INTRODUCTION
Rationale of the study
With the need for accessing the globalization, Viet Nam government has carried out many opening policies in order to integrate with other countries, including economy, politics, education and etc With these changes, our education has so many challenges in equipping second languages for learners to satisfy necessary requirements in the global trend nowadays
Facts have shown that English teachers need to renew their methodology and apply their teaching on the basis of communication for the purpose of increasing learners’ communicative skills Once learners can improve or master their English, they can achieve further academic purposes Therefore, textbook plays a very essential role in teaching and learning English because they can stimulate teachers and students’ effective education And, to gain a good result in English language teaching and learning, it is extremely necessary to find out, use and adapt appropriately textbook in terms of each context
It is the fact that English secondary education system in Viet Nam has a plenty of limitation, including teaching quality, students’ attitude and level, testing assessment and etc Not only has the number of students had no much opportunity to access English communicative schooling but also a large number of schools are unable to provide well-equipped facilities As the result, students feel less interested and demotivated with English, they do not concentrate on this subject and are not confident enough to communicate or speak out their voice
At Minh Khai secondary school, a really small school located a little far from the centre of the city, teaching and learning English on the basis of communicative language teaching (CLT) is a really new challenging job Besides the lack of facilities, teaching communicative methods are quite unfamiliar to teachers They have no much experience in teaching communicative methodology Equally important, student’s levels of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking and pronunciation are so normal That is the reason why they have trouble in learning English and feel less confident to speak out loud their voice successfully In addition, students in the same class are not at the same level, which makes some feel bored and uninterested in one activity while others feel down, tired and depressed due to its difficulty Therefore, I am of the belief that I should make groups of the same-level students and adapt the designed tasks according to communicative approaches Lastly, until now, there are some studies on adapting textbooks at high school, but no research on adapting textbook at secondary school has been carried out on the basis of CLT
All the things above urge the researcher to do this study in the hope of helping her low-level students in grade 7 get more chance to learn, practice, improve and enjoy the interest of learning English through the adaptation of some tasks on the basis of communicative learning during the course.
Aims of the study
Tiếng Anh 7 was issued in 2012, which balances the skills taught and the kinds of language practice the students take part in Therefore, to help the teaching and learning more effective and suitable with students’ ability in each context, using and adapting tasks in this textbook is really necessary And, this study is aimed to achieve two central objectives: o Apply teacher’s knowledge and experiences in teaching English in grade
7 o Produce a series of 16 adapted tasks per 16 units.
Research questions
In order to fulfill the above aims, this study is aimed to answer the following research questions:
(1) What are the bases for adaptation on the basis of research results?
(2) What specifically should be adapted in the textbook?
Scope of the study
As I mentioned above, this study is focused on investigating tasks in the Tiếng Anh 7 Hence, the researcher will study teaching and learning situation basing on learner-centered and communicative learning approach with students in grade 7 at Minh Khai secondary school Since then, she will make recommendations for some specific adapted tasks in the textbook as an example basing on her theoretical background, actual observations and experiences.
Significance of the study
The study discusses about the adaptation of Tiếng Anh 7, which provides samples in 16 units on the basis of CLT for teachers and chances to study in a different way from traditional one for students
One undeniable advantage of this study is that it also finds out strengths and weaknesses of English teachers in general and at Minh Khai secondary school in particular, since then they can have time to consider using and preparing lesson plans in a different kettle of fish.
Design of the study
This study is divided into three main parts, namely Introduction, Development and Conclusion
Part 1, Introduction, presents reasons for choosing the topic, aims, scope and design of the study
Part 2, Development, consists of three chapters: o Chapter one, Literature review, reviews the theories about CLT and textbook adaptation, finds what the researcher can learn and fix, finds some advantages and disadvantages in those researchers; hence, modify it to fit students’ ability and needs at Minh Khai Secondary school o Chapter two, Methodology, provides an overview of the school, including the teachers, students and facilities Methods of the study, data collection and analysis are presented in this chapter o Chapter three, Findings and Sample adaptation, answers for the two research questions and suggests some adaptions (16 tasks on equal terms with 16 units in Tiếng Anh 7) Pilot teaching is also reported
Part 3, Conclusion, gives a summary of the study and limitation is also discussed here.
DEVELOPMENT
Literature review
CLT is now a worldwide teaching method which is mostly employed in the classrooms by the English teachers, but there are no books or unpublished materials that specifically dealt with CLT in secondary schools in Viet Nam The researcher just found a few theses related to this issue Nguyen Thi Trang (2002) studied
“adapting reading tasks in the textbooks Tieng Anh 12 for mixed-level students at
Van Noi High School in Dong Anh, Ha Noi” Luu Thi Thuy (2010) reviewed how to
“adapt English 10 textbook for students at Viet Duc Upper Secondary School” Mai Thi Hang Phuong (2008) had an interesting discussion on “organizing pair work and group work in the context of high school classrooms at Pham Van Nghi Upper Secondary school, Nam Dinh Province”
Even though learning English in secondary education plays a very essential role in order to apply English in the real-life situations and help improve students’ communicative abilities, there are hardly any studies in adapting tasks on the basis of CLT, in fact Up to now, I have just found out a foreign research on “the use of
English textbooks in Capeverdean Secondary schools: the relationship between use, evaluation and adaptation of textbooks” by Dr Deanna Fernandes (2007)
Moreover, all these researches above are quite general and not focus on a specific issue; therefore, this issue is still new, attracting and helpful for further
2 Communicative language teaching 2.1 Definitions of Communicative language teaching (CLT)
CLT has been widely studied by many researchers all over the world, which is considered as a powerful theoretical model in ELT As a result, a huge number of various CLT definitions have been written
According to Larsen – Freeman (1986: 121), CLT is done “by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledgment the interdependence of language and communication” In other words, interaction between teachers and learners or learners and learners are really important She also lists a plenty of communicative to help learners practice their communication skills such as authentic materials, scrambled sentences, games or role play
Other author shares the same idea that “language is acquired through communication” (Howatt, 1984: 279) To illustrate, learners learn the structural system, for example, as they learn how to use language to communicate This also means that teachers should provide learners chances to practice and communicate to each other via the real-life language
Canale and Swan (1980) add that a language teacher should “present learners with the opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is actually used by native speakers” To say, in order to create useful language items used by native speakers, authentic materials should be used in the English class “Since language is a tool of communication, methods and materials should concentrate on the message and not the medium”, Clarke and Silberstein (1977: 51) adds in “Communicative Language Teaching Today” Richards (2006: 20) also lists four benefits of using authentic materials, including “provide cultural information and real language, relate closely to learners’ needs and support creative approach to teaching”
Richards (2006: 2) views CLT as “a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom”
He also introduced a variety of activities using in the classroom and most are designed to make use of pair or group work’s activities Through this, learners are more active than in the traditional learning way
To conclude, all professionals in the field tend to focus on the uses of CLT, which helps learners gain or build up their learning abilities to use in the real context In the following sections, the use of CLT as a tool in teaching English in schools will be discussed as the opinions of Richards (2006)
2.2 Roles of CLT in foreign language education
Richards (2006) mentioned that “the ever-growing need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world” Nowadays, millions of people from the youngest to the oldest desires to master or gain a high level of English Accuracy and fluency are the key to succeed, so they take as much time as possible to practice, practice and practice English regularly With the increasing demand for learning English actively and practically, communicative language learning was born in the late 60s the traditional one and keeps developing and improving and now becomes the centre of language learning CLT highlights “task-oriented and student-centered”, gives learners communication opportunities
Secondary school students are in teaching energetic so that they can manage to control the use of language fluency and accuracy in the best ways In that way, the teachers are not a real teacher any more, they take more responsibility, namely as a facilitator, an advisor, a communicator and even a guide; and the roles of students has changed into all communicators In other words, the aim of CLT in secondary school is to develop their ability to use language to communicative with other in real life situations, to share their personal experiences with others To achieve this goal “learners need to develop communicative abilities” (Richards &
On account of these benefits, CLT takes the forms of cooperation among learners to develop their confidence Hence, many classroom activities compatible with communicative approach are provided, including: accuracy versus fluency activities, mechanical, meaningful and communicative practice, information-gap activities, jigsaw activities, and others like task-completion activities, information- gathering activities, opinion-sharing activities, information-transfer activities, reasoning-gap activities and role plays (Richards, 2006: 14-19)
Estaire and Zanon, 1994: 13-20 divided tasks into two types: learning tasks and communicative tasks If the former is focus on language form namely grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence structure, and the latter concentrates on real- world connection In the researcher’s study, she wants to adapt tasks on the basis of communicative tasks
As cited in Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2001:224), Jack
C Richards and Theodore S Rogers wrote “task as a central unit of planning and teaching” Also in this book, Skehan (1996b:20) proposed the notion of tasks are
“generally bear some resemblance to real-life language use” or it takes “a fairly strong view of communicative language teaching” Sharing the same idea, Estaire and Zanon
(1994: 13-20) mentioned task as “a piece of classroom work which, as far as possible, resembles activities which our students or other people carry out in everyday life, thus reproducing processes of everyday communication” Nunan (1989:10) considered a task as “any classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form” Prabhu (1987:17) said that “task is an activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allows teachers to control and regulate that process”
Methodology
1 Current context at Minh Khai Secondary School
The study is conducted at Minh Khai secondary school, a local school far from Ha Noi 20 kilometers This school is quite small with only 9 classes, including
2 classes for grade 6, 8 and 9; and 3 classes for grade 7 Here, students are provided with a lot of general subjects like other secondary schools and English is also one of three important subjects as usual, but not compulsory one for the high-school entrance examination
Students have three 45-minute English periods per week, including revision periods, which are 54 in the first semester and 51 in the second semester
There are only three female teachers with two at the middle-age, the other is still young The two others have experiences in teaching English for more than 10 years and the other just undergoes 2 teaching years
The two teachers graduated from Ha Tay Teacher Training College and the last one is from Ha Noi University of Languages and International Studies All of them are energetic and enthusiastic with well-qualified knowledge Nevertheless, one of them is a vice-principal, she just takes in charge of only one class (grade 9)
Others two are in charge of eight classes With the workloads of around twelve periods per weeks as well as other jobs like the supervising teachers or the housewives, they have no much time spending on finding extra materials or adapting communicative methods in their classes
There are nine classes in this school with two in grade 6, 8 and 9; three in grade 7 All of them have learnt English at the age of 8 (grade 3) with two main skills including reading and writing They are all in the same undeveloped village; therefore, they have no many opportunities to access the most effective learning English ways
The levels of students are not really good There are, of course, some excellent but this is a rather small amount Equally important, students in a class are with different English attitudes, motivation and backgrounds Some learns due to their interests, another learns because of the marks, teachers’ requirements or parents
In addition, not all but most of students tend to use book with answer keys
They learn English passively and have no specific goals That causes a lot of difficulties for teachers in arousing students’ interests and teaching an effective lesson
First and foremost, with appropriately 30 students in a class, it is not really too big for a class at secondary school However, with mixed-level students, it is not easy for teachers to cover all students just in 45 minutes
Secondly, desk arrangement is not ideal for teaching and learning in communicative approach because teachers are difficult in applying group work or pair work, for example This arrangement also prevents teachers interacting in effect with their students and among students as well
Thirdly, the numbers of equipments such as tapes, cassette players, overhead projects, pictures or teacher cards are limited, which causes many problems in process of teaching and learning Even worse, the quality of high technology devices is poor because there is not enough time to prepare or no one takes care them often
Finally, reference books, videos, magazines, newspapers for teachers and students in English are not available in the school library That unfulfilled facility causes a bad effect in teaching and learning progress
Textbook is widely accepted as a very crucial tool in language education
The seven-year English textbook 7, which was introduced in 2012 and written by
Dang Duc Trung and Tran Thi Khanh, edited by Tran Thu Ha, Tao Thanh Huyen, Dang Minh Hien, Pham Tuan, Le Hoang Hai, Nguyen Tien Dung and Bui Quang Tuan, goes on helping students be familiar with and practice English to obtain a basic English achievement through a variety of English topics, useful structures and attracting dialogues
In the first place, this textbook is mainly focused on grammar and vocabulary with students’ daily-life’s topics, for instance, school, health, neighborhood, play or the world, tenses or model sentences, ect Tiếng Anh 7 includes five Language focus units, which aims to help students assess their own progress and 16 teaching units with different topics and all of them consist two main sections A and B, which are relevant to their main topics and include the following sub-sections, namely: introduce new lexical items and structural ones, practice, summary of the unit as well Likewise, there are a glossary part and a grammar review part at the end of the textbook to help students sum up the whole main points in grade 7 Accompanied with the textbook, there are two kinds of the recorders: one for teacher at school and other for students’ self-study pronunciation as well as listening skills at home
In the second place, in spite of its strengths mentioned above, there is no English pronunciation or phonetics section which is necessary to practice the real language The section “Play with words” in the end of each unit concentrates on intonation, but with the fast rhythm, students hardly follow In addition, with the limitation of the time and the have-to concentration on grammar and vocabulary, most teachers cannot cover this section and ignore this
From my points of view, the role of textbook is undeniable in foreign language teaching and learning However, teachers’ use of textbook is more significant because their students enjoy the lesson at class or not depend on the way of teaching as well as the way of adapting tasks in the textbook
According to Nunan (1992: 19), action research is conducted by seven steps, including Initiation, Preliminary investigation, Hypothesis, Intervention, Evaluation, Dissemination, and Follow-up This study also follows some basic steps of an action research as suggested by Nunan It is carried out through situation analysis, material collection, survey questionnaires, and aptitude test and class observations
Study results and discussion
1 What are the bases for adaptation on the basis of research results?
Textbook have been edited many times; therefore, the later one is usually better than the old one, not only the layouts but also the contents The current textbook, of course, has much strength, including an attractive design or interesting topics
Dr Ngo Bao Chau says on an article “The quality of English language teaching is the basic unequal element in Vietnam education People coming from wealthy families are much better trained” This means that students in not-center areas or in well-to-do families cannot get the best learning English ways; especially, can’t access the most modern methods due to poor equipments as the researcher mentioned in Part 1 – chapter 2
Most students at Minh Khai secondary schools had difficulty in learning English due to too many new words and grammatical structures in a unit They found that they can hardly recall all things they learnt in previous semesters and plus the current items they have to learn That is why they might stressful with English and found no interest in the lessons, and this was also performed undoubtedly in the result of the placement test with not really good outcomes
Undeniable reason for their not-good results is that they almost have to help their family with such housework or field works, so even though they have the recorder (attached to the textbook) for self-study pronunciation and listening skills at home, none of them spends time on it
As the result of the preliminary survey, the majority of the students wanted to change the learning style They desired to be funny, active and enjoyable in a student-centered environment According to the survey, some students even suggested more ideas like “up to the students’ needs, teacher can add more activities”, “funny activities can help students more enthusiastic and less stressful” or “teacher should use games often instead of doing tasks or exercises passively”, and etc Furthermore, there are only five 45-minute periods for each unit The teacher did not have time enough to add more exciting activities, control 28 – 30 students as well as help them practice language more or do the tasks correctly This led to the fact that they were lack of love for English
From the students’ needs mentioned in the preliminary, 16 adapted versions of
16 units were born to change their normal learning styles In other word, the researcher chose only one task of one unit and then adapted it to fit to the students’ levels and wants basing on the techniques by McDonough and Shaw (1993: 36): adding, deleting or omitting, modifying, simplifying, re-ordering and re-placing
2 What specifically should be adapted in the textbook?
Because of the time limitation and the length of the thesis, the researcher cannot adapt all the tasks in Tiếng Anh 7 Therefore, she only chose one task in each unit to adapt it to be suitable with her students With her one experiencing year, she picked the task that her students might feel boring or too difficult, or simply familiar to them Below, the researcher would like to offer some ideas of which tasks were adapted
2.1 Unit 1: Section A, Task 4 (page 12, Tiếng Anh 7) Rationale for adaptation: This task is so useful and familiar to Ss and it can attract Ss’ interest as well The researcher decided to add another funny activity to make her class enjoy the lesson and feel free at the beginning of the term
- Type of task: Who are you? (whole class)
- Type in CLT: mechanical practice
- Procedure: Call student A standing face to face to the board, pointing to another one and ask him/ her to greet student For example, “Good morning, Lan/ Nice to meet you, Lan, etc The student A has to listen to, respond that greeting, and make a guess what the name of that person is If it is correct, the student can be back to the seat If it is false, he/ she must do it again
2.2 Unit 2: Section B, Task 3 (page 24, Tiếng Anh 7) Rationale for adaptation: The purpose of the task was to review how to write the months in the correct order without any practicing chances to speak out loud; hence, the teacher modified the task to motivate students
- Type of task: Remembered days (whole class)
- Aims: practice in talking about dates of the year
- Procedure: T speaks out some popular events and calls out some Ss to read out loud the date of that event For example, T says “Valentine”, then Ss will response “the fourteenth of February”
2.3 Unit 3: Section A, Task 3 (page 31, Tiếng Anh 7) Rationale for adaptation: There are two parts in the task, its purpose is to revise the words they learnt in the previous lesson and also practice grammar structure Because of the time limitation, the researcher decided to replace it with only one activity, instead
- Type of task: Chain game (group work)
- Type in CLT: Meaningful practices
- Aims: Use “There is ”, “There are ” to describe rooms and houses
- Teaching aids: picture (in the textbook)
- Procedure: T divides class into groups of 6 or 8 The first student (in each group) says a sentence (basing on the picture), such as “In the living room, there’s a TV” The second one repeats the first student’s and adds more: “In the living room, there’s a TV and cat” The game continues until the last student
2.4 Unit 4: Section B, Task 1 (page 47, Tiếng Anh 7) Rationale for adaptation: The task aims to develop both listening and reading skills; however, most teachers just focus on the latter but neglecting the former For that reason, the researcher replaced it by the following way
- Type of task: Fill in the form (Individual)
- Type in CLT: Information-gap activities
- Aims: listen to the tape for details
- Teaching aids: hand-outs (see Appendix 4)
- Procedure: T gets Ss to close books, gives hand-outs and lets Ss listen to the tape twice to fill in the form, then calls some Ss to read the answers T lets them listen again and checks
CONCLUSION
Conclusion of the whole thesis
No one can deny that the more Viet Name develops, the more important English is However, the fact shows that learning English at Minh Khai Secondary School is really alarming with many difficulties for both teachers and students Hence, the aims of this study are to try to adapt tasks in Tiếng Anh 7 on the basis of communicative language teaching to involve as many students as possible in learning English effectively and enjoyably
The placement test was used to check the levels of grade-seven students to make sure that the further adaptations are appropriate for their levels The findings showed that most of them are not good at English; therefore, they were usually pressure of almost English lessons
A preliminary survey questionnaire was carried out with the participation of 86 grade-seven students to find out the problems, difficulties as well as their attitudes towards the progress of using the textbook and learning English The results then showed that the design of the textbook extremely appealed their attentions, but with such a lot of lexical and structural items they met some obstacles They totally agreed to add more communicative activities to make the English lessons funnier and more practical
Next, the relevant interview with two other English teachers in this school was conducted to examine their ideas in terms of adapting tasks on the basis of CLT
Both were quite supportive because they found many problems in teaching English here
Through the results of the study, the researcher has presented 16 adapted tasks based on 16 units in Tiếng Anh 7 These are some suggested ways to make English lessons more interesting and motivated, to help students more confident in English and to encourage them to develop English learning habits as well
In a word, this study is hopefully helpful for both teachers and students at Minh Khai Secondary School It is also hoped that those who concerned with this issue will find this beneficial.
Limitations
The researcher has tried best to offer some perceptive findings, but limitations are unavoidable
Firstly, the items in the questionnaires and interviews were designed by the researcher Therefore, they may not satisfy all aspects of the situation such as vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading or speaking
Secondly, although the researcher mentioned some aspects affecting the English learning process, but this is not enough Other factors such as students’ intelligence, personality or motivation, which can impact on the students’ learning style, should be added to fulfill an objective target
Thirdly, basing on the researcher’ teaching experience and knowledge, 16 adapted tasks were designed but this is quite subjective and incomplete
Lastly, the adapted-version tasks were evaluated by the researcher and this is not thoughtful Thus, to reduce the bias the outcomes should be evaluated by the grade- seven students themselves This calls for further research
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5 Cortazzi, M & Lixian Jin (1999) Cultural mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL classroom In Hinkel, E (ed) Culture in second language teaching and learning Cambridge: CUP, 196-219
6 Estaire, S & J Zanon (1994) Planning Classroom: A task-based approach
7 Gabrielatos (2014) Materials Evaluation and adaptation: A case study of grammar teaching Retrieved on Novemeber 14th from
8 Harmer, J (1998) How To Teach English Harlow: Longman
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10 Hutchinson, Tom, and Torres, Eunice (1994) The textbook as agent of change
11 Jack C Richards and David Bohlke (2011) Creating effective language lessons CUP
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13 Jack C Richards (2006) Communicative Language Teaching Today CUP
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16 Loi, Nguyen Van Dung, Nguyen Hanh Hung, Dang Van Nhan, Than Trong Lien (2012) Tiếng Anh 7 Nha Xuat Ban Giao Duc Viet Nam
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26 Shalaway, L (2005) Organizing Small Groups: Do You Know All the Options?
Retrieved at https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/organizing-small-groups- do-you-know-all-options
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28 Tomlinson, Brian (1998) Materials development in language teaching (edited)
29 Valentino, C (2000) Flexible Grouping Retrieved at http://www.eduplace.com/science/profdev/articles/valentino.html
30 Wajnryb, R (1992) Classroom Observation Tasks, Cambridge: CUP
31 Wright, Tony (2005) Classroom Management in Language Education
Mục đích của những câu hỏi dưới đây là để tìm ra những khó khăn trong việc sử dụng sách giáo khoa, nhằm điều chỉnh các hoạt động trong Sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 7 Câu trả lời của em sẽ là nguồn tài liệu nghiên cứu rất có giá trị để hoàn thành cách dạy và học kỹ năng theo hướng giao tiếp cho học sinh lớp 7 tại trường THCS Minh Khai Đề trả lời các câu hỏi phỏng vấn, xin vui lòng đánh dấu vào các ô thích hợp
3 Tính đến nay, em đã học Tiếng Anh được:
4 Điểm tổng kết môn Tiếng Anh kỳ I của em là:
1 Sách giáo khoa trình bày rõ ràng và dễ hiểu không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
2 Hình ảnh mô phỏng phong phú, gây hứng thú cho học sinh không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
3 Các chủ đề trong sách rất thú vị, lôi cuốn và gần gũi với đời sống không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
4 Bài có nhiều từ mới không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
5 Bài có nhiều cấu trúc mới không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
6 Em có thể làm các yêu cầu trong sách vì không quá khó không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
7 Các hoạt động và bài tập trong sách rất phong phú không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
8 Em thấy cần bổ sung thêm các hoạt động khác theo hướng giao tiếp không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
Nếu đồng ý, em hãy chọn dạng hoạt động mà em thấy hiệu quả (có thể chọn nhiều phương án)
Giải ô chữ Trò chơi Đóng kịch Điều tra, khảo sát
9 Khoảng thời gian em muốn dành cho một hoạt động trong sách giáo khoa là:
10 Em thấy học 1 bài học trong 5 tiết là quá ít không đồng ý không chắc đồng ý
Cảm ơn sự hợp tác của các em!
I : Shall I start the interview now?
Th : Yes, you’re welcome!
I : How long have you been teaching?
Th : I have been teaching English for over 10 years I : What do you think about the topics, the amount of vocabulary or grammar in the Tiếng Anh 7?
Th : About English 7, I think the topics is rather familiar with students, so they tend to be interested in speaking lessons English 7 has a variety of vocabulary, especially final units, which requires students work harder to do word form exercises This kind of exercise is rather difficult for students Moreover, almost my students find it hard to remember or practice them Actually, they don’t spend enough time to study in reading texts Grammar, personally, is suitable for the 7 th students and it is more advanced than it was in grade 6
I : Do you think teaching English on the basis of CLT is effective and practical?
Th : Well, I think whether CLT is effective and practical depends on types of lessons targets or skills or types of students Good students can master the grammar points quickly by CLT and traditional methods However, to weak students, I think, is effective Because they find it boring to listen to theories, instead, lessons related to practical uses or related to their lives tend to attract them more
I : Thank you Now I move on to another question Do you usually use some kinds of CLT in your lessons? In what way?
Th : I have been using CLT in teaching, but just sometimes because of many factors such as time limitation, students’ level, or so on But I use games in my lessons whenever my lesson has time left
I : You think those kinds of CLT activities can be done in the classroom without affecting Ss’ learning process or time distribution in a unit?
Th : I think it may not affect the learning process for a unit Because instead of you teach lessons given in the textbook, you can change it by another activity with the knowledge and skills related However, it costs you a lot of time as well as experience to prepare, of course
I: Oh right, thank you very much for your cooperation!
I : Hello, Mrs Tuyet Nice to see you
T : You, too How have you been?
I : Well, I’m quite busy And you?
I : Would you mind helping me answer some questions for my research now?
T : Uhm, I’m not really free now But ok!
I : How long have you been teaching?
T : I have been teaching since my schooling time at college It has been over 10 years already
I : Oh, long time, right? What do you think about the topics, the amount of vocabulary or grammar in the Tiếng Anh 7?
T : Firstly, I think that the vocabulary and grammar in the Tiếng Anh 7 should be added more to reduce the amount of knowledge the students have to learn in the
Tiếng Anh 8 Secondly, I reckon the vocabulary in grade 7 is quite suitable for students at the age of 13-14 However, it is necessary to improve their knowledge about grammar I suppose students at that age have the brightest heads in comparison to any periods of time in their life Therefore, we should add more grammar lessons in this grade
I : Right How about applying CLT in English lessons? Do you think teaching
English on the basis of CLT is effective and practical?
T : From my personal point of view, it is really effective and practical As we know, teaching English on the basis of CLT is efficient because students can immediately apply naturally what they have been taught in real life situations In other words, teaching English is considered a success when students know and use English successfully and naturally in real life to communicate with others, especially English-speaking foreigners
I : I totally agree with you Now I move to another question Do you usually use some kinds of CLT in your lessons? In what way?
T : Not really Because I am now affected by many factors such as family, finance or time, so I cannot spend much on designing a really interesting activity on the basis of CLT
I : So, if you have enough time, do you think those kinds of CLT activities can be done in the classroom without affecting Ss’ learning process or time distribution in a unit?
T : Of course it also depends on how the teacher plans the lessons If the teacher delivers too many tasks, it will affect the time distribution in a unit However, if the teacher carefully prepares and knows what should be added and what should not, CLT activities do enhance the effectiveness of the lesson
I : Thanks so much for your sharing ideas!
Appendix 4: MATERIALS DELIVERED TO CLASSES
1 Unit 4: Section B, Task 1 (page 47, Tiếng Anh 7)
1 Books on the left math, science books
2 Books on the right readers, novels, reference books, dictionaries
3 Books in English history, geography, dictionaries, literature in Vietnamese
2 Unit 6: Section A, Task 3 (page 62, Tiếng Anh 7)
Hand-outs: a She is a member of the school theater group At present, her group is rehearsing a play for the school anniversary celebration b In the afternoon, he usually goes home and watches videos
Sometimes he reads a library book or comics, but most of the time he lies on the couch in front of the TV He never plays games c If they have any new stamps, they usually bring them to school Ba’s American friend, Liz, gives him a lot of American stamps
Nam is not very sporty d The students of class 7A enjoy different activities after school hours
Acting is Nga’s favorite pastime e Ba is the president of the stamp collector’s club On Wednesday afternoons, he and his friends get together and talk about their stamps
3 Unit 7: Section A, Task 3 (page 74, Tiếng Anh 7) a Mid-Autumn Festival b New Year Eve
- This festival is for children The children are holding a lot of lanterns They’re enjoyable
- The moon is full and bright
- This festival is in August in the Lunar calendar
- There are a lot of flowers, Chung cakes and “câu đối”
- Children can get “lucky money” or “lì xì” on this occasion c Teachers’ Day d Children’s Day e Christmas
- There are a lot of students and one teacher
- Students are holding many gifts to send to their teacher
- This day is in November
- In this picture, there are a lot of children They are smiling and jumping
- This day is on the first day of June and it is for children
- There are many colorful balloons and gifts in green and red
- People are singing the song
4 Unit 8: Section B, Task 5 (page 85, Tiếng Anh 7)
S1: Excuse me I’d like two erasers and a pen
Shop keeper: Here you are Is that all?
S1: I also need a pencil case How much is that altogether?
Shop keeper: That is 49.000 dong
Shop keeper: And here is your change Thank you
5 Unit 10: Section B, Task 4 (page 105, Tiếng Anh 7)
* Model grid : go/ dentist? toothache have/ toothache? eat lots of sweets not got/ school? ill feel/ better? tooth/ stop hurting pleased? teeth/ fine have/ toothache? forget/brush teeth not scared? dentist/ kind cavity/not serious? small sad? big cavity dentist/ fill a cavity? toothache not eat/ sweets? bad/ teeth feel better? dentist/ fix tooth nervous? see/ dentist brush/ after meals? make teeth clean tooth/ hurt? cavity hate/ sound/ drill? too loud
- A boy and a girl are sitting
There are lots of pink hearts, gifts, flowers and chocolate
6 Unit 11: Section B, Task 4 (page 112, Tiếng Anh 7)
STOP PLAY SLOW FAST VOLUME ON VOLUME OFF
7 Unit 12: Section A, Task 2 (page 115, Tiếng Anh 7)
8 Unit 14: Section A, Task 3 (page 142, Tiếng Anh 7)
- People may not watch TV because of the popularization of the internet, smart phones, or ipads, for example
- People may be too busy after a hard work day
- TV sets may be bigger and thinner
- TV sets may become a small cinema at home
9 Unit 15: Section A, Task 3 (page 149, Tiếng Anh 7)
10 Unit 16: Section B, Task 2 (page 158, Tiếng Anh 7)
- What is your first name?
- What do you do every day?
- What’s your favorite kind of music/ movie?
- What do you like to eat?
- What would you like to do next year?
Appendix 5: OBSERVATION SHEET OF AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
