personal pronouns in vietnamese and american english ( from cultural perspective) = đại từ xưng hô trong tiếng việt và tiếng anh mỹ, xét từ góc độ văn hóa

EFL: English Foreign Language M.A: Master in English B.A: Bachelor in Art TTT: Teacher Talking time STT: Student Talking time... Although teacher talk involves many aspects, this researc

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HÀ

A STUDY ON TEACHER TALK IN EFL CLASSROOMS AT BACKAN

EDUCATION COLLEGE

Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng ngôn ngữ trong lớp dạy Tiếng Anh của giáo viên

Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Bắc Kạn

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

HA NOI – 2010

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

SUPERVISOR: LÊ VĂN CANH, M.ed

HA NOI - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ……….……… i

Abstract ……….……….………… …ii

Table of contents ……… iii

Lists of abbreviations ……… vi

Lists of tables and figures ……….…… vii

INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationale ……….……… 1

2 Aims of the Study ……….……….……… 1

3 Research Questions ………….….……… ………….……… 2

4 Scope of the study……… 2

5 Research Method ……….……….… ……… 2

6 Structure of the thesis……….……… … 2

7 Summary ……….……… ……… 3

DEVELOPMENT……….….4

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW……… 4

1 The role of teacher talk in foreign language teaching……… 4

1.1 Teacher Talk as a Tool of Classroom Management……… 4

1.2 Teacher Talk as a Source of Target Language Input……… ……….4

2 Teacher Talk from the Second Language Acquisition Perspective……… …… 5

3 Strategies for Teachers’ Use of Target Language in the Classroom……….……….7

4 Previous researches on teacher talk……… …… 10

4.1 Descriptive Studies………11

4.2 Correlational Studies……… …… 11

4.3 Experimental Studies on Teacher Talk……….12

4.4 Qualitative Studies on Teacher Talk……… 12

5 Summary ……… 13

CHAPTER 2 DATA ANALYSIS……… 14

2.1 The Context……… 14

2.2 The Participants ……… 15

2.3 The teacher talking time……….… 15

2.3.1 The teacher 1……….……….15

2.3.2 The teacher 2……… 16

2.3.3 The teacher 3……… … 16

2.4 Interview Data……….…17-18 2.5 Functions of teacher talk……… ……… 18

2.5.1 Giving instructions……… 20

2.5.1.1 The teacher 1……… …… 21

2.5.1.2 The teacher 2……… …… 21

2.5.1.3 The teacher 3……… …….22

2.5.2 Checking the students’ understanding……… 22

2.5.2.1 The teacher 1 ……….23

2.5.2.2 The teacher 2……… 23

2.5.2.3 The teacher 3……….…… 24

2.5.3 Respond to a learner’s response……… …… 24

2.5.3.1 The teacher 1……….…… 24

2.5.3.2 The teacher 2……….… 25

2.5.3.3 The teacher 3……… 25

2.5.4 Cued elicitation……… … 27

2.5.4.1 The teacher 1……… 27

2.5.4.2 The teacher 2……… 27

2.5.4.3 The teacher 3……… 27

2.5.5 Questioning……… 28

2.5.5.1 The teacher 1……… 28

2.5.5.2 The teacher 2……… 28

2.5.5.3 The teacher 3……… … 29

2.5.6 Recycling ……… ….29

2.5.6.1 The teacher 1……… 30

2.5.6.2 The teacher 2……… 30

2.5.6.3 The teacher 3……… ……30

2.6 Summary……… …30

CHAPTER 3 DISCUSSION AND SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS……… 32

3.1 Discussion……….32

3.1.1 Amount of teacher talk……… 32

3.1.2 Functions of teacher talk ……… 32

3.1.3 Teacher language……… ……33

3.2 Some pedagogical implications……… 34

3.2.1 Shifting the teacher- centered classroom into student-centered classroom……… 34

3.2.2 Controlling Teacher Talking Time and focus on the quality of teacher talk…… 35

3.2.3 Using suitable language……….35

3.3 Summary….……… 36

CONCLUSION……… ………….37

References ……… ………….40 Appendices……… I

ESL : English as a second language

EFL: English Foreign Language

M.A: Master in English

B.A: Bachelor in Art

TTT: Teacher Talking time

STT: Student Talking time

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Participants Profile

Table 2: Teacher talking time per lesson (in minutes)

Table 3: Number of moves regarding the functions of teacher talk

Table 4: Functions of teacher talk

Table 5: Functions of teacher talk

INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

Teacher talk in the language classroom is one of the questions in which second language methodologists and applied linguists have shown a great interest for several years As various language teaching methods have come and gone ( Howatt with Widdowson, 2004; Richards & Rodgers, 2001), perspectives on teacher talk has changed accordingly ( Brown, 2001; Gass, 2003; Doughty, 2004) For example, advocates of the Communicative Approach claim that teachers need reduce their talking time in the classroom in order for their students to have more time speaking the foreign language Furthermore, the issue raised is not quantitative between teaching and learning, who should say more than whom

in the classroom, but the important thing is whether the quality and purpose of talk are useful to gain the effect in the classroom This study focuses on analyzing the role of teacher talk used in the classroom according to functions of teacher talk The concept of

“teacher talk” used in this research is talk performed by teachers in the foreign language classroom The term is defined in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics as the “variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are

in the process of teaching In trying to communicate with learners, teachers often simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk in other simplified styles

of speech addressed to language learners” ( Richards, 1992: 471) Although the above definition is helpful, it does not tell much about the functions of teacher talk I think, teacher talk is a type of input source, which is really important in input-poor learning environment like the one in Bac Kan province where the present study was conducted Therefore, for the purpose of this study, I define teacher talk as the quantity and the quality

of the target language teachers use in the classroom for the sake of classroom management

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how teachers talk in foreign language classrooms and the rationale behind their talk in the classroom Furthermore, this study aims to explore teachers‟ perceptions of their talk in the classroom Although teacher talk involves many aspects, this research just focused on three aspects, that is: the frequency of teacher talk in the classroom in comparison with student talk, the frequency of teacher talk

in English in comparison with their talk in Vietnamese, and the way teachers talk in the classroom

3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In order to achieve the above aims, the study is set out to seek answers to the following research questions:

1 How often do teachers talk in the classroom as compared with the students?

2 Which language do teacher use more often in the classroom: English or Vietnamese?

3 Why do teachers talk the way they do in the classroom?

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study was limited to the investigation of a small number of college teachers regarding the way they use language as a pedagogical tool so that understanding of the teachers‟ perspectives on the role of teacher talk could be gained Specifically, the study was confined to the understanding of the amount of teacher talk in the classroom in comparison with that of the students, the preferred use of L1 or L2, and teachers‟ perception of the functions of their talk in the classroom Since the study was conducted on

a very small number of classroom teachers of English (3 teachers) in a college of education located in a mountainous area, no generalization of the findings was intended However, the findings can be valuable to attempts to understand teacher talk as a pedagogical tool in similar educational contexts

5 RESEARCH METHOD

As the purpose of this study is to investigate the use of teacher‟s language in the foreign language classrooms at Bac Kan Education College This study is a case study research with two research instruments were employed for data collection These are (a) classroom observation, and (b) post-observation interviews with teachers and students

6 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS

This study consists of three parts, excluding the references

Part one, Introduction, consists of the rationale, the aims, the research questions, and the scope of the study, the methods, and the design of the study

Part two, Development, is the heart of the study and includes three chapters:

Chapter one presents the literature review relevant to the study including theoretical background of teacher talk

Chapter 2 describes in details the research method used in the study with the necessary components before supplying information about the procedures of collecting the data Then, the statistical results and the analysis of the collected data are shown

Chapter 3 discusses the findings from statistical analysis and some pedagogical implications

The last part is the conclusion of the study as well as some suggestions for implications achieved from the discussion in the thesis and for further studies

7 SUMMARY

This chapter presents an overview of the study including the rationale, the purposes, the research questions, the scope of the study, as well as the structure of the thesis In addition, the research instruments which include classroom observation and interviews were also presented In the next chapter, a theoretical framework for the study will be discussed

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature on the pedagogical functions of teacher talk Also the role of teacher talk from a second language acquisition perspective will be discussed

1 The role of teacher talk in foreign language teaching

Teacher talk plays a vital important role in language learning Quite a few researchers have discussed the relationship between teacher talk and language learning For example, Nunan(1991) maintains that “Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition It is important for the organization and management of the classroom because it is through language that teachers either succeed or fail in implementing their teaching plans In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive.” In Nunan‟s words, teacher talk is to fulfill two pedagogical functions: (1) as a tool of classroom management, and (2) as a source of comprehensible input Regrading the first function of teacher talk in the classroom, Gower, Phillips and Walters (1995) clarify that in the classroom, teachers usually speak more when they present the grammar or structures containing in the lesson, clarifying them to help students understand the new knowledge, checking the understanding of students, modeling new structures Furthermore, they need to talk more when they set up activities or give instructions and feedback in one classroom period

1.1 Teacher Talk as a Tool of Classroom Management

From the classroom management perspective, teacher talk is needed for good classroom management The teacher gives clear instructions to attract students‟ attention, and tells the students what they are expected to do, as well as to establish a good rapport by for example, calling on students by name, etc Furthermore, there is nothing artificial about

a situation involving the teacher praising a student or asking another to try again In addition to these, the teacher can explain something about the language that is being learned in a helpful and reassuring way, and check the students‟ understanding

1.2 Teacher Talk as a Source of Target Language Input

The language teacher uses in the classroom can provide authentic listening texts for his or her students She or he uses the voice to read the texts, which sometimes helps students reduce stresses of listening comprehension Virtually, it is not always necessary to play a recording of an account, an anecdote or a joke if the teacher can provide the real

thing In addition, the teacher can often provide the best model for new language, which helps the students understand more clearly There is no denying that it is better for the teacher to model the language personally than to use a recording Most importantly, the language used by the teacher in the classroom is genuinely communicative By using the target language, the teacher reacts naturally to the students, who will often pick up the everyday words and expressions that the teacher uses in the classroom In other words, the students learn the target language not just from the materials but also from the target language used by their teachers in the classroom This point will be further discussed in the subsequent sections

2 Teacher Talk from the Second Language Acquisition Perspective

One of the most relevant Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories to the discussion of teacher talk is Krashen‟s (1983) comprehensible input hypothesis This hypothesis states simply that “ we acquire (not learn) language by understanding input that

is a little beyond our current level of (acquired) competence” (Krashen and Terrell 1983:32) For instance, if a learner‟s stage is 'i', then acquisition occurs when he/she is exposed to comprehensible input that constitutes 'i + 1' level, provided that he/she understands (read: an acquirer is focused on the meaning rather than on form) language containing „i + 1‟ It can be achieved through reading and hearing structures, which slightly excel learner‟s current ability, as well as through context and extra-linguistic information The input itself can be divided into finely- and roughly-tuned The finely-tuned input is targeted at the learners' present level of acquisition, aiming at one structure

at a time This is typical of teaching syllabus, whose goal is „i +1‟, thus the aim of the lesson, for both teachers and students, is to teach and learn a specific grammatical item or structure The moment the structure is mastered, the next structure from the syllabus can be presented The roughly-tuned input, in contrast, acts as a net spreading out around the current level of acquisition of the learner, his „i‟, also consisting of instances of his „i + 1‟ In this case, the speaker‟s or teacher‟s aim is to make him/her understood It is said that

“when communication is successful, when the input is understood and there is enough of it,

i + 1 will be provided automatically” (Krashen 1982:22) Good examples of roughly-tuned input are caretaker speech, foreigner talk, and teacher talk Caretaker speech, a simplified form of a given language, is considered to be of a great help in the overall process of acquisition, for both first language and second language acquirer, as those who are exposed

to it, apparently acquire language faster Caretaker speech, as it is much simpler in structure and form, appears to be roughly tuned to the linguistic level of the child, and it gets more complex as the child grows in linguistic maturity It is meant for communication, and “here and now” situations Later, when the child has grown enough in his/her linguistic competence, it becomes more displaced in time and space, giving extra-linguistic information or context for the child to acquire „i + 1‟ (Krashen and Terrell 1983) Foreigner talk is another form of caretaker speech, and is characterized by the modifications that native speakers make when talking to non-native speakers Its purpose, just as in the case of caretaker speech, is communication The modifications include

“slowing down, repeating, restating, changing wh- questions to yes/no questions” (Krashen and Terrell 1983:34) Teacher talk, i.e meta-language of the classroom delivered in the target language, also proves to be roughly tuned to the level of acquirer Again, it is used for communication, and seems to have comparative outcome on adults as it has on children Teachers talking to their students and making sure they are understood will not only provide an ordinary language lesson but also administer a great deal of input for acquisition Roughly tuned input is said to be more important and advantageous from finely tuned input With rough tuning, we are always assured that i + 1 will be covered, while with finely tuned exercises, we are taking a guess as to where the student is With roughly tuned input, we are assured of constant recycling and review Third, roughly tuned input will be good for more than one acquirer at a time, even when they are at slightly different levels Finally, roughly tuned caretaker speech in the form of teacher talk or foreigner talk, will nearly always be more interesting than exercise that focuses just on one grammatical point (Krashen and Terrell 1983:35) Krashen‟s (1983) comprehensible input hypothesis can be interpreted that if the teacher uses the target language in the classroom appropriately, i.e., at the students‟ „i+1‟ level, her or his language can be a valuable source

of input to the students to acquire the target language This point is of particular importance in cases where English is taught as a foreign language because in such a context, students tend to have limited exposure to the target language However, teacher talk is effective to language acquisition only when it is used appropriately Misuse of teacher talk in the classroom may bring about reverse effect Gower, Phillips and Walters (1995) states that normally, the aim of most language classes is usually to get the students using the language, therefore when the teachers talk too much the chances for the students

are not being given maximum opportunity to talk Moreover, it is also likely that they will not be listening to the students closely enough, thinking too much about what they are going to say next Next, if the teachers talk „for‟ students they will think the teachers do not appreciate their efforts and will become demotivated In addition, there will be a danger for learners, especially at lower level, if the teachers use for explanation is more difficult to understand than the language being learnt The next section will discuss appropriate strategies for teachers to use their language in the language classroom

3 Strategies for Teachers’ Use of Target Language in the Classroom

Although teacher talk or the way she or he uses the target language in the classroom plays a pivotal role in students‟ acquisition of the target language, it is not automatically effective To be more specific, in order for the teacher talk to support acquisition, teachers should be aware of various strategies for the use of the target language in the classroom In this part, we review the literature on the basis strategies which teachers can apply in the classroom to help learners acquire the target language effectively Sinclair & Coulthard (1975) analyze the classroom discourse and give the general model consisting of three moves which are I-R-F (Initiating - Response - Feedback) The three moves are illustrated in an example below:

T: What‟s the boy doing? (I)

S 1: He‟s climbing a tree (R)

T: That‟s right He‟s climbing a tree (F)

The „F- move‟ shows that teacher talk is used to follow up or feedback about learners‟ speech Furthermore, it is utilized to distinguish the classroom talk from speech events outside the classroom Because when we communicate outside the classroom, the F –moves are optional and unpredicted In the classroom, the teacher‟s F-move is a pedagogical function Cullen (2002) utilizes this model to anlyze teacher talk used in English classroom at high school in Tanzania, and concludes that teacher talk applied in the classroom of the F-move has five pedagogical functions below:

+ Retell a learner‟s response in the right grammatical structure (reformulation)

+ Embellish a student‟s responses by elaborating on them in some way (elaboration) + Comment on a learner‟s response (comment)

+ Repeat a learner‟s response (repetition)

+ Respond to a learner‟s response (responsiveness)

Other researchers (e.g Nabei & Swain , 2002; Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Edwards

& Mercer, 1987; Cullen, 2002) have recommended that teachers can utilize their talk to carry out the following additional pedagogical functions

 Repetition

Repetition of individual learner‟s contribution is used for many different aims For example, to record a learner‟s response, to confirm again the learner‟s response with an acceptable grammar, or to repeat another student‟s response for the whole class to assert the idea of that response but not the form in which it was expressed to draw the students‟ attention to the mistakes more directly

(1) Teacher: Can you describe the man in the picture?

Student: He‟s tall

Teacher: He’s tall Good, Yes He’s tall

(2) Teacher: Now, second question What do you think the man‟s job is?

Student: Teacher

Teacher: a teacher Yes, a teacher

 Recast/ Reformulation

Repairing a definition is expressing again the learner‟s incorrectly grammatical response to

be correct with syntactic function without changing the learner‟s idea Many Second Language Acquisition researchers have been interested in the role of reformulation with the wrong syntax of learners because the opinion making comments on reformulation is one part of English methodology, which not only heightens information but also notices the grammar Researchers consider the form- focused instruction as the effective language teaching method ( Long & Robinson, 1998) For example:

(1) Teacher: Ok Linh?

Linh: Studying hard to en….ent…

Teacher: Enter

Linh: enter examination

Teacher: Ok Studying hard for examination Ok That is a problem, yeah

In the above paragraph, teacher has reformulated Linh‟s response twice The first time

is to complete the student‟s sentence and the second is to repair the whole word phrases

(2) Student: My opinion is… cats are more dangerous animal than dog because

they….they keep going when they met a car They never change their way, and they…run over

Teacher: OK Yeah,…cats are… Cats are at more danger OK So something is dangerous is going to hurt something else At danger is they can be hurt OK

Source: Nabei & Swain, 2002, page 50

An example above shows that the teacher has recast the students‟ wrong sentence in a correctly grammatical form and has explained further about using of two words

“dangerous” and “at danger”

you do?

Student: ………

Teacher: We taught the children to……

Student: read and write

(2) Teacher: Many students can not buy all the required textbooks What do you think

we should do to help them?

Student: I think we should…

Teacher: we should collect…

Student: used textbooks

Teacher: for…

Student: school libraries

Teacher: Right I think we should collect used textbooks for school libraries

 Questioning

Normally, teachers spend most of their talking time in questioning Many researches in foreign countries indicate that the teacher asks two questions per minute on average (Edwards & Mercer, 1987) Questions and answers often happen according to the I-R-F

model shown above This model helps the teacher attract the student‟s participation and confirms again a student‟s response in F-moves However, the limitation of this model is not to provide the student with a chance of initiating a dialogue, to reduce the ability to think independently and the development the learner‟s speaking skill To overcome this disadvantage, the teacher should be flexible and base on the learner‟s response to change the way to question

(1) Teacher: Have you ever spoken English to a native speaker?

Student: No

Teacher: You’ve never spoken English to a native speaker Why never?

(2) Teacher: What would you bring to the party?

Teacher: Anything else? Yes?

Student: He is telling him now to be under his control

Teacher: Now you are under my command You have to do whatever I want you to do

Source: Cullen, 2002, p.121

In the sentence above, the teacher both repairs the learner‟s response exactly and elaborates

on it to help the learner remember again these structures he or she has learnt before

4 Previous researches on teacher talk

Scholarly studies on teacher talk began approximately in the early-mid 1980s They evolved inspired by various findings from (1) "caretaker speech" studies in first language development (Snow, 1972) and (2) "foreigner talk" research (Ferguson, 1975) Teacher talk studies began Teacher talk studies began to evolve partly because of Krashen and

Terrell (1983), who argued that teacher talk is a vital source of comprehensible input in the second/ foreign language classroom

4.1 Descriptive Studies

Seminal teacher talk studies in the 1980s focused on finding and describing similar linguistics features shared in various second/foreign language classroom teacher talk The majority of teacher talk studies administered until the late 1980s were descriptive studies For instance, Wesche & Ready (1985) studied discourse of classroom lectures presented (in English and French) to first language speakers with those to second language speakers They found significant differences, whether the lectures were given in English or in French, between (1) classes composed of first language speaker students and (2) those consisting of second language speaker students in the following five aspects of teacher talk: (a) speech rate, (b) the number and duration of pauses, (c) frequency of tensed verbs and number of S nodes (= clauses) and T units (=a principal clause plus all related dependent clauses), (d) percentage of imperative sentences and self- repetition, and (e) amount of non-verbal information use ( such as gestures, facial expressions, pictures, and visual aids)

4.2 Correlational Studies

In the 1980s, teacher talk research as one sub- area of second language acquisition research grew not only in number but also in quality By the end of the 1980s, several studies started to utilize quantitative research methods based on statistical analyses One of the quantitative research methods utilized then was the correlation (associational) research method Tollefson (1988), for example, explores the degree of association between teachers‟ question types and students‟ response patterns in ESL (English as a second language) classes Teachers‟ question types were divided in to (1) display questions, which aim at testing students‟ target- language knowledge (e.g., “Are you a student?” “What day

is today?”), and (2) referential questions, which intend to gain real information from students (e.g., “What would you like for lunch?” “Has anyone seen the eraser?”) The results show that teachers‟ referential questions have a strong correlation with students‟ creative responses, which often lead to further teacher- student interactions On the other hand, teachers‟ display questions were apt to have a strong association with students‟ imitative responses, which usually do not lead to or facilitate further teacher- student interactions

4.3 Experimental Studies on Teacher Talk

Experimental studies, which can examine/establish causal relationships between variables, were relatively rare in the early 1980s However, more articles about experimental teacher talk studies appeared in second language acquisition journals in the late 1980s In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they became a mainstream research methodology for teacher talk research Chaudron & Richards (1986), for example, conducted their experimental study to investigate the effects of discourse markers in teacher talk on students‟ comprehension The discourse markers included two different types: (1) “macro-markers”, which signal the macro- structure of a lecture and (2) “micro-markers”, which indicate links between sentences within the lecture or function as fillers Discourse markers, such as “What I‟m going to talk about today?” and “let‟s go back to the beginning…” are categorized as macro- markers while discourse markers, such as “well”, “now”, “so” and “you see”, are micro- markers Subjects had significantly better comprehension on the macro- marker version of the spoken lecture information than the baseline version In contrast, the micro-marker version did not produce significantly better comprehension scores than the baseline version Furthermore, Sueyoshi & Hardison (2005) conducted their experimental study to examine the effects of gestures and facial cues on listening comprehension of a videotaped lecture among ESL students Results of a multiple- choice comprehension task revealed that the subjects who saw the audiovisual lecture attained significantly better listening comprehension scores than those who listened to the audio only

4.4 Qualitative Studies on Teacher Talk

In the 2000s, teacher talk researchers began to study qualitative some affective factors (such as perceptions, feelings, and anxieties) students may experience when they are exposed to different types of teacher talk For instance, Mackey, Gass & McDonough(2000) videotaped task-based communicative interactions where a student and a native or near- native interviewer interacted with each other While utilizing so-called stimulus recall and videotaping, they examined how language learners noticed error correction feedback conveyed in the interviewer‟s teacher talk The analysis of the qualitative data showed that the students were relatively accurate in their perceptions about phonological, lexical, and semantic levels of error correction feedback was not noticed as such in general Similar studies followed in the 2000s (e.g., Carpenter et al., 2006; Katayama, 2007)

Although teacher talk in EFL classroom has been researched early but in Vietnam this issue remains underresearched , therefore to study teacher talk is really necessary

5 Summary

In this chapter, I have presented the role of teacher talk in language classrooms Overall, two most fundamental functions of teacher talk are to manage classroom activities and to provide comprehensible input of the target language to the students Then I have reviewed the literature on how to make teacher talk more effective to students‟ learning and to fulfill the functions of the language teachers use in the classroom Finally, a review

of previous studies on teacher talk is presented As can be seen from this literature review that while teacher talk has attracted international researchers for several decades, the topic remains almost unexplored in Vietnam The present study is an attempt to make a modest contribution to the understanding of the issue in the context of a college of education in a mountainous area In the next chapter, I will present the context in which the present study was conducted as well as the research methods that were employed for the purpose of the study

CHAPTER 2 DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the findings of the study Qualitative data were analysed with reference to this study‟s research questions Since the goal of interpretive research is tp

“understand the inner perspectives and meanings of actions and events of those being studied” (Anderson and Burns, 1989, p 67) and words not numbers are considered the primary source of data (Dörnyei, 2007), data were collected through semi structured interviews and open classroom observations (i.e which aim to describe events fully and focused on some predefined topics but with flexibility to other others which emerge (see Drever, 2003) Observations are necessary for the analysis of how much teachers talk in the classroom as well as the functions of their talk while interviews are used to find out the rationale of teachers‟ talk in the classroom

2.1 The Context

The study was conducted at BacKan Education College, which is located in Backan

- a mountainous province in the north east of Viet Nam Most students of the college come from the rural or mountainous areas, especially, a number of these students belong to the ethnic minorities In the same way, students at English classes here are mainly from places where the living standard and the condition to study English are so poor At present, at Backan Education College, English is taught to non-major English students This subject is taught in 2 terms of the first year, and we use the course New Headway to teach students The number of students in each class reaches nearly 50 Although the students have been learning English for at least four years (three years at their high schools and one year as the first year students at Backan Education College.), they have not gained the elementary level of English,yet Students‟ ability use English as a foreign language to communicate with the teachers, and classmates in English classes is bad; they are often silent in English periods They are shy or even do not want to speak out, and they almost use Vietnamese Furthermore, some of them are from different ethnic groups and Vietnamese is second languages for them, i.e., they often speak Tay language when they meet their parents At that time, they feel most comfortable Normally, they only speak Vietnamese when they are at school or at work Therefore, English is really not easy for them to learn, they are often affected by Vietnamese when they pronounce Obviously, in order to help students learn English well in such unfavorable environment, there is no way to except that the teachers themselves have to make their teaching methodology flexible and helpful

2 2 Participants

Three teachers agreed to participate in this study Teacher 1 is a female teacher with over 7 years teaching experience and she has a M.A degree She is teaching non-major English students with elementary level, there are 57 students in the classroom in which there are17 male students and 21 female students Their ages are from 18 to 21 Teacher 2 is a female teacher with over 8 years teaching experience and she has a B.A degree She is teaching non-major English students with elementary level, there are 49 students in the classroom in which there are 12 male students and 37 female students Their ages are from 18 to 21 The third teacher is a female teacher with over 6 years teaching experience and she has a B.A degree She is Tay person She is teaching non-major English students with elementary level, there are 41 students in the classroom in which there are 4 male students and 39 female students Their ages are from 18 to 21 Table 1 presents the information about the participants

Teaching experience 7 years 8 years 6 years

Table 1: Participants Profile 2.3 The teacher talking time

Table 2 shows the amount of teacher talk in an average 45-minute lesson As it is shown

in the table that teacher talk accounted for averagely more than two-thirds of the classroom time Individual cases will be presented and analysed

the teacher talked quite a lot It is not necessary for her to repeat the student‟s question while they can hear the partner‟s question

Extract 1

[R] S3: Where does Seumas live?

[R] S4: She lives and works on the island of Ghigha in the west of Scotland?

[I] T: ( ask S3) Can you hear the answer? (Question)

Perhaps, the reason why the teacher spent much time telling the students to do the task is that her instruction was not clear at the first time In average, each period each student gets only from 40 to 60 seconds, and the rest time is for the students to discuss the task in groups Their activities almost are to answer the teacher‟s requirement and the teacher took part in the students‟ work quite a lot, which reduces the nature in communicating English between the students

2.3.2 Teacher 2

The teacher 2 talked too much in the period, her talking time occupied 37 minutes whereas the students‟ talking time only got 8 minutes The students prepared the task in 2 minutes then answered the questions in the book The teacher called the student one by one Each student talked from 6 seconds to 14 seconds depended on the students‟ ability They could answer right or wrong The extract below is illustrated

Extract 2

[R] S1: she likes her job

[F] T: she likes her job (repetition) Not /dop/ You! What is your name? (Question)

[R] S1: job

The teacher talked all the time in the period, even when she let the students discuss in group, she also intervened some questions or instructions which she said before asking the students to do the task

2.3.3 Teacher 3

In the period, the teacher 3 talked for 31 minutes and left 14 minutes for the students to speak and discuss The student has much chance to speak English or answer the requirement in the exercise in the book They worked individually and got from 5 seconds

to 14 seconds for each student The teacher spent about 3 or nearly 4 minutes for the students preparing the task Most of the students had opportunities to speak English, but

the task was repeated a lot, which made the students bored and they did not attention to the teacher and other students‟ activity

2.4 Interview Data

In order to gain insights into teachers‟ thinking about the way they used either L1 or L2 in the classroom, I carried out post-observations with them The interviews were non-structured to capture the variation in the way teachers talked in the classroom For example, I asked the first teacher why she spoke Vietnamese so much in the period She said that speaking Vietnamese in the period was her habit and she had not improved her methodology yet Furthermore, the students were bad at listening and answering in English, she had to use the first language to teach and communicate Because when she presented a new structure, she had to explain more clearly Whereas, the second teacher said that she did not want to speak Vietnamese so much in the period because she wanted

to create environment learning in English Teachers could use the simple and familiar structures to express so that the students could think in English The second question we asked them: “what is the role of teacher talk in learning English?” Both of them said that they used teacher talk to communicate, explain the structures or grammar in each unit and help the learners imitate The last question we mentioned is “Should the teacher talk less or much in the period?” The first teacher said that it depended on the learners‟ ability and knowledge, the aim, requirement and content of the lesson The second teacher said that on the theory, the teacher should talk less than the students should, the teacher should guide, suggest, and encourage the students to speak English However, in fact, she talked more than the students did because she thought that the students in BacKan were ethnic people and they were bad at language, they acquired the knowledge slowly Therefore, the teacher was quite hard in teaching and she often talked much more than the students did According to me, when the teachers teach one period and there are some other people to attend, they often speak English much The reason is that they teach English so they need

to speak English much In addition, the theory and practice is different Sometimes, we know what we need to teach but when teaching we face to many difficulties such as designing many activities in the period, limited time, stress because we are young and we have not much experience in teaching Therefore, the teachers sometimes forget some activities, some speeches they plan to teach or talk For example, after giving the instruction for the task, they think that they will check the students‟ understand but they

forget Besides, the teachers are afraid of ending the time, they talk much and quickly to cover the steps in the period In short, we need to practice a lot in order to achieve the effective teaching period

2.5 Functions of teacher talk

The following table represents the „F-move‟ of three teachers from three classes that were investigated The functions are listed first, followed by three teachers‟ moves in one period

Period 1

There is a common pattern regarding the functions of teacher talk across all three cases For example, the teachers questioned extensively in the classroom with the number of moves being 63-25 The number of questions asked by Teacher 1 and Teacher 3 was exactly the same whereas Teacher 2 asked questions less than half Similarly, Teacher 1 and Teacher 2 made almost the same moves in giving instructions while the number of moves in giving instructions by Teacher 3 was approximately half It is indicated from Table 3 that recast/reformulation was very rare in the classroom with just one move in the case of Teacher 1 and Teacher 3 while Teacher 2 did not reformulate the students‟ language It is obvious that recast/ reformulation was rarely used as a technique of corrective feedback in the lessons taught by these teachers

Table 3: Number of moves regarding the functions of teacher talk

2 and teacher 3 made repetition the same with the number was 20-21 while the first teacher was only seven

teacher 3 made much more than the second teacher did Teacher 2 asked the numbers of

questions still much more than Teacher 1 and Teacher 3 did Furthermore, cued eliciting of the third teacher was less than Teacher 1 and Teacher 2 It is indicated from Table 5 that recast/reformulation was very rare in the classroom with just one and three moves in the case of Teacher 2 and Teacher 3 while Teacher 1 did not reformulate the students‟ language The second teacher gave more responsiveness than Teacher 1 and Teacher 3 while recycling was rare in three teachers

Table 5: Functions of teacher talk 2.5.1 Giving instructions

2.5.1.1 The teacher 1

Firstly, we refer to the way teacher 1 gave instructions in the periods we recorded In the first period, students are going to listen to a listening exercise in unit 3 of New Headway The requirement of the exercise is to listen to the sentences about Philippe, Keiko, and Mark, and then correct the wrong sentences The teacher is trying to help students understand what they have to do In this classroom example, we concentrate on the language of the „F-move‟ (Cullen, 1998; 2002)

Extract 4

[I] T: Và bài ngày hôm nay chúng ta sẽ tập trung vào 3 bài tập First, exercise 6

We are going to listen some information about three people Do you understand? Trước hết các bạn để nghe được 3 bài đó chúng ta cố nhớ lại một số thong tin về 3 nhân vật Ở trang sô 22 page 21, 22 and 23 có thông tin về 3 nhân vật đó Các bạn một lần nữa đọc lại thông tin về 3 nhân vật đó first about Phillip Some information about him À trong phần này có một vài thông tin về nhân vật này Giờ trước các bạn đã luyện tập về câu hỏi rồi câu trả lời Các bạn lật sang trang về

Keiko, được chưa Keiko Và thứ 3 là nhân vật gì ạ? (instruction)

In this extract, she gave almost Vietnamese instructions, so students quite understood what they had to do However, the F-move that the teacher used in the classroom example above has not gained the target language effectively She gave the initiating move quite much, and when she asked “Do you understand?”, she did not have attention to the students‟ feedback or the students did not give any responses She continued giving instructions She said too much and her instructions was long and complicated, whereas the task‟s

requirement was very simple

[F] T: à, say yes, that's right if sentence is true (comment) Do you understand?

(checking the students’understand) If the sentence is true, you say yes, that's right

The instruction of the teacher 2 was in English, and the requirement she gave quite simple, but she spoke a bit quickly Therefore, when she spoke at the first time, the students could not understand, she had to repeat the instruction and explained or asked some display

questions to help them acquire the requirement Sometimes, she felt that the students were not clear, she had to speak Vietnamese to be sure they understood or not She also asked the students to repeat the requirement to her before they listened to the tape

2.5.1.3 The teacher 3

We talk about the way the teacher 3 gave instructions in the periods we recorded In the first period, the students are going to practice speaking skill with the use of the verb like in Unit 4 of the book New Headway The requirement of the exercise is to tell the other students what you like doing and what you do not like doing from the list having the leisure activities The teacher is trying to help the students understand what they have to

do In this classroom example, we concentrate on the language of the „F-move‟ (Cullen, 1998; 2002)

Extract 7

[[I] T: thế nào, bây giờ em phải nói với bạn mình rằng em thích làm những hoạt động

gì ở đây và không thích làm những hoạt động gì ở đây Sau đấy là gì nhỉ from the

list có nghĩa là từ mục liệt kê này Ask questions about the activities (instruction)

The teacher gave instructions quite in Vietnamese, and asked the students to apply the model in the textbook to practice She spoke slowly enough for the students to listen, and she repeated the direction twice Apart from, the teacher utilized the cued-elicitation and questions to give instructions for the students The students understood and practiced at once

2.5.2 Checking the students’ understanding

2.5.2.1 The teacher 1 She did not repeat the direction; and she checked students‟ acquisition by questioning:

Extract 8

[[I] T: Những thông tin người ta nói nếu đúng thì các bạn sẽ phải tự trả lời là gì?

(checking the students’understand)

[R] Ss: Yes, that‟s right

[I] T: Nếu thông tin sai thì các bạn sẽ nói là gì?(checking the students’understand)

[R] Ss: No, he doesn‟t

In the second period, the teacher is preparing students for a reading passage and then do the exercise with the requirement is answering the questions

The teacher divided thestudents in the classroom into three groups to answer ninequestions After doing the exercise, the students were called to check the answer The teacher had not given the requirement before they practiced speaking out, which forced the teacher to give the instruction during the practicing part Furthermore, she did not check the students‟ understanding before they performed For example, the teacher asked the

students „now, are you ready? Which group? One, two, three? Now, answer the questions Nào, một bạn trong nhóm 3 hỏi một bạn trong nhóm 1 để trả lời câu hỏi 1,2,3 now , in this group Who is volunteer?‟ Then the teacher told one student to question and asked him to

call another student to answer the questions After this pair finished speaking, they did not know what to do next; the teacher had to tell the students to call another to answer the next question She did not carry out as the F-move in the example above, she only gave the initiating move, and she did not ask the students‟ response, which led to the embarrassment

of the students Her aim is that she wanted all the students in the classroom to have chances

to practice, but her instruction for practicing was not clear and the students did not know how to do She spent much time repeating the requirement for each student when the students were called Some sentences below about her requirement are transcribed in that period

Extract 10

[I] T: you You ask one of students in other group Understand? Trước hết bạn gọi

một ai đó trong nhóm 1 sau đó bạn hói các câu hỏi 1,2,3 (instruction)

[I] T: ( look at Huong and tell) Bạn gọi một ai đó trong nhóm trả lời câu 2 Now

Huong Can you ask another student to answer the second question? (instruction)

We can see that she had to repeat her requirement much when the students practiced Instead of uttering again the guide, the teacher should let them ask actively in this situation

2.5.2.2 The teacher 2

After she gave the instructions in English, she checked the students‟ understanding by the question “Clear? Nắm rõ yêu cầu chưa các em? Bây giờ các em phải làm gì?” She said the requirement in English, and then she explained in Vietnamamsese We can see in the extract below

Extract 11

[I] T: free time that means he or she likes doing In the free time So now you look

at the information about Keiko and Mark and talk about them (instruction) Clear?

Nắm rõ yêu cầu chưa các em So what do you have to do now? Bây giờ các em phải

làm gì? Các em phải làm gì? (checking the students’understand)

She spent much time giving instruction in English and checked the understanding and she paraphrased the instruction again She checked the understanding of the students by using display question such as „Do you understand? Or „Clear?‟ or in Vietnamese questions:

„Các em phải làm gì?‟ Or „Nhìn vào thông tin về ai đây? These suggested questions to know whether students understand the requirements or not

2.5.2.3 The teacher 3

She gave the instructions in Vietnamese, so the students understood at once She did not check the students‟ acquisition She asked them to do the task then We can see the extract below

[F] T: Can you hear the answer? She reads the text or answer the question?Bạn

đấy đọc bài hay trả lời câu hỏi đấy? (Question)

[R] Ss:

[F] T: Đấy cũng là một cách trả lời nhưng cách trả lời đấy làm cho người nghe làm

sao ạ I think when I first hear the answer like that it is difficult for me to remember Cách trả lời đấy khó nhớ Khi trả lời ta không nhất thiết đọc trong sách

Các bạn trả lời lại câu hỏi này một cách ngắn gọn và dễ hiểu hơn (comment)

In the extract above, the teacher used the three moves to give initiating, response, and feedback to learner‟s contribution When the teacher asked two students to practice, one

student read the question and another answered After they had finished, the teacher commented on the student 12‟s response In this situation, she gave feedback quite tensely,

instead of saying uh, ok, ….she asked the students as follows: Can you hear the answer? She reads the text or answer the question? Bạn đấy đọc bài hay trả lời câu hỏi đấy?The

teacher made the student afraid and shy, the teacher should have said „ok‟, or uh, because the answer by reading a text to answer this question in this question can be acceptable

Then she said „Đấy cũng là một cách trả lời nhưng cách trả lời đấy làm cho người nghe làm sao ạ I think when I first hear the answer like that it is difficult for me to remember.Cách trả lời đấy khó nhớ Khi trả lời ta không nhất thiết đọc trong sách Các bạn trả lời lại câu hỏi này một cách ngắn gọn và dễ hiểu hơn.’, which made that student

more comfortable than saying continuously as in the above dialogue

2.5.3.2 The teacher 2

In the following extract, we are going to analyze the error correction the teacher gave the students She often repeats the students‟ answers or uses “ah”, or “yes, thank you” to the true answers For the false answers, she normally provides the suggestions by using display questions to help the students come up with the answer We can see the following extracts

to see the teacher‟s feedback to the students‟ contribution

Extract 14

[R] S5: Where does Mark come from?

[F] T: Ah, (responsiveness) Where does Mark come from? (repetition)

2.5.3.3 The teacher 3

In the following extract, we are going to analyze the error correction the teacher gives the

students She often repeats the students‟ answers or uses “ah”, and „okay‟, and they were

used, overused, and abused She used it as feedback to agree the students‟ response

Furthermore, for recast or reformulation function means repairing a definition is expressing again the learner‟s incorrectly grammatical response to be correct with syntactic function without changing the learner‟s idea

Extract 17

[R ] Ss: he speaks

[F] T: ah! (responsiveness) He speaks a little English ( reformulation)

In the extract above, the teacher 1 had to suggest a lot in order to help the student to answer It seemed that the student could not answer, but the teacher gave the responsiveness „ah‟ as if they had a good answer Then she gave the correct answer

In this extract below, the teacher 2 has reformulated the student‟s response twice She repeated the student‟s sentence with her facial expression and tone, which made the student find out his mistake and did it again Finally, she did not repair the whole sentence, she only show the wrong mistake We can see the extract below

[R] S13: Does Keiko speak Englan , Japanese and French?

In the dialogue below, the teacher 3 has reformulated the student‟s response twice She gave suggestion for the student to complete the sentence Finally, she repaired the whole sentence

Extract 19

[R ] S4: Anh ấy uống trà và ăn

[ F] T: ah uống trà và ăn ( elaboration and cued elicitation)

It is a technique which teachers spend „spatial discourse‟ on learners completing a word or

a speech In the following conversation, the teacher 1 gave the questions to suggest for the

students answer to understand the requirement However, in these lessons of three teachers below, there are often prolonged sequences of teacher- fronted eliciting of the classic IRF type (teacher initiates – students responds- teacher follows up / gives feed back):

2.5.4.1 The teacher 1

In the following dialogue, the teacher use Vietnamese words to suggest the students answer She used the word „gì ạ‟, in fact, it sounds funny and it is not suitable when teaching foreign language Perhaps, it is her habit because she often used that word in three periods I recorded In the second sentence, she paused midway in the conversation for the student to complete

The teachers often spend most of time in questioning and questions and answers usually occur according to the I-R-F model It helps the teacher attract the students‟ participation and confirms again a student‟s response in F –moves In the teacher 1‟s classroom, when the students met the new words, the teacher explained the meaning by the way to make display questions, she used so many continuously questions to ask the students to answer

or used the old words to explain the meaning The students could guess the meaning at once, the following commentary is illustrated this point Besides, she often used the cued-elicitation technique to complete the students‟ sentences

Extract 24

[I] T: ….Exciting? (Question) the last word exciting? (Question) What does it

mean? (Question) The same to interesting? Nghĩa bằng nghĩa với từ interesting?

For example, there were some teacher‟s speeches transcribed below

Extract 26

[I] T: now, please look at the picture on the textbook please What can you see on

the picture the whole class? ( Questioning)

Ss: (silent)

The teacher used the present simple tense more than other tenses, and she often utilized the imperative mood to give the commands Her speech and commands were so quick that her students did not understand the lesson It seemed that the students felt tired of the display questions Moreover, she asked so many questions, after each question she did not spend time for the students answering, she asked another question, which caused the students silent at that time

2.5.5.3 The teacher 3

The teacher used the elementary level of English for the students, which made the students acquire the teacher‟s speech The teacher often spoke Vietnamese to explain and give the commands; she only spoke English when she read the requirement of the tasks The questions she made are very simple and the referential questions were not used She only used some display questions and mainly she spoke in Vietnamese We can see some teacher‟s speeches transcribed in the extract below

Extract 30

[ I] T: ah! (responsiveness)trái ngược nhau Mình thích xem TV mình không thích

xem TV nhưng mình thích đọc sách rất nhiều Sau đó bạn phải hỏi thế bạn

thích đọc sách gì? (Question) Đọc truyện tranh chẳng hạn truyện tranh là

gì nhỉ?(Question)

In short, the teacher talk of the third teacher is almost in Vietnamese, which helps the students understand what they have to do or the content of the lesson When they practiced the tasks they could do well However, the students do not have a lot of chances to listen to English or to be in English environment Apart from, each activity in one period takes much time, the teacher lets the students practice too much, which causes boring for the students She does not limit the time for each activity; she permits the whole class to speak For example, in one period, she needs to teach 3 parts, but she only teaches 2 parts Moreover, she often gives the commands and the feedback in the same way for the entire students Normally, the sequences above give the illusion that classes are interactive, and the learners are equal participants in the „conversation‟ The teachers often teach like that

in the other periods, they do not create the activities helped the students speak out by their own thought The teacher should balance these activities in one period, and she should create the changes in the different activities in one period The students will feel more interesting and they want to communicate in English with referential questions, but the teacher does not let them gain that purpose

2.5.6 Recycling

While speaking a foreign language in the classroom, the teacher should try to use words and grammatical structures students have learnt to help them both remember and consolidate again the old knowledge Teachers used this function in their periods when they found that the students often made mistakes with the old knowledge We can see the extracts below

[I] T: now remember to pronounce the word work khi phát âm ở ngôi thứ 3 số

ít.works, speaks, reads Khi các em đọc toàn quên các đuôi này thôi

[I ] T: Look at the board and read again

T: và Ving có 2 trường hợp là gì E, và động từ có một âm tiết những động từ sau e

ta bỏ e và thêm V.ing đúng không? Write -writing Make-making Thứ 2, động từ nào có chứa nguyên âm ngắn , chú ý là nguyên âm ngắn short vowel và có một phụ

âm đằng sau nhớ là có một phụ âm Và chúng ta sẽ gấp đôi phụ âm này lên trước khi thêm đuôi ing Running, sitting Đấy là bài 1 Exercise 1 sang exercise 2 Now discuss in groups what you think your teacher likes doing Chose five activities

In the episode above, the teacher helps pupils to consolidate explicit grammar knowledge

or recycling explicit grammar knowledge When the teacher found out that the pupils forgot or did not remember the grammatical or pronunciation errors or avoidance of using the target grammar point, she used Vietnamese to help them recall those rules by either instructing them to practice more as in Extract 32 or explaining the rules explicitly again like in the Extract 33 It is likely that these teachers felt that it would be more effective to use Vietnamese to teach rules explicitly even though the language items were recycled

2.6 Summary

In short, the evidence shows that teacher 1 used Vietnamese more than she used English in the classroom This frustrated the students to some extent To exemplify this, the students said in the interviews that they wanted her teacher to speak English and give explanations

if they could not understand They liked speaking English and practicing much

Secondly, the way the teacher 2 taught is only suitable for the students at high level When she spoke English a lot, she also noticed that her students often were silent in the periods However, she said that her students were not enthusiastic and they learned other subjects very quietly The air in her classroom was very tense and the students were not enthusiastic The teacher did not create other activities for the students, the students did not have chance to speak English Thirdly, the way the third teacher taught cannot improve the students‟ English knowledge; there are not challenges to the students In all the period, she gave the same activities, the students felt boring and they spent the rest time chatting with other students had finished their task The teacher should speak more English than Vietnamese a bit The teacher depended on the book too much like the teacher 1 and 2, which brought about the dull lectures Finally, I taught two periods in each class then, I tried to break out the iceberg in the teacher 2‟s classroom Firstly, I spoke English a lot and

I felt that they did not understand much, so I spoke both English and Vietnamese I summarized the main idea in the lesson I taught them I did not let them look at the book during the period like the teacher 1, 2, 3 did The students only looked at the teacher and the information on the board and the activities the students and their friends had done I still ran through the main parts in the book, moreover, the students had much chance to speak English and they became active in the tasks the teacher gave It seemed that the students learnt enthusiastically and they were curious about what the teacher taught They said that they wanted the teacher to speak English but she needed to explain more clearly, and they liked practicing a lot instead of sitting quietly in all period