An investigation into grammar learning at ho chi minh city university of education foreign language center m a thesis 60 14 10

This study aims to find out if interpretation tasks really work in the grammar teaching and learning at the University of Education Foreign Language Center UEFLC.. The results of the thr

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Supervisor ĐOÀN HUỆ DUNG, Ph.D

HO CHI MINH CITY - 2009

I hereby certificate my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMAR LEARNING AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER

In terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, October 2009

ĐỖ NGỌC QUỲNH

I hereby state that I, Đỗ Ngọc Quỳnh, being the candidate for the degree of Master

of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use

of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan, or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, October 2009

Đỗ Ngọc Quỳnh

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Đoàn Huệ Dung, for all her patient guidance, continuing encouragement, valuable instructions and keen revision of this thesis Without her great help and special care, this thesis would have never been finished

Special thanks are also expressed to all of my teachers of TESOL 2005 at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, for their interesting lectures and whole-hearted guidance

Many thanks to the teachers and students at UEFLC who have responded to the questionnaires to provide me such a trustworthy source of data for the research

Finally, I also want to thank my family for their love and support during the time of writing this thesis

Input-based approach is a new approach in which the teachers use interpretation tasks to provide their students with a lot of grammatical input For these kinds of tasks, the students are encouraged to focus on both form and meaning of a new structure to answer the questions This study aims to find out if interpretation tasks really work in the grammar teaching and learning at the University of Education Foreign Language Center (UEFLC)

The data for the research were mainly collected by means of three questionnaires for 185 students and 15 teachers at UEFLC The first students’ questionnaire was conducted before the experimental teaching and the second one was carried out after the experimental teaching The third questionnaire was done for the teachers The results of the three questionnaires help to find out: (1) the real situation of students’ grammar learning, (2) problems faced by students in learning grammar, (3) if interpretation tasks really work in facilitating the students’ process of learning grammar

The results of the study showed that many students thought that their grammar knowledge was limited although they have learned English for a long time They also had some problems in learning grammar After the experimental teaching, both teachers and students had good evaluation of interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning The tasks were also thought to be interesting and easy to do

Finally, some practical recommendations were introduced to make interpretation tasks to be more efficiently applied for the students at UEFLC

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1.Background to the study 1

1.2 Grammar learning and teaching at the UEFLC 3

1.3 Aims of the study 3

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Significance of the study 4

1.6 Definitions of terms 4

1.7 Overview of the study 5

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Grammar 6

2.1.1 What is grammar? 6

2.1.2 Place of grammar in learning and teaching 6

2.1.3 Why is English grammar difficult to learn? 8

2.1.4 Causes of errors in grammar learning 8

2.1.5 Factors affecting the learning ability of grammatical structures 10

2.2 Grammar in different teaching methods 14

2.2.1 Grammar Translation Methods (GTM) 14

2.2.2 Direct Method 15

2.2.3 Audio-lingual Method (ALM) 15

2.2.4 Comprehension-based approach 16

2.2.5 Communicative Approach (CA) 16

2.2.6 Input-oriented approach 17

2.2.7 Output-oriented approach 18

2.2.8 Presentation, practice, and production procedure 19

2.3 Interpretation tasks 20

2.3.1 What are interpretation tasks? 20

2.3.2 What do we use interpretation tasks for? 20

2.3.3 General principles for the design of interpretation tasks 21

Chapter 3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND ETHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Research goals and methods 23

3.2 Research Design 24

3.2.1 Subjects 24

3.2.2 Measurement Instruments 24

3.3 Data collection procedure 29

Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 31

4.1 Responses from the questionnaires 31

4.1.1 Students’ responses before the experimental teaching 31

4.1.2 Students’ responses after the experimental teaching 39

4.1.3 Teacher’s questionnaire 43

4.2 Results from the interviews with teachers 49

4.2.1 The first question: Can you tell me about activities in your grammar lessons? 50

4.2.2 The second question “What do you think of grammar exercises in International Express coursebooks and workbooks ?” 50

4.2.3 The third question “What problems do your students have in learning grammar?” 50

4.2.4 The fourth question “What do think of the interpretation tasks recommended by the researcher in teaching grammar?” 51

4.3 Findings 51

4.3.3 The application of interpretation tasks 53

Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 55

5.1 Conclusions 55

5.2 Recommendations 56

5.2.1 For the application of interpretation tasks in grammar teaching 56

5.2.2 For grammar teaching at UEFLC 59

5.2.3 For grammar learning at UEFLC 60

5.3 Further research 60

REFERENCES 62

PPP Presentation Practice Production

TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

UEFLC: the University of Education Foreign Language Center

Table 4.1 Students’ characteristics

Table 4.2 Students’ time of learning English

Table 4.3 Students' purposes in studying grammar

Table 4.4 Student's evaluation of their grammar knowledge

Table 4.5 Students' practising grammar at home

Table 4.6 Students' problems in learning grammar

Table 4.7 Students' characteristics of experimental classes

Table 4.8 Students’ evaluation of the interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning

Table 4.9 Students’ evaluation of interpretation tasks in arousing interest in learning grammar

Table 4.10 Students’ evaluation of the applicability of g interpretation tasks

Table 4.11 Teacher’s characteristics

Table 4.12 Teachers’ teaching experience

Table 4.13 Teacher’s qualifications

Table 4.14 Students' difficulties in learning grammar

Table 4.15 Teacher's comments on interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning

Table 4.16 Teacher's comments on interpretation tasks in arousing interest

Table 4.17 Teacher's comments on the applicability of interpretation tasks

Chart 4.1 Students’ evaluations of learning grammar

Chart 4.2 Students’ opinion: The examples are difficult to understand

Chart 4.3 Students’ opinion: The grammar tasks are not interesting

Chart 4.4 Students’ opinion: The grammar section is not clear enough

Chart 4.5 Students' grammar learning methods

Chart 4.6 Teachers’ opinion: The examples are difficult to understand

Chart 4.7 Teachers’ opinion: The tasks are not interesting

Chart 4.8 Teachers’ opinion: The grammar section is not clear enough

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1.Background to the study

Although grammar is only a component of language, it still plays a very important

part in the learner’s success The learning of grammar serves as a tool towards the

primary purpose of achieving communicative skill as P Ur (1988: 5) states, “Any

learning of grammar takes place only as incidental to the main objective of successful

communication” and “There is no doubt that knowledge - implicit or explicit - of

grammar rules is essential for the mastery of a language.”

Grammar teaching has traditionally been conducted by means of activities that

provide learners with opportunities to produce sentences containing the targeted

structures These activities can consist of mechanical pattern-practice drills of the kind

found in the audio-lingual method or situational grammar exercises where the target

structure is contextualized in terms of some real or imaginary situation The underlying

assumption of these activities or exercises is that requiring learners to produce the

structure correctly and repeatedly helps them to learn it Researchers have seen that this

traditional production-based approach faces a number of problems First, there is the

learning ability problem— teaching learners to produce target structures that they are

not developmentally ready or produce may not work Second, asking learners to

produce grammatical structures they find difficult and then correcting them when they

make mistakes may increase their anxiety and result in a psycho-affective block to

learning (Krashen, 1982) Moreover, current theories of second language acquisition

see production as the result of acquisition rather than the cause It follows that grammar

can be taught more effectively through supplying input than through manipulating

output

In reality, the students usually find it hard to comprehend a grammatical item,

especially for the first time It also takes them quite a long time to comprehend and

learn to use the item Researchers have been saying for sometime now that you can

lead a student to grammar but you cannot make him learn; that the process of learning

is not a mechanistic, linear, input-output one It seems to be much more capricious than that As one researcher, Larsen –Freeman D (1997: 141-165) put it:

Learning linguistic items is not a linear process - learners do not master one item and then move on to another In fact, the learning curve for a single item is not linear either The curve is filled with peaks and valleys, progress and backslidings

According to Ellis, R (1997: 153), forcing production of a newly-learned item too soon may be counter-productive, in that the effort involved in articulation diverts attention away from simply understanding how the new item works: a case of getting-your-tongue-round-it at the expense of getting-your-mind-round-it He also suggested a

new approach in teaching grammar, input-based approach, which involves focusing

learners' attention on a targeted structure in the input and enabling them to identify and

comprehend the meaning that it can realize It emphasizes input processing for

comprehension rather than output-processing for production and requires the use of interpretation tasks in place of traditional production tasks According to Ellis, R

(cited in TESOL Quarterly, 1995) empirical support for an input-based approach to teaching grammar can be found in the early studies of the comprehension-based approach In a review of comprehension-based approach, Gary (1978) identifies four

main advantages: (a) a cognitive advantage (i.e., better L2 learning), (b) an affective

advantage (i.e., the avoidance of the stress and embarrassment that often accompanies

trying to produce sentences in front of others), (c) an efficiency advantage (i.e., a

comprehension-based approach works equally well with low and high aptitude

learners), and (d) a utility advantage (i.e., teaching listening skills helps a learner

become functional in using the L2 and also enables a learner to continue their language study independently of the teacher)

Because of the four big advantages that the comprehension-based approach can offer foreign language learners, I made up my mind to teach grammar to my students with the support of input-based approach, which derives from the comprehension-based one

1.2 Grammar learning and teaching at the UEFLC

The foreign-language center of the University of Education of Ho Chi Minh City has been known as a center where people can learn many foreign languages including English In order to help them with basic English knowledge as well as the practice of the four language skills, the general English courses have been introduced The

International Express coursebooks have been chosen for the general classes since

2006 The academic management board has always encouraged teachers to apply the communicative approach in teaching and create a learner-centered atmosphere in all classes Teachers also have the right to design their own syllabus and lesson plans provided that the students enjoy them I have noticed through several years of teaching that although grammar is included in the curriculum together with the practice of pronunciation and the four skills, it is not favored by the students who claim that grammar is a difficult subject Many teachers also acknowledge that their students do not have good knowledge of grammar even though they are at Pre-intermediate or Intermediate level Actually, they are not able to speak or write English correctly, which prevents them from communicating effectively

From my point of view, the problems may be traced back to the teachers’ lack of grammar activities for their students After the presentation stage, most of the teachers

at UEFLC make use of all the grammar tasks in the International Express coursebooks

and workbooks for the practice stage In my opinion, these grammar tasks are not appropriate for students to comprehend the form and meaning of a new structure because some tasks are very mechanical and others are very difficult to do Therefore,

it is suggested that more suitable grammar tasks should be employed for the students at UEFLC so that they can gain good knowledge of English grammar

1.3 Aims of the study

The present context of grammar learning in general English classes at the UEFLC has aroused my interest in discovering more suitable grammar tasks that can facilitate the grammar learning process Therefore, my study aims:

- To find out the problems facing the learners in learning grammar

- To examine the application of interpretation tasks in teaching grammar in order

to facilitate the students’ grammar learning process

- To propose some pedagogical suggestions for teaching and learning grammar

1.4 Research questions

On the base of the above-mentioned purposes, it is necessary to recognize research questions in order to pilot the research

- What are the problems facing the learners in learning grammar?

- How can interpretation tasks help to facilitate the students’ grammar learning

process?

1.5 Significance of the study

Grammar deserves a noticeable place in the curriculum of general English courses

as it is one of the categories which contribute to the communicative competence Without grammar English learners cannot either make complete sentences or make themselves understood In other words, in no circumstances can grammatical competence be separated from communicative competence However, the students at UEFLC have encountered quite a lot of problems in learning grammar, which prevents them from learning English effectively Therefore, an investigation into how to better the reality of teaching and learning grammar is a great necessity for the UEFLC and any other language institutions in Vietnam where the situation is the same

1.6 Definitions of terms

 Interpretation: This is the process by which learners endeavor to comprehend

input and in so doing pay attention to specific linguistic features and their meanings It involves noticing and cognitive comparison and results in intake (Ellis, 1995: 90-91)

 Production: Production typically relies on implicit knowledge, but this can be

supplemented by explicit knowledge through monitoring Production does not serve as the primary means for acquiring new linguistic knowledge although it may help learners to gain mastery over features that have already entered their interlanguage (Ellis, 1995: 90-91)

 Task: Task is an activity which is designed to help achieve a particular learning

goal (Richard, Platt, J and Platt, D., 1992: 373)

 Input: Input can be defined as language which a learner hears or receives and

from which he or she can learn (Richard, Platt, J and Platt, D., 1992: 182)

 Output: Output means the language a learner produces by analogy (Richard,

Platt, J and Platt, D., 1992: 182)

 Intake: Intake is input which is actually helpful for the learner (Richard, Platt, J and

Platt, D., 1992: 182)

1.7 Overview of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters

Chapter I – Introduction introduces background of the study, grammar learning and

teaching at UEFLC, aims of the study, research questions, significance of the study, limitations of the study, and overview of the study

Chapter II - Literature Review presents the theoretical background of the study

including four parts: nature of grammar, grammar in different teaching methods,

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and interpretation tasks

Chapter III - Research Design and Methodology: describes the issues of the designs

and methodology such as (1) research goals and methods, (2) research design, (3) data collection procedure

Chapter IV - Findings and Analysis: provides the results of the collected data as well

as discussion of the findings

Chapter V – Conclusions and recommendations: is about how to improve the

process of teaching and learning grammar with the application of interpretation tasks

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Grammar

2.1.1 What is grammar?

Richard Platt, J and Platt, D (1992: 161) defined that grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language

Thornbury S (1999: 1) had his own definition of grammar He said that a grammar

is a description of the rules that govern how a language’s sentences are formed

As for Ur P (1996: 75), grammar is sometimes defined as ‘the way words are put together to make correct sentences’

2.1.2 Place of grammar in learning and teaching

In 1622 a certain Joseph Webbe, schoolmaster and textbook writer, wrote: ‘No man can run speedily to the mark of language that is shackled with grammar precepts.’

He maintained that grammar could be picked up through simply communicating: ‘By exercise of reading, writing, and speaking all things belonging to grammar, will without labour, and whether we will or no, thrust themselves upon us.’

Webbe was one of the earliest educators to question the value of grammar instruction, but certainly not the last In fact, no other issue has so preoccupied theorists

and practitioners as the grammar debate, and the history of language teaching is

essentially the history of the claims and counterclaims for and against the teaching of grammar Differences in attitude to the role of grammar underpin differences between methods, between teachers, and between learners It is a subject that everyone involved

in language teaching and learning has an opinion on And these opinions are often strongly and uncompromisingly stated

The fact that we all learned our first language without being taught grammar rules has not escaped theorists If it works for the first, why shouldn’t it work for the second? This is an argument that has been around since Joseph Webbe’s day It received an impetus in the 1970s through the work of the applied linguist Stephen Krashen

Krashen made the distinction between learning and acquisition Learning, according to

Krashen, results from formal instruction, typically in grammar, and is of limited use for

real communication Acquisition, however, is a natural process: it is the process by

which the first language is picked up, and by which other languages are picked up solely through contact with speakers of those languages Acquisition occurs when the learner is exposed to the right input in a stress-free environment so that innate learning

capacities are triggered Krashen also argued that acquisition is a largely unconscious process while learning is a conscious one Success in a second language is due to

acquisition, not learning, he argued

Other theorists have argued that the learner’s role is perhaps less passive than Krashen implies, and that acquisition involves conscious process, of which the

fundamental is attention and pointing out features of grammatical system is a form of

consciousness-raising It may not lead directly and instantly to the acquisition of the item in question But it may nevertheless trigger a train of mental processes that in time will result in accurate and appropriate production

Therefore, if the teacher uses techniques that direct the leaner’s attention to form, and if the teacher provides activities that promote awareness of grammar, learning seems to result We need, therefore, to add to the pro-grammar position the arguments for a focus on form and for consciousness-raising Together they comprise the paying-attention-to-form argument That is to say, learning seems to be enhanced when the learner’s attention is directed to getting the forms right, and when the learner’s attention is directed to features of the grammatical system Furthermore, there are compelling arguments to support the view that without attention to form, including grammatical form, the learner is unlikely to progress beyond the most basic level of communication

To sum up, grammar needs to be taught from the beginning level in order to

provide learners with a grammatical base and prevent fossilization as well Then later it

can help them progress beyond the most basic level of communication

2.1.3 Why is English grammar difficult to learn?

Grammar is the tool needed to handle a language correctly It explains the meaning

of the words, their forms and their functions, and the rules used to build sentences correctly English grammar is complex and difficult to master because (1) in each English-speaking country grammar is taught particular to local, regional versions; (2) words are pronounced differently than their written form; (3) there are many words having multiple grammatical or semantic meanings; (4) there are words having the same form, but they take different meanings, depending on the place they have within the sentence structure; (5) the morphologic sentence elements have both regular and irregular grammatical forms; (6) there are numerous exceptions to grammatical rules; (7) English is a dynamic

language (http://www.corollarytheorems.com/Grammar/en_grammar.htm)

2.1.4 Causes of errors in grammar learning

English as a second language (ESL) students make second-language errors for four basic reasons that evolve from linguistic factors:

First-language interference

Transfer of first-language structures to ESL writing may help or hinder an ESL writer, depending on the similarities or differences between the student’s first and second languages ( Byrd and Reid, 1997: 122)

Littlewood (1981: 22) also shared his view of this kind of error Transfer and overgeneralization are not distinct process Indeed, they represent aspects of the same underlying strategy Both result from the fact that the learner uses what he already knows about language in order to make sense of new experience In the case of overgeneralization, it is his previous knowledge of the second language that the learner

uses In the case of transfer, the learner uses his previous mother tongue experience as

a mean of organizing the second language data It is significant that transfer errors are found to be more frequent with beginners than with intermediate students The

beginner has less previous second language knowledge to draw on in making hypotheses about the rules, and might therefore be expected to make correspondingly more use of his first language knowledge

Overgeneralization of English language rules

Both Byrd and Reid (1997: 122) and Littlewood (1981: 23) agree that the majority

of intralingual errors are instances of the same process of overgeneralization that has been observed in first language acquisition

Generalization is, of course, a fundamental learning strategy in all domains, not only in language In order to make sense of our world, we allocate items into categories; on the basic of these categories, we construct ‘rules’ which predict how the different items will behave Sometimes, however, our predictions are wrong, probably for one of two main reasons:

a) For some reason, the rule does not apply to this particular item, even though we have allocated the item to the appropriate category We must therefore learn an exception to the general rule

b) The item belongs to a different category, which is covered by another rule We must therefore either reallocate the item to a different category which we know,

or we must construct a new category and rule

High level of difficulty of the language structure

According to Byrd and Reid (1997: 122), there are no absolutes of ease and difficulty in language structure So although curriculum designers believe that we should begin with “easy grammar” and progress to more difficult structures, in practice what is “easy” and “difficult” will differ for students from different language backgrounds

Moreover, teachers must not confuse “difficult to explain” with “difficult to learn” Some languages may be easy to teach but difficult to learn (e.g., subject-verb agreement for some learners); others may be the opposite Still others may be difficult both to teach and to learn (e.g articles for some learners) And for learners, both length

of time and consistency of use can vary

2.1.5 Factors affecting the learning ability of grammatical structures

It is necessary to i d e n t if y a number of factors that create different degrees of learning difficulty in learning grammar

Resilient and fragile features

Resilient features include many syntactical features such as word order rules (e.g the position of adjectives in noun phrases) These features are manifest in all varieties

of language, including simple registers such as pidgins and foreigner talk, and may be acquirable as a product of learning how to communicate In contrast, fragile features, which include many of the morphological properties of a language (e.g verb inflections), are often missing in non-primary acquisition Learners in the French immersion studies for example, appear able to learn resilient features from classroom communication but fail to learn fragile features It can be argued, therefore, that grammar instruction should focus on fragile features (Goldin-Meadow 1982)

Saliency

Saliency refers to the ease with which learners are able to perceive grammatical features in input (Sch midt: 1990) If it assumed that learners need to attend consciously to features in the input in order for acquisition to take place, it is reasonable to assume that features that are salient will be attended to, and thus acquired

more easily than those that are not For example, no is likely to be more salient than not

in input because it can be used by itself and frequently receives emphatic stress This

may explain why most learners of L2 English acquire no before not Learners may

benefit by receiving instruction directed at less salient items

Frequency

Ellis (1994) claims that there is mixed evidence to suggest that the frequency with

which different items appear in the input helps to determine their acquisition This is probably because frequency interacts with other factors such as saliency Highly frequent but non-salient and semantically complex forms such as articles ‘a’ and ‘the’

are notoriously difficult to learn On the other hand verb+ing, which tends to occur

frequently in input to beginners and which is more salient than simple verb, is learnt

easily and often overused Frequency by itself cannot be easily used as a criterion for selecting which structures require explicit instruction

Redundancy

A grammatical feature is considered redundant if it does not contribute any meaning to the message in which it occurs Obviously, therefore, whether a feature is or is not

redundant depends on the context

Some grammatical features are invariably redundant, however That is, they always occur in contexts where there is some other signal of the meanings they convey Third

person -s and auxiliary 'be' in the progressive tenses are examples Such features are

often learnt late or not at all They may benefit from being explicitly taught (Ellis: 1994)

Scope and reliability

Scope refers to how many items a particular rule applies to, while reliability refers

to the extent to which a rule is subject to exceptions According to Hulstijn and de Graaff (1994: 103), a rule is large in scope if it covers more than 50 cases, while it is high in reliability if it applies to close to 90 percent of cases For example, in English,

the plural -s rule can be considered high in scope (i.e there are many more than 50 nouns that add -s when they are pluralized) and is also high in reliability (i.e the rule

probably applies to more than 90 percent of nouns) It probably makes good sense to focus instruction on rules that are large in scope and high in reliability

Marked vs unmarked features

The notion of markedness is a somewhat vague one as there is often no clear basis for establishing which features are unmarked and which ones are marked However, the notion has been invoked to explain why certain features resist acquisition and also why learners are able to project beyond what they have been taught It is possible that instruction directed at marked grammatical properties such as passive constructions or object relative pronouns w i l l promote more efficient learning because it helps learners

to acquire features that they may not acquire naturally (Long 1988) Also, it may enable learners to acquire implicationally related unmarked structures It does not

follow, however, that instruction should always focus on the marked structures Preposition stranding (e.g.'Who did you give the book to?’) is considered marked in relation to pied-piping (e.g 'To whom did you give the book?') yet is acquired more easily, probably because it is more frequent in the input (Bardovi-Harlig: 1987)

Linguistic complexity

There is no simple definition of linguistic complexity It is helpful to make a clear distinction between items that are linguistically complex with regard to implicit learning (Krashen's 'acquisition') and those that are complex in terms of explicit learning The factors mentioned above in particular saliency, redundancy, and markedness may contribute to complexity in implicit learning However, in explicit

learning, other factors are involved, in particular, the difficulty of representing a rule in

a declarative, propositional form It is, for example, much easier to explain plural -s than articles

There are two competing views regarding the relationship between linguistic complexity, learning ability and grammar instruction One is that features which are formally simple (e.g involve the addition of a single element to a grammatical string) and which manifest clear form-function relationships (e.g a single form realizes a single meaning) are good candidates for form-focused instruction Examples are plural

-s and regular past tense -ed in English The alternative view is that grammar

instruction should focus on complex rules Hulstijn and De Graaff (1994), for example, argue that simple grammatical rules are likely to be salient in the input and thus can be learnt implicitly Complex rules, on the other hand, will not be so salient and so may not be learnt without considerable effort However, Hulstijn and De Graaff appear to conflate complexity with lack of saliency In fact, a feature may be simple but non-salient (e.g third-person-s) or it may be semantically complex and yet

relatively salient (e.g verb + ing)

Items vs rules

As Hulstijn and De Graaff (1994) point out some grammatical features can be

acquired as items or as rules For example, learners of L2 French may learn the gender

of nouns item by item or they may learn the rules for determining which noun is masculine and which is feminine Similarly, dative alternation in English may involve item learning (i.e learning which patterns are possible with particular verbs) or system le arn in g (i.e learning which kind of verb takes which pattern) Some grammatical features, however, necessarily entail system learning (e.g English articles) while some probably only involve item learning (e.g verb complementation in English)

Again, conflicting views are evident when it comes to determining which kind of feature is best suited to form-focused instruction Schwartz (1993) argues that items can be explicitly taught but not rules, at least where implicit knowledge is concerned Rules can only be learnt via positive evidence (i.e via communicative input) Hulstijn and De Graaff (1994), however, argue that explicit instruction should focus on rule learning rather than item learning

Congruence with L1 forms

According to White (1 9 9 1 ) a n d Harley (1989), certain target language structures that differ from the learners' L1 may prove difficult to acquire naturally This appears

to happen in cases of indeterminate structures such as adverb position, which display considerable cross-linguistic variation, and also in cases of structures which differ from the L1 but nevertheless manifest a crucial degree of similarity with it (e.g imparfait and passé composé for English-speaking learners of French or negatives for German learners of L2 English) However, not all non-congruent structures pose problems Japanese learners, for example, do not generally experience problems in learning English word order The inadequacies of predictions based on a contrastive analysis of the learners' L1 and the target language are now well documented It is necessary, therefore, to focus instruction not just on those target structures where transfer

is likely to take place

Developmental and variational features

Some grammatical feature are subject to processing constraints and are acquired in

a developmental sequence, while others can be acquired at any time providing the learner is sufficiently motivated to master target language norms Instruction directed

at developmental features will only work if the learner is psycho linguistically ready Instruction directed at variational features is not subject to such constraint s and, therefore, may have a better chance of succeeding However, Pienemann ( l 9 8 5 ) also suggests that the effects of instruction on variational features may not be durable The distinction between developmental and variational features is potentially an important one but, to date, there are no independent means for classifying grammatical features

A variational feature seems to be any feature that has been shown not to be developmental

These, then, are some of the factors which have been identified as of potential relevance in the choice of instructional content But it is not clear how they should be app li ed in designing a grammatical syllabus For a start, some factors would appear

to be in conflict with others This is not surprising as they are based on very different theoretical perspectives But it is clearly necessary to address the conflicts For example, how does one reconcile the requirements that features be linguistically simple and t h a t they be marked and therefore, potentially complex and functionally opaque? There is a need to balance teaching what is learnable, which will ensure the effectiveness of the instruction, with teaching what is problematic to the learner, which will ensure the efficiency of the instruction But we are a long way from knowing how

to achieve this balance

2.2 Grammar in different teaching methods

2.2.1 Grammar Translation Methods (GTM)

Grammar-translation method (GTM) was commonly used in the early twentieth century to teach foreign, mainly European languages This method was clearly rooted

in the formal teaching of Latin and Greek which prevailed in Europe for many centuries Richards, J C and Rodgers, T S (2001: 3) listed the major characteristics

of GTM in teaching grammar, “Grammar is taught deductively - that is, by presentation and study of grammar rules, which are then practiced through translation exercises In most Grammar-translation texts, a syllabus was followed for a sequencing of grammar points throughout a text, and there was an attempt to teach grammar in an organized and systematic way.”

2.2.2 Direct Method

This method emerged in mid-to-late nineteenth century, challenging the way that GTM focused exclusively on the written language By claiming to be a ‘natural’ method, the direct method prioritized oral skills, and while following a syllabus of grammar structures, rejected explicit grammar teaching The learners, it was supposed, picked up the grammar of their mother tongue, simply by being immersed in language (Richards, J C and Rodgers, T S., 2001: 9) They also point out that grammar was taught inductively and new teaching points were taught through modeling and practice

2.2.3 Audio-lingual Method (ALM)

The emergence of the Audio-lingual method resulted from the increased attention given to foreign language teaching in the United States toward the end of the 1950s As

a largely North America invention, the ALM stayed faithful to the Direct Method belief in the primacy of speech, but was even stricter in its rejection of grammar teaching It derived its theoretical base from behaviorist psychology, which considered language as simply a form of behavior, to be learned through the formation of correct habits The characteristics of grammar teaching can be summed up as the followings (cited in Brown, H D., 1994: 57)

 Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time

 Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills

 There is little or no grammatical explanation

 Grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive explanation The ALM enjoyed many years of popularity until it met the attack from many linguists Noam Chomsky rejected the structuralist approach to language description as

well as the behaviorist theory of language learning, “Language is not a habit structure Ordinary linguistic behavior charactically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy” (1966: 153) In fact, the ALM together with its pattern practice, drilling and memorization were not resulting in competence This referred to a view of learning that allowed for a conscious focus on grammar and that acknowledged the role of abstract mental processes in learning rather than defining learning simply in terms of habit formation (Richards, J.C and Rodgers, T.S., 2001: 60)

In a review of comprehension-based approach, Gary ( 1978: 146) identifies four

main advantages: (a) a cognitive advantage (i.e., better L2 learning), (b) an affective

advantage (i.e., the avoidance of the stress and embarrassment that often accompanies

trying to produce sentences in front of others), (c) an efficiency advantage (i.e., a

comprehension-based approach works equally well with low and high aptitude

learners), and (d) a utility advantage (i.e., teaching listening skills helps a learner

become functional in using the L2 and also enables a learner to continue their language study independently of the teacher)

2.2.5 Communicative Approach (CA)

The Communicative Approach (CA) has been known as a new way in teaching English since the early 1970s It was also seen as dissatisfaction with the GTM and the

ALM of many educators and linguists as these two methods cannot help learners to communicate in different situations appropriately According to American and British proponents (cited in Richards and Rodgers, 1986: 66), this approach aims to make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and develop procedures for the teaching of the four skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication

As for grammar teaching, Brown, H.D (1994: 245) states that grammatical structures might better be subsomed under various functional categories In CA, we pay considerably less attention to the overt presentation and discussion of grammatical rules than we traditionally did A great deal of use of authentic language is implied in Communicative Approach as we attempt to build fluency It is important to note, however, that fluency should never be encouraged at the expense of clear, unambiguous, direct communication And much more spontaneity is present in communicative classrooms Students are encouraged to deal with unrehearsed situations under the guidance, but not control of the teacher

2.2.6 Input-oriented approach

According to Ellis, R (1997: 88), it is perfectly possible to design grammar tasks that do not require learners to engage in production but instead focus their attention on specific structures and help them to understand the meanings which these structures realize—to induce them to undertake a k i n d of form-function analysis of the structure,

as this is exemplified in input that has been specially contrived to illustrate it For example, learners may be asked to listen to sentences (some of which are active and some passive in voice) and then select the appropriate form of a series of sentences to match the meanings displaced in pictures

Input-oriented grammar instruction receives support from current theories of L2 acquisition These theories suggest that it may be more effective to teach grammatical structures through carefully organizing the input than through trying to manipulate learners' output so that they produce the target structure One reason is that noticing a grammatical feature in input is not subject to the same constraints that govern

production of it in output Also, it is not clear how learners are supposed to l e a r n new structures through production It would seem more logical to teach new structures by getting learners to attend to them in the input Of course, production practice may still

be of value in helping learners gain greater control of structures which they know (i.e the structures which have entered their interlanguage) but which they use variably, alternating between target and non-target forms

2.2.6.1 Flooding approach

Learners are simply exposed to sentences or texts containing the target structure but nothing else is done to draw the learners' attention to it The assumption here is that the sheet frequency of the structure in the input will be sufficient to influence learning

2.2.6.2 Input enhancement approach

In input enhancement efforts are made to increase the prominence of the target structure in the input This can be achieved by either doctoring the input itself (e.g using bold print to highlight the structure) or by setting some task that requires learners

to attend to the structure (e.g asking questions that will lead the learners to pay careful attention to the structure)

2.2.7.2 Error-avoiding approach

There are, of course, a whole host of options where error avoiding is the aim A traditional distinction is between dr ill s and exercises The former are constructed in such a way as to allow only one correct answer, while the latter are more open-ended This distinction, however, is not truly dichotomous and, therefore, can perhaps best be represented as a continuum ranging from text manipulation to text creation

Text-manipulation activities are those that supply learners with the sentences they

will be requited to produce and ask them to operate on them in some limited way—fill

in the blank, make a choice from items supplied, substitute another item, transform them into some other pattern, and so on

Text-creation activities require learners to produce their own sentences containing

the target structure In their purest form, they are similar to communicative grammar tasks but d i f f e r from them in that learners are fully aware that the aim is to practise a specific structure Thus, they treat them as opportunities to practise rather than as opportunities to communicate For this reason, text-creation grammar tasks are much easier to construct than communicative grammar tasks, which, as we have already noted, are difficult to design in such away as to make the use of specific target structures essential

2.2.8 Presentation, practice, and production procedure

A variation on Audio-lingualism in British-based teaching and elsewhere is the procedure most often referred to as PPP, which stands for Presentation, Practice and Production In this procedure the teacher introduces a situation which contextualizes the language to be taught The language, too, is then presented The students now practise the language using accurate reproduction techniques such as choral repetition, individual repetition and cue-response drills These have similarities with the classic kind of Audio-lingual drill, but because they are contextualized by the situation that has been presented, they carry more meaning than a simple substitution drill Later the students, using the new language, make sentences of their own, and this is referred to

as production (Harmer, 1991: 80)

2.3 Interpretation tasks

2.3.1 What are interpretation tasks?

What does input practice involve? It involves "structured input tasks." These are

tasks that require students to (1) read or listen to input that has been specially designed

to include plentiful examples of the target structure and (2) consciously attend to the target structure and understand its meaning In one kind of structured input task, a text

is gapped by removing words containing the target structure and asking students to fill

in the missing words (Ellis, 1997: 151)

2.3.2 What do we use interpretation tasks for?

Interpretation tasks have the following goals (Ellis, 1997: 153)

First, to enable learners to identify the meanings realized by a specific grammatical feature (i.e to help them carry out a form-function mapping)

In this case, the goal is grammar comprehension, to be distinguished from what might be called message comprehension, which can take place without the learner having to attend to the grammatical form

To enhance input in such a way that learners are induced to notice a grammatical feature that otherwise they might ignore

In other words, interpretation tasks are designed to facilitate noticing

To enable learners to carry out the kind of cognitive comparison that has been hypothesized to be important for interlanguage development Learners need to be encouraged to notice the gap between the way a particular form works to convey meaning in the input and how they are using the same form or, alternatively, how they convey the meaning realized by the form when they communicate This can be achieved by drawing learners’ attention to the kinds of errors they typically make Interpretation tasks can be devised as sequences of activities that reflect these three operations That is, in the first instance, learners are required to comprehend input that

has been specially contrived to induce them to attend to the meaning of a specific grammatical structure, followed by a task that induces them to pay careful attention to

the important properties of the target feature and finally by a task that encourages the

kind of cognitive comparison they will have to perform ultimately on their own output

2.3.3 General principles for the design of interpretation tasks

Before any interpretation task is designed, the following principles must be taken

into consideration (Ellis, 1997: 155)

Learners should be required to process the target language, not to produce it

An interpretation activity consists of a stimulus to which learners must make some kind of response

The stimulus can take the form of spoken or written input

The response can take various forms (e.g true/ false, check a box, select the correct picture, draw a diagram and perform an action) but in each case the response can be either completely non-verbal or minimally verbal

The activities in the task can be helpfully sequenced to required first attention to meaning, then noticing the form and function of the grammatical structure and finally error identification

As a result of completing the task, the learners should have arrived at an understanding of how the target form is used to perform a particular function or functions in communication (i.e they must have undertaken a form-function mapping)

Learners can benefit from the opportunity to negotiate the input they hear or read Interpretation tasks should require learners to make a personal response as well as

a referential response

As a result of completing the task, learners should have been made aware of common learner errors involving the target structure as well as correct usage

It is important to recognize the limitations of such tasks Interpretation tasks offer teachers the chance to intervene directly in L2 acquisition But they do not guarantee that their intervention will be successful, as intake may not become part of implicit L2 knowledge

Finally, Ellis (1997) emphasized that he was not proposing that interpretation tasks should entirely replace production-based grammar teaching Such instruction may prove of value in improving learners' accuracy in the use of target language grammatical forms they have already acquired Neither was he suggesting that grammar teaching should constitute the entire content or even the major part of a language programme, if used, interpretation will need to be used in conjunction with

tasks which have no specific linguistic focus and are, instead, designed to cater for the

incidental acquisition of implicit knowledge After all, a complete language

programme will include a variety of tasks that invite both a focus on form and a focus

on message conveyance

Chapter 3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND ETHODOLOGY

3.1 Research goals and methods

As mentioned in chapter 1, the study aims (1) to find out the problems faced by

learners in learning grammar, (2) to examine the application of interpretation tasks in

teaching grammar in order to facilitate the students’ grammar learning process and (3)

to propose some pedagogical suggestions for teaching and learning grammar

For the research purposes, the study was carried out through an experimental

teaching in which grammar lessons were designed on the basis of input-based

approach The experimental teaching, on the one hand, tried to help students get to

know the new structures through plenty of interpretation tasks On the other hand, it supplied the students with a lot of grammatical input so that they could achieve better knowledge of how a new structure worked in English and apply the rule to make their own sentences

In addition to the experimental teaching, two sets of questionnaires were given to the students before and after the experimental teaching The first questionnaire mainly involved collecting data concerning students’ problems in learning grammar, the ways the students learned grammar and their suggestions to improve grammar learning and teaching The second questionnaire distributed after the experimental teaching focused

on the assessment of the effectiveness of interpretation tasks in the understanding and

application of new structures Similarly, the teachers’ questionnaire was to gather relevant information about learners’ difficulties in learning grammar and the solutions which the teachers had worked out in their teaching

Data collected from the three sets of questionnaires will show a better sight into grammar teaching and learning at UEFLC so that some pedagogical recommendations can be made to better the situation

the International Express coursebooks, which were written on business matters Many

of them were university and college students, a few of them were high school and secondary students and a small number of them were working people They studied English for different purposes For example, some of them wanted to review what they had learned before, a few of them wanted to get better jobs, and the others needed to improve their English skills before taking the TOEIC course and a small number of them had no goal in learning general English

Fifteen teachers were selected randomly among 28 teachers at the foreign-language center of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Education They were young and enthusiastic Many of them were freelance English teachers who only worked for foreign language centers, some of them were high school teachers, a few of them taught English at university and college and a small number of them were graduates Most of them had experience in English teaching

3.2.2 Measurement Instruments

3.2.2.1 Questionnaires

According to Brown (2001: 6), questionnaires are any written instruments that present respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are to react either by writing out their answers or selecting from among existing answers Questionnaires are particularly efficient for gathering data on a large-scale basis

One of the strengths of questionnaires is that it is less time-consuming for the

researchers In fact, “surveys and questionnaires are useful ways of gathering

information about affective dimensions of teaching and learning such as beliefs, attitudes, motivation, and preferences and enable a teacher to collect a large amount

of information relatively quickly” (Richard :1996) Nowadays questionnaires are used

mostly in many branches of applied linguistics such as in language surveys, the study

of attitudes and motivation

Three different questionnaires were used to investigate the two groups: teachers and students There were two questionnaires for the students: one distributed before the experimental teaching and the other collected after the experimental teaching The third questionnaire was done for teachers

3.2.2.1.1 Students’ questionnaire before the experimental teaching

The first questionnaire with 11 items is divided into two parts Part I is to get background information about students’ characteristics including their gender and age while part II consists of the main questions of the survey For all the questions, except question 11 which requires the subjects to give their own recommendations on how to improve the teaching and learning grammar at the center, the respondents are asked to select their answers from the available opinions or to state their own ideas in the extra space “Other opinions” in case they find none of the choices applicable to them

The Vietnamese version of the first questionnaire can be found in appendix A and the English one can be found in appendix B Below is a summary of the contents of the questionnaire

Item 1 is about students’ gender

Item 2 is about students’ age

Item 3 is about how long they have learnt English

Item 4 is about their purpose of learning English

Item 5 is about their assessment of their grammar knowledge

Item 6 is about how often they learn grammar

Item 7 is about their comments on grammar

Item 8 is about their problems in learning grammar with their coursebook

Item 9 is about their weaknesses in learning grammar

Item 10 is about their ways of practising grammar

Item 11 is to gather their recommendations to improve the situation of teaching and learning grammar at UEFLC

3.2.2.1.2 Students’ questionnaire after the experimental teaching

The second questionnaire with 6 items is divided into two parts Part I is to get background information about the students’ characteristics including their gender and

age while part II consists of the main questions of the survey

Item 1 is about students’ gender

Item 2 is about students’ age

Item 3 is about their evaluation of interpretation tasks to help them understand form and meaning of a new structure

Item 4 is about their evaluation of interpretation tasks to arouse their interest in learning grammar

Item 5 is about their evaluation of the applicability of interpretation tasks

3.2.2.1.3 Teachers’ questionnaires

The questionnaire consists of 11 questions and is given to the teachers in order to find out their techniques in teaching grammar, their points of view on the teaching conditions and the difficulties they encountered in the process of teaching grammar It has two parts Part I deal with getting background information about the teachers’ characteristics concerning their gender, age, teaching experience and their highest teaching qualifications As the design of the teacher questionnaire is similar to that of the student questionnaire, the teachers are also expected to do the same The main points of the questionnaire are presented as follows:

Item 1 is about teachers’ gender

Item 2 is about their age

Item 3 is about their teaching experience

Item 4 is about their highest qualifications

Item 5 is what they know about the students’ difficulties with the coursebook in learning grammar

Item 6 is about what they know about the students’ weaknesses in learning grammar

Item 7 is about their evaluation of the efficiency of interpretation tasks to help students understand form and meaning of a new structure

Item 8 is about their evaluation of the efficiency of interpretation tasks to arouse students’ interest in learning grammar

Item 9 is about their evaluation of the applicability of interpretation tasks

Item 10 is about their recommendations to improve the situation of teaching and learning grammar at UEFLC

3.2.2.2 Interviews

According to Brown (2001: 78), interviews are relatively flexible and personal, and provide for relatively rich data in written or spoken forms The flexibility of interviews allows the interviewer to explore new avenues of opinion in ways that a questionnaire does not; thus interviews seem better suited to exploratory tasks The personal nature

of interviews may encourage interviewees to be more open and willing to express tentative or exploratory opinions, ideas, and speculation that would not come out on a questionnaire The richness of interview data also leads to more possibilities in terms

of exploring the issues involved

Therefore, in order to ensure the validity of this research, interviews to teachers were done with 15 teachers The topics of the interviews focused on teachers’ opinions

of their students’ problems in learning grammar, their comments on grammar tasks in

the International Express coursebook and their judgements about the grammar tasks

recommended by the researcher

The responses of the interviewees were noted and recorded carefully and with permission The teachers participating in the interviews were also informed of the objectives of the informal talks so that they could feel free when answering the questions

3.2.2.3 Experimental teaching

3.2.2.3.1 Experimental teaching outline

Week Elementary level (Class A2) Low-intermediate level (Class B3)

1 Unit 5: Mass and count nouns Unit 1: Present simple and present

continuous

2 Unit 5: How much / how many Unit 1: Action and state verbs

3 Unit 5:Some/ any/ a lot of/ much/

many

Unit 2: Past simple and present perfect simple review

4 Unit 6: Comparative adjectives Unit 2: Used to + infinitive

5 Unit 6: Superlative adjectives Unit 2: Subject and object questions

6 Unit 7: Present continuous tense Unit 3: Relative clauses

7 Unit 8: Simple future tense Unit 3: Relative clauses

The elementary level has four classes: A1,A2, A3 and A4 The pre-intermediate level consists of four classes: A5, A6, B1 and B2 The intermediate level includes B3, B4, B5 and B6.The upper-intermediate level has four classes C1, C2, C3 and C4

3.2.2.3.2 Materials

The series of International Express coursebooks by Keith Harding and Liz Taylor

were selected as the instructional materials for those elementary and low-intermediate classes They were published by Oxford University Press in 2006 Those books have a purpose of equipping the learners with language knowledge such as pronunciation and grammar as well as improving the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Grammar is taught during eight-week courses together with the four skills in order that the students will not feel bored with the lessons

On the one hand, the teacher has to depend on the International Express

coursebook to make the lesson plans On the other hand, he or she can use other coursebooks or reference books to make their lessons more effective and interesting

The reference books chosen for the experimental teaching course were Focus in

Grammar: An Integrated Skill Approach and Grammar Express published by Pearson

Longman in 2006 and 2002 respectively The teacher exploited plenty of grammar tasks for his or her lessons in those books

3.2.2.3.3 Experimental teaching process

Experimental classes were conducted by the researcher from March 16th to May

12th, 2009 Two classes participated in the experimental process The first one was B3 class, at low intermediate level and the second one was A2 class, at elementary level The results from these experimental classes were analysed in order to check the applicability of interpretation tasks in teaching grammar Interpretation tasks were evaluated in three different aspects: firstly, whether they were effective in understanding form and meaning of a new structure, secondly whether they were interesting to do and finally whether they were easy to do Seven kinds of interpretation tasks were introduced in the experimental teaching process:

1 Looking at a picture and choosing a sentence to describe it

2 Reading the questions/ information and circling the correct sentences

3 Giving the correct word form to complete the sentences

4 Matching the information in column A with that in column B

5 Reading the text / information and deciding whether the sentences are true or false

6 Underlining the words or phrases then checking the correct information

7 Listening and checking the correct information

During the experimental process, the teacher followed the PPP procedure to conduct grammar lessons and these interpretation tasks were employed in the practice stage Therefore, these tasks could be considered as additional tasks to support and facilitate the process of learning and teaching grammar

3.3 Data collection procedure

The first student questionnaire was handed out to the students of six evening classes

at UEFLC which included all the four levels: elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate This questionnaire focused on finding the students’ difficulties in learning grammar as well as their opinions of how to better the situation of teaching and learning grammar at UEFLC On the day of the questionnaire delivery, the researcher was present in these classes in order to help students straighten

out any ambiguity The students were asked to answer the questionnaire within 20 minutes right in class Totally 135 students’ questionnaires and 18 teachers’ questionnaires were distributed and recollected As for teachers’ questionnaires, because there was not enough time for the teachers to answer them at the teacher’s lounge, they took them home and turned them in later All 15 returned questionnaires from the teachers met the requirements of questionnaire completion whereas 127 of the learner questionnaires did Data analysis, thus, will only be based on those questionnaires

After seven weeks of experimental lessons, the second students’ questionnaire was handed out to the students of two classes which were taught by the researcher This questionnaire focused on the students’ evaluation of the new approach There were totally 58 questionnaires collected for data analysis

This chapter has presented the research design and methodology, described the subjects involved in the study, the experimental teaching, and the collection of data The data analysis and discussion of the findings will be presented in the next chapter