Principles of designing British literature material for English major students Các nguyên tắc thiết kế tư liệu văn học Anh cho sinh viên chuyên Tiếng Anh tại tr.PDF

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS v TABLES OF CONTENTS vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale 2.Aims of the study 3.Method of research 4.Scope of the study 5.Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1.Material Design 1.1.1 An overview of materials 1.1.2 Categories of materials 1.1.2.1 Published materials 1.1.2.2 Authentic materials 1.1.2.3 Specially-prepared materials 1.1.3 Characteristics of good materials 1.1.4 The process of materials designing 1.1.5 Principles for designing materials 1.1.6 Designing materials for British literature 10 1.1.6.1 The concept of literature 10 1.1.6.2 Models of teaching literature in ESL classroom 11 1.1.6.3 Criteria for the literary text selection 12 1.2 Need analysis 14 1.2.1 The concept of language needs 14 1.2.2 Purposes of needs analysis in language teaching 15 1.3 Summary of chapter 15 vii CHAPTER II: NEEDS ANALYSIS AT BA RIA VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY 16 2.1 Situational analysis 16 2.1.1 Training Institution 16 2.1.2 Teaching staff 16 2.1.3 Facilities 16 2.1.4 The current syllabus and materials in use 17 2.1.4.1 Syllabus for British Literature 17 2.1.4.2 Materials for British Literature 17 2.1.5 Students 18 2.2 The analysis of participants’ opinions 19 2.2.1 Subjects of the study 19 a The student population 19 b The teacher population 19 2.2.2 Procedures 19 2.2.3 Data analysis, findings and discussions 20 2.3 Summary of chapter 33 CHAPTER III: SOME PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING BRITISH LITERATURE MATERIALS FOR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT BVU 35 3.1 The compatibility with the syllabus 35 3.2 The learners’ interests 35 3.3 Paying attention to students’ linguistic proficiency and literary background 36 3.4 Counting culture and other mother tongue-related elements in students’ first language 37 3.5 Selecting the literary texts 38 3.6 Taking notice of the teaching duration 38 3.7 Taking teachers’ and students’ difficulties into account 39 3.8 Samples of the British materials for students at BVU 41 PART C: CONCLUSION 43 Recapitulation 43 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research 43 REFERENCE APPENDICES iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BVU: Ba Ria Vung Tau University FLD: Foreign Language Department ESL: English as second language ESP: English for Specific Purposes BL: British literature v LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS List of figures page Fig.1 A Process of materials writing Fig.2 A teacher’s path through the production of new or adapted materials Fig.3 Checklist for choosing literary texts 14 List of tables Table Students’ motivation in learning British literature 20 Table Teachers’ responses on the teaching material 22 Table Teachers’ preparation of teaching material 23 Table 4.1 Teacher’s handling of the teaching content inside the material perceived by students 24 Table 4.2 Teachers’ choice of teaching the content in the syllabus 25 Table Teachers’ selection of literary texts 27 Table Teachers’ provision of questions after the texts 28 Table 7.1 Students’ preferred items in the learning of BL 29 Table 7.2 Teachers’ choice of content areas 29 Table 8.1 Students’ difficulties in learning British literature 30 Table 8.2 Difficulties perceived by teachers in teaching 31 Table 9.1 Types of tasks favored by students 32 Table 9.2 Task types often held by teachers at class time 33 List of charts Chart Students’ opinions on the official teaching material 21 Chart Students’ comments on teachers’ preparation of material 22 Chart Difficulty of literary texts 25 Chart The length of the literary works 26 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale The teaching and learning of a foreign language is always associated with the learning of culture Culture here is understood as a set of behaviors, attitudes, perceptions that people in a nation share and follow As a field with the reflection function of life, literature is regarded as a core part of culture Moreover, the learning of literature is an effective way to explore the use of language and its beauty presented in the field through an interesting experience Thanks to the learning of literature, we are more aware of the variety, multilayer and multi-colors of the kind of language used in the field of literature and then know more about the history process and social life reflected in literature Therefore, literature is always included as an obligatory subject in every foreign language training program Together with many compulsory subjects in the training program for English major students such as semantics, phonology, syntax, British culture, etc at Ba Ria Vung Tau University, British literature (BL) has been put into teaching for the first time and for the first training course since 2009 However, the current program is showing off its shortcomings in terms of syllabus design and material development In fact, the syllabus is designed with only 45 periods of teaching which is not enough time for students to have an adequate input of the knowledge of British literature From this fact, it is difficult for the Foreign Language Department (FLD) to design an official material As a result, the University currently does not have an official material for British literature and it is the teachers who take on teaching the subject choose and prepare the materials for teaching and learning based on the requirements in the syllabus Those teachers often combine many sources of materials from different universities without permission and from the Internet such as British materials of Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) In addition, problems arise with the material contents that teachers apply are unavoidable: the material is made according to the subjective decision of the teachers which means that different teachers apply different teaching materials so the contents may not be suitable enough with the syllabus and with the class time Consequently, the teaching and learning outcomes are not effective From all the above reasons, an official British literature material is vitally important Furthermore, the teaching material is not something fixed but changeable together with time and curriculum When time goes on, the change of teaching material is possible to occur, but for any time, the design of material could not avoid following its own principles Therefore, in this thesis, I not intend to design a complete material for British literature but only expect to generalize some important principles used for any material design for the subject to gain as good as possible results in teaching and learning of British literature Aims of the study The study primarily aims at finding out important principles for designing British literature material for the major English students at BVU To obtain this aim, the following objectives are set up: (i) Firstly, to get overview of the basic theories of material design and needs analysis (ii) Secondly, to make an investigation into the current use of syllabus and material for British literature at BVU based on students and teachers’ ideas (iii) Thirdly, to find out students’ needs, wants, desires, interests, challenges and expectation in learning British literature (iv) Fourthly, to look for teachers’ opinions on the material preparation for British literature, difficulties and expectations (v) Finally, to suggest a sample of material design for British literature Method of research The fulfillment of the thesis is done firstly based on the literature review in the area of material development to build up a theoretical background for the research The study is mainly carried out with quantitative methodology Survey questionnaire is used as data collection instrument The survey which consists of multiple choice questions is done on 125 post-course English major students at Ba Ria Vung Tau University to investigate their evaluations on teachers’ material preparation, challenges in learning, and their demands, desires, interests and expectations Another set of questionnaire including multiple choice and one open-ended questions is also delivered to teachers to collect their ideas on issues such as material preparation, teaching difficulties and expectations in teaching British literature at BVU This will help to draw some principles in designing materials which leads to the birth of an official textbook for teaching and learning British literature at BVU later Moreover, the observation and formal discussion methods are also applied into the teaching and learning situation in order to get initial information for the conduction of the study Scope of the study Concerning material design for British literature, there are several issues to study such as designing British material for teaching and learning, designing supplementary literary reading materials, etc However, within the scope of a minor thesis, this study just focuses on finding out some important principles of designing British literature material for English major students at BVU based on the syllabus requirements and needs analysis with a reference to the review of the related materials Design of the study The thesis consists of three main parts: Part A: Introduction presents rationale, aims, method, scope and design of the study Part B: Development comprises of four chapters: Chapter 1- Literature Review- includes two parts: materials design and needs analysis The first part provides an overview of materials, types of materials, characteristics of good materials, process of material designing, principles for designing materials and some theory of designing materials for British literature including the concept of literature, models of teaching literature in ESL classroom and the criteria for literary text selection Part two deals with the theory of needs analysis in language teaching which includes the concept of language needs and the purposes of needs analysis in language teaching These two parts of chapter one play an important role in the formation of theoretical background for the study Chapter 2- firstly is an overview of the current syllabus and material in use for British literature at BVU Secondly it deals with the needs analysis of the students of English major and teachers at BVU which involves a process of carrying out and collecting a set of questionnaire and the analysis of the result in order to draw the main principles of designing materials for British literature for English major students at BVU Chapter 3- is the main part of the study in which some important principles for designing materials for British literature for English major students at BVU are drawn Part C: Conclusion: presents the general conclusions drawn from the results of the study after a summary of what has been done and states the limitation of the study and suggestions for further study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Material Design 1.1.1 An overview of materials Material in language teaching has been in the center of attention of not only language teachers but also educational practitioners The essence of material refers to all forms of materials employed to help to teach language learners Both McGrath (2002:7) and Tomlinson (1998:11) agree on the point that materials can be anything which is deliberately used to increase the learner’s knowledge and/or experience of the language Thus, materials can be anything that can be used in learning setting: cassettes, tapes, CDROMs, videos, dictionaries, books (course book, exercise book, reference books and such things), newspapers and magazines, photographs, handouts, pens and pencils, even bags or desks and others in the classroom setting The term “materials”, therefore, does not limit in the conventional boundary, but is various and can take all types which are used to facilitate the learning of a language It can be taken from the authentic source such as newspapers, magazines, internet, etc or it can be non-authentic, that is, the material has been specially selected and exploited for teaching purposes However, whatever forms it may have, the final and the end of the material are for instructing the language learners 1.1.2 Categories of materials In language teaching, materials are classified into many types but commonly, scholars put them into three main types: Published materials, authentic materials and specially-prepared materials 1.1.2.1 Published materials Published materials can be course books including students’ book, teacher’s book, workbook, books and reference materials such as dictionaries, test practice materials In Vietnam, published materials can serve as the core textbook which are used as the only input for students in a course Some publishers produce materials specifically intended for use by learners working independently whereas, in some other cases, according to Gardner and Miller (1999), those materials can be simply classroom teaching materials with an answer key 1.1.2.2 Authentic materials Authentic materials are those which are taken from the real life and there are different viewpoints on what authentic material is In terms of categories, scholars seem to agree that there are two types of authentic materials: simulated and unmodified According to Rogers & Medley (1988), simulated authentic material is the language produced for pedagogical purpose This type of material exhibits features with high possibility of occurring in actual acts of communication such as the naturalness of form, and appropriateness of context as in the language of native speakers On the other hand, unmodified authentic material is oral or written language which is originally written or spoken for a non-pedagogical purpose, and which is created by native speakers and for native speakers of the language for a genuine of communication aiming to convey information or to entertain (Brian, 1998; Bacon, 1992; Rogers & Medley, 1988) 1.1.2.3 Specially-prepared materials Apart from published and authentic materials, there is always a needs for material that is precisely tailored to the needs of students This type of material can be either teachergenerated or student-generated and in many cases normally is used to supplement the course books in use within the institution (MacGrath, 2002) 1.1.3 Characteristics of good materials Methold (1972) states that good materials will have the following characteristics: - They will set out to teach a predetermined body of knowledge, e.g., what is contained in the syllabus - They will be divided into teachable segments (i.e take into account of both time constraints and the quality of material that can be included in a particular lesson) - They will take into account such principles as variety, weighting, the content validity of exercises and the need for recycling - They will take into account local conditions (the classroom environment, conventional teaching and learning practices, and teachers’ linguistic and methodological competence) It is understood from the above characteristics that good materials should meet the standards of knowledge, time, teaching condition, adequacy of content, etc Therefore, it is not easy for a specific material to match all the teaching and learning features of all universities and hence, the finding out of principles for designing material is of significant importance and necessity ... good materials, process of material designing, principles for designing materials and some theory of designing materials for British literature including the concept of literature, models of teaching... information concerning material design such as an overview of materials, categories of materials, characteristics of good materials, process of material writing and principles for designing materials... and collecting a set of questionnaire and the analysis of the result in order to draw the main principles of designing materials for British literature for English major students at BVU Chapter