Microsoft Word 124 Nguyen Thu Huong doc Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2019 ISBN 978 604 82 2981 8 652 THE IMPACT OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWAR[.]
Trang 1THE IMPACT OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS
LEARNING ENGLISH
Nguyen Thu Huong
Thuyloi University, email: Huongthu@tlu.edu.vn
1 INTRODUCTION
The author is currently an English teacher
at Thuyloi University (TLU) The participants
in this study were non-English major students
from different parts of Vietnam Most them
had limited English capability, as they didn’t
spend much time learning it From the
author’s teaching experience, it can be seen
that students (especially freshmen) often
struggle adapting to the new learning methods
in university The new learning style is
fast-paced and requires students to be more
autonomous during lessons This has caused a
lot of difficulties for both teachers and
students as modern English teaching focuses
on learners’ overall competencies and how
learners can use English confidently in a
communicative setting
Participants of this study were 20 students majoring in engineering or economics at TLU
These learners had different levels of English
proficiency and were expected to use English
in a simple way after completing the course
The author decided to conduct this research to
evaluate students’ attitude toward English
learning, specifically the application of
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
What the author did with her particular class
was assigning students with a set of activities
under the CLT approach, namely topic-based
presentations and role-play conversations
Through these tasks, students got to actively
prepare and practice listening and speaking
skills Then the author would use her choice
of data collection tools to determine how these
CLT tasks affected learners
2 COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)
2.1 The definition of Communicative Language Teaching
CLT is defined as a language teaching approach that emphasizes the communication
of meaning rather than the practice of grammatical forms in isolation According to Larsen-Freeman (2000: 121), the main goal
of the CLT is "to communicate the goals of language teaching and to communicate the interdependence of language and communication."
Nunan and Lamb (1996) described the traditional approach as students following what teachers tell them to and learning English by repetition and memorization Most of the time teacher is the one who has
to take the central and active role to keep the class going It can be seen that traditional learning is not completely bad, but it does not bring much effectiveness to learners besides making them "memorize" English The CLT method, on the other hand, considers the use
of English for communication purposes as the ultimate goal; the teacher then becomes a facilitator and learners become "negotiator and interactor" Learners will use meaningful tasks as well as authentic materials to practice their communicative skills
2.2 Research method
The author chose qualitative as her research method as it was the best method to get a detailed answer to the research question
"How do CLT activitiesaffect students’
Trang 2attitude in English class?" All students were
informed of the research at the beginning of
the course and were free to choose whether
or not to participate After obtaining these
students' consent, the next steps of the study
were conducted and necessary data were then
collected by means of three instruments:
individual interview, group interview and
observation
Individual interview
In the first session, participants were individually interviewed to provide
researcher with information regarding their
learning (habits, interests, course
expectations, etc.) The information from
these interviews could tell the researcher a lot
about individuals’ English level and attitude
towards English learning
Observation
The main data collecting instrument used in the process of applying CLT was observing
and recording students’ behaviors
Observation method gave researcher the
chance to actively gather information during
classes Comments such as "Student A
constantly asked her friends about the
instruction of the task"; "Student B were
afraid to speak English to their classmates";
"Student C gave a confident presentation with
a wide range of vocabulary" etc were briefly
written down in a note These observational
comments would later be triangulated with
data from individual and group interviews to
make more accurate conclusions
Group interview
At the end of the course, the researcher dedicated a whole session interviewing
participants in groups which they worked in
during their projects Here the researcher asked
participants questions to see whether students
understood the research and how they engaged
with it The benefits of group interview were
that it would save researcher a lot of time but
still be able to gather really rich data
3 FINDINGS
Here are the author’s main findings drawn from the process of collecting and
triangulating research information:
3.1 Different levels of understanding of CLT approach
Through analyzing the data, it can be seen that there were differences in the students’ understanding of the CLT activities Specifically, a student answered the interview question about how she understood the application of CLT to her English class: "This innovation is intended to help students improve listening and speaking skills because I had to practice speaking and listening a lot I prepared the presentation with the help of my friends in the group I gave a presentation on the second topic, Food, and I talked about my favorite one – fried chicken I also shared how
I usually make this at home” Apparently, this student knew what to do and she accomplished
it Being able to recite the learning process shows that she understood and remembered what the teacher taught her in class
While some students appeared to understand the innovation, many failed to describe it For example, student number 11,
in her presentation on topic “Travel”, showed the whole class a series of slides of tourist destinations in Vietnam without describing them and sharing her travel experience When being interviewed, she said: "I didn't know what to speak about I thought that I need to describe as many tourist destinations
as possible.”
These findings also matched the observational data It was notable that certain students really paid attention and kept asking the teacher for clarification during lessons, while some appeared to be quite confused or didn’t really listen Failure to follow teacher's instructions might prevent them from thoroughly understanding or even misunderstanding the assignment From triangulating the data, the author found that only one third of the class understood exactly what these CLT activities were about
3.2 Different levels of engagement in the CLT tasks
From the observational note, some students got extremely excited to work in group and give presentation in front of the class It was
Trang 3observed that they usually jotted down
necessary instructions and tips and discussed
with group members as soon as assignment
was given Student number 8 loved discussing
the planning of the assignment with his peers
and instructing other people in the group
Number 8 also volunteered to be the first to
give presentation Another student having the
same positive attitude towards this CLT
activities - student number 12, said: "I think
the idea of presenting and later discussing in
English is very interesting I often meet up
with my group in the library to better prepare
the assignments”
However, several other students had a neutral attitude and low level of participation
in the lesson Specifically, student number 11
said: "I had no idea on how to give a
presentation, so I went online to download a
series of landscapes photos and put together a
PowerPoint”
Some students showed great excitement and couldn't wait to get started like numbers 8 and
9, saying in the group interview: "we learned
how to give a presentation before so we want
to quickly prepare this English presentation
This was a rare opportunity for us to practice
English speaking in front of the crowd”
Differently, there were students who didn’t
engage in the innovation, as described by
student number 4: "There were times that some
of my group members were not very excited
They often sit quietly in group discussion.”
3.3 Different levels of confidence
Throughout the innovation, participants showed different levels of confidence About
half of the students was confident of
participating in CLT activities Student number
2 said: “I’m not good at English, but the whole
idea of speaking in front of other people is
fun” It was true that even though his speaking
was not the most fluent or accurate one, he
managed to finish his task confidently and
received a lot of support from class members
Still, there were students who seemed to be quite timid in both class presentations and
role-play task These students often had to
look at paper or slide to speak, they gave little
or no responds during lessons To explain this problem, student number 19 said: “I am very scared of English I didn’t know what I had to
do with these exercises I was afraid I might
do something wrong and look stupid to the whole class” Obviously, fear from making mistakes affected leaners and it prevented them from practicing communicative skills Similar to number 19, student number 15 said:
"It is very intimidating for me to speak in front of the crowd I had never given a presentation before, even in Vietnamese” Obviously, the lack of necessary skills and training also greatly affected the students’ confidence in this study
4 CONCLUSION
The objective of this study was to study the impact of CLT approach on the language learning attitude of TLU students This study revealed a number of key findings, namely that students showed different levels of understanding, different levels of engagement and different levels of confidence in the research These results gave author a detailed view of the student's attitude when an innovation, in this case, a series of activities under the CLT approach, was applied to the English class
It was absolutely necessary for the author
to conduct this research Being able to work closely with students and bring new improvement into the class benefited the author as a teacher, while collecting and analyzing data gained the author experience
in conducting research
5 REFERENCES
[1] Larsen-Freeman, D (2000) Techniques and principles in language teaching Oxford University
[2] Nunan, D & Lamb, C (1996) Changing views on the nature of language and learning: traditionalism and CLT, The self-directed teacher: managing the learning process Cambridge University Press, New York, 114–115