(SKKN 2022) TEACHING GRAMMAR TO 10 GRADE THROUGH COMMUNICATIVE TASK

THANH HOA EDUCATION &TRAINING DEPARTMENT HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVES “TEACHING GRAMMAR TO GRADE 10 STUDENTS THROUGH COMMUNICATIVE TASKS” The writer : Tran Thi Linh Possition : Teacher Shool Unit: Ham Rong High school The field of the experience initiative : Foreign language THANH HOA 2022 Table of contents 1: INTRODUCTION + Aims of the study + Research hypothesis and questions + Significance of the study + Scope of the study + Organization of the study + Summary 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1 The syllabus of grade 10 2.2 The subjects 2.3 Rationale for using quasi- experiment 2.4 Research design 2.5 Procedures 2.6 The tasks 2.7 Findings 2.8 Discussion 2.9 Summary Nowadays, English teaching has improved in method in the light of the communicative, learner-centered which is adaptable to required objectives and give students many opportunities to communicate in English According to Prabhu, who developed the idea of getting learners to acquire English through tasks in 1980s in India, “learners may learn more effectively when their minds are focused on tasks, rather than on the language they are using.” Furthermore, TGTCT has been promoted (Nunan, 1992) And because of the features of taskbased teaching approach, which widely promoted in English teaching nowadays, and adopted in teaching language skills in the textbook at upper secondary school in Vietnam, is mentioned later I, myself, think that TBLT may have significance or may be effective in grammar teaching- the important aspect of language learning In order to know whether or not the task-based teaching approach is possible in grammar teaching And from these above reasons, I decided to choose “teaching grammar to grade 10 students through communicative tasks” for my thesis of the MA course and experienc initiatives ((Dạy ngữ pháp cho học sinh khối 10 thông qua hoạt động làm tập/giao nhiệm vụ) Aims of the study The aims of this study are to experiment teaching grammar through communicative tasks for grade 10 students To be more specific, the primary objectives of the study were set as followed: - To experiment teaching grammar through communicative task for grade 10 students and test its result - To investigate the experimental students' attitudes towards teaching grammar through communicative task Research hypothesis and questions To achieve the aims and objectives, the study was designed to test the hypothesis: Teaching grammar through communicative tasks is more effective to the development of students' grammatical competence than the traditional approach which emphasizes the memorization of rules and decontextualized practice In order to identify the research hypothesis would be accepted or would be rejected, the research questions were formulated and needed to be answered satisfactorily Is students' grammaticality better as measured by their test scores than it is taught in the traditional focus-on-forms methods? What are the students' attitudes towards teaching grammar through communicative tasks after experimental period? Significance of the study Grammar in the TIENG ANH textbook series for high schools is presented in a traditional way In other words, discrete-point grammatical items are presented usually with more than one grammatical items being presented in one Lesson Unit This means that a traditional approach to grammar, which focuses on decontextualized or sentence-based presentation and practice of grammar The study will give an answer to the question of whether it is practical to teach grammar through communicative tasks in the context of the high school in Viet Nam Scope of the study The study was designed to test the hypothesis that it is possible to teach grammar presented in the textbook following the Task-based model Because of the time constraint The researcher could just carry out an experiment upon a small sample of grade 10 students who were no-randomly assigned to a control class and an experimental class, (30 students per each) The pretest and posttest scores were used to measure both groups' English grammar knowledge before and after the trial period of first semester and half of the second semester of the 2009-2010 academic year The post- program questionnaire was designed to get more feedback from experimental students The result of the questionnaire would give the researcher supplementary support for the conclusion drawing So that, the findings of the research could reflect the effects of TGTCT on the subject in the context under consideration Organization of the study This study deals with a detailed description of the study consisting of the syllabus for grade 10 students, the subjects of the study, the rationale for using quasi-experimental study, research design, procedures, the tasks and the findings which concluding the comparison of the pretest and posttest of both control group and experimental group, the students' attitudes towards teaching grammar through communicate tasks The discussions of the findings are presented in this chapter Summary This study presents the rationale, the aims, the hypothesis to be tested and the research method used in this study Introduction As introduced, this study was to test the effectiveness of teaching grammar through communicative tasks In order to meet the aim of the study , the researcher used a quasi- experiment and it was implemented in two intact grade 10 groups in one high school This study starts with a description of the syllabus for grade 10 This will be followed by a discussion of the research method, procedures and outcomes The syllabus for grade 10 In some recent years, new methods of teaching and learning English have been introduced to high schools through the adoption of the new national English textbooks Thanh Hoa Specialized upper secondary school is not except one Unlike the old textbook, the "Tieng Anh 10" has attracted both teachers and students by introducing a theme-based approach with sixteen units Lessons are arranged according to themes which are familiar with students and relevant to many aspects of daily life For example, these themes or topics include A day in the life of , schools talks, people's background, special education, technology and you, an excursion, the media mass, the story of my village, undersea world, conversation, national parks, music, films and cinema, the world cup, cities, and historical places The purpose of this textbook is to develop students' communicative language skills in four skills: reading, speaking, listening, and writing In fact, each unit in the book is divided into five parts: reading first, second is speaking, third is listening, and fourth is writing , and the last is language focus In learning language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), students are excited and interested because of new methods in which they have to some tasks However, Language Focus, including Grammar and Pronunciation is based on very traditional approach which emphasizes the practice of discrete grammar points In the language focus, students are asked to practice some pronunciations in the textbook and taught grammar with a very traditional method This is reflected in the way teachers give examples and explain grammar rules They often spend a lot of time explaining the target grammar rules, analyzing while expounding less useful but difficult words Then students are asked to exercises in the textbook This is likely to make students feel that grammar lesson is so boring because of sitting front of the teacher listening to the teacher explain grammar rules then completing some exercises The subjects The subjects in this study are two groups of grade 10 students , nonEnglish majors who are collected from the two existing classes (Class 10 A2 and Class A3) in Ham Rong high school These two intact classes were pre-assigned to the experimental group and the control group before the study The total number of students in both groups was 60, or 30 each Their age ranged from 15 to 16 and included 24 boys and 36 girls 88 % of them came from the centre of Thanh Hoa city while the rest came from different rural districts of Thanh Hoa province Students in both groups are similar in terms of English proficiency basing on not only the fact that they had spent four years studying English at lower secondary schools but also their pretest scores These two groups are taught by the same Vietnamese teacher of English In this study, both groups regularly received three weekly English classes taught by the researcher according to the school timetable Teaching grammar in the two groups is different The students in the experimental class were taught by a new method, i.e teaching grammar through communicative tasks In contrast, students in the control class were required to some exercises in the text book (or they were taught by a very traditional method ) Rationale for using quasi- experiment Since quasi-experimental designs are used when randomization is impossible and/or impractical, they are typically easier to set up than true experimental designs, it takes much less effort to study and compare subjects or groups of subjects that are already naturally organized than to have to conduct random assignment of subjects Additionally, utilizing quasi-experimental designs minimizes threats to external validity as natural environments not suffer the same problems of artificiality as compared to a well-controlled laboratory setting Since quasi-experiments are natural experiments, findings in one may be applied to other subjects and settings, allowing for some generalizations to be made about population Also, this experimentation method is efficient in longitudinal research that involves longer time periods which can be followed up in different environments In order to measure the effect of the independent variables (teaching grammar through communicative task), the quasi-experimental study is the best choice Besides its practical benefits, the quasi-experimental design has some shortcomings Quasi-experimental study can not randomize the subjects, the researcher has to use intact groups so that the result is not generalized However, the aim of the research is not to generalize but only to test the hypothesis that it is possible to teach grammar item presented in the textbook which is based on a very traditional approach following the task-based model Research design Choosing participants for the study, the researcher chose two existing classes group 10 of Math(A2), and group 10 of Chemistry(A3), because of these following factors: Prepare for the university entrance examination most of the students in the two classes have been following A module with Math, Chemistry and Physics English is a compulsory subject for their leaving-school examination only This means most of these students learn English for the same purpose These two classes are taught by the same teacher but not the researcher to make sure that students are very objective to give researcher their opinions when answering the questionnaire Moreover, students in both two classes are very good and well- behaved There are still some reasons why the researcher chose the two classes, the number of these two classes are the same, both these two classes are well-equipped with a projector per each and the same size In order to equate the control and the experimental groups, the researcher conducted pretest, which was administered before the allocation of students to the experimental and the control groups at the same time on the same day The test was administered under the surveillance of the researcher and another teacher at Ham Rong high school to make sure that no student could copy the answer from the others The purpose of the pretest was to see whether there was statistically significant difference between the language performance of the study group and the control group before they went into the training To this end, an attempt was made to cover most of the grammar items included in grade 10 th students' textbook All the test items were taken from what students had learnt during the academic year The question types include: multiple choice, matching, and sentence transformation The test includes 40 questions Each correct answer was rated one point After comparing the result of the pretest scores in the two classes, the researcher stared teaching grammar for both control group and experiment group follow the timetable of the school with different methods The control group (10A2) was provided with traditional routine situation in the classroom while the experimental group (10A3) was provided with task-based approach as treatment The experiment continued for three months Soon after the treatment was over, posttest was administered to both groups to measure achievement level of the students as result of treatment, after that the researcher identified any difference in the posttest scores between the two groups The posttest was conducted after the weeks of consecutive treatment to measure the sample subjects' language performance (attainment) following the training like the pretest, all the test items were taken from what students had learnt during the academic year To reduce the marking problems and to minimize personal bias, the marking for the post-test was carried out by another teacher who did not participate in this study In this study, a written questionnaire was administered to all students of the experiment group at the same time In order to receive the objective results from 30 subjects who took part in an experimental group, 10 closed questions and three open-ended questions were carefully designed to draw experimental students' evaluative opinions of the new grammar teaching method after the experiment All the written questions were related to students' feedback to the teaching grammar through communicative task on students' English grammar acquisition After having the result of pretest, posttest scores and questionnaire which lasted a time of three months, the researcher collected and analyzed all the data for the result of the study Procedures The study was conducted over months, beginning from October 2th , 2020 and finishing by January 10th, 2021 at Ham Rong high school, Thanh Hoa province As this study is an action research in nature, which is aimed to find a more effective way to teach grammar to the upper secondary school students, the following procedures were followed: Identify the problem, study the literature review underlying the study before carrying out the research Establish the methodological framework for the study Design and administer the pretest to both groups (experimental and control group) Identify any difference in the pretest scores between the two groups Apply the TBA ( teaching grammar through task) on the experimental group Design and administer the posttest to both groups Analyze both groups' posttest scores to establish the difference in grammar acquisition between the two groups after the experimental period Design and deliver the questionnaire to the experimental group to get their ideas of teaching grammar through communicative task Collect and analyze all the data for the results of the study 10 Discuss the findings and draw out conclusions and suggestions for further study The tasks Because of students' level as well as habits of learning grammar following traditional method, although the researcher applied the TBA into teaching grammar to students who took part in the experimental group, she combined both the traditional method and TBA into her teaching In a time of threemonths, it may be difficult for students to be familiar with the new teaching method, they had to have time to be familiar with teaching grammar through communicative task, so that the researcher designed tasks following both traditional method and TBA The traditional method should be reduced more and more until the students are familiar with TBA in teaching grammar The following tasks were used to teach Conditional Sentence Type -Unit 11 Pre-task (warm up) Introduction to topic and tasks Teacher asked students these following questions in two minutes: Do you like traveling? Did you go on holiday last summer? Why and why not? Students were asked to listen to the recorder about the speaker's last summer holiday Before listening to the recorder, students were asked to guess whether last summer she went on holiday or not? And why? Where she went for her summer holiday… My name is Mary, I am a doctor, I like traveling very much In summer I often go on holiday with my family when I have free time I did not go on holiday last summer because of my work If I had not worked, I would have gone to Nha Trang for my holiday If I had gone to Nha Trang, I would have visited many interesting places I would have met my old friends if I had gone to Nha Trang If I had gone to Nha Trang I would have walked along the beech with my friend and we would have talked all day What a pity that I could not go Task * Planning the task Suppose that you went to Nha Trang last summer for your holiday, work in group of five discussing what you would have done and where you would have visited e.g: If I had gone to Nha Trang, I would have visited……… Let students discuss in six minutes * Doing the task Stopping the task, students were asked to continue to work in group preparing a summary of their discussion for later report to the whole class Students wrote notes for this summary and reported this orally to the whole class When students were ready, the spokesperson from each group was asked to the report Students had five minutes to prepare a summary of their discussion and they had minutes to report, each group had minute to orally report Example: If we had gone to Nha Trang, We would have…… * Presenting the product of the task Ask the students some quick comprehension questions Let students look at the passage again and answer the following questions: Did the writer go on holiday last summer? Where she would have gone for her holiday if had not worked? Who would the writer have met if she had gone to Nha Trang? 10 Would she have walked along the beech if she had gone to Nha Trang? post task * Language focus Students were asked to look at the passage again, picking out those sentences which contain If clauses (one student stood up to point out if sentences) Teacher showed those sentences on the screen Students were asked to generalize the use and form of Conditional Sentence Type If + S + Had ( not) PII, S + Would (not) have PII Would + S + have + PII, If + S + Had (not) PII? Teacher pointed out that in English people use conditional sentence type to tell about wishes that could not in the past (Or events that did not happen in the past.) At this point students were asked to make sentences using conditional sentence type telling about their own events in the past Teacher went around the class and helped students if necessary * Language practice Students were asked to exercise 1,2 in the textbook in five minutes Finishing exercises, some students were asked to read their exercise and the others compared with their result The teacher correct students' exercises * Home work assignment Teacher asked students to make an interview asking their family members' wishes that could not be done in the past Findings This section comprises of the two main sections: comparison of the pretest and posttest performance and the experimental group 's opinions of teaching grammar through communicative task given in the questionnaires The data collected from the pretest and posttest scores were used to measure the impact of the treatment, i.e teaching grammar through communicative tasks All tests were crossed-marked by the researcher and another teacher of English at school The test scores were computed and analyzed by means of SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) to work out means (M), mode, median, standard deviation (SD), to identify whether the 11 control group or the experimental group could improve their grammar knowledge after experimental period First, both groups' pretest scores were carefully calculated and recorded to examine the difference in their grammar proficiency before the experiment The pretest scores were also used for later analysis and comparison with the posttest scores Then, individual subject's gain in grammar test was computed by subtracting the pretest score from the posttest score The next step in the analysis was calculating the mean and the standard deviation of each group's gain for comparison Finally, the standard deviation and the gain of the control group were compared with those of the experimental group to decide whether the possible difference was significant 7.1 Comparison of the pretest and posttest scores, the gain values between the two groups Table 1: Descriptive statistics for the pretest and post-test of the experimental and control groups (Max score = 40) Descriptive statistics Control group (N=30) Experimental group(N=30) Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest M 23.63 25.33 22.8 25.47 Mode 21 22 20 23 Median 22 24 21.5 24.5 Low 16 18 16 19 High 34 36 34 37 Range 18 18 18 18 Sd Deviation 4.58 4.671 4.13 4.31 As can be seen from Table 3.2, the control group achieved a mean score 23.63 in the pretest, which was slightly higher than that of the experimental group (M = 22.8) However, The posttest score of the experimental group was slightly higher than that of the control group (25.47 vs 25.33; SD: 4.31 vs 4.67) Such difference was too small to be significant This is true to other statistical values such as the mode, median and range It seems that the treatment, i.e 12 teaching grammar through communicative tasks did not have significant impact on students' grammatical competence Regarding gains, the treatment seems to be effective to a small number of the students This is illustrated below The difference in gain values obtained by both groups after the experiment Interestingly, both groups showed progress in terms of their grammatical competence over the period of treatment, a gain of 1-2 points was more popular in the control group while a gain of 3-5 was more popular in the experimental group Nonetheless, there is only point difference regarding the median Specially the median of the control group in the posttest is 24 against 24.5 of the experimental group Looking at the standard deviation, we can see that the posttest scores of the control group spread out a little bit more widely than those of the experimental group (4.67 vs 4.31) In short, considering all the statistical values, the new approach to grammar did not seem to have a significant impact on students' grammatical competence against the traditional way of teaching grammar To be more exact, the traditional way of teaching grammar was almost as effective as a more taskbased approach to grammar 7.2 Subjects' attitudes towards the new teaching method - teaching grammar through communicative task The result of the subjects' attitudes toward the treatment could help us find the answer to the first question of the study.We focus on the data collected from the questionnaire, i.e the experimental students' opinion of the TGTCT in this section 13 Subjects' attitudes toward teaching grammar through communicative tasks ( N = 30) Opinion The new teaching method makes the grammar class more comfortable The new teaching method helps me learn grammar more effectively The new teaching method helps me remember my vocabulary better The new teaching method helps me remember grammar structures which I had learnt before The new teaching method helps me grammar exercises more correctly The new teaching method helps me speak English more confidently The new teaching method helps me write English more correctly The new teaching method does not help me learn English better than the old method The new teaching method is very difficult for me The new teaching method is appropriate only with students who learn well Agree Disagre No idea e 29 96.7% 0% 3.3% 28 1 93.3% 3.3% 3.3% 26 2 86.6% 6.7% 6.7% 26 86.6% 3.3% 10% 27 90.% 3.3% 6.7% 28 1 93.3% 3.3% 3.3% 26 86.6% 3.3% 10% 28 93.3% 0.% 6.7% 26 3.3 % 86.6% 10 % 27 3.3% 90% 6.7% As shown in Table 3.3, 96.7 % of the subjects who took part in the experiment felt that learning grammar through communicative tasks was very comfortable which is one of very necessary and useful factors in language learning and teaching, while only 3.3 % of them did not have any idea about this, no one disagreed 14 Regarding the effectiveness of the new teaching method, the majority of students who took part in an experiment ( 28% ) said that the new teaching method helped them learn grammar more effectively Although, 3.3 % of them did not express any idea about this, and 3.3 % of them found that it was ineffective Moreover, 86.6 % of them stated that the new teaching method helped them not only remember grammar structures better but also helped them write English more correctly This was against 3.3 % of the respondents disagreeing with this statement Choosing " no idea" accounted for 10 % Similarly, 86.6 % of them recognized that learning grammar through communicative tasks helped them remember vocabulary although 6.7 % of them disagreed and other 6.7 % of them did not express their idea about this The responses of 27 of experimental students out of 30 suggested that teaching grammar through communicative tasks helped them be able to grammar exercises better However, there was one student who disagreed and two of them had no idea about this statement Clearly, 93.3 % of the experimental students agreed that the treatment helped them speak English more confidently However, there was one student (3.3 %) who did not agree with this opinion, and one (3.3 %) student did not express any ideas about this Item number dealt with students' negative criticism of the new teaching method, it was surprising that no one in the experimental group acknowledged that it did not help them learn grammar better than the old method, although two of them did not express their opinion about this It is the researcher's consideration that new teaching method is difficult for her students, in fact only one (3.3 %) of the subjects who took part in the experimental group found that the new teaching method was very difficult to him/her, 86.6% of them affirmed that it was not difficult for them to learn following the new teaching method and 10 % of them did not have any idea about this The last of ten closed-ended questions, 90 % of them disagreed the statement that the new teaching method was only appropriate with students who learn well, only 3.3 % of them agreed with this and 6.7% of them did not have any idea about this In order to get students' evaluate attitudes which are not 15 concerned in the questionnaire, in the other hand to make students have chance to give opinions about the new teaching method more freely, opened- ended questions were also designed In open-ended questions, three questions of asking students' reasons for their preference and the continuance of the new teaching method were asked, they are: Give one reason why you like the new teaching method ? Give one reason why you not like the new teaching method? Do you like the teacher continue to teach grammar following the new method? Why? In open-ended questions, most students who took part in an experiment said that they liked the new teaching method because the class atmosphere was very comfortable and they were not pressured Some of them said that the new teaching method helped them help the others and learn from each other With the reference to the continuance of the new teaching method in the future, 100 % of them wanted the teacher to continue to teach grammar as following the new method No one said that he or she did not like the way the researcher taught them Answering the second question which helped the researcher to know the reasons why students did not like the new teaching method, and helped the researcher know the limitation of the new teaching method There were some students who took part in an experimental said that the new teaching method did not help them practice pronunciation in the textbook There was an opinion that it may be noisy in the teaching grammar through communicative tasks lessons, some students took advantage of discuss in group to talk Discussion 8.1 The impact of TBLT on grammar acquisition The findings of this research show that the adaptation of a TBLT approach to grammar does not show a significant difference in terms of students' grammar acquisition in comparison with the traditional approach to teaching grammar This supports Ma li 's (2004) suggestion that TBLT may not be effective in large classes.One of the reason accounting for this insignificant impact is that the treatment was applied in a very short time In other words, the time for the treatment was not long enough to bring about significant impact on 16 students' grammar acquisition However, even when the syllabus is not prescribed, it takes time to try out various grammar items with the TBLT approach before decisions on which grammar items are more appropriate for TBLT approach This is probably a challenge for teachers who wish to teach grammar through communicative tasks 8.2 Students' attitudes towards teaching grammar to 10 grade students through communicative tasks The results of the questionnaire show that students have positive attitudes toward the teaching of grammar through communicative tasks Paradoxically, while their attitudes toward the new approach to grammar were positive, this was not reflected in their gains of grammar knowledge as shown in their test scores Summary This STUDY presents the research method and research procedures as well as research results.The results indicate that there was a difference between the post test scores of the two groups, however, it was too small to be significant It would be concluded that, teaching grammar through communicative tasks may not be more effective to the development of students' grammatical competence than the traditional approach to teaching grammar But an important point is that students seemed to be positive to this approach to teaching grammar And this encourages teachers to try this approach in their classrooms It is possible that the new approach to teaching grammar was applied in a short time, which failed to familiarize the students with the new approach Therefore the results were not significantly different During a long time using these experiences in teaching, I have achieved a lot of worth successes in my life of teaching as the following results: *The school year 2019-2021 Học sinh : Nguyễn Ngọc Linh Xuân – Đạt giải học sinh giỏi cấp tỉnh Học sinh: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Anh – Đạt giải nhì học sinh giỏi cấp trường *The school year 2016-2019 Học sinh : Lê Minh Anh – Đạt giải học sinh giỏi cấp trường 17 * With the above results , I think my experiences in teaching are very practical, helpful , and important They not only help students study better , but also give students a lot of different chances to practice English Therefore , my experiences make students study English better and better and the English classes are more exciting I hope all of you are sincere to give me your ideas about this topic In this method, I realized most students worked harder, expressed more ideas, became more active and interested in the lessons and especially had more satisfactory results despite the fact that they are the students of HAM RONG HIGH CSHOOL However, I myself have not discovered its limitation yet, I would like to get the comments and advice from the colleagues, especially from the English teachers so that my topic will be more completed and widely used in teaching English for students in high school Thank you so much! Thanh Hoa,22/04/2022 LEADER’S CONFIRMATIONS (XÁC NHẬN CỦA THỦTRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ ) I strongly ensure this is my own work without copying from any other’s Writer Trần Thị Linh 18 References 1.Ma Li 2004 A survey of teachers’ attitudes towards grammar teaching through tasks Journal of Basic English Education 6/3 Nassaji, H & Fotos, S (2004) Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 126-145 Nunan, D (1989) Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classsroom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nunan, D (1991) Language Teaching Methodology: a Textbook for Teachers New York: Prentice Hall Nunan, D Research Methods in Language Learning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press English 10th Student’s book 19 NHỮNG NĂM ĐƯỢC HỘI ĐỒNG KHOA HỌC NGÀNH GIÁO DỤC ĐÁNH GIÁ XẾP LOẠI 20 ... are to experiment teaching grammar through communicative tasks for grade 10 students To be more specific, the primary objectives of the study were set as followed: - To experiment teaching grammar. .. teaching grammar through communicative task for grade 10 students and test its result - To investigate the experimental students' attitudes towards teaching grammar through communicative task Research... grammar to 10 grade students through communicative tasks The results of the questionnaire show that students have positive attitudes toward the teaching of grammar through communicative tasks Paradoxically,