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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE RESEARCH REPORT CHALLENGES FOR VIETNAMESE ADULT ENGLISH LEARNERS IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING Major: English Language Minor: English Language Teaching Supervisor(s): Student’s name: Student ID: Class: Ho Chi Minh City, 2018 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE RESEARCH REPORT CHALLENGES FOR VIETNAMESE ADULT ENGLISH LEARNERS IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING Major: English Language Minor: English Language Teaching Supervisor(s): Student’s name: Student ID: Class: Ho Chi Minh City, 2018 ABSTRACT  Being successful in language learning depends on many factors including learners’ personal efforts, motivation, teaching approaches, especially their age This paper reports on a study that investigated about the challenges such as about the low language competence, time or learning condition environment et al that English learners face Vietnam This study aims to identify learners’ problems with second learning for the purpose of teaching practice Data come from both survey of 25 participants and interview with five adult learners learning English at an online language center which operatesacross Vietnam Findings include some promiment problems among Vietnamese English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners when learning English There are many subjective and objective factors affecting the L2 acquisition process of ESL students when they have an exposure to the language This study is highly useful for those who are interested in teaching adults, as well as for adults learners of english Keyword: challenges, L2 factors, EFL, English, Vietnamese learners ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  This work would not have been possible without the support of the lecturers who have taught me over the past one and a half year I am grateful to you for your help to complete my very first task as a researcher as well as being in a teacher position I am especially indebted to Dr Pham Huy Cuong, Dean of English Faculty of University of Economics and Finance, who has been supportive of my study and actively provide me with enormous information to achieve the goal As my lecture and mentor, he has taught me more than I could ever give hime credit for here He has shown me, by his example, what a good teacher (and person) should be Also, I am thankful to al of those with whom I had the pleasure to work during this project Each of the participants of this project has provided me extensive personal and professional guidance and shown me the experiences that I have never had before while working with them Nobody has shown their support to my study more than my friends I would like to thank all of my friends, who always support and help me though the study together with the inspiration they gave me THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM Independence - Freedom - Happiness SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Student’s full name : TRẦN ĐINH KHIEM Student ID: 16406005 Intake : 2016-2018 Internship duration …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… Major and minor …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… Comments …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………… Supervisor’s signature TABLE OF CONTENT Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 The research problem 1.2 Rationale for the present study 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Significance of the study Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Methodology 3.1 Research Design 3.2 Data gathering instruments 10 3.3 Settings for the present study 12 3.4 Participants’ information 12 3.4.1 Demographic relationships and study variables 13 3.4.2 Age ranges of the participants in the sample 14 3.4.3 Gender differences of the participants in the sample 15 3.5 Data collection procedures 15 3.5.1 Online surveys 16 3.5.2 Interviews 16 3.6 Data analysis 17 Chapter 4: Findings 19 4.1 Objective factors 19 4.1.1 Habits and interests 19 4.1.2 Materials 19 4.2 Subjective factors 20 4.2.1 Time 20 4.2.2 Low language competence 21 Chapter 5: Discussion 25 Chapter 6: Conclusion 26 6.1 Summary of key findings 26 6.2 Implications (for English teaching) 26 6.3 Limitations and directions for future research 27 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Foreign Language FL English as Foreign Language EFL Second Language L2 Grammar Translation Method GTM Communicative Language Teaching CLT LIST OF FIGURES/ IMAGES Table 3.4.2 Participants’s age ranges 14 Table 3.4.3 Participants’s gender differences 15 Figure 3.4 Aliases of interviewees 13 Figure 4.2.1 The time span of learning English 19 Figure 4.2.2 Language leanrning difficulties confronting the partcipant 20 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning FINDINGS Based on the data was analyzed in the previous chapter, this chapter concentrate on research findings The findings related to the research that guided the study would be grouped into specific categories After analyzing the data, the researcher realized that most of difficulties the participants encountered were either objective factors or subjective factors, which will be discussed in details During the interview period, many participants listed their difficulties to learn new languages and the researcher has classified them into categories, being Objective factors and Subjective factors 4.1 Objective factors Objective factors are factors that affected learner unbiasedly In this section, the researcher will discuss mostly main objective factors, including: 4.1.1 Habits and interests Despite understanding the importance of English, many students built a bad habit of using the mother tongue every time they struggled to express their ideas in English This would lead to the fact that their English skills would be limited in simple structures Participants drew out their interest, which is English in the bound of this study, significantly when they felt tired or encountered obstacles 4.1.2 Materials One of the most supposed-to-be-easiest things was material for the course A lot of participants felt the material choice was not good enough to draw their attention to the lessons Sometimes, it was very difficult with a lot of difficult vocabulary, structures and vice versa Tran Dinh Khiem 18 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning 4.2 Subjective factors Besides objective factors which were unavoidable during the learning time, there are some subjective factors These factors differentiate from each individual Therefore, the researcher would like to group these factors into some categories 4.2.1 Time The samples in this study were the ones who had learnt English for at least months It means they had a good amount of time to contact with the language This research will skip the time they spent learning English in class and concentrate on the time they use for improving their language skills 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 < hour 2-3 hours > hours Time span Figure 4.2.1 The time span of learning English In this section, there are more than 60% participant spent at least -3 hours per day to learn English through watching news and music while there is around 25% spending their time to learn English more than hours Although many said that they could not understand one hundred percent of the meaning of Tran Dinh Khiem 19 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning the pieces of news or the songs they are listening to, they can have a good vision of what the news or the songs are talking about 4.2.2 Low language competence Due to the fact that participants in the study were at the Beginner level, it means they would have some issues when expressing themselves via new language Therefore, they encountered many problems during learning such language Knowing the difficulties that people encountered when learning English will make an opportunity to bring out the solutions for the obstacles student facing in their working and daily life A majority of respondents have listed many difficulties as well as their own solutions as below chart Enviroment Vocabulary Pronunciation Fluency Understanding and Cohesion Figure 4.2.2 Language leanrning difficulties confronting the partcipant Tran Dinh Khiem 20 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning Difficulty No.1: Environment Most of learners agreed that environment is the most influential factor to their way of learning languages Working and living in an environment using mostly the mother tongue, Vietnamese, the chance to apply their new learning languages into their daily and working life if limited An office staff who took part in the survey, for instance, said that he did not have the right environment to apply the English skills set because most of his customers or co-workers were Vietnamese at that time Therefore, it affected their abilities to using English skills in their daily routine Difficulty No.2: Vocabulary For many participants, vocabulary is one of the most challenging things they’ve encountered during the time learning English They said that “they cannot remember the words because there are a lot of synonyms, antonyms and word family going with the word they learnt as well as the different meanings of same word.” When they get the trouble with the vocabulary, they will immediately change it back to Vietnamese to express the idea Difficulty No.3: Pronunciation Most participants admitted that they had no idea what pronunciation is and how important role it plays in communication Comparing with the native language, Vietnamese, it is extremely difficult for students to produce correct sounds because there are, in fact, no equivalent sound such as ending sound, or diphthongs…When interviewing the subjects, the researcher realizes that the participants forgot to add the ending sounds such as “f” or “t” when they talked Besides that, they also pronounced entire words wrong, such as “great”, “will”… Especially, the ones who are from the Northern of Vietnam often have same mistakes about the “l” and “n” sound Tran Dinh Khiem 21 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning When doing the interviewed, all the interviewees are asked to introduce themselves Those lines are transcripted into English exactly when they are recorded without grammar or pronunciation correction A said: "My name i A (the name was changed to kept their informaition confidental) I am tenty sick year old I am an accountant It greet to see you." She totally mispronunced all the words when making an introduction Meanwhile, F, who is a Hanoian, mixed the sounds together He said: "Hi, I win introdu mysell My lame is F, I am 35 and I am walking for a mattress company I am a civil engineer" Those are typical examples for the difficulty of adult leaners when they studied pronunciation Difficulty No.4: Fluency Fluency was one of the most significant difficulties participants listed in the surveys Most of them thought that they were not confident enough to speak English Therefore, their utterances normally are short, simple sentences, which means that long, complex sentences are preferred not to be used in any contexts Furthermore, they tended to pause so long for each question to brainstorm the answer for the questions Argeeing with the challenge the reseacher giving out, C and D admited that: “I don’t know what I should say or uhm…[pause in about fifteen or twenty seconds) how to maintain a conversation and uhm… I don’t know the words.” Difficulty No.5: Understanding and Cohesion Tran Dinh Khiem 22 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning One of the most influential difficulties are mentioned is how the participants understand and express their ideas cohesively As mentioned above, most students expressed their ideas by using short sentences It gives no chance for researchers to exploit information deeper Moreover, their understanding ability is limited in many ways They always gave wrong answers for simple questions such as Yes/No questions Plus, they found it difficult to understand the meaning of the questions fully For example, when the researcher conducted a short interview with the subjects, asking them the questions such as “Do you switch to your native language when having difficult to use English?”, the responses were simply neither “Yes, I do” nor “No, I don’t”, but a lengthy answer with their own difficulties Some struggled with vocabulary and grammar, the roots of difficulties in learning reading and writing skills On the other hand, pronunciation is an issue for those who wanted to master their listening and speaking skills In this chapter, the findings as known as study results has been presented and found to be consistent with the findings of several related studies on difficulties of English learners in Vietnam The results would support the researcher’s discussion, which will be discussed in Chapter Tran Dinh Khiem 23 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning DISCUSSION Teaching EFL is not as easy as it sounds That is a whole research process which will help both teachers and learners apply language correctly in different settings or contexts Through the results of findings being discussed in Chapter and 4, the difficulties of learners are mainly in skills: writing and speaking Many learners found it hard to speak while a lot of people struggled with writing In fact, most of teachers in Vietnam are using Grammar Translation method to teach learners, there is no doubt that learners cannot remember anything because it was an oldfashioned style of teaching Learners have no motivation to acquire new knowledge or absorb the cultural things during learning In addition, the role of teachers also affect the way learners receive information For instance, learners will possess a thick local accent with many wrong pronunciations if teacher has that accent When compared with the literature reviewed in Chapter 2, the research reliaze that the main challenges of adults are gender, which affect their time of learning English, environment to practice as well as the way English is conveyed make them find it hard to understand the nature of English Chapter discusses the main problems of learners when learning English To solve the problems found in this study, there are some solutions presented in chapter Tran Dinh Khiem 24 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning CONCLUSION Following the compilation of problems discovered through the research, the researcher will discuss the key findings, implication for English language teaching as well as the limitations and directions for future research 6.1 Summary of key findings Nearly one month and a half was spent conducting the interviews, and surveys to find the principle problems of English learners in Vietnam Age is one of the most significant factors, affecting the results of outcome People tend to learning English because they not want to lag behind the new generation who have conditions to access up-to-date technologies Besides that, there are several objective factors such as environment and material etc Many Vietnamese learners agreed that there is no place for them to practice the materials they learnt in class Furthermore, subjective factors including time, habits, and limited ability also play an important role to build up a hard learning experience time for new learners 6.2 Implications Research indicates that teacher quality directly affects student achievement and identifies the teacher as the single most important factor that impacts student learning In fact, the students will be affected by the way teachers teach them Thus, it is critically important to change the traditional ways of teaching Tran Dinh Khiem 25 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning Implication 1: For those who are teaching learners at thesame level as the ones in the study, they should focus on teaching them about using long, more complex sentences In fact, Vietnamese learners tend to use short, simple sentences to write and speak Besides, the learners have a limited competence, therefore, teachers must be patient and explain in details the reason why we should use that utterances when speaking or sentences when writing For example, learners always responsed “I’m fine Thank you And you?” every time being asked “How are you?” without acknowledging the reason behind the answer By explaining the root of the response, it will help them improve faster Implication 2: Teachers have to create an interesting, energetic friendly environment where students are able to express themselves Furthermore, teachers need to encourage them to apply or combine their own knowledge and their new information or vocabulary to produce various version of a same sentence Teachers have to hold many kinds of activities during class to attract the attention of students which will enhance their language competence Implication 3: According to many research, it is a critical success for teachers teaching students at Beginning level if interaction between teachers and students go along well In fact, there are kinds of Beginner level One is used for the people who have no English exposure before and the other is the term to mention the ones who already learnt English but forgot most of it Hence, it is necessary for teachers to classify who they are teaching and treat them equally The teachers will not the one who teach but the one who guide and inspire the learners using English well in both oral and written documents Steps should be taken slowly Teachers should not throw a great amount of information for one turn, but Tran Dinh Khiem 26 Challenges for Vietnamese adult English language learners : Implications for language teaching and learning chopping it into small pieces of knowledge so that the learners can understand organically 6.3 Limitations and directions for future research The study has focused on the challenges of adult English learners in Vietnam and its solutions It investigated the problems of adult English learners in the modern days Here the researcher emphasized the main matters that adults encountered when learning English However, the number of participants as well as the time spent conducting surveys and interviews were limited Thus, the study only reflects a part of problem of learning English This study only began to reveal some superficial problems If the research was conducted in longer time, it would reflect the problems more correctly Thus, it would be an appreciate for those who are interested in the topic to further research Tran Dinh Khiem to understand the nature of the problems 27 REFERENCES Bell, D (2007) Do teachers think that methods are dead? 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New York, NY W.H Freeman & Company Richards, K., Ross, S &Seedhouse, P (2012).Research methods for applied language studies.Abingdon: Routledge Seliger, H W., Shohamy, E G., & Shohamy, E (1989) Second language research methods Oxford: Oxford University Press Thornbury, S (2001) Uncovering grammar Oxford: McMillan Heinemann Tomlinson, B., & Bao, D (2004) The contributions of Vietnamese learners of English to ELT methodology Language Teaching Research, Retrieved from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/1362168804lr140oa APPENDICES SURVEY Name:………………………………….…………………………………….…… Age:…………………………….…………………………………….…………… Occupation:…………………………….…………………………………….…… Address:…………………………………….…………………………………… Gender…………………………………….…………………………………….… This survey purposely used for the researcher’s study, which is about the obstacles students encountering while learning English and finding the solutions for those obstacles All information is keep confidential Are you interested in English? A Yes B No In scale to 5, how important is English to you? Not Slightly normal important important important Very important In your opinion, what is your current level in English?  Beginner  Pre-intermediate  Lower intermediate  Upper intermediate  Advance How many percentage of English you understand? A < 40 % B 40 -60 % C 60-80% D 100% How long have you learnt English? A < months B – years C >5 years How many hours per day you spend learning English? A < hour B 2- hours C > hours Where you learn your English from? A Friends B School C Language center D Self – study What are your difficulties when learning English? …………………………………………………………………………… Do you have environment practice English? A Yes B No 10 Do you switch to your native language when having difficult to use English? A Yes B No 11 Which aspects of English you want to improve (Pronunciation, Speaking, Writing…)? A Writing B Speaking C Listening D Reading E Other 12 What can you to improve your English skills yourself? …………………………………….…………………………………….… INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Name:………………………………….…………………………………….…… Age:…………………………….…………………………………….…………… Occupation:…………………………….…………………………………….…… Address:…………………………………….…………………………………… Gender…………………………………….…………………………………….… This survey purposely used for the researcher’s study, which is about the obstacles students encountering while learning English and finding the solutions for those obstacles All information is keep confidential Can you introduce yourself in English? …………………………………….…………………………………….… Are you interested in English? Why? …………………………………….…………………………………….… In your opinion, what is your current level in English? …………………………………….…………………………………….… Where you learn your English from? …………………………………….…………………………………….… What are your difficulties when learning English? …………………………………………………………………………… Which aspects of English you want to improve (Pronunciation, Speaking, Writing…)? …………………………………….…………………………………….… What can you to improve your English skills yourself? …………………………………….…………………………………….… Can you read out loud the following pair of words: Will - win, great –greet, name – lame, work – walk, nice – nine