The contributions of vietnamese learners of english to ELT methodology

Language Teaching Research 8,2 (2004); pp 199±222 The contributions of Vietnamese learners of English to ELT methodology Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat Leeds Metropolitan University This article reports a survey of 300 intermediate-level EFL adult learners’ views about the instruction they receive and of 15 of their teachers at the National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City Its main focus is on how learners can contribute to ELT methodology The article reviews the literature on learner cultures and perceptions in language education and on the contributions that learners have made and could make to decisions about classroom methodology It also reports the conduct and the results of the survey and uses this to discuss implications for L2 classrooms in Vietnam and elsewhere, and to suggest pedagogic interventions that could help to facilitate learner contributions and cater for learner needs and wants The survey indicates that the teachers (as reported in other similar studies) were largely unaware of what their students felt and thought about the methodology of their courses, and that the learners would welcome changes to the culture of their classrooms I Background This study was motivated by our awareness of the apparent reluctance of adult Vietnamese students to participate in classroom interaction in English and by our feeling that this was at least partially attributable to the lack of congruence between the learners’ and the teachers’ perceptions of the classroom culture in English language lessons in Vietnam, and in particular of their perceptions of the role of interaction in English in this culture From initial observations at our research location we observed that spontaneous discourse was rare in many classrooms and many oral interactions not only did not include any students’ indiAddress for correspondence: Brian Tomlinson, Leslie Silver International Faculty, School of Languages Leeds Metropolitan University, Beckett Park Campus, Leeds LS6 3QS, UK; e-mail: B.Tomlinson@leedsmet.ac.uk # Arnold 2004 10.1191/1362168804lr140oa Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 200 The contributions of Vietnamese learners vidual thoughts or elaborated responses but also fostered a great deal of dependence on the teacher It was our hypothesis that the learners were dissatis®ed with the way English classes are conducted in adult institutions in Vietnam and that they would suggest changes if they were given a say in the decision-making process In our review of the recent literature we found that many researchers pay attention to learner cultures and perceptions in second language education (Chen, 1985; Scarcella, 1990; Meyer, 1991; Wu, 1991; Kramsch, 1993; Johnson, 1995; Ballard, 1996; Cortazzi, 1996; Burns and Joyce, 1997; Karavas-Doukas, 1998; McDonough, 2002), as well as to the contributions that learners can make to the classroom decision-making process (Allwright, 1984: 167; Barkhuizen, 1998: 85) This re¯ects an apparently growing awareness that the learners’ view of the classroom process frequently diŒers from that of the teachers McDonough (2002) reports on a study of learners and teachers of Greek and French in which, for example, only 20% of the teachers considered grammar practice useful compared to 81% of the learners, and Nunan (1988), Williams and Burden (1997: 201¡202), Barkhuizen (1998) and Spratt (1999) report similar discrepancies between teacher and learner perceptions of the usefulness of classroom activities This divergence between teacher and learner perceptions has often been attributed to culturally in¯uenced determinants of classroom behaviour (Fu, 1995; Johnson, 1995; Lin and Warden, 1998; Sato, 1982; Scarcella and Oxford, 1992) Learners’ views are rarely taken into account when decisions about curricula, materials and methodology are made in the persistently teacher-centred ministries, staŒ-rooms and classrooms of the world (Mitchell and Lee, 2003), and it is recognized that learners need assistance in communicating what they cannot communicate alone (Scarcella and Oxford, 1992: 45) It is also becoming acknowledged that the awareness of the learning process implicit in students’ classroom behaviour is just as valid a determiner of pedagogic processes as the concepts and theories of academic literature (Altrichter et al., 1991: 4; String, 1999: 167) Failure to acknowledge this has led to the failure of many language EFL innovation projects in the last few decades because they have Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 201 unwittingly imposed practices that have promoted inappropriate types of social order in the target classroom (Shamin, 1996; Karavas-Doukas, 1998: 49) and have not taken into account that diŒerent learners prefer to learn in diŒerent ways In fact, those learners who are pushed to behave in ways that they not ®nd helpful are very unlikely to be successful (Allwright and Bailey, 1991: 149¡150; Lewis, 1996; Oxford, 1996) There is considerable evidence, for example, that current course books and examinations favour analytically inclined learners even though the majority of learners prefer to learn experientially (Tomlinson, 1996, 1998a; Islam, 2001; Tomlinson et al., 2001) There is also evidence though that there are some universal learner inclinations, such as a liking for narrative, incongruity and fun (Tomlinson, 2003a; Tomlinson, forthcoming), and there is evidence that learners will readily stretch their learning styles if novel approaches are seen to be interesting and potentially useful (Bedell and Oxford, 1996; Tennant, 2001; Kubanyiova, 2002) While theorists emphasize the potential of learner contributions, practitioners continue to overlook the rich resource from their own students that they have at hand `Very many teachers seem to ®nd it di cult to accept learners as people with a positive contribution to make to the instructional process’ (Allwright, 1984: 167) Consequently, learners have, as yet, made little contribution to the pedagogic procedures of particular classrooms nor to ELT methodology in general This situation is especially regrettable when, as Daoud (1995: 84) maintains, an essential part of analysis in much action research has been shaped by the contribution of learners’ foreign language ideologies Arguably, to understand and respect learner identity (Tudor, 1996: 158¡59) is not enough; more speci®c eŒorts need to be made to link knowledge of learner perceptions with eŒective teaching intervention II Rationale of the study This article summarizes a study that was part of a longitudinal project that eventually arranged for 300 EFL adult learners to take part in methodological reform in their own classrooms The project Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 202 The contributions of Vietnamese learners derived from complaints among language educators in Vietnam about student reticence in classroom discussion While some teachers hold the students responsible for their passive learning style, others blame it on uninteresting learning materials and activities Unfortunately, because of institutional hierarchies and the lack of learner feedback policies, the students have never articulated or accounted for their learning di culties Our study set out to bridge this gap by giving the students opportunities to express their views The research questions were as follows: Are students able to reveal the factors that cause them dif®culty in oral participation in classroom activities? How can knowledge of such factors serve as a frame of reference for devising more suitable pedagogical procedures? In this article we focus on the data on student and teacher perceptions gathered over two years (1998¡2000) at a language centre in Ho Chi Minh City The research project was later on expanded into a series of classroom interventions in which the pedagogy recommended in the Discussion section of this article was put into action and then re-evaluated A report of this further project will appear in a future article (Dat and Tomlinson, in progress) III Method Participants The voices to be heard in the study were those of 319 EFL adult learners, aged between 16 and 50, from eight lowerimmediate classes (receiving 180 to 360 hours of EFL) and seven upper-immediate classes (receiving 360 to 720 hours of EFL) in the Centre for Foreign Languages at the National University of Vietnam The choice of intermediate levels, which covered between one and two years of learning experiences, allowed the students not only to discuss their present course but to re¯ect on the history of studying in previous courses Their roles in the project were to provide a picture of their learning problems and, where possible, to make suggestions on how the teaching could be adapted Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 203 In addition, 15 teachers who worked with these classes were invited to listen to their students’ concerns and to interact with them in order to make pedagogic decisions These teachers, who had ELT experience in adult language institutes, shared the same nationality (Vietnamese) and similar educational backgrounds (a BA in Linguistics and Literature from a local university), and two of them had also received further TESOL training overseas The main reason for selecting this group was that it comprised EFL teachers who worked closely with our learner sample on a frequent basis and who were likely to stay with these classes through the length of our ®eldwork Their familiarity with learner background and behaviour was a valuable source of data and the fact that some of them were our acquaintances and friends helped in setting up connections, requesting permission, seeking support from other teachers and obtaining co-operation throughout the study project Design Data were collected through a variety of procedures (including interviews with students and with teachers, questionnaires, observation, ®eld notes and diaries) To process the teacher and student responses, we chose our analytical methods that related to the speci®c needs of our research situations rather than following any single approach Although action research has been evolving for half a century (Zuber-Skerritt, 1992: 11), it is still a relatively new approach in second language education (Burns, 1999: 152) and procedures for analysing action research data remain open to a good deal of development (Burns, 1998: 6) In our ®eldwork circumstances, we were frequently driven by a need to interpret the varying clusters of data being captured until we were able to decide which variables to continue pursuing Consequently, we decided to integrate the tasks of data analysis and data gathering ¡ because for us, information, interpretation and action only made sense when they constantly interacted to constitute one dynamic route of progression For example, through preliminary observation of classrooms, we started to analyse factors that in¯uence classroom participation Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 204 The contributions of Vietnamese learners in order to develop the student questionnaire Information from this questionnaire then helped us to select speci®c issues to pursue more deeply by conducting follow-up interviews with a number of learners and interviews with teachers In addition, observing the teachers’ working patterns in their classroom also suggested points for interviews to follow up what we witnessed in the classroom Such interviews allowed us to set the teachers’ responses against what the students said about the classroom process to achieve a more complete picture of what might obstruct learner participation Rather than waiting until the end of the data collection, we treated data analysis as a procedural undertaking that ran through the entire research inquiry at every stage We coded, interpreted, triangulated, pursued and categorized every piece of data being captured so that analysis and collection ¯owed together and supported each other Interpreting each set of data gave us a better sense of what to collect next, and then collecting it helped us to revisit our initial interpretation and to modify it Instruments The questionnaire consisted of 44 items that sought information relating to the following: students’ expectations of the classroom, including their perception of learner roles and learning styles, how they de®ne obstacles to classroom interaction, and whether they have a desire to be more orally active; students’ re¯ections on their previous learning experience, including classroom instances that encouraged or discouraged their oral performance; and conditions for learner participation, kinds of activities, topics, texts, and so on that help students to participate during a lesson These aspects were focused on as a result of our preliminary investigation in which we conducted a series of eight classroom observations to identify what encourages and what inhibits student participation Each item in the questionnaire was either structured, open-ended, or both Here is an example: 13 When you not participate during the lesson, which of the following would best describe you: (You can tick more than one choice) & a passive learner & a shy learner & a thoughtful learner & a lazy learner Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 205 & a frustrated learner (why?) _ & other than these: _ _ _ _ The questionnaire was ®rst written in English and then, to ensure clarity for the respondents, was translated into Vietnamese Procedures Since the questionnaire contained a large number of items, which could have aŒected the students’ concentration span, we decided to administer it in two sessions To this, we requested permission from 15 teachers to let us administer the survey in their classrooms twice, each time for 20 minutes We administered the questionnaire to 300 respondents in the ®rst session and 294 in the second session The students could answer all the questions in either Vietnamese or English, or a combination of both ¡ whichever way made them feel most comfortable in getting their message across Twenty-®ve follow-up interviews were conducted with individual students to clarify responses in their questionnaires Analysis The students’ responses to the questionnaire were examined and re-examined to form a picture of how the nature of the teacher=learner relationship is embedded in their everyday classroom behaviour As we did this, the picture began to reveal many factors that inhibited learner participation and to suggest how the situation could be changed This process also revealed that all 300 student respondents were willing to make a contribution to improving teaching and learning in their classroom, as well as to suggest what they would like the classroom process to be We made use of the information from the questionnaire to identify those student views that were particularly salient For example, when informants revealed, `I always process ideas in my mind even when not actually participating’, the ®gure 97.6% (see item 7.4 in Table 1) suggests that there are in fact very few students who not respond with their inner voice (Tomlinson: 2000, 2001, 2003b) We also used it to compare the frequency of responses, as well as the relationship between diŒerent variables Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 206 The contributions of Vietnamese learners Table Summary of student ideologies and suggestions Issues of student concern Student feelings about classroom relationship 1.1 I ®nd peer pressure strong and intimidating to my participation I keep quiet when I fell apprehensive of my teacher I keep quiet when I like my teacher less I keep quiet as part of my shy nature I enjoy interaction with my classmates I believe conversation in class is good for my study 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Performance anxiety 2.1 Speaking English in class often makes me feel shy and unnatural Speaking English in class often makes me feel highly anxious The English classroom is a very stressful place to be in 2.2 2.3 Low self-esteem 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 My participation only wastes class time, especially when unauthorized I’m ashamed of my limited English I’m ashamed of my poor pronunciation I’m less pro®cient than most of my classmates Consciousness of linguistic incompetence 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 My pronunciation is poor My English is inaccurate I’m hopeless about my grammar I’m hopeless about listening comprehension I’ve failed to meet the standard of my English courses Many courses I’ve taken have not bene®ted my speaking facility much 4.6 Dissatisfaction with classroom climate 5.1 5.2 I ®nd my classroom routine monotonous My teacher seems too serious and short of humour My teacher seems lacking in commitment and enthusiasm My teacher seems impatient and intolerant of silence I wish my teacher diversi®ed classroom activities more 5.3 5.4 5.5 Negative or passive perceptions about the learning process Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Number of responses 23 % 7.6 105 35 15 221 216 210 37.6 74 70 136 45.3 143 47.6 147 49 24 70 15 112 23.3 37.3 168 132 221 79 112 56 44 73.6 26.3 37.3 247 82.3 105 105 35 35 15 38 12.6 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 207 Table (continued) Issues of student concern 6.1 6.4 6.4 I can learn English well without any verbal participation My participation makes sense only when it is accurate If I raise questions that would only reveal my ignorance My questions are often not worth asking I am too old for English The need for comprehensible expectation 7.1 7.2 7.3 I’m willing to participate yet I rarely so I don’t have much practice in speaking skills I am frustrated by my teacher’s method of correction I always process ideas in my mind even when not actually participating The teacher should give more waiting time for my contribution The teacher should encourage me to speak more The teacher should get everyone to volunteer 6.2 6.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.8 Consciousness of being underestimated or neglected by the teacher 8.1 I wish I had been encouraged to express my ideas The teacher should reduce the tendency to invite only good students to speak I wish we were able to provide class discussion topics I hope for opportunities to talk more about my own experience 8.2 8.3 8.4 Communal mentality 9.1 9.6 I fear having to break the silent norm of my class I feel comfortable working in groups I enjoy learning English from friends The teacher should organize more communication among classmates I want to learn by repeating after the teacher 10 The need for grammar study 10.1 The teacher should help me make sentences from the language provided The teacher should help me revise the language taught The teacher should lecture about how the language works The teacher should teach me more vocabulary and sentence patterns 9.2 9.3 9.5 10.2 10.3 10.4 Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Number of responses 66 % 22 140 46.6 14 101 28 33.6 19.3 211 268 45 70.3 89.3 15 293 97.6 75 25.5 222 75.5 66 22.5 285 95 51 17 210 71.5 69 23.5 53 17.6 204 255 102 69.7 87 35 63 21.5 69 23.5 111 38 177 60 208 The contributions of Vietnamese learners For example, the fact that 37.3% of students who revealed that `I’m less pro®cient than most of my classmates’ (see item 3.4) can be linked to the ®nding that 17% of the students thought that, `The teacher should reduce the tendency to invite only good students to speak’ (see item 8.2) The main issues raised in the analysis of the questionnaire responses were followed up by in-depth interviews Then by reporting the student responses in a seminar with the 15 class teachers and inviting teachers to make comments we strived for a more complete picture of the classroom process We also compared our ®ndings to those in the relevant literature for further insights IV Results Table presents the results of the questionnaire It shows the number and percentage of responses relating the key factors that were identi®ed The presentation of these key factors that follows draws on both the questionnaire responses and the interviews with the 15 class teachers Learners want deeper social relationships in the classroom Many learners enter the classroom with a desire not only to improve their language pro®ciency but also to socialize and be accepted by the classroom society (74% enjoy interaction with their class mates ¡ see 1.5 in Table 1) The socialization objective, unfortunately, often seems to be neglected by teachers A large number of students in this project admitted failing to establish an open, friendly relationship with peers and suŒering from their own timid, unsociable nature (37.6% ¡ see 1.4) When many students in the same classroom are shy, others share a reluctance to break the silent norm (17.6% ¡ see 9.1) Learners need to reduce their performance anxiety Di culty in listening comprehension (26.3% ¡ see 4.4), fear of making mistakes (44% ¡ see 4.2), fear of teacher criticism (12.6% ¡ see 5.4), peer pressure (7.6% ¡ see 1.1) and unfamiliarity with Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 209 using English in communication (45.3% ¡ see 2.1) are among reasons that seem to make many students feel apprehensive when speaking out during a lesson and to create the impression that the English classroom is a stressful environment (49% ¡ see 2.3) Students need to overcome their low self-esteem Many students in the study feel they risk losing face while sharing the same class with better students (37.3% ¡ see 3.4) Not only they lack con®dence due to their perception of their limited English pro®ciency (23.3% ¡ see 3.2), but they also feel inferior because their potential is not respected by the teacher (17% ¡ see 8.2) Students need to deal with their linguistic limitations For many weak students, feeling frustrated by the lack of conversational practice in their classroom in the past (82.3% ¡ see 4.6) and failing to meet the standard of their ongoing course (37.3% ¡ see 4.5) make them reluctant to participate Interview data also show that many students’ extreme desire for correctness plays a part in making them feel inadequate and powerless in the classroom One student stated that speaking a little but correctly is more important than verbalizing a lot but wrongly, an attitude that came from many of her teachers in the past who had laid much emphasis on perfection This coincides with Lewis and McCook (2002: 147) view that verbal perfection has been traditionally valued across many Asian cultures Students experience a classroom atmosphere that does not stimulate discussion Students reported having worked with teachers who were impatient with mistakes and poor performance (12.6% ¡ see 5.4), or who followed classroom routine (35% ¡ see 5.1) with little commitment or enthusiasm (5% ¡ see 5.3) `What and how teachers and say things greatly aŒects the atmosphere of the class community’ (Fu, 1995: 199) If the teacher criticizes harshly, students are likely to avoid risking any behaviour that makes them vulnerable Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 210 The contributions of Vietnamese learners Learners need to deal with negative conceptions of the learning process Unfamiliarity with learner-centred approaches and lack of trust in some teachers in the past have led students to believe that mistakes bring shame (46.6% ¡ see 6.2), that oral communication in the classroom is not helpful (22% ¡ see 6.1), and that asking questions reveals ignorance (8% ¡ see 6.3) or is even not worth doing (33.6% ¡ see 6.4) These beliefs are likely to inhibit interaction One of the 25 students interviewed revealed: `If the teacher asks me a question that seems too easy, it’s not worth answering thus I keep quiet If the question seems too di cult, I wouldn’t have the answer to give, so again I remain quiet.’ Learners have expectations they wish to see ful®lled Although it is has been claimed that self-initiated interaction speeds up acquisition of a second language (Seliger, 1983: 252¡53), our data consistently indicate that such interaction might not bene®t all learners in the same way Some students who appreciate some level of freedom and spontaneity may welcome opportunities to volunteer to speak out (22.5% ¡ see 7.8) Others ®nd the idea of self-initiation somewhat threatening or a waste of class time (8% ¡ see 3.1) Instead, they feel the need to rely on some form of support, such as their own written notes or being called on by the teacher, in order to feel secure and operate eŒectively Teachers tend to underestimate learner competence The interview data show that some of the teachers refused to believe in the learners’ willingness to participate and their potential to express themselves ¯uently in English They thus form selfful®lling beliefs about their students’ incompetence (see, e.g., 8.2) that lead to acceptance of learner reticence and prevention of change In particular, seven of the 15 teachers interviewed thought that their students might not be willing to increase their participation much because of their limited oral competence in English The survey data, however, indicates that many students have the desire to express their thoughts orally (95% ¡ see 8.1), provide Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 211 discussion topics (71.5% ¡ see 8.3) and share their experiences with the class (23.5% ¡ see 8.4) Classroom methodology should re¯ect the students’ preference for a `family style’ One typical feature that stands out in the Vietnamese learning culture, as is evident during much classroom observation, is the ideal of social harmony built into the participating act (see, e.g., 9.1) Every time the teacher directs an activity that happens to challenge or undermine this ideology, learners are unlikely to respond The following anecdote taken from an interview with a teacher is a case in point: During one lesson I decided to challenge my students to speak more by deliberately trying to disturb their emotion I made up a series of provocative statements that described Vietnamese people in a negative light, and asked the class whether they thought the statements were true To my surprise, everyone calmly told me that they accepted the statements As I insisted on further reactions, the students remained silent, showing no intention to argue with the teacher whom they had always respected and agreed with I felt hopeless having created a con¯ict that led me nowhere In many of the lessons we observed, the students seemed quiet and reluctant to articulate their personal ideas; but some of them responded as a group to a teacher’s question or interactive initiation This seemed to increase a sense of communal acceptance among peers but it was noticeable that it occurred during learner response to display questions, to which answers were already in the teacher’s mind, rather than to referential questions, to which answers came from the learners’ minds Choral response allowed learners to participate securely, but it also encouraged imitation and restricted individual attempts towards more original contributions Further evidence of the reassurance of social harmony is provided by the 69.7% of the respondents who said they were comfortable working in groups (9.2) and the 87% who said they enjoy learning from their friends (9.3) 10 The classroom methodology needs to cater for student expectations of grammar teaching in the preparation and feedback stages of oral lessons Vietnamese learners view grammar as an indispensable component of their language course (see 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4) This was Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 212 The contributions of Vietnamese learners also true of the 236 high school students in China and the 189 high school students in Spain who took part in a research project in which Tomlinson and Masuhara (in progress) are investigating learner similarities and diŒerences across cultures Both the Chinese and Spanish students rated grammar explanation as one of the least popular but most useful classroom activities V Discussion We will now revisit each of the factors identi®ed in the Results section in order to consider the implications for language teaching In so doing we will seek to answer research question two Learners need deeper social relationships in the classroom The most practical way that teachers could help students to socialize would be through organizing more group work, as 69.7% of our student respondents said they were comfortable working in groups (9.2), 87% said they enjoy learning from their friends (9.3) and 35% thought the teacher should organize more communication among classmates During the seminar, many of the 15 teachers agreed with us when we suggested that an appropriate solution for this problem would be to provide conditions to stimulate openness and interpersonal communication through activities that assist students in socializing more comfortably with one another Learners need to reduce their performance anxiety Fear of taking risks could be reduced by using a multi-layered approach to eliciting speech For example, shy students are invited to speak while keeping a low pro®le, such as speaking to a classmate If a question requires a public answer, the teacher could ®rst give thinking time and then look for signs of willingness before inviting a response; or even encourage a quick preparatory exchange of ideas between peers before inviting a public response When the answer is ready, it can be provided either by individuals or sometimes even in choral response And students who are strongly oriented to the printed word and not enjoy interacting with others, might wish to plan their responses before answering a question Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 213 Students need to overcome their low self-esteem The problem of students’ low self-esteem can be dealt with by not disparaging students in front of others, by helping them to develop an awareness of personal worth, by setting them achievable challenges, and by encouraging them to develop and express their views (Arnold, 1999; Tomlinson, 1998b) Gibson and Chandler (1988: 394) observe that students often learn most from teachers who their best to increase their students’ self-esteem Scarcella and Oxford (1992: 58) also emphasize the need to make students feel good about themselves on a consistent basis and interestingly argue that a little bit of positive self-delusion might be better than brutal self-honesty There are at least three techniques that we agree can help to make students value themselves in oral lessons: set classroom goals in the light of student ability; warmly receive student talk; and provide positive feedback on a lesson-to-lesson basis Teachers can also help students develop higher self-esteem by training them to set reasonable objectives in the ®rst place and to assess their own progress toward these objectives realistically and positively Even within one task, the teacher can assign diŒerent students to diŒerent roles, each of which is at an appropriate level of challenge Students need to deal with their linguistic limitations To assist weaker students, it may be helpful to use a sequential approach to guide them through performance Support could be provided to facilitate learner output by temporarily not paying attention to what they not know while utilizing what they know For example, they could be invited to write down topics for which they have enough relevant vocabulary and structures to talk about and then later they could be helped to enrich their discussions by providing them with opportunities to acquire new language relevant to those topics When linguistic support is oŒered, the teacher must make sure that it is always in the context of immediate need and interest rather than in isolation, being incorporated in practical tasks that lead to increased oral facility Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 214 The contributions of Vietnamese learners The central idea is to guide students through speci®c steps gradually When students begin to show some sign of progress, no matter how little, it should be noticed and acknowledged `If a task produces only small gains that learners might not notice, teachers should provide evidence that gains are taking place’ (Gibson and Chandler, 1988: 353) Such acknowledgement can motivate students to engage in further communication Students experience a classroom atmosphere which does not stimulate discussion Appropriate strategies can create a caring climate by responding positively to student talk Teacher talk can also develop from instances of student talk so as to actively involve the students in sustained interaction related to their personal thinking, and to expose them to purposeful input (though many of our 15 teachers worried that developing interaction from learner talk might prevent them from covering the syllabus) For a characterization of the Good Teacher, who can stimulate a positive class atmosphere, see Tomlinson (forthcoming) Learners need to deal with negative conceptions of the learning process To repair negative attitudes, teachers could try being explicit to the class about the rules of oral participation and their bene®t in the learning process As Phillips (1991: 16) suggests, shy people often need to be given more instructions on how to behave Cohen (1998: 66) also points out that learning will be facilitated if students are explicitly trained to become more aware of the strategies that can be utilized throughout the language learning process In the seminar, almost all the 15 teachers were positive about these suggestions Learners have expectations they wish to see ful®lled It would be useful if teachers established classroom rules that were ¯exible enough to satisfy diŒerent expectations, and if both teachers and students articulated their expectations before the course began As Prabhu (1992: 228) says, `The classroom lesson is a Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 215 recurrent encounter between people and, like all recurrent encounters, needs a sense of security arising from shared expectation.’ In one extreme case of con¯icting expectations, one student said: `I wish my teacher would teach us more conversational skills instead of lecturing so much like he’s doing now.’ When this comment was brought up in the seminar, one teacher remarked: `If my students participated more, I would interact more with them instead of lecturing so much as I’m doing now’, and about one-third of the teachers thought that it was partly the students’ fault for misunderstanding their good intentions Many teachers were also sceptical about trying to bridge the gap by getting teachers and students to articulate their expectations prior to a course They thought that many students might not know what they wanted and also that it would be very di cult to try to please all the students all the time Teachers tend to underestimate learner competence Some of the teachers were unaware that they were underestimating their learners’ ability to speak in English, as is evident in these spontaneous remarks during the seminar discussion: `I don’t think my students will be able to perform this task’; `You don’t know them, they just won’t speak’; `If you use a lot of English during the lesson, the students will not understand’; `Their level is much lower than you think’; and `Some students are simply lazy.’ We feel that students will only reveal their real ability to speak in English if their teachers encourage and value oral participation, foster a positive and supportive atmosphere, provide constructive feedback, encourage peer interaction and give thinking and rehearsal time Classroom methodology should re¯ect the students’ preference for a `family style’ Collective classroom behaviour is characterized by Kramsch and Sullivan (1996: 199) in the term `classroom-as-family’, which is sometimes manifested in choral response, a form of participation interpreted by Scarcella (1990: 198) as a strong tendency for mutual reliance This can help to facilitate a sense of communal acceptance among peers but it can encourage imitation, it distorts Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 216 The contributions of Vietnamese learners pronunciation, it does not facilitate individual teacher feedback and it can restrict individual attempts to achieve a more original contribution In order to cater for a family-style preference, we would recommend frequent use of group work in oral lessons to cater for students who are inhibited by the demands of plenary communication and to encourage collaborative sharing and development of ideas We would, however, also recommend sometimes inviting groups to provide choral summaries of their conclusions 10 Classroom methodology should cater for student expectations of grammar teaching in the preparation and feedback stages of oral lessons What needs to be further discussed in Vietnam and elsewhere is how to teach grammar in a meaningful and useful way Theorist views regarding the value of grammatical instruction are quite mixed Some question its value because of the large gap between practising structures in a classroom and using new language in real life, which they see as `a vast no-man’s land which some never manage to cross’ (Dubin and Olshtain, 1977: 201) They believe that form-focused instruction does not necessarily contribute to ¯uency (see, e.g., Krashen, 1987: 37), aŒects only short-term learning (Whitlow, 2001: 177), and is not helpful for real communication (Taylor, 1983: 70) Others express more support for pedagogical grammar (Rutherford, 1988: 15; Scarcella and Oxford, 1992: 140; Holliday, 1994: 165; Thompson, 1996: 10) They identify grammatical competence as one component of communicative competence (Scarcella and Oxford, 1992: 140), a su cient condition for successful language learning (Rutherford, 1988: 15), and a contribution to the speakers’ ¯uency (Scarcella and Oxford, 1992: 140; Thompson, 1996: 10) More moderate views refuse to judge the signi®cance of grammar teaching in isolation but suggest avoiding decontextualization by being more sensitive to learners’ particular needs (Taylor, 1983: 70; Pienemann, 1985; Grant, 1987: 11; Nunan, 1998: 102; Stranks, 2003) It is argued that instruction of grammar rules will bene®t learners who are psychologically ready to learn structures and ®nd pleasure in learning them (Pienemann, 1985) when a new form Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 Brian Tomlinson and Bao Dat 217 being taught is dramatically linked to the discourse contexts in which it occurs (Nunan, 1998: 102), and when learners recognize the immediate communicative utility of that form (Taylor, 1983: 70) Ellis argues for what he terms `interpretative grammar tasks’, which ` focus learners’ attention on a targeted structure in the input and enable them to identify and comprehend the meaning(s) of this structure’ (Ellis, 1995: 88), and Long and Robinson (1998) advocate helping learners to notice how forms are actually used to communicate meaning in contexts Interviews with many Vietnamese students show that they feel that the teaching of grammar can be linked to both intellectual and aŒective needs (e.g., 69 out of 177 students (23.5% ) said that the opportunity to create sentences of their own helped them to participate) For them, grammar is considered negative if it is presented in humdrum mechanical practice in long, formal sessions, and positive if taught in learnable amounts and made enjoyable in discovery activities of an interactive nature connected with pleasant experiences For ways of achieving this see Bolitho and Tomlinson, 1995; Tomlinson, 1994; Bolitho et al., 2003 VI Conclusion From this study we have learned that while many teachers keep to their classroom routine with self-satisfaction, many learners ®nd such routines tiresome and uninspiring for oral communication For example, of our 15 teachers, eight (53.3% ) felt contented with their habitual performance and did not wish to participate in the intervention for change When reading student responses, many teachers were surprised to learn that many students wanted to talk but felt their teachers inhibited them Such `revelations’ raise the need for course teachers to seek a better understanding of what learners think and how they feel rather than simply how they behave, bearing in mind that, in Holliday’s (1994: 7) words, `all teachers are outsiders to the cultures of their students’ Our study also suggests a need for more culturally sensitive pedagogy as a vehicle to transfer culturally appropriate subject matter This does not mean that we think that each distinctive culture needs its own distinctive methodology; but it does mean that Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 218 The contributions of Vietnamese learners we think that pedagogic procedures that have proved eŒective in one culture need sensitive modi®cation if they are to be accepted with eŒect by both teachers and students in another culture (Tomlinson, forthcoming) What we need in order to achieve locally eŒective variations of pedagogic procedures is the willingness and ability to listen to our students and 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A study of factors that aŒect classroom participation in English language learning In Yaofu, L., Huang, H., Jeng, H., Liao, S., Chou, S., Lin, S and Hadzima, A., editors, Papers from the seventh conference on English teaching and learning in the Republic of China Taipei: The Grane Publishing Co., 159¡87 Zuber-Skerritt, O 1992 Action research in higher education ¡ examples and re¯ections London: Kogan Page Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com by guest on July 26, 2015 ... some of the teachers refused to believe in the learners? ?? willingness to participate and their potential to express themselves ¯uently in English They thus form selfful®lling beliefs about their... years of learning experiences, allowed the students not only to discuss their present course but to re¯ect on the history of studying in previous courses Their roles in the project were to provide... July 26, 2015 204 The contributions of Vietnamese learners in order to develop the student questionnaire Information from this questionnaire then helped us to select speci®c issues to pursue more