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A CASE STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OFA CASE STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF
COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN ENGLISH TEACHING ANDCOMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN ENGLISH TEACHING AND
LEARNING IN VIETNAMESE HIGHER EDUCATIONLEARNING IN VIETNAMESE HIGHER EDUCATION
M.A Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen
Division of International Standard Program
Faculty of English
Phone number: 0963716969
Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
The study investigates the application of CLT in the International Standard
Program, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam.
Freshmen in different majors study English in the program in one year to
prepare for their academic learning. The questionnaire and interview examine
both teachers and students’ reflection of the approach implementation as well
as students’ engagement and motivation in the teaching and learning process.
It has revealed that the program has applied major principles and made some
adjustments. Participants are aware of the use of Vietnamese and English in
class; teaching grammar communicatively, employing communicative
activities, pair work or group work; avoiding immediate error correction and
making use of authentic materials. CLT is really employed and does work in
this context in relation with student engagement and involvement. Therefore,
it brings a new impression on the CLT adoption in English language teaching
in Vietnam, which is often examined with challenges and even failures of the
approach. However, like other EFL contexts, teachers here also have to make
adaptations to fit student’s need and ability. That is to say, in foreign language
learning, context may decide the way an approach work, and this can be
different from one to another.
1
Key words: communicative approach (CLT), non-English major students,
student engagement and motivation.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
In recent decades, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or Communicative
Approach as its original name (Harmer, 2007) has been advocated to apply in
language teaching contexts all over the world, especially in the settings where
English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). Due to the awareness of English
being the international language, national language education policies in EFL
countries have moved towards CLT since 1990s (Littlewood, 2007). It could not
be denied that CLT has gained the growing reputation as an approach involving
learners into the real-life language use and develops their communication in
English, which the foreign language context may lack. However, the
implementation of this approach has also faced various challenges in this context.
Some studies in the last fifteen years such as Ellis (1996), Lewis and Cook (2002),
Pham (2007), and others have investigated the existing obstacles. A number of
difficulties have been found from all the research, including students’ lack of
communicative needs, the shortage of authentic materials, the great effects of
classic approaches together with cultural – related features that can not be
changed immediately. Therefore, in Asian settings such as China or Vietnam, Ellis
(1996) highly evaluates the teacher’s role in “mediating” the approach by making
it appropriate to the local culture and redefining the teacher – learner
relationship in keeping with the cultural norms. Especially, for the case of
Vietnam, local teachers have to play the role of both “a teacher of English” and “a
Vietnamese teacher” to be reasonable and appropriate in the way of carrying out
the new teaching approach (Phan, 2004). In other words, CLT needs to be both
“culturally attuned” and “culturally accepted”.
Few studies have been carried out about its implementation in Vietnamese
educational setting and teacher beliefs and practice (Lewis & Cook, 2002; Phan,
2002; Pham, 2007). However, there seems to be little concern about the
2
implementation of CLT in a context where English is not only a subject but also a
medium for learners to pursue their academic majors. As a result, this study sets
its aim of investigating the way CLT is implemented in the specific context
mentioned above as well as providing with some implication for foreign language
learning.
1.2. The study context
The study is conducted in the educational setting of ISP, University of
Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU).
Despite its two – year length, it has gained a great amount of attention from all
related partners as authorities, teachers, and students. This is a special program
for talented first-year students who belong to fast-track programs in their majors.
From four universities known as the branches of Vietnam National University
(University of Sciences, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, University
of Technology and Engineering, University of Business and Economics), these
students spend one year studying the English for ISP in ULIS. The result of a
placement test at the beginning of the course categorizes students into twenty
four classes from high to low level. The ultimate purpose is to teach students
General English as a background for their major studying in English in the next
years. Thus, their ability to use the language is highly concerned in this program
because after this one-year program students are expect to learn their majors in
English. After five six-week semesters with the levels following the Common
European Framework for Reference of languages from A1 to C1, they can fulfill
the program in case of achieving a certain score at the end of the school year. The
scope of this study is limited into two first semesters – A1 and A2.
Due to the output requirement that students can use English as a medium in
their academic majors, the biggest concern of this program lies in enhancing both
students’ background knowledge of English related to its sub-skills, vocabulary
and grammar as well as promoting their communicative skills in English. To this
extent, communicative approach is preferred as the main one in teaching and
learning activities. However, factors referring the gap between students’ level in
3
different classes and the teaching time pressure may affect the implementation of
CLT in this setting. As a result, the contextualization of communicative approach
is always taken into consideration in the whole program. For these reasons, by
conducting questionnaire and interviews to ISP students and teachers, the project
aims to answer the two following questions:
1. To what extent is communicative approach (CLT) implemented in
teaching English for ISP?
2. What are the implications for student engagement, student motivation
and for foreign language learning in this context?
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Participants:
Being conducted in the context of ISP, the project involved teachers and
students of the program. Sixty eight students, about one ninth of the total, took
part in the study. Due to the fact that it is hard to have all students’ participation,
this number is expected to partially reflect the whole setting with participants’
variety of gender, schools and groups. Ranging in the age from 18 to 20, 37 males
and 31 females belong to 18 out of 24 classes. They come from all four branched
universities as mentioned in the project context.
With regard to teacher, the three female teachers in this study are all junior
ones who have three years of official teaching experience. While the teachers
could not represent the whole potential participants, they did represent a distinct
feature of the ISP division that is the young and enthusiastic teaching staff.
Henceforth, three interviewed teachers will be named as teacher 1 (T1), teacher
(T2) and teacher 3 (T3).
2.2. Methodology
2.2.1. Data collection instruments
Given the purpose of this study, mixed method research seems to be the
most appropriate methodology to be applied. It is important to investigate the
real situation of English teaching and learning and the extent of CLT adaptation
from both students and teachers for a more objective result. Hence, the projects
4
used two types of data collection methods known as a written questionnaire
(Appendix 1) and semi – structured interviews (Appendix 2).
With regard to questionnaire, the reason why I chose it as the main method
to collect data comes from the fact that a large amount of data can be collected
quickly and economically from a certain sample. In this context, students playing
the role of the questionnaire respondents probably prefer because it saves their
time and effort. The questionnaire was designed to investigate the extent of CLT
implementation in ISP classrooms with regards to its main principles. Moreover,
it is expected to suggest some implications on student motivation, student
engagement and foreign language learning related to the context. For these
purposes, apart from the first part of personal information, the second part
focuses on the use of classroom activities by a number of frequency rating
questions with the five scales applied Levine (2003) as 0-20%, 20%-40%, 40%-
60%, 60%-80% and 80%-100%. That is to give an estimate for the frequency
level. The third part asking about student’s opinions towards their role, the lesson
itself employs the Likert scale of attitudes. Due to student’s level of English
proficiency, the questionnaire was sent to them in Vietnamese version. The
English version is in Appendix 1.
Moreover, two semi-structured interviews are carried out for both teachers
and students. The teacher interview is another tool to reflect the process of
teaching and learning and give more description and explanation for what
happens in the classroom. Thanks to teacher’s high English proficiency, the
interview was conducted in English. The follow-up interview designed for
students who responded the questionnaire may give an in-depth description for
the answers in the questionnaire. Thus, the questions are quite similar to the
questionnaire and in Vietnamese. Each interview lasted about thirty minutes and
a list of open-ended questions can be seen in Appendix 2.
2.2.2. Data collection procedure
The data collection has been done with a procedure of two phases. Firstly,
the online questionnaire was sent to students and the interviews of three
teachers were conducted at the same time. In the questionnaire, it is convenience
sampling because students can only do the questionnaire in case they have
5
Internet access, and they are all participants that are available for the study.
Secondly, the follow-up interview took place thanks to snowball sampling which
means from one participant; I could make contact with the other two, and then
interviewed three of questionnaire respondents. In the analysis, they will be
assigned as student 1 (S1), student 2 (S2) and student 3 (S3).
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The result of the data collection process will be presented, analyzed and
discussed in this section. This analysis is supposed to provide the answers to two
research questions of the project.
1. Research question 1:
To what extent is communicative approach (CLT) implemented in teaching
English for ISP?
In the first research question, the investigation of the implementation of CLT
in ISP program is based on the major features of this approach summarized in
existing studies (Brandl, 2007; Richards & Roger, 2001; Burns, 2009; Savignon,
2005). The aspects are the language use referring to the use of English and
Vietnamese in the class, the grammar teaching, the fluency enhancement,
instruction materials, and error treatment.
1.1. The language use
The student use of Vietnamese
The student use of English
The teacher use of Vietnamese
The teacher use of English
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
80%-100%60%-80%40%-60%20%-40%0%-20%
Figure 1: The student and teacher use of English and Vietnamese in the classroom
The figure reveals that there is not much difference in the frequency of
student using Vietnamese and English in their classes. More than a half of
6
participants responded that they use the mother tongue in the range of 40% -
60% while this scale gained a little less number to English. The interviews
explained that students normally use Vietnamese when they cannot express their
idea in English “ in case students do not have enough vocabulary to speak” (S2);
or when they work in pair or in group, “some pairs or groups want to exchange
the ideas in Vietnamese, then translate into English” (T1). On the other hand,
English is obviously used when they do speaking activities with assigned topics
(T3 & S2) or when they want to raise a question with teachers (T1). The amount
of the first language use and second language use is rather equal in the class,
which reflects a matter that students do speak in English, but the lack of
vocabulary and the habit of using Vietnamese may hinder them. Even though 40
out of 68 students have more than six years of learning English before the
program, their use of English and Vietnamese in the classrooms is still a matter.
Despite their balanced use of two languages, students’ answers show that
teachers use English much more than Vietnamese in the lessons. 52 respondents
stated that English has been used 60% to 80% while 38 students claimed the use
of Vietnamese takes place quite occasionally. This calculation reflects teachers’
awareness of applying the target language as much as possible, which Brandl
(2007) advocated. The interviews also revealed that for best classes (group 1 and
2) the teacher uses nearly 100% of English (T1), but for lower level ones they
also use English but have to then translate into Vietnamese, especially when
explaining a grammatical point (T2 & T3). To this extent, what ISP teachers have
done followed the principle supported by Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983). Their
use of the two languages is also reported to highly depend on the students’ level.
1.2. The teaching of grammar
As Savignon (1972, 2005) emphasizes that grammar cannot be forsaken in
the CLT contexts. In this specific setting, the student questionnaire shows that
grammar teaching takes place quite frequently in their lesson. The concern comes
up with the way it is taught and practiced.
7
Grammar
is tau
ght s
epara
tely
Grammar
is integ
rated
into sk
ills
Drills in
gram
mar lea
rning
Communicative
practice
in gram
mar lea
rning
01020304050607080
80%-100%60%-80%40%-60%20 %- 40%0%-20%
Figure 2: The teaching of grammar in the classroom.
In respect of whether grammar is taught separately or integrated into sub-
skills, the answer is both as shown in Figure 2. Referring to teaching it separately,
about 80% of students stated that the frequency varies from 20% to 60. Only five
cases felt that it is taught separately all the time. Therefore, it is not surprising to
notice of about 70% of participants reflecting the usual integration of grammar in
teaching other skills. The program is likely to pursue the purpose of teaching
grammar with speaking, reading, listening and writing; however, the question lies
in the certain amount of separated grammar lessons. The interviews did help
clarify the problems when teachers and students provided reasonable arguments
as grammar is taught separately in A1 and A2 to revise students’ knowledge (T2,
S3).
In terms of the grammar practice, the chart displays a fact that drills or
mechanical practices are quite popular in the lessons with 46 students reporting
its use from 60% to 100%. T1 explained that this kind of practice almost occurs in
low level class whereas even in high level class, S1 in group 1 also mentioned
drills as one kind of grammar practice. To this extent, Grammar Translation
Method still seems to have its place in this context. Besides, communicative
practice also has its own position in the program. Only 10 students answered that
there are no or little communicative activities to practice the grammatical points.
8
Teachers confirmed that they often use interactive games with the whole class
involvement. Together with exercises, they need students “to use the grammar
point to talk, to communicate with their friends”(T3) and also “use what they
have learnt in listening and writing”(T1). At this point, their perspective may
echo the “weak” version of CLT as discussed in the previous part.
To sum up, for A1 and A2, improving students’ grammar has been actually
regarded as one of major goals of the program. In order to achieve this, they had a
combination of both traditional approach and communicative approach.
1.3. Fluency enhancement
As mentioned before, the key principle of CLT is to develop learners’ fluency
which can be gained through communicative activities, group work or pair work
and the tolerance of error. The situation of these issues is reported in Figure 3 as
following:
Figure 3: The aspect of fluency in the classroom
Firstly, as can be inferred from the table, developing communication skills
attracts the serious attention in the classroom. The frequency of communicative
topics and communicative activities is likely to be great with about 80% students
responding their proportion from 60% to 100%. The communicative topics
showing the language functions are in fact based on the “Practical English”
section in the course book as one teacher revealed. Communicative tasks,
9
discussing in the teacher and student interview, appear to be the essential part of
the lesson.
The data has shown the interest of both teachers and students in applying
activities such as role play or discussion. They see the effectiveness of using those
to raise the class up and make the lesson easier.
Due to the high frequency of communicative activities, there is no surprise
that pair work and group work also possess the large portion as displayed in the
table. T1 even confirmed that she always uses the cooperative learning in her
lesson, especially in speaking and listening. In other words, they become the
backbone of the lessons in this context.
Lastly, the study investigates the way teachers treat errors in student’s
speaking activities, which is whether they correct the errors immediately or delay
the action until students. Interestingly, students have rather similar responses to
the frequency of both methods. The figure may imply that teachers apply both of
them and have a moderate use. From the interview, “immediate error correction
often solves with serious pronunciation or grammar errors affecting the meaning
understanding” (T3). Normally, when students have a short talk in front of the
class, teachers will not interrupt because they are afraid of demotivating the
speaker.
Generally speaking, the learning and teaching process here is in favor of
promoting students’ communication in terms of fluency practice. To this extent,
the communicative approach does really work well in the context.
1.4. The instruction materials
Last but not least, materials – one of the input resources- have been
examined in the project to evaluate the level of authenticity. It is unearthed that
besides using the textbooks known as New English File, teachers have used a
number of supplementary materials. Related to materials such as English
newspapers, magazines or films, the questionnaire result shows that over a half
of students thought that their teachers used these ones from 40% to 80% of the
lessons. All three students stated that they sometimes watched a short film in
English. T2 told that she uses BBC or CNN news in listening or T1 even organizes
10
a game using “realia” in helping students learn new vocabulary. However, the
point that T3 raised should also be taken into consideration, she admitted that
she rarely used the English films or newspapers for low level students because it
may be too hard for them. That is to say, teachers are aware of using authentic
materials but they have to make careful consideration due to students’ level. The
story can be very different from top classes to ones at the bottom.
2. Research question 2:
What are the implications for student engagement, student motivation
and for foreign language learning in this context?
In fact, this question can be regarded as a follow-up of the first question.
However, I put it into a separate one to highlight the effects of CLT
implementation on student in particular and the process of foreign language
learning in general. Using the Likert scale of attitudes, the third part of the
questionnaire tries to investigate student’s evaluation of their involvement and
their roles in the lessons. The following table summarizes the result:
Figure 4: Student motivation and engagement in the classroom
The questions are around students’ viewpoint on the lessons, their
participation, their motivation and their roles in the class. It can be clearly seen
that a large number of students strongly agreed with all the four statements
which gives positive evaluations. Moreover, no one had a strong disagreement
with any statement. There are still a certain group who are confused to give make
their final decision and chose the one between two spheres. The interviews with
11
teachers and students again state this result and vary the case when figuring out
that most of students are very interested in learning English (T3, T1).
In terms of positive impact, the result that the lessons are interesting to
almost students and involve them in activities can be shared with other studies in
EFL contexts such as Jin, Singh & Li (2005), Sun and Cheng (2002). Moreover,
students in this context are really motivated as Tosuncuoglu (2011) stresses that
learners prefer a meaning-based approach. What motivates them most is the time
when they can play games or do other interactive activities because they are
learning English to use the language. Importantly, they all feel that they play the
central role and teachers are the facilitator, manager and supporter, which is
another outstanding feature of CLT. However, all teachers have the same
feedback that there are still some students who do not want to take part in any
activities in the class. Maybe they are shy and quiet people or their English is not
good enough to speak out. This kind of anxiety is, to a certain degree, caused by
CLT because all phases often require students to be very active whereas it takes
time for someone to adjust the situation (Brandl, 2007).
With regard to the foreign language learning, when Littlewood (1981) and
Johnson (1982) indicated principles inferred from CLT practice, they
underscored that activities of this approach does promote the second or foreign
language learning because they involve real communication. It is a pity that the
project cannot assess the approach effects on learners’ progress within its scope.
Nevertheless, the interviews partially affirm its benefit to learners when all three
students can see their progress in many aspects of the language such as grammar,
vocabulary, and skills. Especially, they now feel more confident to speak in
English when they meet a foreigner or attend events in English.
4. CONCLUSION
In summary, the study investigated the application of communicative
approach in a specific EFL context. It has revealed that the teaching and learning
process has applied its major principles and made some adjustments to the local
setting. Both teachers and students are aware of maximizing the target language
use and minimizing the native language; teaching grammar communicatively,
employing communicative activities, pair work or group work as much as
12
possible; avoiding immediate error correction and making use of authentic
materials. They have a great interaction with each other, and students really feel
engaged into the lessons. CLT is really employed and does work in this context in
relation with student engagement and involvement. To this aspect, it brings a
new impression on the CLT adoption in English language teaching in Vietnam,
which is often examined with a lot of challenges and even failures of the
approach. However, like other EFL context, teachers here also have to make some
adaptation to fit student’s need and ability. For instances, grammar which is
stressed in the first two semesters is at times taught separately; or teachers
occasionally use Vietnamese in the lessons and still have some immediate error
correction. This is because of the gap in student’s level within the program
between top classes and the bottom ones, the fact that many students cannot
speak English even after ten year learning the language at school and also
student’s personality. That is to say, in foreign language learning, context may
decide the way an approach work, and this can be different from one to another.
For further research, the impact of CLT implementation on students’
language learning should be carried out to give a more in-depth evaluation on its
effectiveness. Also, due to the limitation of this research, classroom observation
needs to be applied in the future studies.
REFERENCES
1. Borg, S and Burns, A.(2008), Integrating grammar in adult TESOL classrooms.
Applied Linguistics, 29(3), 456-482.
2. Brumfit, C. (1988), Applied linguistics and communicative language teaching.
In Grabe, W (ed.) Annual Review of Applied Linguistics: Communicative
Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.
3. Burns, A. (2009), Grammar and Communicative Language Teaching: Why,
When and How to teach it?. CAMTESOL Conference.
4. www.professoranneburns.com/.../camtesol2009.pdf (consulted 20/01/2012)
5. Canale, M and Swain, M. (1980), Theoretical bases of communicative
approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1),
1-47.
13
6. Ellis, G. (1996), How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach,
ELT Journal, 50(3), 213-218.
7. Finocchiaro, M and Brumfit, C. (1983), The Functional – Notional Approach:
From Theory to Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
8. Grabe, W (ed.) 2009, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics: Communicative
Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.
9. Harmer, J. (2007), The Practice of English Language Teaching, (4th ed.).
Pearson Longman.
10. Hymes, D.(1972), On communicative competence. In Pride, J.B and Holmes, J
(eds) Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp.269-293.
11. Johnson, K. (1982), Communicative Syllabus Design and Methodology. Oxford:
Pergamon.
12. Lewis, M and Cook, F. (2002), Cultures of teaching: voices from Vietnam. ELT
Journal, 56(2), 146-153.
13. Littlewood, W. (1981), Communicative Language Teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
14. Littlewood, W. (2007), Communicative and task-based language teaching in
East Asia classrooms. Language Teaching, 40(3), 243-249.
15. Pham, H.H.(2007), Communicative language teaching: unity within diversity.
ELT Journal, 61(3), 193-201.
16. Phan, L.H. (2004), University classrooms in Vietnam: contesting the
stereotypes. ELT Journal, 58(1), 50-57.
17. Richards, J.C and Rodgers, T.S. (2001), Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18. Savignon, S.J. (1972), Teaching for communicative competence: a research
report. Audiovisual Language Journal, 10(3), 153-162.
NGHIÊN C U ĐI N H NH V VI C ÁP D NG PH NG PHÁPỨ Ể Ỉ Ề Ệ Ụ ƯƠ
GI NG D Y TI NG ANH THEO Đ NG H NG GIAO TI P B CẢ Ạ Ế ƯỜ ƯỚ Ế Ậ
Đ I H C VI T NAMẠ Ọ Ở Ệ
Th.S Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo
14
Bộ môn Nhiệm vụ chiến lược
Khoa Tiếng Anh
Điện thoại: 0963716969
Email: [email protected]
TÓM TẮT
Nghiên cứu này khảo sát việc áp dụng phương pháp giảng dạy tiếng Anh theo đường
hướng giao tiếp (CLT) dành cho chương trình Nhiệm vụ chiến lược. Các sinh viên
năm thứ nhất từ các trường thành viên của ĐHQGHN học tiếng Anh cơ bản trong một
năm tại ĐHNN để chuẩn bị cho việc học chuyên ngành bằng tiếng Anh. Nghiên cứu
được thực hiện qua việc phát phiếu khảo sát cho sinh viên và phỏng vấn một số giáo
viên và sinh viên trong chương trình. Kết quả cho thấy CLT đã được áp dụng với một
số thay đổi phù hợp với thực tiễn giảng dạy. Cả giáo viên và sinh viên nhận thức được
tầng suất sử dụng tiếng Việt và tiếng Anh trong lớp học, việc dạy và học ngữ pháp một
cách tích cực, ứng dụng các hoạt động phát huy khả năng giao tiếp, hoạt động đôi và
nhóm, tránh việc chữa lỗi tức thời cũng như việc dùng tài liệu thực tiễn. Một số khó
khăn và thay đổi được đưa ra. Từ đó chỉ ra rằng thực tiễn giảng dạy có ảnh hưởng tới
việc áp dụng phương pháp này.
Từ khóa: phương pháp giảng dạy theo đường hướng giao tiếp, sinh viên không
chuyên ngành tiếng Anh, sự tham gia của học sinh, động lực học tập
APPENDIX
Appendix 1:
STUDENT QUESTIONNAIRE
I. Personal information:
Please circle the option or write down your answer:
1. Age:
2. Gender: Male Female
3. Which university do you study for your major?
a. University of Business and Economics
b. University of Technology and Engineering
c. University of Science
d. University of Social Sciences and Humanities
15
4. Which class of ISP are you in?
5. How long have you been learning English?
II. Activities in the classroom
Please put a tick in the boxes which show how often the following activities take
place in your English class.
Activities 100%-
80%
80%-
60%
60%-
40%
40%-
20%
20%-
0%
I use the target language (i.e English)
Students use the mother tongue (i.e
Vietnamese)
Teachers use the target language (i.e
English)
Students use the mother tongue (i.e
Vietnamese)
Learning grammatical rules in the lessons
Grammar is taught separately from other
skills
Grammar is taught together with other
skills (speaking, listening, reading or
writing)
Students do structural exercises to practise
grammatical rules after learning them
Students play games, and do other
communicative activities as role play to
practise grammatical rules
Functional activities to help students
improve communicative competence such
as greeting, inviting, etc are used in the
lessons
Games and role play are used in the lessons
Students are required to work in pairs/
groups
Teachers use authentic materials (e.g:
English newspaper, films)
16
Teachers correct student errors when
he/she is speaking.
Teachers correct student errors after they
finish their speaking activity.
III. Student engagement and motivation in the classroom
Please put a tick () in the boxes that show your opinion on the following statement.
Strongly
agree
Agree Neither
agree
nor
disagree
Disagre
e
Strongl
y
disagre
e
The lessons are interesting.
Students are involved in every activity.
I feel motivated to learn English in this
program.
Students are the centre of the lesson,
not teacher.
THANK YOU FOR YOU COOPERATION!
Appendix 2:
TEACHER INTERVIEW
1. How many years have you been teaching English?
2. How many hours of class do you teach a week?
3. Can you describe the programme you’re teaching?
4. What kinds of material do you use in your teaching?
5. Can you describe how you would teach a new grammar point to your students?
17
6. How do you introduce and help students practice grammatical rules?
7. Do you use communicative activities such as information gap, jigsaw, opinion
sharing, task-completion? If so, how often? What do you like/dislike about these
tasks?
8. Do you use pair work, group work in your classroom? If so, how often? What do
you like/dislike about these ways of organizing learning?
9. What do you think about can be the role of these activities in the lessons?
10. Do you use English newspapers, films in your teaching?
11. Do you use Vietnamese in your teaching? If so, when and why?
12. Do your students use Vietnamese in class? If so, when and why?
13. How do you deal with student errors in speaking activities?
14. What is students’ level of involvement in the lessons?
15. In which phase of the lesson do you see students are most engaged?
16. What do you do to motivate students in the lessons?
17. What approach(es) do you follow in your teaching? And the effects of this/these
approach(es) to the students/lessons?
18. Is there anything else with regard to teaching English in Vietnam that I should
have asked or that you would like to comment on?
STUDENT INTERVIEW
1. What ISP class are you in?
2. Which university are you studying for your maijor?
3. What language do you often use in the class?
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4. How about learning grammar? Do you learn grammar and how often?
5. How does your teacher introduce a new grammatical point?
6. How do you practice with that grammatical point?
7. How often do your teachers use this activity?
8. Do you work in pair or in group in the lessons?
9. What do you like or dislike about this way of organizing learning?
10. Can you explain more about your learning materials?
11. In terms of error correction, what do your teachers do with the error you make in
speaking activities?
12. Which way do you prefer?
13. In general, what do you think about the lessons?
14. How’s about your role in the lesson?
15. And in which part of the lesson are you most involved?
16. Finally, would you like to have any feedback to the program?
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