiastic supervisor, my colleagues and friends have helped me a lot to carry out this thesis

6 Design of the study

The thesis consists of three parts

Part A is the introduction which presents the rationales, the focus, the objectives, the scope, the method and the design of the study

Part B has three chapters

Chapter I will give an overview of the local situation such as the course, the objectives of the course, physical setting, the learners and teachers and time allocation of the course

Chapter II contains a brief analysis on different teaching approaches and language learning, an attention will be put on the communicative approach And then the study on contrastive analysis with the definition, the relationship between two branches of linguistics (microlinguistics and macrolingustics) and contrastive analysis, Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error Analysis (EA) Further focus is on teaching based on contrastive analysis, its specific application on teaching speaking; this will be illustrated with different procedures and treatment of errors

In chapter III, the detailed study on data analysis, research result and comment on the application of teaching speaking based on contrastive analysis to non-English majored students at Vietnam Forestry University will be presented, accompanied by the recommendations and suggestions for the teacher and the student

Part C ends with a conclusion, which tells all issues in the research, the appendix with the survey questionnaires is also included, then a bibliography listing all reference books and materials used for this research paper

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In this chapter, the general information about the current situation of English learning and teaching in Vietnam Forestry University (VFU) will be presented with the purpose of providing sufficient data for understanding the problems, and situation analysis of teaching speaking The information ranges from the description of the course, the teacher and the student, the objectives, physical setting and the time allocation of the course

1 Description of the course

Like many other colleges and universities in Vietnam, in which English is majored, English learning is a compulsory subject for all full time students (except part time students) here All students have to learn English in the first three semesters of 300 periods, allocated as follows: 120 periods for the first semester, 90 each for the two last A few classes learn totally 150 periods (divided as 60; 45; 45), after finishing these courses of General English, a few classes will learn English for specific purposes (ESP) The text book used to teach General English at the moment is “New Headway”, which aims to develop students’ four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking The ESP textbooks such as English for Forestry Students, English for Economics and Business etc are designed by the local teachers and some are taken from other university in the country These textbooks focus mainly on reading, writing and translation, a little on speaking

non-2 The students and teachers

Many students in the university are from rural or mountainous areas, and some of them are from urban areas, their English is so different Some have learnt English for about more than 6 or 7 years, some have never studied it before, while a major number have learnt it for about 3 years In general, almost of them are beginners and they mainly acquire grammar, and other skills are not very good, especially, their speaking

The teacher, the most significant factor in teaching process and at the tertiary level in Vietnam their role is even more important, because of the fact that many students ignore their foreign language learning at school or they were taught under the light of Grammar – Translation Method at school In VFU, there are 11 teachers in the Foreign Language

Department, three of them used to be teachers of Russian and French, the rest all graduated from Vietnam National University – College of Foreign Languages And the methods of language teaching mainly, used are Grammar-Translation Method and Audio-lingual method Luckily, most of them show a great desire to acquire knowledge of communicative teaching and claim to apply it, but there seems to be difficulties

3 Description of the Physical Setting

“Setting” mentioned here in the sense of class arrangements, the task of the lesson and activities inside and outside the classroom In VFU, learning and teaching activities are almost carried out in the classrooms Most of the lessons are performed in such fixed condition, so it

is very difficult for the teachers to apply new ideas of language teaching

The class size is usually of more than forty five students in each class, this is a big problem for the teachers, especially, when teaching speaking skill

The available teaching facilities mainly consist of an overhead projector, overhead transparencies, a cassette recorder, but the cassette is preferable, because there are few classes equipped with projectors and some teachers are not interested in using it, it is not convenient and available when the teachers want to use it and speaking skill is not much of attention, there is only a written test at the end of each semester

The material for reference and self study is often designed and given to the student by the teachers, there are not many reference books available for the student, the students also do not have many opportunities to read magazines or newspapers in English, and chances to expose to the language they have studied

All of the classrooms are designed for lecture lessons with the seating, which is orderly arranged in front of the teacher and classroom equipment is just a chalkboard

4 The objectives of the course

After graduating from VFU, the students will work in forestry field such as institutes, companies, factories or farms etc And for them English is just a “tool” to support their work

So the requirements for the graduates may be:

- To acquire the general knowledge of English and a certain amount of vocabulary

- To be able to read the specific materials and documents in English of their specialties

- To be able to translate related documents and material into and from English at an intermediate level

From the objectives of the course and the student’s needs, it implies that speaking skill

is not much of attention, and there exists the fact that the student pronunciation and speaking

is not very good So it is important to realize this problem in language teaching and learning in the university

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 An overview of language learning

In an effort to help the teacher understand about the language learning, one of the important point in language teaching, because it is the understanding how language is learned, there will be a study of different views of language learning It is said that language theory doesn’t draw any significant distinctions between human learning in general and language learning in particular Language learning can only be properly understood as a reflection of human thought process It is conditioned in the way in which the mind observes, organizes, and stores information In other words, it is important to acquire the structure and processes of the mind for the successful learning and teaching Although the fact that there is still little understanding how a person learn What we can do is to make our teaching efficient should be based on principles of learning

1.1 Behaviorism

There have been a number of language learning theories, but in this section, we will have a look at some of these views of language acquisition which are foundation for the approaches in language teaching One of these is behaviorism, behaviorists thought that language acquisition is a product of habit formation Habits are constructed through repeated association between some stimulus and some responses, which would become bonded when positively reinforced And second language learning is viewed as a process of replacing those habits of the mother tongue by a set of new habits of the target language, as the result, the old L1 ( mother tongue) interfere with this process, either helping or inhibited it This view led to the belief that contrastive analysis of languages is invaluable in language teaching, the learning will be easy if the structures in the L2 (target language) are similar to those in the L1

However, it will be difficult if the structures in L2 and L1 are different Emphasis is therefore paid on the need to regulate the stimuli by grading the input into a series of steps so that each step forms a suitable and appropriate level of difficulty for the learner

1.2 Cognitivisim

The second one is cognitivism, which views the learner as a passive recipient of information and portrays the learner as an active processor of information Learning is not just behaviour, but involves mental processes in which the learner learns by thinking about and trying to make sense of what he or she hears, sees and feels (Canh, LV, 2004, p37) Cognitive psychologists are therefore interested in the mental processes that are involved in learning Cognitive psychology is based on the assumptions that: people develop at different rates; development is relatively ordered; and development takes place gradually So the basic teaching technique which they are most interested in is problem solving With this approach, the teacher selects learning tasks according to the learner’s developmental level, and elicits learner reasoning in relation to those tasks

1.3 Contructivisim

Constructivism is the third one, which characterizes learning as sense – marking and the learner as an actor, not a passive recipient of information Cognitive constructivist theories emphasize the exploration and discovery on the part of each learner as explaining the learning process

Another theory is the interactionist view, which takes the learner as an active processor

of information, and considers the language acquisition is the result of an interaction between the learner’s mental abilities and the linguistic environment The learner’s processing mechanisms both determine and are determined by the nature of input Learning, then, is a process in which the learner actively tries to make sense of data, and learning is said to take place when the learner tries to impose some sort of meaningful interpretation or pattern on the data

Moreover, it is significant to realize the affective factors in language learning, it is said that the age of the learner determines the rate of learning, and motivation to learn, individual differences in aptitude for language learning, personal intelligence and learner’s preferences

are also contributed to the success of language learning Among those factors, motivation to learn is very important, it involves the attitudes and affective states that influence the degree of effort that learners make to learn second language And according to Brown (1981), there are three types of motivation: global motivation (always motivated to do things); situational motivation (depended on the time); task motivation (tasks to do) Or as Gragner and Lambert (1972) stated, there are two types of motivation: Integrative motivation (the learner wants learn to a language just for personal development); instrumental motivation (the learner studies for economic reasons: for a job, higher study etc ) In some situations, an integrative motivation may be more powerful in facilitating successful second language learning, but in other situations, instrumental motivation may do better, so level and type of motivation is strongly influenced by the social context in which learning takes place

2 Approaches to language teaching

Through the history of language teaching in the world in general and in Vietnam in particular, there have been changes in the recognition of theories and practice of teaching methods towards the proficiency of the learner There have been some methods, which have proved their remarkable roles in language teaching, although there still exist controversies about their advantages and disadvantages, and there is a continue to find appropriate and effective methods So I will briefly look at the different methods with the comment on some influenced ones and their advantages and disadvantages

2.1 The Grammar –Translation Method

The method is characterized by an emphasis on memorization of verb paradigms, grammar rules, vocabulary, and translation of literary texts It was based on the written word and texts, since the ability to read literature to be the goal of studying foreign language The medium instruction is the mother tongue, which is used to explain conceptual problems and to discuss the use of a particular grammatical structure, central to this method is accurate use of language items This method is characterized by presenting the rules of a particular item of grammar and the use of the item is illustrated several times in a text Then opportunities are given to practice using the item through writing sentences and translating it into the mother

tongue The text is often accompanied by a vocabulary list Reading of difficult texts can be early introduced in the course with little emphasis on speaking, listening and pronunciation

The advantages of this method are easy to apply and cheap to administer, it also requires not many resources This is why it is still used by many teachers However, the Grammar Translation method concerns itself primarily with the written language of classical literature and ignores authentic spoken communication and the social variation of language In other words, it overemphasizes the rules and neglects the communicative skills, as a result, students learn rules of grammar and vocabulary without much feeling of progress in the mastery of the target language, which will lead to lack of motivation in learning because they have little opportunity to express themselves through it

2.2 The Direct Method

The Direct method is characterized by the use of the target language as a mean of instruction and communication in the classroom, and by the avoidance of the use of the first language and translation as a technique (Stern, 1983) The lessons often begin with a dialogue

in the target language, the language items are introduced orally with actions or pictures without translation, grammar is taught inductively with rules being generalized from the practice and experience with the target language There is an emphasis on correct pronunciation and grammar

With this method, students are exposed to target language situations, so their ability to think in target language will be developed; it is also an interesting way of learning a language through activity (River, 1981, p33) But the development of the student’s thoughts in the target language may lead to the inaccurate fluency if they are not properly guided, this originated from their trying to express them in the target language with insufficient knowledge about the language

2.3 The Audio-lingual Method

As Stern (1983) claimed Audio- lingual Method was the first language teaching method that was derived from linguistics and psychology It reflects descriptive, structural and contrastive linguistics and the behaviors principles of psychology It was based on the principle that language learning is a process of habit formation through repetition and

imitation and drills in term of stimulus and response Rivers (1964) summarized the principles

of the method as follows: (p19)

- Foreign language learning is a process of mechanical habit formation Good habits are formed by providing correct responses rather than making mistakes

- Language skills are learned more effectively if the spoken form is learned before the written form

- Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis Drills can enable learners to form correct analogies

- The meaning that the word of a language has for the native speaker can be learned only in the context, not in isolation

In this method, the order of presentation should be strictly observed, listening and speaking are considered as fundamental skills on which reading and writing are built The techniques used by the teacher are based on imitating memorization where students listen and repeat; on repetition individually or in chorus; on role – play and dramatization; and on the use

of drills and pattern practice for structures

The first advantage of this method is to develop students’ listening comprehension skill and fluency in speaking in the target language, the student has a sense of being able to use what they have learned, moreover, the study is reinforced by repetition, so students have good repetition and this is suitable for different abilities In spite of those good points, the success and failure of this method depends largely on the quality of the teacher and availability of resources The teacher must be a fluent speaker as most of his work is done orally in the target language Furthermore, the teacher must vary the techniques to make learning more interesting and meaningful; otherwise, students might be bored with mechanical repetition

2.4 Communicative Language Teaching

There have been a variety of definitions and ideas about CLT, and the method is said

to be efficient in some cultures, but there are still questions about its use and application So I will analyze some of the ideas around this method and comment on the application Firstly, Nunan (1989, p194) views this method as follow:

CLT views language as a system for the expression of meaning Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks and using language, which is meaningful to the learner Objectives reflect the needs of the learners; they include functional skills as well as linguistic objectives The learner’s role is a negotiator and integrator The teacher’s role is as a facilitators of the communication process Materials promote communicative language use; they are task – based and authentic

The focus of CLT is on the functional language use and the learner’s ability to express her/his own ideas, feelings, attitudes, desires and needs Open – ended questioning and problem solving activities and exchanges of personal information are utilized to enable learners to develop their communicative competence There are three major principles of CLT: The first is the communicative principle which emphasizes activities involves the real communication promote learning The second is the task principle, which supports that activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning The third is meaningfulness principle, which claims that language that is meaningful to the learners support the learning process The focus of CLT, therefore, is not on language practice but on learning about how language works in discourse

Communicative lessons are characterized by activities where learners communicate and where tasks are completed by means of interaction with other learners Therefore, a learner completing a task is foregrounded, and communicating with each other is back grounded To this end there may be considerable if not extensive use of pair work, group work and mingling activities, with the emphasis on completing the tasks successfully through communication with others rather than on the accurate use of form Then the teacher’s role is a facilitator and then to monitor, usually without interruption, and then to provide feedback on the success or the communication, possibly on linguistic performance of the learner in the form of post activity error correction

However, there are two major issues which should be taken into account about CLT (Canh, LV, 2004, p86) “Firstly, it is an issue of whether a Communicative Approach is appropriate to local contexts and cultures, and how it might be adapted and used by teachers and learners in relevant ways Secondly, with CLT things like rote – learning, memorization, display questions, teacher talks automatically mean bad In fact none of these things alone is

bad.” Thirdly, the notion of communicative competence suggested by Hymes (1972) applies to competence in the first language of native speakers and can not be transferred to foreign language teaching contexts To conclude that, communicative competence is complex and context specific, the communicative abilities and needs are diversified in different settings, in other words, communicative can mean different things for different groups of foreign learners

3 Contrastive Analysis

3.1 Definition: The “What”

In this section, I will mainly base on the ideas of Carl James to study about the contrastive analysis (CA) As he stated “CA is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e., contrastive, not comparative) two valued typologies and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.” It is also said that CA is always concerned with

a pair of languages and it belongs to interlanguage study, which is interested in the emergence

of these languages rather than in the finished products, since “emergence” is an evolutionary concept, it is followed that CA is viewed as diachronic rather than synchronic in orientation

He suggested the use of the term ‘diachronic’ in the sense of ontogeny, or change within human language This can be explained that the study of the second language or foreign language is concerned with a monolingual becoming a bilingual; when two languages are involved (the L1 and L2), so we have a true case of interlingual diachronic study

There are three branches of two valued interlingual linguistics that is translation theory (which is concerned the processes of test conversion); error analysis (which is involved a detailed description and analysis of the kinds of errors second language learners make) and contrastive analysis Of these, the last two having the object of enquiring the means whereby a monolingual learns to be bilingual Error analysis differs from contrastive analysis in that it did not set out to predict errors, rather it sought to discover and describe different kinds of errors in an effort to understand how learners process second language data

CA is concerned with how a monolingual becomes bilingual and the way in which second language affects foreign language in the individual

3.2 Linguistic components of Contrastive Analysis

The goal of CA is to explain certain aspects of L2 learning and their means are descriptive accounts of the learner’s L1 and the L2 to be learnt, the techniques for the comparison of these descriptions CA is a form of linguistics, because their goals belong to psychology while their means are derived from linguistic science

CA adopts the linguistic tactics of dividing up the unwieldy concept “a language” into three smaller and more manageable areas

1 The levels of phonology, grammar and lexis

2 Use is made of the description categories of linguistics: unit, structure, class and system

3 A CA utilizes descriptions arrived at the same model of language

3.3 Microlinguistic Contrastive Analysis

Traditional practice of CA is on three levels of phonology, lexis and grammar The general principles involve two steps: description and comparison And CA consists of descriptions of L1 and L2, and the two descriptions need to be parallel The minimum requirement of parallel description is that two languages can be described through the same model of description; this is because of several following reasons:

Firstly, different models can describe certain features of language more successful than other models, for example, the Transformation Grammar can effectively account for native speakers’ intuition that certain construction–types are somehow related and that certain others are ambiguous Case Grammar, on other hand, provides apparatus for explaining the semantic affinity between a pair of sentences Furthermore, Harris (1963: 3) claimed that comparable descriptions of two languages will only be guaranteed if identical methods of description are used for description of the two

3.4 Macrolinguistics and Contrastive Analysis

According to Yngve (1975) (cited by Carl James, 1983), macrolinguistics is called

‘broad’ or ‘human linguistics with its goal is to achieve a scientific understanding of how people communicate, it is different from the goal of code linguistics is to specify the universal and particular properties of human languages or in other words, it’s concerned with the process of communication Obviously, this process is mainly done by means of language, so the knowledge of code linguistics is very important, but it is not language itself which

communicates, there is also non–codal aspects, which Carl James called ‘sensitivity’: “the communicating individual must be able to identified the situational constraints to which speech events are subject and produce utterances that conform them.”(p100) These constraints are socio- cultural variables that play a part in the success of communication, and

as Hymes (1974) identified, there are six variables characterizing any particular speech events: Setting; Participants, Purpose, Key, Content and Channel

- Setting: the time and place of speech determine its form

- Participants: there are four participant roles: addressor; speaker, addressee and audience

- Purpose: Every speech act has a purpose, and the purpose can be of persuasion, command, advice, greeting etc

- Key: This is called the ‘tone, manner or spirit’ by Hymes in which the speech act is performed

- Content: the topic we are talking about, this codetermines the language forms selected

- Channel: there are two main channel for verbal communication: speech and writing

From the knowledge of communication and its variables, macrolinguistics places its attention on communicative competence rather than linguistics competence and try to describe linguistic events within their extra- linguistic settings, as well as, to look for units of linguistic organization larger than the single sentence Its scope aimed at two directions: the first one is

on the formal level, and find the answer to question of how sentences are organized into lager suprasentential units or texts The second direction is the functional one, and look at the ways

in which people put language to use

3.5 Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis

Error Analysis (EA) differs from CA in that it did not set out to predict errors rather than it sought to discover and describe different kinds of errors in effort to understand how learners process second language data (Patsy Light Brown and Nina Spada, p74) Or as Carl James claimed (p184), CA has predictive power and EA has the power to diagnose errors that have been committed They should be viewed as complementing each other rather than as competitor for some procedural prize of place Furthermore, the learner’s errors are very important because they are indicative both of the state of the learner’s knowledge and the

ways in which a second language is learned We also need to distinguish the difference between “mistakes’ and “errors” Mistakes are performance errors and errors are “true” errors which are markers of the learner’s transitional competence Mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning, or linguists distinguish mistakes from errors like this: errors which are made out of the underlying system are called mistakes or unsystematically errors or errors of performance because error maker has to resort to communication strategy and performance effort to produce language images Errors which are in the underlying system are called ‘true error’ or errors of competence or systematic errors

According to Jack C Richards (1992) there are seven factors characterizing and influencing the learner’s language use: language transfer; intralingual interference; the effects

of the sociolinguistic situation; the modality of exposure to the target language and the modality of production; the age of the learner; the instability of the linguistic system; the effects of the inherent difficulty of the particular item being learned

As Jack C Richards ( 1992) said, errors are significant in three ways: Firstly, they tell the teacher the progress of the learner and what remains for him to learn; Secondly, they provide the evidence of how language is required, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of language; Thirdly, the most important thing, they are very essential for the learner himself because making errors is a device he uses to learn, it is a way for him to test the hypothesis about the nature of the language he is learning

For the teacher, a basic distinction should be made between intralingual and interlingual Interlingual errors are those were accounted for by language transfer and intralingual errors were categorized as overgeneralizations ( errors caused by extensions of target language rules to inappropriate context); simplications (errors resulting from redundancy reduction) and developmental errors ( those reflecting built on stages of linguistic development); communication – based errors ( errors resulting from strategies of communication) ; induced errors ( those derived from the sequencing and presentation of target language items); errors of avoidance ( failure to use certain types of target language features because of perceived difficulties); errors of overproduction ( target language features produced correctly but used too frequently) These and similar classifications have been used

to account for errors at the level of phonology, syntax, lexis and speech acts However, there are difficulties on assigning errors to categories, because of a lack of precise criteria for classification, and an overlapping of some of the categories and the possibility of multiple explanations Many error studies and classifications lacked reliabilities and had limited explanation power

4 Teaching based on Contrastive Analysis

4.1 Applied Contrastive Analysis

As you know there are two kinds of CA: theoretical and applied For the former, CAs look for the realization of a universal category X in both language L1 and L2, on the other hand, Applied CAs find out how a universal category X realized in language as Y, is rendered

in language B This means that applied CAs are unidirectional As it is admitted that the question of whether applied CAs should be based on or independent of theoretical CAs is undecided And Carl James explained that an applied CA executed independently is liable to lose its objectivity that is its predictions will tend to be based on teacher’s experience of learners’ difficulty rather than from linguistic analysis So applied CAs are interpretations (of theoretical CAs) rather than independent execution

4.2 Traditional Applications of Contrastive Analysis

Traditional applications of CA are predicting and diagnosing a proportion of the L2 errors committed by learners with a common L1, and in the design of testing instrument for such learners It is based on the assumption that we can predict and describe the patterns (of L2) that will cause difficulty in learning and those that will not cause difficulty (Lado, 1957) And there seems to be three things that a CA can predict: What aspects will cause problems?;

It can predict difficulty; It can predict errors (Prediction errors mean either prediction that there will be error or prediction of the form of that error)

And of course, there are purely quantitative limitations on the number of learner’s errors that CAs can predict: Firstly, there is a fact that not all errors are the results of L1 interference, other major sources of errors are of a non – contrastive origin, including the effects of language asymmetric, transfer of training; strategies of L2 learning and L2 communication strategies The followings are some of applications of CA

4.2.1 Hierarchy of foreign language difficulty This hierarchy identified the types of choices that either language makes available and relating these choices There are three types

of choices: optional choices; obligatory choices and zero For example, an optional phonological choice refers to the possible among phonemes Obligatory choice involves little freedom, since phonetic context determines which of a set of allophones is required to represent a freely selected phoneme Zero reflects the absence of a category in one of the language which is available in the other This scale of difficulty is subject to empirical validation, though there are other complicating factors such as motivation, aptitude, learning and teaching styles, etc

4.2.2 Diagnosis of error: An important role of the teacher as a monitor and assessor of the learner’s performance is to know why certain errors are committed This diagnosis is based

on the knowledge that the teacher organizes feedback to the learner and remedial work The purpose is to see if a particular arrested error is explicable in terms of L1 interference If no L1 structure can be found that the structure of errors seem to be a reflection of, then we have to start the long job of finding some causes other than L1 transfer

4.2.3 Testing: CA has a role to play in testing Since sampling is required it will carry about what to test, and to what degree to test different L2 items If items isomorphic in L1 and L2 are assumed to be easy for the learner, they can be bypassed in the test For the degree to which to test, it depends on the level of the learner, CA based test should be concerned with the scale of difficulty

4.2.4 Course Design

There is an assumption that those L2 structures that match L1 structures must be part

of the teaching materials, because we do not teach what is new but also what identities that two languages share This is meant by Carl James (1986) as Intensively Selection: ‘ .the learner is exposed to all parts of the L2, he must be given opportunities to confirm his positive transfers on the other hand and to learn what he does not know ’ this also suggests that we have two types of teaching materials: those are confirming and those for learning In addition

to the selection, the assumption of CA on grading as Lado (1957) stated that when learning a foreign language those elements are similar to his native language will be simple for him and

those are different will be difficult, so the principle for language learning should proceed from easy to difficult

4.3 Teaching based on Contrastive Analysis - Code cognitive approach & further development

Teaching based on Contrastive Analysis involves presenting to the learner at the same time all the terms in a linguistic system of L2 which, as a system contrasts with the corresponding L1 system The systems concerned may be grammatical, phonological or lexical It also provides the learner with selected especially, transparent instances of contrastive “pairs” each term being suitably contextualized

Or as Richard (1992) stated “the major contribution of the linguistic to language teaching was seen as in intensive contrastive study of the systems of the second language and the mother tongue Out of this, it would come an inventory of the area of difficulty which the learner would encounter and the value of this inventory would be direct to the teacher’s attention to these areas so that he might direct special care and emphasis on his teaching to the overcoming or even avoiding, of the predicted difficulties?” (p.19)

Moreover the importance of CA in teaching is suggested as “ a CA has a significant role to play , not only in pre- identifying the learning problems, but also in specifying the controlled steps’ whereby the learner can most efficiently solve his learning problem A learner whose L1 system is isomorphic with the L2 system has no learning problem and where the L1 and L2 system has do contrast, the algorithm will have to be specified at least in part in conformity with the kind of contrast involved.” (Carl James, 1986, p.156)

5 Summary

Interference from the mother tongue is clearly a major source of difficulty in second language acquisition, and contrastive analysis has proved valuable in locating areas of interlanguage interference Errors derive from many resources and constitute a natural part of language learning Many errors, however, come from the strategies employed by the learner in language acquisition, and from the mutual interference of items within the target language These can not be accounted for by mere contrastive analysis Teaching techniques and procedures should take account of the structural and developmental conflicts that can come

about in language learning There are also various approaches to language learning and teaching, this approach may work for this group of students, but may not for others So the teacher’s job is to decide which one matches with the local context and certain group of students In the following chapter there will be an illustration for this idea

CHAPTER III:

APPLICATION OF CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

ON TEACHING SPEAKING IN VIETNAM FORESTRY UNIVERSITY

1 The reason of the application

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I do not intend to use CA as a total method for teaching speaking at VFU, but I have tried to make use of CA as a kind of a supporting method to follow the CLT method and aimed at helping the student to be more successful in acquiring speaking skill I decided to do so because of several following seasons:

Firstly, it’s said in the background part of the first chapter, the student of VFU is at a rather low and mixed level of English: most of them are beginners although some have studied for about 5 or 6 years and English is considered as a basic subject, and almost classes are of more than 45 students, a few are of more than 70 students Students’ motivation toward learning English is not as high as in many other universities So it is a great challenge for the teacher

Secondly, there has been a great emphasis on teaching and learning grammar, structure, vocabulary, especially grammar And speaking is not paid due attention to As a result the student’s speaking skill is not very good It is difficult for many of them to carry out

a short conversation in English It is even worse when they graduate from university after a long time of ignorance (i.e.: they do not have to learn English in the last two years of the course)

Finally, we do not much expect the student to acquire a kind of fluent and standard English in communicating, but hope them to acquire speaking skill at intermediate level So

my suggestions and application for teaching speaking are as follows:

+ On carrying the learning tasks, there will be a focus on pronunciation teaching of sounds, stress, rhythm, intonation at the beginning of the course, this is expected to help them pronounce a word correctly and then carry out the sentences at a relevant level of English using the stress, rhythm and intonation These factors are very essential for speakers to make them be intelligible to listeners This is the reason why the importance of pronunciation is raised at a very early stage of learning This is suggested by Michael Lewis, Jimmies Hill

(1992: 74) “If students are to use the spoken language effectively, stress and intonation need to

be given their real place in the teaching at all times.” Moreover, communication involves structures, stress, intonation and purposes Textbooks do not always reflect this Most modern textbooks draw explicit attention to the fact that they teach certain structures and certain functions (purposes) But if the student does not have a reasonable control of pronunciation, stress and intonation, he will be difficult to listen to and easily misunderstood

+ Another teaching point comes from the fact that languages are different In general, students tend to assume that the language that they are learning behaves similarly to their own native language This assumption will result in making interference mistakes - carrying over the patterns of their own language inappropriately to the language they are learning So the teacher needs over a period of time and in different ways, to persuade students that languages are different and they must not be surprised by the differences

When obvious differences occur attention should be drawn to them in the teaching In teaching speaking this can be done during pre-speaking and post -speaking stages with the use

of both target language and mother tongue But it is noted for the teacher to avoid word for word translation because this will discourage students and they should be encouraged to understand, and to feel that learning a foreign language is learning to see the world through the new eyes

For example, when helping students to express an exclamation in English through various situations the teacher can contrast the way to express this in English with it in Vietnamese before asking them to carry out a speaking task like this:

A: Pre-speaking: To form an exclamation

- Use “How + clause!”

How hot it is

How quickly the man runs!

- Use “What + noun phrase!

What a lot of books!

What a beautiful girl!

+ Use the words such as: ôi, chao ôi, tr i i or quá, l m, ghê, th t, thay

Ôi tr i nóng quá! (How hot it is!) Chao ôi sao nhi u sách th ! (What a lot of books!)

Ch y xinh th t - Ch y xinh quá

B: Speaking Tasks: How do you exclaim in the following situations!

- You see a lovely picture when you enter your classroom

- You explain so many times a thing to your friend but she can not understand you

+ In addition, a teaching point comes from the fact that language is a system, certain language items in language acquire meaning only by relation to other items in language and more important they can only and easier understood in contrast with others In English, for example the contrast is very useful to distinguish between present perfect and past perfect

2 Teaching speaking and Application of Contrastive Analysis on teaching speaking

2.1 Communicative competence and Teaching speaking

Speaking is one of the four important skills in learning and teaching a language, or it is sometimes said to be the most important skill because ‘speaking’ includes all other kinds of knowledge, in other words, communicative competence This competence is the goal of language teaching which consists of both grammatical competence (linguistic competence or the mastery of linguistic code) and socio – linguistic competence (ability in the social rules of language use) According to Penny Ur (1996: 120), a successful speaking activity consists of the following characteristics:

- Learners talks a lot: As much as possible of the activity is occupied the learner’s talk

- Participant is even: all learners are involved and have a chance to talk and the distribution is even among individual learner

- Motivation is high: the learner is interested in talking such as in contributing new ideas, listening to the topic and others’

- Language is of an acceptable level: this means that learners’ expression is comprehensible to others and at an acceptable level of language accuracy

Besides, the following problems with speaking activities should be avoided in the classroom:

- Learners are inhibited from speaking because of being worried about making mistakes, or losing their face, being criticized, or simply being shy

- They are not motivated to say because they can not think of what to say, they find it

difficult to express themselves

- They tend to use mother – tongue instead of target language, because it feels

unnatural to speak in a foreign language They feel secure when speaking in their mother

tongue

From the goal and some characteristics of a successful speaking class, the teacher’s job

is to find the appropriate method to achieve that goal And the next part, we will see one of

these executions, that is teaching speaking based on CA

2.2 Teaching speaking based on Contrastive Analysis

First and foremost when applying contrastive analysis on teaching speaking, we need

to affirm that “language transfer” is a phenomenon in language learning This is the

phenomenon of borrowing and transferring learner’s native language patterns into the target

language It is pragmatically proved that learner’s mother tongue and their way of thinking in

terms of culturally linguistic expression influence them a lot when they are trying to acquire a

foreign language This is terminologically called “the interference” of the mother tongue into

the target language Further more, in an effort to develop learners’ communicative competence

of both grammatical and social- linguistics from the above characteristics of a successful

speaking activity and some of the problems need to avoid when teaching speaking In addition

to, we should based on the suggestion that “contrastive teaching should involve presenting to

the learner at the same time all the terms in a linguistic system of L2 which, as system

contrastive with the corresponding L1 system’ (Carl James, p154) From the perspectives of

microlinguistics the system of concern may be of phonological, grammatical and lexical which

related to the learner’s speaking skill and from the extreme of macrolinguitics, the application

can be the interference originated from sociolinguistic events or units of linguistic

organization larger than single sentence such as at the formal level (text analysis) and

functional level (discourse analysis) This will be more and detailed illustrated with the

different procedures as follows: