Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS an investigation into the students attitudes towards the cultural contents in the textbook new headway pre intermediate at ho chi minh city university of industry based in thanh hoa

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES **************************************** LÊ THỊ NGA AN INVESTIG

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

****************************************

LÊ THỊ NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN THANH

HOA

( ĐIỀU TRA THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI NỘI DUNG VĂN HÓA TRONG GIÁO TRÌNH NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP

THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH CƠ SỞ THANH HÓA)

MINOR M.A THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

HÀ NỘI, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

****************************************

LÊ THỊ NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN THANH

HOA

( ĐIỀU TRA THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI NỘI DUNG VĂN HÓA TRONG GIÁO TRÌNH NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP

THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH CƠ SỞ THANH HÓA)

MINOR M.A THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

Supervisor: Phan Thị Vân Quyên M.A

HÀ NỘI, 2011

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATION OF ORINALITY……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………ii

ABSTRACT……… iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… …….iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……….v

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS……… vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationales……… 1

2 Aims of the study……… 1

3 Research questions………1

4 Scope of the study……… 1

5 Methods of the study……….1

6 Design of the study……… 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT……… 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW………4

1 Culture……… 4

2 Language and the relationship between language and culture……… 9

3 Learning Attitudes……… 9

4 Identifications of British and American cultural elements in New Headway textbooks……… 11

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY……… 20

2.1 Current situation of teaching and learning English at the HUI……… 20

2.2 Research questions……….22

2.3 Method of the study ……… 23

2.4 Data Collection Instruments……… 23

2.5 Data collection procedures……….24

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS……….25

3.1 Questionnaire for students……….25

3.2 Interviews with students………31

CHAPTER IV: FINGDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS……….32

Findings……….32

Suggestions for improving the situation………33

PART III: CONCLUSION……… ……35

1 Conclusion……… 35

2 Limitations of the study……….35

3 Suggestions for further study……….35

REFERENCES………36 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS I APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW………III

AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW HEADWAY Pre-intermediate AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN

THANH HOA

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

• Globalization leads to the remarkable teaching and learning English issue

• Besides, there is a dialectical connection between language and culture

• However, the students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa often neglect cultural contents while studying English

2 Aims of the study

The study focuses on investigating the attitude of students at Ho Chi Minh City University

of Industry based in Thanh Hoa Province towards cultural contents expessed in the textbook Headway 2 to enhance the effect of using them as a means to provide comprehensible input in learning English

3 Research questions

This research is carried out to find the answer to the following research questions:

1 Are students interested in learning culture when studying language?

2 Do teachers include cultural contents in their lectures?

3 Are students satisfied with their teacher’s cultural teaching?

4 Scope of the study

As it has been stated above, the study is designed to explore students’ attitudes towards

cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre in order to make some methodological

recommendations for studying English The study is, therefore, explorative by nature

Given the aims of the study, I limited myself to focus on the first-year students at the HUI

who have studied the textbook NH Pre

5 Methods of the study

- Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used

- The data for the study are collected from questionnaires and interviews

- Discussion with the supervisor

6 Design of the study

The study is presented in three parts: introduction, development and conclusion

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Part one INTRODUCTION introduces the rationale, aims, focus, objectives, research questions, scope, methods and design of the study

Part two DEVELOPMENT concludes 3 chapters:

Chapter one is the literature reviews This chapter intends to set up the framework of the study It focuses on the theory of the relationship between culture and language

Chapter two includes two sections The first section presents the local situation in the foreign language group, Ho Chi Minh city University of Industry, the Branch in Thanh Hoa, with a brief description of the learning and teaching conditions, students, teachers and course book used for teaching basic English The second section describes the research methodology that includes the description of the subjects, setting, data collection instruments and procedures

Chapter three presents the results collected from the self-observation, questionnaires and interviews in the form of tables and figures This is followed by the discussion and analysis

of the data

Part three CONCLUSION includes the implications and suggestions for teaching English through teaching culture Recommendations for further research are also mentioned in this part

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1.Culture

- Definition of Culture

- Elements of Culture

1 2 Language and the relationship between language and culture

1 3 Learning Attitudes

- Definitions of attitudes

- The role of attitudes in language learning

1 4 Identifications of British and American cultural elements in New Headway textbooks

- British cultural elements

- American cultural elements

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Current situation of teaching and learning English at the HUI

- Brief introduction of Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry based in Thanh Hoa Province

- Students and their background

Students of HUI come from all parts of Thanh Hoa province (Thanh Hoa city, districts and mountainous areas) Some of them have learned English for 7 years at secondary and high school whereas others have only learned English for 3 years Specifically, some other students have never learned English before Most of students who learned English at school experienced traditional method of English teaching (the Grammar- translation method) the emphasis of which is on the learning of the rules of the language, not on the acquisition of language skills and cutural contents Furthermore, the majority of the students does not have appropriate learning strategies and have passive learning styles

Therefore, their General English skills are supposed to be at lower levels

- The course book

New headway textbooks ( written by Liz and John Soars) consist of six levels which are at beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced However, in my research only New headway at pre-intermediate level is under investigation New headway- pre-intermediate is divided into 14 units Each unit of textbooks is divided into sections such as reading, listening, writing, speaking, vocabulary and grammar The textbooks have been designed according to the miscellany approach It

is a type of course books the content of which is eclectic

New Headway Pre may satisfy the demands of the communicative approach to language teaching They emphasize the learning of the language for clearly defined purposes and four major skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking in a very systematic way The Teacher’s Book also provides photocopiable progress tests and additional activities as well as detailed answer keys and notes, so that teachers have a wealth of support In addition, we can see some notes and explanations for cultural features of countries, especially English speaking cultures Indeed, if we have a closer look at New Headway Pre, we discover cultural elements in almost every text or activity It would be extremely difficult to cover all the cases in which the course books offer learners information about the target culture The presentation of culture takes various forms:

examining everyday life and cultural behaviour, looking into communication styles, norms, values and attitudes, etc The activities focus on particular subject areas like shopping, food, meals, traffic, restaurants, jobs and many more A great advantage of the

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course book is that it gives not only information and knowledge about the target culture but also other foreign cultures Learners are given an opportunity to deal with various cultural issues The aim is to develop an understanding of English countries in general However, British and American cultures are the most prominently described in the textbook

2.2 Research questions

This research is carried out to find the answer to the following research questions:

1 Are students interested in learning culture when studying language?

2 Do teachers include cultural contents in their lectures?

3 Are students satisfied with their teacher’s cultuhral teaching?

2.3 Method of the Study

To achieve the aims stated, quantitative method was mainly used The data collected for the study come from 100 first- year students at the HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province who

have just finished studying NH Pre

Survey questionnaires were used to collect information and evidence for the study with the hope that the research would be reliable and the processing of the data would be manageable within limited time budget

In addition, the research also used qualitative method that is the author collected some information based on her informal classroom observations and interviews with 10 students chosen from 100 students The researcher hopes that these methodologies supplement each other and the data are more reliable

All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion provided in the study are based

on the data analysis

2.4 Data Collection Instruments

The main instruments, which I have used in this study to collect data, are questionnaire and interviews

2.4.1 Questionaire

The research questionaire consists of nine questions that are divided into three parts: the students’attitudes toward the culture, the students’attitudes towards the cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre and the difficulties they enhance when studying the cultural contents

in this textbook

The questionaire aims to investigate the students’attitudes towards cultural learning in general and their attitudes towards the cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre as well as their attitudes to cultural teaching in their English classes

2.4.2 Interview

The interview is carried out after finishing the questionaire part 10 out of 100 students are chosen to give further ideas

2.5 Data collection procedures

In order to get results showing the differences in attitudes of the students towards the cutural contents, nine questions were delivered to the participants After the questionnaires, students were chosen randomly for the interviews before and after the experiment, and finally collected data is analized

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter analysed the collected data from the survey questionnaires and the interviews

to find the answers for the research questions

3.1 Questionnaire for students 3.1.1 The attitudes of students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province towards culture learning when studying language

In short, it can be concluded that most of the students answer that they are not very interested in culture because it is also not very important for them in studying English

More than a third of studetns suppose that cutural knowledge is not important to them at all

in learning English As a result, a very small percentage of them suppose that they are interested in culture and determine its importance Moreover, no one say that they master general cultural knowledge such as its definition and elements very well; and more than half of them do not understand these at all

3.1.2 The attitudes of students at the HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province towards the

cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre

- When these 100 students were asked whether they could identify the cultural elements in the textbook NH Pre after finishing the course, well over a half of students can do although

it is not much 36% cannot do at all

- A great number of students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa showed a negative attitude towards the cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre Much more respondents said that the cultural contents were not rich enough (61%), wheares only 39% said that these contents were rich The number of students who supposed that the cultural contents boring were slightly higher than interesting, 41% and 35% Similarly, this happened to the idea whether these contents were obviously expressed or not

3 1 3 The students’attitudes towards the cultural teaching

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Most of the students (78%) said that they were not satisfied with the teachers’ cultural teaching in the class None of them felt very satisfied but 22 % of the students have shown good attitudes towards it

3.1.4 Students’ difficulties when learning cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre

72% of the students admitted that they lack background knowledge of British and American culture 28% of respondents were worried about lack of vocabulary to express their ideas said that they had difficulties in expressing ideas because they lacked

knowledge about the culture It was difficult for 12% because they had not any visual illustrations Only 8% said that they had no time to acquire cultural knowledge

3.2 Interviews with students

After gathering information from the survey questionnaires, the researcher conducted instructional interviews with 10 students out of 100 students under questions 1, 2 in interview part to confirm students’ further ideas about the cultural contents in current textbook All of the interviewed students said that:

The things that students unsatisfied are:

(1) Their teachers have not emphasized the importance of cultural knowledge when teaching English yet

(2)Time allowance for cultural contents in English classes is so limited

(3) The cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre are not very obviously expressed to identify them

(*) The things that students will be satisfied and can improve students’ cultural knowledge

(1) they are reminded about the importance of British and American cultural knowledge in

studying English in the first lessons of the course

(2) they are transferred the culture definition and its elements as soon as possible during the course so that they can themselves identify the cultural elements in each part of the lesson or discuss with their friends

(3) the teachers should tell more stories and give more exercises related to culture as well

as use a variety of activities and techniques for integrating the cultural contents into their teaching,

(4) the comparison between British and American culture and Vietnamese culture should

be done if possible in order that students not only find more interested in cultural contents but they also can memorise these easily and deeply

CHAPTER IV: FINGDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS 4.1 Findings

Firstly, the first year students at the HUI show not very positive attitudes towards culture and studying it Not many of these students see the importance of cultural knowledge for their learning English as well as communication with native speakers Consequently, not all of them are really interested in cultural lessons

Secondly, it is clear from the survey that the students are not satisfied because cultural contents are not always integrated into English lessons To be more exact, they want to be taught the basic knowledge of culture that helps them to identify the cultural elements in each unit The students also say that the teaching techniques and activities are not varied enough The students expressed their wish to acquire British and American cultural knowledge through more interesting communicative activities such as games, songs, story telling, picture describing,…

It is clear that nowadays there is a tendency to study English for communication, therefore cultural knowledge plays an important role However, a considerable number of the English learners at HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province do not focus on this in class This situation is due to the following reasons:

4.2 Suggestions for improving the situation 4.2.1 Suggestions for students

Firstly, to be successful in learning English, students ‘attitudes towards English need to change They should consider English as important as other subjects in the curriculum and appreciate the role of culture in studying English

Secondly, students’ attitude towards cultural knowledge and cultural learning also should

be improved It not only helps them to broaden their knowledge but it is also a vital part of learning English for communication

Thirdly, students’ role is no longer passive recipients They can explore the cultural knowledge by themselves from different sources They should feel free to express their own ideas, to put questions to the teachers, to show their disagreements with the teachers

4.2.2 Suggestions for teachers

First of all, the teachers should provide the students with the knowledge of the cultures of English-speaking countries which is considered the effective means of mastering English