Vcd as a stimulating factor to increase the young learners’ time-on-task

Vcd as a stimulating factor to increase the young learners’ time-on-task

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

I.1 Rationale of the study:

Increasing the students’ participation in language classroom activities is very crucial to thesuccess in language learning However, the question of how to increase the young learners’time-on-task is really complicated As many researchers and studies on the second languageacquisition point out that the process of acquiring a second language grammar is notsubstantially affected by age, but the process of acquiring pronunciation, proficiency andespecially, native accents is acquired better by children That means young learners have moreadvantages when they early start to learn a second language Nevertheless, young learnerscannot concentrate for very long on monotonous language learning activities In languageteaching, there is a number of ways to involve the young learners such as games, media…, andthe use of all those facilities is obviously helpful for motivating learners There are varioustypes of facilities Native speakers can be considered as a facility However, in Vietnameseschools settings it is not easy to have native speakers for students to engage in the real socialinteraction and to be more exposed to native accents Instead, students can watch nativespeakers on Videos or VCDs or DVDs (in the latter parts of this study, the term VCDs will beused to refer to all three means) Moreover, young learners usually are more visually oriented.Hypothetically, the use of videos in classroom settings could help to prolong young learners’span of concentration and to motivate them during classroom activities Yet, the issue seems tohave been underexplored The reality showed that the use of VCDs in schools was a rare andluxurious thing in the past Nowadays, the use of VCDs and other means is not yet increasedin language teaching That is a reason why this study is designed to fill this gap in theliterature.

I.2 Aim of the study

This study aims at exploring the possibility of using VCDs to increase the young learners’time-on-task

Specifically, the aims of the study are to explore:

 Teachers and learners’ perception of the advantages of VCDs over audiocassettes. The extent to which VCDs increase learners’ time-on-task.

 The pupils’ attitudes toward using VCDs in the classroom.

I.3 Scope of the study

Definition: VCD stands for Video CD Developed in the early 90's by JVC, Matsushita,

Philips, and Sony, VCDs, although having limited success in the U.S., became popular, mostlyin Asia, for the playback of video content

For this study, the author would conduct a research on 10 English teachers and 50 pupils inHanoi These 50 pupils are in normal classes of a normal school They are in the labor area -their parents all come from the working class - so most of them do not have condition to go toextra English courses However, they have enabled to study English at school since grade 3and have acquired an average level with about 800 word vocabulary There are three types oftextbooks used for normal primary schools in Vietnam: Let’s Learn (published with theassistance of a Singaporean publishing house); the textbook officially published by theMinistry of Education and Training of Vietnam, and Let’s Go Every school has the right tochoose what material it likes to teach students The school under this research has chosen Let’sGo because it is a publication of the Oxford University, and it has both cassettes and VCDswhile the two other types of textbooks only have cassettes The students under the researchstudy Let’s Go 2B Thus, this research paper only refers to the use of VCDs included with thetextbook Let’s Go 2.

For the sake of this research, the author selects 4 lessons The VCDs is included with thetextbook and is illustrated with the first and second part of every unit (Let’s talk and Let’ssing).

I.4 Organization of the study

This minor thesis includes five chapters:

- Chapter 1: Introduction, which presents the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, the

scope, method and organization of the study

- Chapter 2: Setting up some theoretical backgrounds, which are relevant to the purpose

of the study

- Chapter 3: Methodology, which provides an overview of participants’ background

information and method of collecting data

- Chapter 4: This part deals with data collection, findings and discussions

- Chapter 5: Summary of the thesis, limitation and suggestions for further study.

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

II.1 A review of language teaching approaches

Teaching language has received much focus for the past few decades So many approachesand methods such as Audiolingual Method, Total Physical Response, Content-based languageteaching, Theme-based language teaching have been advanced, but it must be said that they allfollow three different theoretical views of language and the nature of language proficiency: thestructural view, the functional view, and the interactional view (Richards and Rogers 1996).The structural view see language as systematically structured segments and language teachingis aimed at helping learners learn these segments According to this view, language is seen asan object and learners as students The functional view sees language as a medium forexpressing the functional meaning, and language teaching is aimed at helping learners learnlanguage functions such as requests, commands, greetings, thanking, apology, complaints,compliments, invitations, and refusals Like the structural view, however, it is an attempt forimplementation of the structural or synthetic syllabus, which requires learners to resynthesizethe discrete pieces of language to use in communicative situations, and so language is stillseen as an object and learners still as students In contrast with the two above views, theinteractional view sees language as a tool for the creation and maintenance of interpersonaland social relations between individuals, and learners are viewed as language users It is anattempt for implementation of the analytic syllabus, which aims to immerse learners in real-life communication.

The following section will review three different teaching approaches: the oral-situationalapproach, the notional-functional approach, and the communicative approach, which are basedon the three above language theories, respectively.

According to Ellis (2005), the oral-situational approach is based on a behaviorist learningtheory, that is, it assumes that language learning is habit formation and over learning.Grammatical structures are carefully selected and sequenced from basic to more complex and

then presented inductively Learners are required to experience much controlled practice withmanipulative drill types to memorize certain sentence patterns and to minimize errors, whichare seen as bat habits This description of the oral-situational approach seems similar to theaudiolingual approach because both are based on a structural syllabus However, the former isdifferent from the latter in the sense that it focuses on both meaning ad forms of the linguisticstructures It also emphasizes the importance of creating different situational contexts in theclassroom for learners to practice the structures The latter version of the oral-situationalapproach concerns with skill-building theory (Anderson 1993, cited in Ellis 2005), whichinvolves the assumption that declarative knowledge or explicit knowledge can be convertedinto procedural knowledge or implicit knowledge through practice It is the fact that the latterversion is related to PPP model, which is based on the Interface Hypothesis fully developed bySharwood Smith (1981, cited in Ellis 1994) This hypothesis claims that learners should betaught some language before they can communicate They then practice using learntknowledge via different types of drill exercises until the learnt knowledge becomes automatic.The learners, thereby, acquire the learnt language However, this hypothesis does not take intoaccount the learners’ cognition problems such as cognitive load and cognitive complexity It isthe fact that learners’ general cognitive processing capacity is limited, and they are not readyto acquire the structures being beyond their developmental patterns whatever how much theypractice (Ellis 1994).

The notional-functional approach is derived from the functional view of language describedabove It is built on a theory of communicative competence and on functional models oflanguage The language functions and language notions are taught to learners at the same timewith the assumption that language learning relates to learning formulaic expressions oflanguage as well as learning rules of language Formulaic expressions can be distinguished byroutines and patterns (Krashen and Scarcella 1978, cited in Ellis 1994) when the former refersto utterances learnt as memorized chunks (e.g I don’t know) and the latter refers to utteranceslearnt as ready-made expressions (e.g Can I have a _?) So the notional-functionalapproach is useful in that it helps learners develop pragmatic competence and minimize

pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic errors However, like the oral-situational approach, thenotional-functional approach is still based on PPP model, that is, it is accuracy rather thanfluency oriented.

According to Kirkpatrick (1985), communicative language teaching is an idea or a set ofprinciples that owes much to a social view of language and to the concept of communicativecompetence described by Hymes (1970) The goal of communicative language teaching is toproduce people who are communicatively, not merely, linguistically competent That is to say,the more the language learning in the classroom approaches the real-life communication, themore successful it is Communicative language teaching pays much attention to givingstudents the opportunity to practice in genuine communication Furthermore, the emphasis inteaching language through communication is, therefore, on classroom activities which helplearners to acquire the rules (unconsciously) rather than to learn them (consciously) Suchactivities must require the learners to focus on meaning, rather than on form Linguisticknowledge such as grammar is learnt in an unconscious ways; that is, students learn it throughtask-based activities or communicative tasks.

The task-based teaching and learning, which is derived from the communicative approach,aims at helping learners learn language through communication It is built aroundcommunicative tasks and so its primary focus is on meaning, that is, focuses on informationexchanges The tasks are built on learners’ real communicative demands and this would helplearners with intrinsic motivation because the tasks they are doing in the classroom resemblethe real-life communication outside the classroom And so learners’ language learning isassessed through the outcome of the task performance Linguistic structures are the secondaryfocus in the task-based approach They are embedded in the communicative tasks and taughtindirectly Learners’ attention will focus on forms when their communication is broke down.When so, they have to utilize different strategies such as negotiation of meaning, recasts,clarification requests, and conformation requests to make their communication smooth Andthey may learn linguistic forms naturally Hence, the task-based teaching is useful in that itcreates opportunities for learners to use language as a tool rather than as an object to satisfy

communicative needs It focuses on fluency rather than accuracy but, as described above,linguistic forms can be also learnt as a result of learning to communicate However, it isnecessary to distinguish between tasks and exercises According to Ellis (2005, p 5) ‘the latterrequires a primary focus on form rather than meaning and typically asks learners to manipulatelanguage given to them rather than to attempt to communicate using their own linguistic andnon-linguistic resources.’ In Ellis (2003, cited in Ellis 2005), he also makes a distinctionbetween task-based teaching and task-supported teaching The task-based teaching occurswhen the teaching is based exclusively on meaning-focus tasks, and the task-supportedteaching occurs when tasks are incorporated into either an oral-situational or a notional-functional syllabus and used to practice pre-selected and presented linguistic forms.

II.2 VCD as a language – teaching aid

VCDs in the classroom offer exciting possibilities for language teaching and learning Theprinciples of effective teaching and learning are illustrated with examples from a wide rangeof material, at all levels of language learning Radio and television have made importantcontribution to foreign language learning The widespread use of video recorders has had twomain effects on language - teaching broadcast The first of these is to free teaching institutionsand learners from the constraints of the broadcasting timetable Video recorders can be used tostore programmes for showing at any convenient time The second change concerns with howtelevision programmes are made Appreciating the benefits that a video recorder brings intothe classroom, more producers of language - teaching materials are designing video tapematerials with the classroom exploitation in mind Four or five minutes of video tape materialcan easily provide enough stimulating input for one hour’s teaching

The outstanding feature of video films is their ability to present complete communicativesituations The combination of sound and vision is dynamic, immediate, and accessible Thismeans that communication can be shown in a context, and the many factors in communicationcan be perceived easily by viewers - and language learners The speakers in dialogues can beseen and heard; other participants in the situation can be seen The language learner can

readily see the ages of the participants; their sex, perhaps their relationships one to another;their dress, social status, and what they are doing; and perhaps their mood or feeling Further,paralinguistic information, such as facial expression or hand gestures, is available toaccompany aural clues of intonation Similarly, the setting of the communication is clear: thelanguage learner can see on the screen where the action is taking place This information mayhelp to clarify whether the situation is very formal, or perhaps informal Of course, theseaudio-visual features of video films are found in cinema films and television broadcasts too.But these other media do not offer the same facilities for classroom exploitation of thematerial and content that video recorders do A further feature of video recordings – which isshared with other related media – is the use of electronic tricks to create special effects andimages These are usually quite beyond the resources of the language teacher to produce, andprovide another valuable source of material for use in language teaching and learning Videopresentations will be intrinsically interesting to language learners The learner will want towatch, even if comprehension is limited The material should be motivating; the learner shouldwant to see more, to ask question, to follow up ideas and suggestions By generating andmotivation, the Video films can create a climate for successful learning In a language –learning context, there is a need for special action: inter-action with the video (Jack Lonergan,1984).

II.3 The use of VCD in language classroom

This section will discuss some advantages and disadvantages of the use of VCD in languageclassrooms.

According to Gallacher there are totally five benefits that video can bring about when used inclassroom First, children enjoy language learning with video because video creates anattractive enjoyable learning environment Second, video is an effective way of studying bodylanguage as younger language learners are still learning about the world around them Third,children can obtain confidence through repetition when they watch a video several times andabsorb and imitate what they see and hear Fourth, video communicates meaning better than

other media We can see that video presents language in context in ways that a cassette can’t;that is, learners can see who’s speaking, where the speakers are, what they are doing, etc Last,video represents a positive exploitation of technology This is because young learners alwayshave positive attitude towards television and video, which is considered modern compared tobooks However, teachers are also advised to watch out for some shortcomings that video cancause in the classroom Video can make children become passive when watching it so teachersshould provide as many stimulating activities as possible where the children can interact withand learn from the video Furthermore, children’s parents may get annoyed when hearing theirchildren spend the class watching the video as they can do it at home Hence, the time towatch the video should be kept to a minimum and the children should have somethingconcrete and related to the video to show to their parents.

Beside the pros and cons of the use of video in language classroom, Gallacher also points outfour possible roles for video: developing listening skill, providing information, presenting orreinforcing language, and stimulating language production These roles do not operateseparately but can appear within one lesson For example, learners may watch a video to findout information about a famous person, and this may include work on developing listeningskill to enable them to extract the relevant information; it could then be used to developvocabulary on the topic of lives.

Gallacher next goes to show criteria for selecting video He argues that an authentic video foruse in the classroom should be first watchable; that is, the video should be interesting Next,the video clip should tell a complete story a section of a story This is important as younglearners’ primary motivation for watching is enjoyment The length of the clip is important,too It should be between 30 seconds and 10 minutes depending on the learning objectives.What is more, the content of the video clip and children’s level of maturity should becompatible, that is, the content should be suitable with each age group of children Relatedmaterials that accompany with the video should be available, too In addition, Gallacherclaims more that when a video is used for presenting language or comprehension tasks,

selecting the video should based on degree of visual support, which means the more visual avideo is, the easier it is to understand; clarity of picture and sound; density of language, whichrefers to the amount of language spoken in a particular time; speech delivery, which includesclarity of speech, speech rate and accents; language content, which consists of linguistic items;and language level, which should be appropriate for the level of the class without the teacherhaving to explain too much.

* Teaching Foreign Languages to Children through Video

The teaching of foreign languages at the elementary school level has changed immensely overthe past two decades Growing public awareness of the benefits of early foreign languagelearning has led to an increase in both foreign language teaching and professionaldevelopment for language teachers at the elementary school level (Rhodes & Branaman,1999) In 1996, the release of national standards for foreign language learning had anextremely positive influence on K–12 foreign language teaching State education agenciesdeveloped standards based on the national model, and school districts began to implementthese standards at the local level

This positive trend, however, has been jeopardized by a shortage of trained language teachers(Duncan, 2000) and by budgetary constraints In addition, parents and educators areincreasingly concerned about a lack of equity in elementary school language programs, whichare viewed by some as special classes for a select group of students School districts are nowlooking for ways to provide language classes for all students (Steele & Johnson, 2000)

Many administrators who are convinced of the importance of early foreign language educationbut who don’t have the resources to offer foreign language classes taught by trained languageteachers are looking for affordable alternatives Video programs that do not require the use ofa certified foreign language teacher offer a unique possibility

II.4 Time-on-task

All the students of the age group 6-14 have not only enrolled but provided education ofsatisfactory quality It implies that the curriculum objectives for primary and upper primaryclasses are achieved during their schooling However, what students learn in school dependson several factors, many of which are school and teacher related factors These factors affectnot only students’ learning in academic subjects but also personality development andachievement in various co-curricular areas Much depends on how teachers and students spendtheir time on various teaching-learning activities in school.

Apart from the time spent on active teaching by teachers and how they teach, an importantdimension of the teaching-learning that takes place in school, is what student do and howmuch time they spend on different types of learning and other related and unrelated activitiesin school This calls for a ‘time and task’ study of students, which should focus on what theydo individually or in a group while they are in school.

It is very necessary to claim that the more time students spend on tasks, the more knowledgeand more skillful they become But an important question arisen here is that what the teacherscan do to increase students’ time spent on tasks Brewster and Fager (2000) argue that thereare five strategies to increase the amount of time students spend on tasks First, the teachersmust be aware that course materials relate to students’ lives and highlight ways learning canbe applied in real-life situations That is to say, students should be taught what they need andthey can use what they have learnt in their daily life Second, in the classroom activities,students should be allowed to have some degree of control over learning This means thatstudents can have free choices between different assignments; or they are let to monitor andevaluate their own progress; or adult supervision over students’ group projects should beminimized Third, the teachers should assign challenging but achievable tasks for all students,including at-risk, remedial, and learning disabled students This is because students need tofeel successful and that they have earned success Fourth, students’ curiosity should be takeninto account when tasks are given to them This can be best to give students an opportunity to

direct inquiry and discover for themselves Furthermore, it also builds up students’ needs forcompetence and autonomy Lastly, the teachers should design projects that allow students toshare new knowledge with others Projects are more engaging when students share what theyare learning in reciprocal relationship, as collaborative projects where each student’sknowledge is needed by others in the group to complete an assignment.

Spanjers, Burns, and Wagner (2008) discusses this issue in more details when he gives fivestages in a procedure to increase students’ time-on-task Each of five stages includessubstages, which are indeed techniques to increase the time students spend on task These fivestages are (1) determine the average time the child can stay on task for each type of activity ofinterest, and this can be done in the following procedure: (a) have the child perform the task 5to 20 times, (b) when you have at least 5 recorded times, add them all, (c) divide the total bythe number of recorded times; (2) require that the child stays on task for a slightly longer thanhis or her average, and (a) when the child pays attention for the new longer time, reward himor her with some small reward he or she really likes or (b) each time the child tries hard tomeet the criteria or succeeds, give the child a quick break; (3) repeat stages 1 and 2 daily orevery-other-day sessions until the child attends for half an hour; (4) if the child increases timeon task and performance in training session, but not when you are not there observe the childat school, there may be two cases: (a) if the teacher’s methods are the problem use themduring the training session so the child learns to pays attention even in uninspiringcircumstances, and (b) if the problem is only the child’s, encourage the child; (5) repeat theprocedure with other tasks

Teaching for transfer and integrating language and content won't solve all the time problemsthat teachers of ELLs encounter For those teaching in all-English programs, the fact remainsthat teaching content in English to ELLs takes more time than teaching the same content tonative speakers Bilingual programs ease the time problem by teaching content in the nativelanguage, but political pressures and the English testing requirements of No Child Left Behindoften push ELLs into all-English instruction before they are ready.

We could do a lot to help ease the time crunch by ensuring that students are engaged inproductive activities during the entire school day When I started teaching, my students spent agood part of the day doing unproductive activities or doing nothing, and I found the samething happening years later when I did an observational study of a second-grade bilingualclassroom (Irujo, 1998, pp 14-20) Almost all teachers can create extra time in their schedulesby cutting down on the time spent on clerical tasks such as attendance, announcements, orcollecting and passing out papers Effective classroom management techniques can eliminateexcess time spent on disciplining students Instructional time can be made more efficientthrough flexible grouping arrangements that change according to tasks and student needs.Student attention can be increased through relevant, motivational tasks that are challenging yetachievable.

II 5 Motivation in language learningII 5.1 The concept of motivation

Gardner (1960) claims that to fully understand a student’s motivation to learn a secondlanguage, it is necessary to explain his long-term drive to acquire all aspects of the targetlanguage However, this should be done first with the examination of the student’s firstlanguage acquisition Gardner cites many studies to show that children learn their firstlanguage by imitation and the motive they learn the language here is that they want to beidentified as a member of the family Hence, the children tend to take on many behavioralcharacteristics of the parents and their behaviors are modified by that of the parents That is tosay, the family becomes a reference group, and language learning is consequently one aspectof social learning This is called ‘identification motive’ This is also applied to the children’ssecond language acquisition because languages are typically learned in the process ofbecoming a member of a particular group The sustaining motivation is usually one of groupmembership, not of language acquisition alone And the willingness to become a member ofanother language group is regarded as integrative orientation

Gardner states more that the desire to integrate with another language group can be motivatedin two ways First, the learner wants to be a member of another group because he perceivesthat group favorably and possibly as having higher status than his own group The learner thenimitates behavioral characteristics of members of that group so that he will be recognized as amember himself This called ‘approach’ dimension Second, the learner does not necessarilyperceive the other group as having desirable characteristics Rather, he chooses the othergroup as a ‘reference’ group because of personal dissatisfactions with his own culturalcommunity Consequently, this aim in integration could be independent of any favorableevaluation of the new group This is called ‘avoidance’ dimension.

The integrative motivation should be differentiated with the instrumental motivation Whilethe former is dependent upon the integrative orientation, the later is the learner’s primary aimin studying the language to be an interest in acquiring sufficient knowledge of the language forits instrumental values in goal attainment That is, the learner seeking to learn a language forother reasons such as for school credits, job opportunities, etc., will not manifest and maintainas high a degree of motivation over extended periods of language study.

II.5.2 Some review of studies of motivation in language learning

The effect of motivation to learning a foreign or second language is inevitable Many languageteachers and researchers even view motivation as a key factor in L2 learning and explain theirown sense of failure with reference to the students' lack of motivation Being aware of theimportance of the students' motivation, many language researchers have devoted their time tostudy the relationship between the students' motivation and their achievement in L2 learning.Some of them such as Gardner and Lambert (1972) or Crookes and Smith (1989) (as cited inEllis 1994) try to investigate the consistent correlation between students' internal motivationand their L2 achievement, that is, they hope to prove a positive relationship that the highermotivation students have, the more successful in L2 learning they are However, some otherssuch as Oller, Baca and Vigil (1977, cited in Ellis 1994) have demonstrated a converse thing.They report that Mexican women in California are successful in learning English though they

have negative attitudes towards the target language community Many other studies focus onstudents' external motivation and view it as determinant of students' motivational strength.They claim that when students are provided with some kind of incentives to learn such as afinancial reward, they may be motivated and do better in learning But the major disadvantageof this kind motivation is that students may stop extra effort to learning when the reward iseliminated Gardner, Day, and MacIntyre (1991) carry out a study which aims to find out theeffects of both integrative motivation and anxiety on computerized vocabulary acquisitionusing a laboratory analog procedure as a microcosm of second language learning The result ofthe study shows that integrative motivation facilitates learning of vocabulary items Thismeans that integrative motivation is associated with higher levels of achievement and awillingness to initiate a respond quickly Integratively motivated subjects learn the items morequickly and consequently are willing to risk attempting an answer sooner as trials progress.

The studies mentioned so far suggest that students with greater motivation could get betterlearning, but not vice verse However, some further studies by Strong (1983, 1984) orSavignon (1972) (as cited in Ellis 1994) claim that students' achievement can affect stronglytheir motivation, that is, students' desire to learn would increase with attainment in theirlanguage proficiency In addition, students' intrinsic interest is also considered to be one of themain elements of motivation The studies by Crookes and Smith (1989) and McNamara (1973)(as cited in Ellis 1994) point out that students' motivation could be activated if they have achance to participate actively in learning tasks and it is teachers’ job to motivate students byengaging their interest in classroom activities And in his own conclusion, Ellis (1994) sumsup four types of motivation: integrative motivation or internal motivation, instrumentalmotivation or external motivation, resultative motivation, and motivation as intrinsic interest.According to him, this is based on the assumptions that the main determinants of motivationare the learners' attitudes to the target language community and their need to learn the L2.Motivation can affect the extent to which individual learners achieve in learning the L2, thekind of learning they employ.

II.5.3 Motivation for young learners

Why should we worry about motivation? After all shouldn’t it be up to the student to makesure they come to class in the right frame of mind? Can the presence or absence of motivationmake any real difference?

The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics defines motivationas follows:

Motivation is generally considered to be one of the primary causes of success and failure insecond language learning (2002: 344).

So it would seem from this definition that motivation is something we teachers need to takeseriously if we are concerned about creating the best possible acquisition/learningenvironment for our students But what is a good motivator? And how can we ‘rekindle theinner fire’? According to O Dunn (1984), after a time of studying, young learners “begin tolose interest in learning English and thus motivation is vital” (Developing English with younglearners P83) and among some sources for activities to motivate young learners he suggestsusing of audio-visual material, especially video.

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

This research is based on the qualitative and quantitative methods with the surveyquestionnaires, interviews and classroom observation in order to achieve quantifiedbackground data, which aims to prove how VCDs increase the pupils’ time-on-task All thedata and information collected present the foundation for my study

III.1 The subjects of the research

The subjects for this study consist of 60 participants placed in two groups:

- The first group includes 50 pupils at Thinh Hao primary school in Hanoi They werechosen at random from 5 classes of 5th grade All the pupils follow the same three - yearcourse of English and their textbooks in use are Let’s Go 2 This group of pupils is taught byVietnamese teachers of English.

- The second group includes 10 teachers, who were chosen from three primary schools inHanoi (Dai Tu primary school, Thinh Hao primary school, Thanh Liet primary school) Theyare in charge of teaching English for 5th grade Five of them are in their early thirties with 8years of teaching experience; five others are in their late forties with more than 20 years ofteaching experience.

III 2 Data collectionIII.2.1 Questionnaire

We have designed two sets of questionnaire One is for teachers and the other for primarypupils In order that the answerer could be free to express their specific thoughts about theitems raised in the questionnaire, some questions are designed to be open - ended or to allowinterviewees give free answers (these are often the last choice in the suggested group ofanswer).

Questionnaire No 1, consisting of 11 questions all written in English, was administered to the10 English teachers

Questionnaire No 2, including 14 questions, was administered to the 50 primary pupils Allquestions were written in Vietnamese in order to make sure that they can be fully understoodby the pupils before they give their answers They were also requested to answer inVietnamese, so as to fully express their ideas For easier reference, these questionnaires areincluded in the appendixes.

The questions for the teacher focus on the following points:

- Situation of using VCDs in teaching- Purposes of using VCDs in teaching

- Pupils’ feeling and attitudes towards VCDs used during the classroom hours- The differences between using VCDs and cassettes in teaching

- How can the use of VCDs motivate the pupils?- Teachers’ suggestions

The questions for pupils cover some similar points with those for the teacher Q1 and Q2 is

made to get information about the situation of using VCDs If pupils say “Yes”, they have toanswer 10 following questions (Q3-Q12) If they choose “No”, they can ignore Q3 to Q12 andgo on to Q13 and 14 The questions for the pupils refer to the following points:

- Accessing VCDs

- Advantages of VCDs in learning English

- Pupils’ feeling and attitudes towards Video, VCD- When and for how long are VCDs used in the class

- Opinions about the use of VCDs in teaching and learning English

Note: The interviewees can choose more than one option in the questionnaire

III.2.2 Classroom observation

We have also applied the classroom observation method in this study to try to prove ourresearch hypothesis that VCDs can help to increase the pupils’ time-on-task The observationwas carried out in 4 classes of 5th grade.

Pupils are judged to be on-task, misbehaving, or doing nothing The observer selects one ofthese three descriptions of the pupils' behavior and records either a letter T (on-task), a letter B

(misbehaving), or a letter N - nothing (not on task, not misbehaving) At the end of theobservation session, the data are tallied and a percent time-on-task score is assessed In orderto accurately assess time-on-task, the observer must be able to clearly distinguish betweenthese three behaviors In certain learning situations, this may be fairly difficult to ascertain.When a pupil is sitting quietly, who can really determine whether or not he is on task? If thepupil is thinking about or processing the subject material, formulating a question or an answer,or simply listening and absorbing, he may be judged to be doing nothing when he is in fact on-task and actively learning The five-second sampling interval requires the observer to make asnap decision without benefit of careful study.

The calculation of time-on-task is made by dividing the number of on-task observations by thetotal number of observations Should the "nothing" data points be excluded from the total?This bears careful consideration The number of these null points, of course, has a bearing onthe decision A data set with very few null points will not be greatly affected either way, but alarge number of null points can sway the on-task percentage significantly If the objective ofthe evaluation is to determine time spent effectively on learning activities, and the observerconfidently assigns the null value to mean "not on task, not misbehaving", then the pointsshould be included Excluding them will give a falsely high on-task rating If the observercannot confidently determine that the pupil is not on task, the points should be excluded.

III.2.3 Informal follow-up interview

To consolidate the results of survey and classroom observations, the researcher contacteddirectly with answerers (the teachers and pupils) to ask for further information Here is thequestion used for the follow-up interviews:

- How can you compare advantages of VCDs over cassettes?

The questionnaires and class observations are represented in Appendix I, II and III,respectively at the end of the study

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

IV.1 Data analysis and discussion

IV.1.1 Result of teachers’ survey

After collecting, summarizing and analyzing the teachers’ answers, the researcher has foundmany interesting and significant points that are present here below selectively.

The first question was used to find out whether the teachers used VCDs or cassettes in theirteaching The result is presented in Table No 1 and Chart No 1 below:

Table 1 Q1 What is the type of teaching aid you are using in your English class?

What is the type of teachingaid you are using in yourEnglish class?

* Specific questions for those who say they use cassettes:( from Q 2 to Q5)

Table 2 Q2 Please indicate why you do not choose VCDs for your English class?

Chart 1 Q2 Please indicate why you do not choose VCDs for your English class?

As it is shown in the table 2, all the teachers who didn’t use VCDs in their teaching processblamed for the lack of equipment, as the only reason of their failure to use VCDs in the class.Some teachers employ even the traditional education methods where teachers typically lectureto students who take notes and then memorize and recall the material to perform well onexaminations The principal teaching equipment used at class includes the black board andchalk The curriculum also needs a lot of attention In a world in which technology is changingrapidly and students are to be able to think creatively, make decisions, and solve problems, itis clear that we have to find out means to deal with above-mentioned situation and improve theteaching-learning process quality

Table 3 Q3 Please indicate roughly how many percents of your pupils activelyparticipate (voluntarily answering teacher’s questions, pair work, team work, role-play,

Don’t like Don’t have Don’t know

Please indicate why you do not choose VCDs for your English class?

freeze-frame control - prediction, freeze-frame control - description, discussion) in theclass activities?

Please indicate roughlyhow many percents ofyour pupils activelyparticipate in the classactivities?

AVoluntarily answering teacher’s questions25

When using cassette to teach the “Let’s Talk”, it seems that the students do not pay enough

attention In the class they may sit quietly to listen to the tape, but when they practice talking,

they do not actively work with their partners Some pairs do not talk (35%), when they workin group, the percentage of the students keep silence or have private talk increase So there isonly 60% of the students work in group and only 25% of the students volunteer to answer thequestions of the teachers

Table 4 Q4 How can you describe the classroom environment?

Classroom environmentTotal (%)

Table 5 Q5 How many percents of your pupils achieve good English marks, i.e from 8 to10 points?

How many percents of Less than 50% (<50%) 100