Improving the first year students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction at university of economic and technical industries

Improving the first year students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction at university of economic and technical industries Phạm Thu Yến Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Methodology; Mã Số: 60 14 10 Người hướng dẫn: Khoa Anh Việt, M.A Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract: The study was carried to assess whether focus-on-form instruction (FFI) can help develop the first-year students’ grammar mastery at University of Economic and Technical Industries (UNETI). Total of 26 repeat students at college level in a retake exam class at UNETI were randomly selected to be participants, who were divided into two groups including experimental group and control group in 10 lessons, each of which lasted two hours with fifteen-minute break.The data collection instruments used in the study were tests, questionnaire and interview. Initially, two first interview questions were used to elicit information to design questionnaire and identify target structure. Similarly, two groups took a pretest in the first class meeting and a posttest of the same content in the fourth lesson. The target structure consisting of present simple and present continuous were taught in four first lessons. Compared with the control group with no FFI, the learning gains from pre-to post tests indicated that focus-on-form instruction helped improve students of the experimental group dramatically. In the last class meeting – the tenth lesson, questionnaire and interview administered after the tests provided necessary information about students’ background, difficulties and attitudes toward to focus-on-form instruction. Both questionnaire and interview show students’ positive response to focus on form instruction though some students are unconfident to take part in communication.Generally, quantitative data (from questionnaire and interview) and qualitative data (from interview) support each other to show that focus-on-form instruction helps to improve the first-year students’ grammar significantly. Additionally, students showed their interest and agreement with focus-on-form application despite their previous habit of receiving rules and lack of confidence in communication and figuring out rules.Based on the findings, the thesis suggests some tips such as appropriate classroom input, non-stressed activities for eliciting grammatical rules and helping students to take notes of basic knowledge, which enable students to overcome their unfamiliarity when following FFI. Keywords: Ngữ pháp; Giao tiếp; Tiếng Anh; Phương pháp dạy học. Content: iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES viii INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale 1 2. Significance of the study 2 3. Aims and scope of the study 3 4. Research methods 4 5. Organization of the study Error! Bookmark not defined. DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1. Grammar 5 1.1.1. Definition of grammar 5 1.1.2. Kinds of grammar 5 1.1.3. Effect of grammar instruction on students’ grammar mastery 6 1.2. Focus-on-form instruction (FFI) 9 1.2.1. Focus-on-form, focus on forms and focus on meaning 9 1.2.2. Definition of Focus-on-form instruction 10 1.2.3. Kinds of focus-on-form 12 1.2.4. Focus-on-form teaching techniques 16 1.2.5. Focus-on-form previous research 21 1.3. Summary 23 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 24 2.1. The experimental setting 24 v 2.2. Participants and material description. 25 2.2.1. Participants 25 2.2.2. Material description 26 2.3. Research questions and hypotheses 29 2.4. Target structure 29 2.5. Research design: experimental research 31 2.6. Research procedure 32 2. 7. Data collection instruments 36 2.7.1. Questionnaire 36 2.7.2. Pre-test and post-test 38 2.7.3. Interview 48 2.8. Data collection procedure 49 2.9. Summary 51 CHAPTER 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 52 3.1. Statistical analysis 52 3.2. Results 52 3.2.1. Factors relating focus-on-form instruction to develop students’ grammar 52 3.2.2. Improving students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction 61 3.2.3. Applying focus-on-form instruction to improve UNETI students’ grammar 72 3.3. Discussion 76 3.4. Summary 79 CONCLUSION 80 1. Review of the study 80 2. Findings 80 3. Pedagogical implications 81 4. Further research 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY 83 APPENDIX 1: PRETEST I APPENDIX 2: POSTTEST II APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT III APPENDIX 4: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE V APPENDIX 5: CÂU HỎI PHỎNG VẤN VII APPENDIX 6: INTERVIEW VIII vi APPENDIX 7: STUDENTS’ RAW SCORES IN THE PRETEST - POSTTEST IX LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS CO Control group CR Consciousness raising task EFL English as a Foreign Language EA Error analysis task EX Experimental group FFI Focus-on-form instruction GT Tense gap-fill task IELTS International English Language Testing System L1 Native Language L2 Second Language; Foreign Language MCR Multiple-choice recognition task M Mean (average score) N Number P p-value, probability value PC Present continuous tense PS Present simple tense S Student SD Standard deviation SEM Standard error of means t t-value T Teacher TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEIC Test of English for International Communication UNETI University of Economic and Technical Industries vii % mark Percentage mark LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Grammar focus in the course book New Headway Pre- Intermediate (Liz and John Soars, 2003) 28 Table 2: The list of grammar points tested 41 Table 3: Percentage marks of grammar points tested 42 Table 4: Proportion of grammar points tested 42 Table 5: The same content of pre-test and post-test 43 Table 6: Students’ profile 53 Table 7: Descriptive statistics on pretest overall scores for experimental group (EG) and control group (CG) 61 Table 8: Learning gains difference of posttests between experimental group and control group 62 Table 9: Learning gains from pre- to posttest for experimental group 62 Table 10: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the multiple- choice recognition task 63 Table 11: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the error analysis task 64 Table 12: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the tense gap-fill task 64 Table 13: Experimental group’s development means on three subtasks from pre- to post tests 65 Table 14: Students’ grammar improvement basing on pass/fail criteria 67 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale In modern times, English is an indispensable tool for those who want to communicate well in international working as well as achieve success. To have good knowledge of a language in general and English in specific, a learner has to master four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and three language aspects (vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar). In learning English, language skills and language aspects are interrelated each other, thus, cannot be separated. Specifically, language aspects help to perfect the language skills. Learning English well requires students to use appropriate basic and structural patterns to master grammar and vocabulary. Grammar is an important aspect for forming words and building English sentences. Chomsky in Radford (1988, p.3) states that grammar is a model (systemic description) of those linguistic abilities of native speakers of a language which enable them to speak. From the Chomsky’s point of view in the above explanation, grammar is the most important aspect to communicate with other people, because grammar can show our meaning in communication so that other people can understand our message. Grammar includes phonological (sound), morphology (word composition), and syntax (sentence composition) (Hall, 1993, p.3). Generally, learning grammar is essential since it helps students to achieve their short term goal of passing grammar-based exams and the long term goal of using English in real life situations for future jobs. For over three years of teaching English at University of Economic and Technical Industries (UNETI), I have worked out that grammar plays such an important part in assessing students because it is a major component in any tests - about ninety percent of criteria. Additionally, students also perceive grammar as the first element to master. However, learning grammar well seems to be threatening with most students. Unlike specialized students of high motivation and hard work, non-major ones feel bored with learning by heart so many complicated and boring rules and structures mechanically but not meaningfully and communicatively. Additionally, a deductive approach to grammar method commonly applied at UNETI is not interesting, thus learners feel bored. In 2 teaching grammar, the teacher shows the rules directly, thus students do not understand the use in sentence or context. Moreover, the students are usually confused of rules and the uses of tenses. Accordingly, they get bored, frightened and even ignore learning grammar. As a result, a lot of students have low scores on English caused by the failure in mastering grammar. To improve students’ English, I have experimented many ways to deal with this problem. Finally, I have found focus on form instruction as the most appropriate solution to this problem at UNETI. Beneficially, characteristics of focus on form both help students to achieve their goals of grammar and enable them to use it in communication. To make use of communicative grammar teaching techniques with purpose of helping students to be interested and inspired to learn grammar, I have decided to conduct a study on: “Improving the first year students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction at University of Economic and Technical Industries” 2. Significance of the study In the context of English learning and teaching at UNETI also exists a problematic gap between communication –based course book and grammar- based examinations. The completion of the research will not only solve the problems for classroom practitioners but also benefit students, administrators as well as researchers working on related fields. Besides, the research can reveal much useful information about the actual situation. Additionally, together with the tendency of the world the university tries to improve students’ ability to meet the requirement for TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) so that educated students can communicate well in international communication working. The research finds a way to combine both grammar and communicative approach to teach grammar. In other words, the research tries to teach grammar through communication. More importantly, results in this project can, hopefully, be the first steps to further study or discovery to let students learn English with their desires, needs and interest, which build their motivation and confidence. If the research has effective effect on students, it will surely open a new door to inspire students to love grammar – the matter used to be so 3 boring and discouraging with them. Above all, the study results will prove the efficacy of focus-on-form instruction on students’ grammar mastery. 3. Aims and scope of the study Aims of the study The research aims at making use of focus on form instruction to improve students’ language structural patterns while they remain primarily focused on meaning or communication. To serve this purpose, the research seeks information to:  Describe factors helping the first-year learners to develop their grammar  Experiment whether the use of focus on form instruction can improve the first year students’ grammar  Anticipate students’ difficulties to apply focus-on-form instruction to teaching grammar Scope of the study For the time, material, ability and thesis limit, the research tries to improve the grammar of the first year students at UNETI – the beginners who are thoroughly affected by the first impression of learning grammar, which is a decisive element for their English learning success in a long run. I have no ambitions to enable students to achieve both long term goal of communication jobs and short term goal of grammatical exams, thus the thesis aims at developing students’ grammatical patterns to achieve their soonest goal of passing grammar-based exams. Accordingly, “grammar” in the research mentions structural patterns to complete mechanical grammatical exercises in UNETI final exams well. Grammar here does not mean communicative grammar competence which helps students to use grammar in real life situations. Among many grammar points, the research pays attention to the verb tenses, especially present simple and present continuous raised in the course book “New Headway Pre- Intermediate” by Liz and John Soars, Oxford University Press. It is because present simple and present continuous tenses are rather common but confusing for starters like the freshman, which is also the reason to choose these two verb tenses to be target structure. 4 4. Research methods The study uses experimental method as the research method to test the causal relationship between focus-on-form instruction and students’ improved grammatical competence. The research aims at checking the hypothesis whether the independent variable “focus-on-form instruction” has any effect on the dependent variable “students’ grammatical competence”. The experimental study uses both quantitative data through pre-and post tests together with questionnaire and qualitative data from structured and semi-structured interview. 5. Organization of the study The study is divided into three main parts with three development chapters as follows: The first part is Introduction which provides the background information including rationale, significance, aims, scope, research method, and organization of the study. The second part is Development, which is the main part of the study, consists of three key chapters including Literature Review, Research Methodology and Results with Discussion. The first chapter “Literature Review” reviews literature related to the study including grammar notion with classification, focus-on-form instruction notion, activities, teaching techniques and previous research which would hopefully provide the readers with a detailed background to the research. The second chapter “Research Methodology” describes the research method, the research procedure, the detailed description of data collection instruments and subjects of the study. The data collection instruments consisting of pre- and post tests, questionnaire and interview are thoroughly presented with rationale, description and the way to use instruments to collect data. The third chapter “Results and Discussion” summarizes the results of the study in relation to the research questions and hypothesis presented in Chapter 1. Additionally, the results are discussed and compared with other previous research findings. The last part Conclusion summarizes the study’s findings, discusses pedagogical implications, and suggests areas for future research. 83 REFERENCES: Abdolmanafi, Seyed Jalal. (2010). Effects of Focus on Form on the Learning of Relative Clauses in an EFL Contex. Islamic Azad University. Behshahr Branch. Iran. Andrews, K. L. Z. (2007). The effects of implicit and explicit instruction on simple and complex grammatical structures for adult English language learners. TESL-EJ, 11(2) retrieved March 3 th , 2009, from http://tesl-ej.org/ej42/a5.html Azar, Betty Schrampfer. (2001). Understanding and Using English Grammar. Longman. Azar, Betty Schrampfer. (2008). 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Significance of the study In the context of English learning and teaching at UNETI. Abstract: The study was carried to assess whether focus-on-form instruction (FFI) can help develop the first- year students’ grammar mastery at University of Economic and Technical Industries. Improving the first year students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction at university of economic and technical industries Phạm Thu Yến Trường