Despite their benefits, there remain some disadvantages to be found. The first issue is connected with time. Roughly two-thirds of the students (68.75%) had the same opinion that the time for them to complete OCT was not enough. This result is relatively similar to what was observed in class. When the students participated in the OCT given for the first time, the teacher had to give them extra time because they were not very familiar with doing OCT in a grammar lesson. On the contrary, a small number of students disagreed, accounting for 31.25% of the students, as illustrated in Table 4.10.
Table 4.10
Responses to Item 15 in the questionnaire.
Statements
SD D N A SA
f % f % f % f % f %
The allotted time for completing OCT is too short for me.
5 31.25 8 50.00 3 18.75
N = 16
Note. f = frequency; SD = strongly disagree; D = disagree; N = neutral; A = agree;
SA = strongly agree
In terms of difficulties in working in pairs or groups, the number of students who agreed that their partner or group members used a lot of mother tongue was quite similar to the figure for those who disagreed. “Some of my classmates do not know how to say it in English, so they use Vietnamese instead.”, Interviewee 5 explained. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the students (81.25%) disagreed that their classmates were not willing to do OCT. It can be inferred that most of them showed their willingness to take part in OCT, which is not considered as a drawback of OCT in this case. Another disadvantage to be mentioned is the noise made during doing OCT. More than half of students (56.25%) did not feel that doing OCT in pairs or groups sometimes made the class so noisy whereas only 3 students (18.75%) thought that carrying out OCT created noise in class sometimes, which led to their loss of concentration on the OCT, as Interviewee 4 stated, “Too many people speak at the same time is also another problem. This causes noise and distraction, which makes me forget what I’m going to say”. Table 4.11 provides the statistics concerning those issues.
Table 4.11
Responses to Items 16-18 in the questionnaire.
Statements
SD D N A SA
f % f % f % f % f %
My partner/
group members use a lot of mother tongue when doing OCT.
1 6.25 6 37.50 7 43.75 2 12.50
My partner/
group members are not willing to do OCT.
11 68.75 2 12.50 3 18.75
Sometimes doing OCT in pairs/ groups makes the class so noisy that I can not concentrate on
completing them.
2 12.50 7 43.75 4 25.00 1 6.25 2 12.50
Statements
SD D N A SA
f % f % f % f % f %
N = 16
Note. f = frequency; SD = strongly disagree; D = disagree; N = neutral; A = agree;
SA = strongly agree
In addition to these obstacles, finding ideas to complete OCT was another challenge they faced. A large number of students (75%) agreed that they encountered this problem when doing OCT (Table 4.12).
Table 4.12
Responses to Item 19 in the questionnaire.
Statements
SD D N A SA
f % f % f % f % f %
Sometimes, I find it difficult to find ideas for
completing OCT.
3 18.75 1 6.25 8 50.00 4 25.00
N = 16
Note. f = frequency; SD = strongly disagree; D = disagree; N = neutral; A = agree;
SA = strongly agree
Another barrier that prevented the students from performing the OCT well was their listening skills. Two out of five interviewees believed that when they
“can’t understand what we hear”, they “can’t do the tasks”, thereby “being unable to finish the tasks” (Interviewee 1). Besides, when the teacher uses English to talk about the objective or give instructions on how to do tasks, he/ she “can not follow the teacher’s instructions” (Interviewee 5). However, the most serious problem that
regularly confronts them is lack of lexical resources. The shortage of vocabulary truly prevents them from expressing their opinions in English. Moreover, OCT often requires them to generate ideas and respond quickly; therefore, they are unable to react timely if they have limited vocabulary range, as explained by Interviewee 3,
“My greatest difficulty is when I want to talk about something, I do not have enough vocabulary to express my ideas. In the traditional method, I have time to look up words for meaning, but when doing oral communicative tasks, I have to respond quickly and I need to know about the vocabulary…I can not respond promptly because of lack of vocabulary” and Interviewee 5 “because I do not know many English words, so there are pauses and mistakes when I speak. This is also a difficulty to me”. The data from the classroom observations made by the teacher researcher also are also consistent with the above-mentioned reactions by the students, recording that “some students were reluctant to do at first because they didn’t know how to express what they were going to say in English”. Last but not least, there remain some arguments between group members or unwillingness to join the group work of some group members, according to Interviewee 1.
All in all, there exist a number of disadvantages found during the implementation of OCT in grammar lessons. Even though these issues are somehow unavoidable, they need to be addressed and tackled properly to ensure effective implementation of OCT in grammar teaching in the future.