An investigation into gender bias in vietnamese secondary school EFL textbook dialogues

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÀ AN INVESTIGATION INTO GENDER BIAS IN VIETNAMESE SECONDARY SCHOOL EFL TEXTBOOK DIALOGUES (Nghiên cứu thiên vị giới tính đoạn hội thoại thuộc sách giáo khoa tiếng Anh dành cho bậc THCS Việt Nam) M.A MINOR THESIS (Type I) Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÀ AN INVESTIGATION INTO GENDER BIAS IN VIETNAMESE SECONDARY SCHOOL EFL TEXTBOOK DIALOGUES (Nghiên cứu thiên vị giới tính đoạn hội thoại thuộc sách giáo khoa tiếng Anh dành cho bậc THCS Việt Nam) M.A MINOR THESIS (Type I) Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Supervisor: Prof Dr Hoang Van Van Hanoi – 2019 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and effort and it has not been submitted to any other university or institution wholly or partially Hanoi, May 2019 Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My graduation thesis has been completed with the support of a great number of people First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Prof Dr Hoang Van Van who gave me a lot of valuable guidance, encouragement, criticisms and correction throughout my thesis writing Secondly, I would like to thank Dr Huynh Anh Tuan, Head of Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, and the rest of the council members for granting me the permission to conduct this thesis Last but not least, My sincere thanks go to my family, my friends for their encouragement and support that help me to complete my work ii ABSTRACT This investigation is a quantitative study of dialogues in eight EFL textbooks used in lower secondary schools in Vietnam The chosen textbooks are Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, and Tiếng Anh tập The aim is to investigate if there is any overrepresentation of female or male characters in the dialogues in the textbooks currently being used in Vietnam This study was conducted over the dialogues of each textbook, and the researcher will look at four different typologies: (1) The number of times male/female character initiated dialogue; (2) The number of turns taken; (3) The number of characters; and (4) The number of words used The findings show that gender overrepresentation occurs in all of the investigated textbooks To be more specific, two of the eight textbooks over-represented female characters while the other six textbooks overrepresented male ones It is also worth mentioning that there is a shift from maledominated dialogues to more female-dominate dialogues from 2013 to 2016 Some pedagogical implications have been suggested to textbooks writers and learners in terms of gender bias in textbook dialogues Keywords: gender over-representation, textbook dialogues, pedagogical implications iii TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION i CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the Study 1.2 Aim and Objectives of the Study 1.3 Research Questions 1.4 Scope of the Study 1.5 Significance of the Study 1.5.1 Theoretical Significance 1.5.2 Practical Significance 1.6 Organization of the Thesis CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the Thesis 2.1.1 Studies of Gender Bias in EFL Textbooks in the World 2.1.2 Studies of Gender Bias in EFL Textbooks in Vietnam 2.2 Review of Theoretical Background 10 2.2.1 Gender Theory 10 2.2.2 Influences of Gender Bias in Foreign Language Textbook Dialogues 11 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 16 3.1 Research Type 16 3.2 Research Setting 16 3.3 Material Selection 17 3.4 Research Methodology 17 3.5 Analytical Framework of the Study 19 3.5 Data Collection Procedure 19 iv 3.6 Data Analysis Procedures 21 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 22 4.1 Tiếng Anh tập 22 4.2 Tiếng Anh tập 23 4.3 Tiếng Anh tập 25 4.4 Tiếng Anh tập 27 4.5 Tiếng Anh tập 29 4.6 Tiếng Anh tập 31 4.7 Tiếng Anh tập 32 4.8 Tiếng Anh tập 35 4.9 Analysis and Discussion of the Findings 37 4.10 Pedagogical Implications 40 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 42 5.1 Recapitulation 42 5.2 Limitations of the Study 43 5.3 Suggestions for Future Research 44 REFERENCES 45 GLOSSARY 49 v LIST OF TABLES Table Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 22 Table Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 23 Table Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 24 Table Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 25 Table Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 26 Table Summary of same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 26 Table Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 28 Table Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 28 Table Summary of same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 29 Table 10 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 30 Table 11 Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 30 Table 12 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 31 Table 13 Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 32 Table 14 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 33 Table 15 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 33 Table 16 Summary of same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 34 Table 17 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập 35 Table 18 Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 36 Table 19 Summary of same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 37 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATION EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language UNESCO: United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organizations vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION This chapter provides background information and rationale of the study It is subdivided into six sections, namely (a) rationale for the study, (b) aim and objectives of the study, (c) research questions, (d) scope of the study, significance of the study and organization of the thesis 1.1 Rationale for the Study As an English teacher, not only the chance but also the amount of time each student is given to practice English in a lesson is what I pay attention to However, there were times the textbook dialogues did not support me For example, one day, I invited two male students and two female students to read a dialogue While my expectation was to share the chance to practice English among students, it turned out that the girls‟ turns were far fewer than boys‟ and at the very end of the conversation Another instance is that on the day I taught the unit whose topic was “At the Science Club” (Tiếng Anh tập 1), seeing that some female students were not interested, I intended to get them to read the dialogue Unfortunately, in that dialogue, there was only one female character who discussed the roles of science and technology with three men That was also the day I started to wonder whether the textbooks I was using treat men prior to women According to the Order of the President of the State on Promulgation of Law (June 2005), schools or other educational institutions are responsible for giving the learners the respect, equal treatment and provide them with the adequate information concerning their own learning and training by schools or other educational institution One of the important missions of the school system is to teach students the value of equality and for teachers to teach in a way that encourages equality As a result, the school should actively and consciously further equal rights and opportunities for men and women While the national curriculum highlights the importance of providing equal learning opportunities for both boys and girls, this is not always the case in the classroom or in the teaching materials being used in the classroom (Mesthrie et al., 2000; 30.9% 69.1% In summary, the entire Tiếng Anh tập 1, male characters are over-represented considerably in all four typologies consisting of the number of initiations, the number of turns taken, the number of characters and the number of words used 4.8 Tiếng Anh tập Tiếng Anh tập consists of a total of six dialogues, four of which are mixed-gendered In this textbook, there are not only female and male characters but also two neutral characters, namely „Teacher‟ and „Interviewer‟ They may be men or women, so I defined them as neutral characters The results from the study of the textbook Tiếng Anh tập are summarized in Table 17 The table pointed out that in the entire Tiếng Anh tập 2, there was a minor over-representation of female characters in three out of four investigated typologies Concerning the first typology, initiation, the numbers of female, male and neutral were exactly the same (2 dialogues) The second and third typology, „number of turns taken‟ and „number of characters‟ witnessed a minor difference between the two genders Female characters are allocated 41 (46.1%) of the conversation turns whereas male characters are allocated 36 (40.4%) Similarly, there are female (47.1%) and male (41.2%) characters in Tiếng Anh tập 46.1% and 37.1% were the percentages of words uttered by female and male characters respectively The neutral characters accounted for 7.1% of the words used Table 17 Summary of Tiếng Anh tập Initiate dialogue Turns taken Female Male Neutral 2 33.3% 33.3% 33.3% 41 36 12 35 Number of characters Words used 46.1% 40.4% 13.5% 47.1% 41.2% 11.8% 626 504 229 46.1% 37.1% 16.9% In Table 18, the results from mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập are presented It is obvious that female characters are over-represented in all of the investigated typologies Table 18 Summary of mixed-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập Initiate dialogue Turns taken Number of characters Words used Female Male Neutral 2 40% 20% 40% 27 12 58.7% 15.2% 26.1% Female Male Neutral 46.2% 38.5% 15.4% 419 266 229 45.8% 29.1% 25.1% In Table 19, the results from the two same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập are demonstrated The findings revealed that the number of dialogue initiations and characters are exactly the same between the two genders As for the remaining 36 typologies, while female characters took more turns, their contemporaries use more words in same-gender dialogues found in Tiếng Anh tập Table 19 Summary of same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập Initiate dialogue Turns taken Number of characters Words used Female Male 1 50% 50% 16 14 53.3% 46.7% 2 50% 50% 207 238 46.5% 53.5% In summary, in the Tiếng Anh tập 2, female characters are over-represented in the number of turns taken, the number of characters and words used while there is a balance between of the two genders in the remaining typology (dialogue initiation) 4.9 Analysis and Discussion of the Findings When looking at the first typology „initiating a dialogue‟ over-representation of female characters appears in only one out of eight selected textbooks: Tiếng Anh tập As mentioned earlier, Sunderland (2000) noted that a 1997 textbook featured only one male character in a speaking exercise for students to practice starting up a conversation The implications were that girls did not have the opportunity to practice this language function Today, it appears that the opposite is occurring with Tiếng Anh tập where 50% of the dialogues are initiated by female characters In Tiếng Anh tập 2, the neutral character „Interviewer‟ accounts for one out of six dialogue initiations Depending on how a teacher handles that dialogue in the EFL classroom, „Interviewer‟ might be defined 37 as male or female Therefore, the neutral character might be used as a flexible solution to promote equal opportunities for all learners to practice As Sunderland (1998) noted, teachers can use un-biased texts in biased ways and conversely use biased texts in unbiased ways It is also worth mentioning that in Tiếng Anh tập 2, none of the dialogues was initiated by female characters There is not any neutral character in this textbook, resulting in the fact that girls who learn this textbook have little chance to practice dialogue initiations In a different picture, Tiếng Anh tập has succeeded in creating an equal balance in the number of dialogues initiated by the two genders In this textbook, dialogues, accounting for 33.3%, were initiated by each gender Regarding the typology „turns taken‟, the textbooks over-represented female characters are Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập It was a coincidence that in both textbooks, 46.1% of turns taken are allocated to female characters While girls are given more opportunities to speak in Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập judging by the number of female characters‟ turns, boys are not necessarily excluded as they may be assigned neutral roles As mentioned before, it is up to the teachers to determine how the dialogues are held and the equal opportunities to practice speaking are provided for all learners Tiếng Anh tập demonstrated a little over-representation in terms of conversational turns, male characters have more turns (5.6%) than female characters In stark contrast, Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập showed a great gap between how many turns female and male characters take in the dialogues In the former, female characters accounted for 19 turns whereas male characters account for 63 turns In the latter, the male character took nearly nine times as many as turns as the female (61 turns versus turns) For the typology „number of characters‟, Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập are still the only textbooks over-representing female characters In both of them, there are eight female characters and seven male characters so the difference is very little Meanwhile, Tiếng Anh tập witnessed a marked over-representation of the male when it comes to this typology The number of male characters is four times as many as that of female 38 characters It is worth mentioning that in Tiếng Anh tập there are three same-gender dialogues which are between men As a result, the speaking opportunities for girls are only available if they are willing to take on a male role in those lessons A similar situation appears in Tiếng Anh tập 2, which tends to use far more male characters than female characters in dialogues (10 male characters compared to male characters) All of the same-gender dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập are between male characters Tiếng Anh tập has succeeded in creating an equal balance in the number of female and male characters In this textbook, female characters accounted for 42.9% and male characters occupied 50% Regarding the words used, Tiếng Anh tập allocated exactly the same amount of words to both female and male characters (381 words) Meanwhile, Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập allocated more words to female characters (530 words and 626 words versus 452 words and 504 words respectively) Tiếng Anh tập presented a significant overrepresentation of male characters in this typology In this textbook, the male character used somewhere in the vicinity of eight times as many as words as the female (805 words versus 98 words) The over-representation could have been avoided with the introduction of mixed-gendered dialogues rather than same-gendered That may be why the textbook authors made an effort to designed 100% mixed-gender dialogue in Tiếng Anh tập As a matter of fact, whether same-gender dialogues exclude some learners in the classroom is still not known However, as Sunderland (2000) pointed out in her study of German class, girls were more willing to take on male character roles and boys were unwilling to take on female roles From the results of this study on dialogues, it is clear that Vietnamese lower secondary school EFL textbooks are gender biased However, the over-representations are different in each investigated textbook Among six textbooks that over-represent male characters, Tiếng Anh tập presents the most striking over-representation, whereas a slight gender bias is found in the ones which treat women prior to men, namely Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập It is also worth mentioning that female characters are excluded 39 completely in half of the dialogues in Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập It appears that there is an improvement of gender bias in dialogues from the textbooks published in 2013 to the textbooks published in 2016 The oldest textbook in this study, Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập 2, published in 2013, over-represented male characters in all of the investigated typologies, while the newest textbook in this research Tiếng Anh tập 2, published in 2016, witnessed a little over-representation of female characters in dialogues In this limited study of eight textbooks, we see that the shift from male-dominated dialogues to more female-dominated dialogues is correlated to the publication date It is important to remember that this study included only eight textbooks and is quantitative It was not taken into account qualitative data which may provide a different picture 4.10 Pedagogical Implications The analysis of the dialogues shows an over-representation of male characters Once we recognize gender biases in a textbook, it is also significant to understand whether these play a role in the learning process Some studies revealed that biases and gender imbalances in textbooks may have serious consequences They may impede the accomplishment of some language functions when they are mostly performed by males (Poulou, 1997) They may diminish females‟ opportunities to practice the language in playing the roles of dialogue participants (Poulou) When males usually initiate mixed-gender dialogues, women get less practice in initiating conversations (Sunderland, 1994) The findings of the present study may provide crucial implications for textbooks writers, teachers and learners of English For English textbook writers, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of gender-fair textbooks They can take advantage of this study as it reveals the points that the dialogues contain considerable over-representation of male characters Thus, a considerate textbook 40 designer should pay close attention to the issues of gender and equality so that the overrepresentation of a gender could be avoided They are recommended to take action to make sure that gender equality exists in textbooks by making equal the numbers of words spoken by males/females, the number of turns taken by males/females, dialogue initiations and the number of characters For teachers of English, a lot has been said about how teachers could deal with biased textbooks in class One of the solutions is that teachers could reverse sex roles that are sex-biased, and students could rewrite sexist dialogues trying to distribute equally the amount and kind of speech between males and females (Poulou, 1997) Sano, Iida and Hardy (2001) proposed that teachers may give students blind readings of the texts so that the opportunity to practice could be allotted equally Hartman and Judd (1978) suggested that when teachers come across gender bias in textbooks, they could raise the issue of gender discrimination in class, thus adding an element of controversy that could also arouse the students‟ interest and therefore their learning process Clearly, it can be quite difficult to notice that male characters speak more or that they have more turns unless the difference with female characters is very evident and consistent throughout the book Hence, it is time for teachers to be aware of the phenomenon of over-representation When teachers spot the imbalance of between the male and female characters, a good way to solve it could be asking students swap their roles, so that all students read all roles and speak the same amount of words, and get the same opportunity to practice different functions In the presence of gender biases, I think it is very important to raise the issue and ask students what they think about this and how these problems are dealt with in Vietnam 41 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION This chapter will first provide a general look at the whole study and next summarize the key findings in accordance with the research questions The limitations of the study as well as some suggestions for future studies will be acknowledged then 5.1 Recapitulation Researches in gender bias in EFL/ESL textbook dialogues have been carried out in America, Europe and some Asian countries for some decades now However, not much research has been conducted into this area in Vietnam up to the present time To fill this gap, I decided to undertake the present research In this thesis, I have looked at gender bias in the new English textbook series for lower secondary schools in Vietnam In an attempt to spot the imbalance between two genders, I have raised two research questions: 1) To what extent EFL Vietnamese lower secondary school EFL textbook dialogues: Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập 2, Tiếng Anh tập 1, Tiếng Anh tập over-represent a particular gender? 2) What pedagogical implications should be suggested to textbook authors and teachers in terms of gender bias in textbook dialogues? To answer these questions, I employed the qualitative method that Jones, Kitetu and Sunderland (1995) have used Four different typologies which were chosen to illuminate gender bias in the identified dialogues are dialogue initiation, number of turns, number of characters and number of words The result indicated that gender bias exists in Vietnamese ELF lower secondary textbook dialogues However, although this set of EFL textbooks were designed by the same group of leading Vietnamese specialists in the English language, the extent of gender over-representation are greatly different among the textbooks and typologies as well Two of the eight textbooks, namely Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập 2, over-represented female characters while the other six ones 42 over-represented male ones Of all the analyzed textbooks, Tiếng Anh tập witnesses the clearest gender imbalance of textbook characters It is also important to note that Tiếng Anh tập and Tiếng Anh tập succeeded in creating a balance between two genders in the number of words and dialogue initiations respectively Only Tiếng Anh tập includes all mixed-gender dialogue This shows that little attention was paid to gender bias during the process of writing the books because many instances of gender imbalance in visibility and firstness could have been avoided easily if the textbook writers had really interested Another interesting point is that the textbooks which over-represented male characters were published earlier than the textbooks which over-represented female characters In other words, there is a shift from male-dominated dialogues to more female-dominated dialogues from 2013 to 2016 Regarding the second research question, one pedagogical implication of my investigation is that textbook authors need to recognize the complexity of textbook dialogues in terms of gender in order to ensure opportunities for both boys and girls to practice and learn English As for the teachers, they should be cognizant of gender-bias teaching material It is their responsibility to ensure that all the teaching materials they use in the classroom offer an equal opportunity for learning for all students The teachers have to decide if a biased text will be used in a biased way or un-biased way Swapping the roles, providing the blinding texts or raising the issue for discussion are some possible solutions In brief, the result of this research will be of great interest to educators, teachers, and textbook designers who are interested in improving the quality of gender equality in the EFL textbooks 5.2 Limitations of the Study This study is just a modest example of linguistic sexism in a particular type of language teaching materials: English language textbooks by Vietnamese authors; and of course it has some limitations First, this investigation was only carried out the dialogues of 43 textbooks without considering the related illustration and CDs for each textbook If those materials are taken into account, the results may be different Second, the research was conducted with only one set of eight textbooks written by only one group of specialists Had the sample selection expanded, the picture of gender bias in EFL textbook dialogues would have been more colorful Finally, it is evident for the existence of gender overrepresentation but how it could affect Vietnamese teachers and students using these books has not been discovered These limitations are probably the bases for suggestions for further study, which will be presented in the next section 5.3 Suggestions for Future Research From the limitation stated above, some reasonable suggestions for further studies relating to this matter may be offered as followed First of all, it is suggested that a study on gender bias in EFL textbook dialogues including illustration images and CDs used in this set of English textbooks should be conducted In addition, an investigation into the same topic but with some other sets of English textbooks written by some other specialists is necessary so that a comparison could be made among these different sets of English textbooks Moreover, it is recommended that a study on how gender over-representation in the English textbook dialogues affect Vietnamese teachers and students in language teaching and learning should be undertaken 44 REFERENCES Primary sources Hoang Van Van et al (2013) Tiếng Anh tập (English Vol 1), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2013) Tiếng Anh tập (English Vol 2), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2014) Tiếng Anh tập (English Vol 1), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2014) Tiếng Anh tập (English Vol 2), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2015) Tiếng Anh tập (English Book 1), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2015) Tiếng Anh tập (English Book 1), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2016) Tiếng Anh tập (English Book 1), Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Hoang Van Van et al (2016) Tiếng Anh tập (English Book 2], Ha Noi: Viet Nam Education Publishing House Secondary sources Bayyurt, Y & Litosseliti, L (2006) Gender and language in education In Litosseliti, L (Ed.) 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