Tác động của các hoạt động nâng cao nhận thức đối với năng lực ngữ pháp của học sinh lớp 10, trường THPT Trần Nhật Duật

V IE T N A M N A T IO N A L Ư N IV E R S IT Y -H A N O I Ư N IV E R S ITY OF LANGƯ AGES & IN T E R N A T IO N A L STUDIES F A C U L T Y OF POST - GRADƯ ATE STUDIES ie ie ic ic k ic ie ic k ic id e id c ic ic k Đ IN H T H Ị T H A N H VÂN • THE EFFEC T OF C O N SC IO U SN E SS-R A ISIN G A C T IV ITIES ON TH E 10th G R A D E ST U D E N T S’ G R A M M A T IC A L C O M PE T E N C E AT TRAN NHAT DUAT UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL (Tác động hoạt động nâng cao nhận thức đối vói lực ngữ phap học sính lóp 10, trường T H P T Trần Nhật Duạt) M A M IN O R P R O G R A M M E TH E S IS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 601410 Supervisor: Phạm Thị Hạnh, M A ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRUNG TAM THÕNG TIN THƯ VIỆN ữQU 0004% HANOI-2011 DECLARATION I hereby State th a t the m ln o r thesis entitled “ T he effect of consciousnessraising activities on grade 10th stu d en ts’ g ram m atical com petence a t T n N hat D uat U p p er S econdary School” and subm itted in p a rtia l fulfiUment of the req u irem en ts for the degree of M aster o f A rts in English teaching m ethodology is the resu lt of my own re sea rc h T he substance of the thesỉs has not, w holly o r in p a rt, been subm itted fo r a degree to any o th e r universities o r institutions The research re p o rte d in this thesis was ap p ro v ed by M s P ham T hi H anh, M A., V ietnam N ational U niversity o f H anoi H anoi, S ep tem b er, 2011 Đ inh T h ị T h a n h V ân ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First o f all, I w ould like to express my deep gratitude and respect to my supervisor, Ms Pham Thi Hanh, M A., for her continual guidance, com m ent, and especially her sym pathy throughout the whole research process I am also grateful to all teachers at the Postgraduate Departm ent, ƯLIS,VNU, w hose lectures and guidance have contributed to my understanding o f the problem and led to the com pletion o f this thesis My special thanks w ould also go to Dr Le Van Canh, who helped us update the m odem approaches in English teaching m ethodology and suggested this thesis I am indebted to my beloved friend, To Thi Ngoe Nga, ULIS, VNU, for her encouragem ent She was so helpful and dedicated in spite o f her illness Thanks also go to my colleague, Ly Tuan Anh for his support in collecting the data for the study Especially, I wish to express my appreciation to my students o f class 10 A l, TNDUSS, who have been really helpíul and cooperative in the im plem entation o f the study Last but not least, I would also like to send my w hole-hearted thanks to my family, my parents and my husband who took care o f my two little sons and supported me spiritually during my study ABSTRACT The teaching approach of grammar has always been the most complex and controversial aspects in second language teaching in general and in English in particular With an investigation into the reality of teaching and leaming grammar at Tran Nhat Duat Upper Secondary school, this thesis is aimed at working out an appropriative, effective, suitable and practical approach in a m ountainous context, n o t to pin p o in t the right or correct method to teach grammar Upon carrying out a preliminary investigation and literature review, it is found that CR activities, which integrate instructional assumptions and components of traditional and communicative methods, can work well in the context of a mountainous school CR activities were then designed and implemented in the second term o f the school year 2010-2011 with the participation o f 41 students from class 1OA In order to collect the data, a num ber o f instrum ents were em ployed including: (a) a semistructured group interview to the tw enty students o f grade 10,h in that school; (b) classroom observations; (c) a questionnaire ìer applying CR and (d) a test The results o f the study reveal that (1) students had a positive attitude towards the necessity o f English grammar learning; (2) the tradỉtional methods were mainly used in this school and (3) CR activities vvere effective on ỉmproving students' grammaticaỉ competence As far as the study suggests, it can be concluded that CR activities can be an effective tool for the improvement of Engiish grammar teaching practices ABBREVIATIONS MOET: Vietnam ese M inistry o f Education and Training CR: C onsciousness-raising CC: Com m unicative competence GC: Gram m atical com petence LC: Linguistic com petence CLT: C om m unicative language teaching L2: Second language L l: First language SSLE: Second School Leaving Examination TNDƯSS: Tran Nhat Duat ưpper Secondary School T: teacher Sts: students V TABLE OF CONTENTS D E C LA R A TIO N i K N O W LED G EM EN TS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF A B B R EVIA TIO N S iv PA R T I IN T R O D U C T IO N 1 Rationale for the study .1 Aims o f the s tu d y Scope o f the stu d y .3 Signiíìcant o f the study Method o f the study Organization o f the study PA R T II D E V E L O P M E N T C h a p te r 1: L IT E R A T U R E REVIEVV 1.1 C om m unỉcative com petence and g ram m atical com petence 1.1.1 Communicative com petence 1.1.2 Grammatical com petence .8 1.2 M ethodology for teaching g m m a r 10 1.2.1 Pro and Anti-Grammar Perspectives 10 1.2.2 The Evolution o f Language Teaching M ethodology 12 1.2.3 Consciousness-raising approach 17 C h a p te r 2: R E SE A R C H M E T H O D O L O G Y 21 2.1 B ackground of the stu d y 21 2.1.1 The c o u rse 21 2.2.2 The stu d en ts 21 2.2.3 The teachers .22 2.2 R esearch questions 23 vi 2.3 R esearch a p p ro a c h 23 2.4 P a rtic ip a n ts 25 2.5 Instruments 25 2.6 D ata collection p ro c e d u re s .27 2.7 D ata anaiysis p ro c e d u re s 29 2.8 S u m n ia ry 29 C h a p te r 3: T H E P R A C T IC A L STU D Y 30 3.1 P relim in ary investigation 30 3.1.1 Interview s 30 3.1.2 Class observations 32 3.2 In te rv e n tio n 34 3.2.1 The design and aims o fC R activities 34 3.2.2 Procedures o f the CR lessons 34 3.3 E v a lu a tio n 36 Data presentation of the evaluation questionnaires Data presentation of the quizzes and thetest 3.1 3 3.4 S u m m a ry 39 C h a p te r 4: D ISC U SSIO N O F T H E F IN D IN G S 40 4.1 R esearch question 40 4.2 R esearch question 40 4.3 R esearch question .41 PA R T III: C O N C L U S IO N 41 C on clu sio n 41 R eco m m e n d a tio n s 42 L ỉm itations o f the study and suggestions fo r ĩu rth e r stu d y 43 Suggestions for the fu rth e r s tu d y 44 REFERENCES APPENDICES P A R T I: IN T R O D U C T IO N R ationale o f th e study English has become a common means of communication of human beings all over the world Integrating into that trend of the global integration, Vietnam has been more and more active to train hard-working and dynamic Vietnamese, who can use English íluently for communicative purposes Much effort has been spent on improving Vietnamese students’ competence to be able to communicate in English The most signiíicant solution can be the implementation of the new series of English books started in 2006 by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) for secondary high school which claimed to develop both language skills and language knowledge for students There are two types of textbook sets: the advanced and the Standard ones Each unit in the new English textbooks consists of five parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus, among which the Language Focus sections are to consolidate students’ pronunciation and grammar Once the new textbooks have been implemented, the teaching approach has also changed However, the teaching approach of grammar has always been the most complex and controversial aspects It has taken a long but not easy time for teachers to change their traditional ways of teaching to so-called communicative approach But after several years applying communicative language teaching (CLT), although seeing a lot of its advantages, many teachers have wondered vvhether CLT is really effective, suitable and practical in Vietnamese context, which rarely has “the opportunity to take part in meaningíul communication interaction with highly competent speakers of the language, i.e to respond to genuine communicative needs in realistic second language situations” (Canale and Swain ( ), cited in Canh, 0 ); and in which most of the national examinations whose sole objective is to measure candidates’ linguistic or grammatical competence in vvritten form Especially, in the context of a mountainous upper secondary school in Yen Bai province, teaching English is not a simple task because of many reasons Firstly, the students in this school have a low level of English; every student with the English score at the school entrance examination above zero can enter the school Secondly, the size of the class at the school is big with average of over 40 students in one class, which makes teachers diffícult to take control Furthermore, other problems are compounded by poor living conditions, poorly-fumished classrooms, scarce access to supporting materials and facilities, limited access to the target language As a result, many students fail to make progress in leam ing the language and the quality o f English language All the abovementioned ĩactors seem to be disadvantageous to teaching Engỉish, especially in dcveloping students' com m unicative com petence In the context o f this school, teaching gram m ar, therefore, should be done and needs to be done appropriately After twelve years o f teaching English in which five years by the new English textbooks in this m ountainous school, the researcher observed that the teachers and leam ers there faced a num ber o f difficulties not only in teaching and leam ing the four language skills but also in teaching and leam ing gram m ar during the Language Focus lessons, especially for grade 10' , the starter in upper secondary school program The researcher o f this study has always w ondered how she should present gram m ar to be effective beíore a preparation for a gram m ar period Luckily, during the course as a post graduate student at University o f Languages and International Studies, she has been considering the ‘consciousness-raising’ approach, which she subjectively thinks appropriate to her school context Consequently, she decided to an action research on applying consciousness-raising activities and investigating their effect on students’ grammatical com petence with the hope to make a small contribution to improve the quality o f teaching English gram m ar in a mountainous province The research was entitled “The effect o f consciousness-raising activities on grade 10lh students’ gram matical competence at Tran Nhat Duat Upper Secondary School” O verall, the research er hopes that this study w ould provide a possible solution to teaching gram m ar in everyday classroom situ atio n ; thus, it vvould be h elp íu l to not only the research er h e rs e lĩ in m aking b e tte r teach in g d ecisio n s in h er classes but also to the school ad m in istrato rs and policy m akers for íu rth er im provem ent o f E nglish teaching and learning A im s o f th e stu d y With the above-presented rationale, the aims o f the study are: • To investigate attitudes towards gram m ar lessons o f m ountainous stuđents who are considered as weak gram m atical com petence, to find out their diíĩĩculties and their desires in teaching and leam ing grammar • To fmd out how teachers in a m ountainous school context treat gram m ar lessons and identify the problem arising in gram m ar lessons • To offer some consciousness-raising activities and to fínd out vvhether they are suitable and effective to grammar lessons, may or may not improve mountainous students’ grammatical competence It is hoped that the íìndings from this study will be o f some benefits to the teachers in Vietnamese secondary schools, especially those who are engaged in grammar teaching Signiíicance of the study The study is hoped to be beneíĩcial to both teachers and students in mountainous high schools First, íĩndings o f the study could be shared among teachers o f English to improve the quality o f teaching and leaming in the coming years Next, it might highỉight the rationale for proíessional development programs for high school teachers o f English in mountainous areas in Vietnam Finally, the ĩindings could be used as a data base for further study Scope o f Che study There are two sets o f the new English textbooks for grade 10: the advanced and the Standard sets This study only aimed at investigating the reality o f teaching and leam ing gram m ar in Language Focus lessons in the Standard set This study, as early stated, was designed to investigate how mountainous teachers treat grammar lessons; mountainous students’ attitudes towards grammar teaching, their difficulties and desires in order to make some changes by using C-R activities and find out w hether C-R activities effective or not; may improve or may not improve the quality o f teaching and learning To keep the study in a manageable size, the study has been delimited only to three English language teachers and a group o f grade 10 students at Tran Nhat Duat p p er Secondary School in Yen Bai M ethodology The study was conducted as an action research This type o f research was chosen for the following reasons In the first place, being a teacher o f English, the researcher herself actually experienced traditional methods and saw their advantages on tests and disadvantages on communication; she then tried the communicative methods vvith a lot of difficulties in a mountainous school and deeply wanted to take some actions for improvement However, teaching o f grammar is the most controversial and each teacher has their own reasons to choose a suitable gram m ar teaching approach for their own ... were em ployed including: (a) a semistructured group interview to the tw enty students o f grade 10,h in that school; (b) classroom observations; (c) a questionnaire ìer applying CR and (d) a test... betvveen what the students said in the intervievv and what actually happens in class The grade 10,h Language Focus lessons, not other lesson skills, were chosen because the researcher prefers... social knovvledge about “when, where and how to use language appropriately” Díaz-Rico and Weed (2 010, p 58) The notion o f c c intended by Hymes does not provide any priorities for any does not