Nghiên cứu về việc xử lý các khía cạnh liên văn hóa trong lớp học tiếng anh của giáo viên ở trường chuyên hạ long

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LE THI NGA A STUDY ON HA LONG GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHERS’ ADDRESSING OF INTERCULTURAL ASPECTS IN THEIR CLASSES (Nghiên cứu việc xử lý khía cạnh liên văn hóa lớp học tiếng Anh giáo viên Trường Chuyên Hạ Long) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this submission of the minor thesis entitled “ A study on Ha Long gifted high school English teachers’ addressing of intercultural aspects in their classes” is my own work To the best of my knowledge, it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at SFL or any other educational institutions The thesis has not been submitted to any other examining body and has not been published Any contribution made to the research by others is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis Thai Nguyen, July 2019 Le Thi Nga Approved by SUPERVISOR Dr Nguyen Thi Hang i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis could not have been accomplished without the help and support from a number of people First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks and my deepest gratitude towards Dr Nguyen Thi Hang, my supervisor, for her thorough instruction, precious guidance and ideas and constant encouragement from the first day of working out the outline for the research to the last days of writing up the thesis Without her invaluable support, this graduation paper would not have been completed My special thanks are also sent to my colleagues and my beloved students at Ha Long high school for gifted students for their enthusiastic participation in my study Their devoted and sincere contribution helped shape the validity and reliability of this study Last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude towards my family and my friends for their endless care, support and faith in me Thai Nguyen, July 2019 Le Thi Nga ii ABSTRACT This study examines the practice of teaching culture among English teachers at high school in Vietnam with practical experience in English as a foreign language It focuses on the forms of intercultural learning provided by teachers and teachers’ utility of culture input to develop students’ intercultural competence Teachers of English at Ha Long high school for gifted students are considered a cultural group, which is the reason for me to apply an ethnographic method in the study The data for analysis is collected from two sources: class observations and postobservation interviews with the teacher participants The findings show that culture teaching is now integrated closely with linguistic competence in the curriculum The teachers exploit different forms of intercultural learning to provide students with intercultural knowledge, among which project-based learning activity, discussion on cultural differences and role plays are of extreme preference, enabling students to self-discover the culture aspects assigned Noticeably, most of those forms are based on the input available in the set English textbook Teachers had little opportunity to use supplementary material In the practice of culture teaching, the factors preventing both students and teachers from achieving their culture-intaking were also explained, among which time constraint was the key reason Based on the findings of the study, recommendations are provided for both English teachers and educational administrator for improving the quality and quantity of culture teaching at high schools in Vietnam iii TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Rationale 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Scope of the study 1.7 Design of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Conceptualisations of culture 2.2 Culture in language education 2.2.1 Relationship between language and culture 2.2.2 Intercultural competence 2.3 Cultural content in language teaching materials 2.4 Previous studies of IC teaching 10 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 13 3.1 Ethnography 13 3.2 Field site and participants 14 3.3 Data collection procedure 16 3.3.1 Classroom observation 16 3.3.2 Semi-structured interviews 17 Data analysis 19 3.4.1 Step 19 3.4.2 Step 20 3.4.3 Step 20 iv CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 21 4.1 Forms of intercultural learning provided by the teachers 21 4.1.1 Project-based learning 22 4.1.2 Discussion on cultural differences 25 4.1.3 Role-play 27 4.2 Teachers’ utility of culture input to develop students’ intercultural competence 30 4.2.1 Teachers’ use of set teaching materials 31 4.2.2 Teachers’ use of supplementary culture input 36 4.3 Summary 40 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION 41 5.1 Summary of the findings 41 5.1.1 Forms of intercultural learning provided by the teachers 41 5.1.2 Teacher’s utility of culture input 42 5.2 Recommendations for more effective integration of culture into English lessons 42 5.2.1 Physical dimension 42 5.2.2 Professional dimension 43 5.2.3 Providing teachers with more professional support 43 5.3 Limitations of the study 44 5.4 Suggestions for further study 44 5.5 Conclusion 45 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1: CLASS OBSERVATION SHEET I APPENDIX 2: THE INTERVIEW GUIDE II v8 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language IC: Intercultural competence ICC: Intercultural communicative competence MOET: Ministry of Education and Training vi LIST OF TABLES` Table 3.1: Demographic information about participants …………………………… 16 Table 1: Summary of intercultural learning forms…………………… … 22 Table 2: Summary of project-based learning activities……………… ………… 23 Table 3: Summary of discussion activities…………………………… ………… 27 Table 4: Summary of role-play activities…………………… ………………… 29 Table 5: Summary of how culture input utilized………………… …………… 32 Table 6: Culture input provided in set teaching materials……………… ……… 36 vii 10 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction In the age of globalization with its resulting economic, technological, social and educational transformation, there is an increased need for the development of intercultural competence (IC) This ability to communicate across cultural boundaries and mediate between cultures should be an important goal of language education (Byram, 1997, 2009) In order to develop learners’ IC, culture is regarded a core element and strongly linked with language In this sense, culture plays a critically important part in language teaching which is acknowledged by the English teaching circle (Wang, 2011) Language is both a part of culture and at the same time the deepest cultural reflection The linguist Robert Lado defines the goal of learning a foreign language as “the ability to use it, understanding its meanings and connotations in terms of the target language and culture, and the ability to understand the speech and writing of natives of the target culture in terms of their great ideas and achievement” (Lado, 1964) Therefore, the English teaching inevitably involves culture teaching In Vietnam, the traditional perspective that teaching the language simply means providing students with an understanding of the nature of the foreign language, asking the student to lexical and grammatical exercises or developing one or two language skills such as reading or writing has become out of date Hoang (2016) stated that the purpose of learning the language in modern time is using language elements like pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar and four language skills to reach the target of developing students’ intercultural competence (IC) This enables students to understand foreigners and communicate with them in real life From Hoang’ perspectives, to address IC, which is a new focus of English curriculum, culture must be explicitly taught as a central element and integrated with the teaching of language (Crozet & Liddicoat, 1999, 2000; Liddicoat, 2002; Newton & Shearn, 2010b) In fact, the IC objectives have been highlighted by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) when compiling new English teaching syllabus The introduction of a newly added section - Communication and Culture- is a good example of overt intercultural integration of the new English textbooks It is confirmed that the integration of culture into EFL teaching in Vietnam has been recognized from macro level with the evidence of IC objectives in the curriculum and the representation of intercultural contents and activities in the new English textbooks However, to enact this reformation comprehensively, EFL teachers should take active roles as the main implementers, who integrate culture into their teaching appropriately to their students and teaching contexts The widespread of this modern approach has led to some positive changes in foreign language education in Vietnam One noticeable change is the teachers’ positive attitudes towards culture teaching Interestingly, more and more high schoolteachers in foreign language education have realized they need to devote more efforts so as to facilitate language learners to develop their intercultural communication competence, (Zhang, 2017) Gifted high school teachers who are in charge of training brilliant students should be pioneers in integrating culture into the teaching and learning of foreign language for the development of learners’ IC However, it is a fact that there is still a heavy focus on only linguistic knowledge, while culture has not received enough attention and devotion as observed by Ho (2011), as well as in my own experience This is also the case in Ha Long high school for gifted students where I am currently teaching Regarding the need to investigate culture teaching in the context of foreign language teaching at high school, the study explores the relevance of implementing the cultural aspects of Ha Long high gifted schoolteachers in the teaching and learning English 1.2 Rationale There are three main reasons why I conducted this present study Firstly, I carried out this study based on my great passion for cultural aspects in language education and my awareness about the importance of integrating culture into language teaching for the development of language learners’ IC It was the most important driving force that motivated me to engage in conducting this study From the findings of the study, I can gain insights into the realities of teaching and learning These teachers’ use of supplementary sources from the internet and books is in line with the strategies that Peterson and Coltrane (2003) suggested From their viewpoint, authentic materials such as films, news broadcasts, television shows, websites, photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials would help engage the students in discussion of cultural issues b Teacher’s exploitation of culture from supplementary sources The supplementary sources mentioned in the previous part enabled teachers to support their students’ target language acquisition in one or all of the following ways  Lead-in to the topic One of the sections in which supplementary materials was used most often in observed classes was as a lead in activity to warm the students up – to generate interest and get them thinking about the topic In this stage, two of the three teachers resorted to authentic videos to introduce the topic One of them was about endangered giant panda, which were losing their natural habitats, imprisoned in tense areas and dying Another one described the development of Bangkok in the past decades to elicit the topic “urbanization” After watching the videos, there were follow-up questions for students like guessing the name, the place, the reasons, the problems, the solutions, etc Those videos somehow enhanced the interest of the students in the topic and made them eager to discover the culture later in the lesson  Providing background knowledge It was interesting in the lesson with Trang, the students had a great chance to listen to her sharing her own knowledge of the topic “Choosing a career” Lan had two years of studying abroad in Canada and several times travelling to different Western countries From her experience, the perspectives as well as practice of Vietnamese students and overseas ones were worlds apart It was strange that her students listened so attentively that no one said a word until she finished her story and asked the class if they had comments on or questions for her Not until that time, they became noisy and excited again One of the students even eagerly shared the argument between his parents and his brother in deciding the brother’s career after university graduation 38 (although sometimes he switched to Vietnamese due to a lack of English vocabulary and expressions)  Providing tasks and input for students to practice the target language skills: The cultural content provided by the teachers through videos, book information and personal knowledge, together with the textbook not only introduced language units for the students to learn, but also provided them with language tasks such as discussion, presentation, reflection, and comparison and input like cultural topic, cultural practices and behavior for them to practice the target language skills These tasks offered a variety of opportunities for the students to develop their target language skills  Speaking skills: discussion (in urbanization topic), and presentation (in choosing a career topic)  Writing skills: writing about a famous person (in Life stories topic)  Listening skills: listening while watching the videos In brief, it is a fact that supplementary culture input is a supportive means in providing and enhancing students’ understanding and practice of both cultural and intercultural aspects The teachers, in the interviews expressed their hope that the syllabus would not be so tense so that they could have more chances to integrate their extra materials and knowledge in the teaching of culture 4.3 Summary The findings from the study were presented under categories related to forms of intercultural learning provided by the teachers and teachers’ utility of culture input to develop students’ cultural competence Concerning the forms of intercultural learning, teachers at Ha Long high school for gifted students utilize project-based activity, discussion on cultural differences and role play to encourage students to actively get involved in the culture topic of the lessons Among the three forms, projects such as presentation, speaking contest, quiz show, and talk show were of biggest preference, followed by discussion on cultural similarities and differences The least popular form was role play due to students’ low language proficiency 39 In terms of the way teachers use culture input to provide and reinforce students’ IC, the set English textbook for grade 12 students was the main source This resulted from the requirements of the syllabus agreed on by the whole school Luckily, the culture input in this book was, to some extent, adequate and useful In case the culture input in the set materials were not sufficient or interesting enough, the teachers had to resort to other supplementary sources, including websites, books, and personal cultural accumulated knowledge in the stages of leading in to the topic, providing background knowledge and providing tasks and input for students to practice the target language skills 40 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION This chapter first summarizes the findings of this study with regard to teachers’ perceptions and practice in dealing with cultural aspects in English class This is followed by some recommendations which were made after considering the objectives of teaching and learning English set by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), my critical observation while collecting the data, and my personal experience The chapter ends with the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research 5.1 Summary of the findings The findings of the study provide information to answer two research questions of the study: the forms of intercultural learning teachers of English used and their utility of culture input to develop their students’ intercultural competence 5.1.1 Forms of intercultural learning provided by the teachers Among the three forms of intercultural learning that teachers at Ha Long high school for gifted students utilize, project-based activity was the most popular one as doing project is a part of the textbook content This form proved to effectively get students involved in the culture topic and discover it by themselves However, one difficulty that most teachers had was time constraint As a presentation, a talk show, etc, took time, they had problem with time management for linguistic provision Discussion on cultural differences was the second most preferred form of intercultural learning The teachers mostly used the questions available in the textbook for in-class discussion on different cultural issues, which helped students generate ideas and share with their peers However, it was necessary for teachers to select the topic for discussion with due care to avoid boring ones, which may de-motivate the students Role play activities seem uncommon in culture teaching as students’ low language proficiency in some classes did not allow them to perform real-life situations well Also, due to time constraint, not many teachers favored this form for fear of lacking time for language provision 41 5.1.2 Teacher’s utility of culture input There were two sources of culture input that teacher participants used: the set textbook and supplementary sources All the participating teachers fully exploited the culture part of the book as they agreed that the cultural content provided in their main teaching materials was enough to teach to their students Also, they are under time pressure of following the subject syllabus and did not have an opportunity to use other materials for fear of being unable to complete the teaching workload per lesson To teach culture from the textbook, the teachers normally provided culture input; support students’ target language acquisition; and provide explicit instructions for culture teaching When the culture input in the set materials were not enough or interesting enough, the teachers used other supplementary sources, most frequently from websites, books, and personal knowledge to lead in to the topic, provide background knowledge and provide tasks and input for students to practice the target language skills 5.2 Recommendations for more effective integration of culture into English lessons As analyzed in the findings, whether the teachers teach culture from the set textbook or supplementary sources, students showed more interest and involvement if there were presentations, quiz shows, talk shows, experience sharing, videos, etc than just lectures on a culture topic Therefore, in order to appeal students to learning culture, I would make the following suggestions for both the teachers and the educational administrators 5.2.1 Physical dimension It was good to notice that all the school had wifi coverage, which enabled teachers and students to search for cultural information on the internet when needed However, the instability of wifi connection disrupted the searching process then decreased students’ interest in the topic Moreover, there was problem with the projectors’ screen in two classes, which made it unclear and uncomfortable to look at during the presentations and video showing Therefore, I believe that more investment should be spent on education and its innovation, on the upgrading of infrastructure and teaching equipment at schools This aid would encourage teachers to design interesting extra and interesting activities, colorful and vivid lessons to motivate students by using updated applications, encourage students to conduct self-research, work at home in groups, in pairs to complete a project Also, it would enable EFL teachers to present 42 students with aspects of cultural content and perform other tasks such as role-plays, dramas, etc 5.2.2 Professional dimension In a class observation, I noticed that when the teacher led in to the topic by sharing her own experience in deciding a career in Canada – the country she studied for Master degree, the students got completely interested They also asked a lot of questions about this real-life story with excitement That means the teacher themselves can be an interesting and reliable source of culture knowledge if they equip themselves with the skills, knowledge, and ability to take the role of the cultural mediators In order to accomplish their mission, EFL teachers should:  attend regular IC workshops, seminars and training courses to develop them to be a conscious, devoted and ideal language-and-culture teacher  observe their colleagues’ class, not only to evaluate but also to share problems, solutions, knowledge and experience  build up more interesting supplemental activities besides the tasks available in textbooks To keep students motivated and deepen their understanding of certain cultural aspects, teachers need to be flexible in adopting and adapting the activities in textbooks and try to design more exciting outside- textbook activities  enhance their skills of using technology in classroom to create more vivid and inspiring lessons  make full use of the internet which provide a various source of authentic cultural materials such as movies, songs, articles, news, fairy tales, folklores, pictures, etc 5.2.3 Providing teachers with more professional support To lead the objective of developing of learners’ intercultural communication competence to success, teachers need a lot of professional help from MOET Firstly, teachers should be provided with more supplementary materials relating to the new textbook being taught Secondly, training courses delivered by wellqualified and leading language experts are necessary for every teacher who is struggling to find effective approaches to foster students’ intercultural communication ability Such training is vital to create room for language teachers to discuss and share their teaching experience in addressing cultural aspects in foreign language class Thirdly, it is advised that more and more qualified teachers should be sent to study abroad or encouraged to participate in teacher exchange programs abroad It is the 43 excellent opportunity to share ideas and knowledge, as well as learn about educational practices from different countries The first-hand experience of living and working in different cultures will help teachers to broaden their cultural knowledge and enhance cultural sensitivity as well as competence 5.3 Limitations of the study Although the researcher has made every effort to offer some interesting findings, like other studies there are some limitations Firstly, this is a modest study with limited number of subjects The researcher observed only ten classes and five teachers of English took part in the interviews The study was small-scaled one in the sense that it only focuses on teachers and students in one school coded Ha Long high school for gifted students therefore may not be representative of the general group or population Secondly, the classroom observations, in a sense, help to provide useful information of how observed teachers address cultural aspects in their class Nevertheless, these observations were not frequent and what the researcher saw in the classroom may not true to what was really going on in the classroom The observed teachers may teach differently to get convinced demonstration for fear of negative evaluation from the observer Being aware of these problems during the observations the researcher tried to minimize their impacts though they cannot totally eliminate Finally, at the time the study was conducted all the three graders 10th, 11th, 12thhad used the innovative English textbooks Tieng Anh Thi Diem, but the researcher was just able to focus on the cultural content of the Experimental English textbook for grade 12 However, I believe that the gap that my paper has not covered will be fulfilled by other studies in the future 5.4 Suggestions for further study On the basis of the findings and limitations of the study, the following suggestions are made for further research As mentioned before, further research needs to be carried out to investigate more deeply into the topic Moreover, this study only focuses on cultural content presented in Tieng Anh Thi Diem 12 and the 12th graders; more study should be on the cultural content in Tieng Anh Thi Diem 10 and 12 as well as the 10th, 11th graders In a further study, it is suggested that interview questions should be distributed to a large 44 numbers of participants so that findings are more generalized In order to be able to generalize the findings, a larger sample of schools need to be included and this require a larger scale research study Finally, the case as well as the scope of the study, as indicated above is a limitation of the study which needs much more attention on in further studies It would be interesting to conduct a similar study in another single case and the scope would be broadened to all of the new series of innovative textbooks 5.5 Conclusion This research obviously does not allow us to generalize, but it is important to note the following insights gained from the study of Ha Long gifted high school teachers’ addressing of cultural aspects in their classes The participating teachers showed evidence of some conscious efforts – with varying degrees of success in their implementation – to incorporate the intercultural dimension during their teaching practice as well It turns out that Tieng Anh Thi Diem 12 helps to raise students’ cultural awareness but due to some subjective reasons, it, in some cases, does not usually give 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In M Byram & P Grundy (Eds.), Context and culture in language teaching and learning (pp 72-80) Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters Walford, G.(2008) The nature of educational ethnography In G Walford (Ed), How to educational ethnography (pp.1-15) London, The United Kingdom: The Tufnell Press Wang, J (2011) Culture Differences and English Teaching English Language Teaching, 4(2), 223-230 Zhang, H (2007) Intercultural approach to foreign language teaching: 上海: 上海外 语教育出版社 50 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: CLASS OBSERVATION SHEET Date: Teacher’s name: Class: Lesson content: Activities Forms of Culture Students’ intercultural input level of learning involvement I Other notes APPENDIX 2: THE INTERVIEW GUIDE Date : …………………………………………………………………….…………… Teacher’s name: …………………………………………………………………… Main questions Possible probes Q1 How important you think  Is it important to integrating culture into culture is in language learning and teaching? English teaching?  How often you teach cultural knowledge to your students?  Do you have any difficulties in incorporating culture in English lessons? Q2 How you exploit culture  Teaching input to teach culture? materials? Ready-made and commercially available? Developing it by yourself? Sharing with your colleagues?  Sources: textbook/internet/personal cultural accumulated knowledge…  Is the textbook “Tieng Anh thi diem 12” the main resource for teaching culture?  How you exploit the textbook to teach culture to your students?  Besides the textbook, what other sources or materials you utilize to teach culture? Q3 What forms of inter-cultural  What activities you use to teach culture to learning you provide for your students? your students?  Among these activities, which one you find the most effective in developing your students’ intercultural competence? Why? II ... Ha Long gifted high school English teachers’ addressing of intercultural aspects in their classes.” 1.3 Aims of the study This study is aimed at exploring how the teachers of English at Ha Long. .. 12th grade students at Ha Long high school for gifted students in the academic year 2018-2019 The study focuses on the reality of teaching and learning English at Ha Long high school for gifted... utility of culture input to develop students’ intercultural competence Teachers of English at Ha Long high school for gifted students are considered a cultural group, which is the reason for me