Teaching english grammar to 10th graders at nguyen du specialized school in dak lak province the application of contrastive analysis in grammar teaching

The results of these instruments help to find out: 1 the real situation of teaching and learning English grammar to the 10th graders at NDSUS and 2 if Contrastive analysis really works i

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG HẠNH

AT NGUYEN DU SPECIALIZED SCHOOL IN DAK LAK PROVINCE – THE APPLICATION OF CONTRASTIVE

ANALYSIS IN GRAMMAR TEACHING

A Thesis in Master of Arts Major: TESOL

Code: 5 07 02

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL

Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ KIỀU THU, PH.D

HO CHI MINH CITY- 2008

TEACHING

in terms of the statement of Requirements for theses in Master’s Programmes issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City March 12th, 2008

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG HẠNH

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

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I would also like to thank all of my teachers of TESOL 2004 at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, HCM City, for their interesting lectures and whole-hearted guidance from which I greatly benefited in my writing this thesis

I would also like to thank the English staff at Nguyen Du specialized secondary School in DakLak Province for their help with the data collection for the study; all of the students participating in the study for their enthusiastic cooperation; and all of my friends and colleagues for their precious advice, support and encouragement

Upper-Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support in completing this work

ABSTRACT

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The data for the research were mainly collected by means of questionnaires for

232 10th graders and 10 teachers of English at NDSUS, 2 classroom observations, interviews done with 42 students, tests and a quasi-experiment The results of these instruments help to find out: (1) the real situation of teaching and learning English grammar to the 10th graders at NDSUS and (2) if Contrastive analysis really works in helping students realize the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese and thus facilitates the teaching and learning of English grammar

The results of the study showed that grammar was paid much attention to in the process of teaching and learning English at NDSUS because this component was very important in helping students pass their exams with grammar-based tasks The second revelation was that grammar was both taught deductively and inductively In addition, most of the students expressed their wish to study grammar actively and to find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese structures However, most of the teachers were not fully aware of the usefulness of Contrastive Analysis in teaching and learning English grammar In fact, through the results of the experimental teaching, Contrastive analysis proved to be very useful as it could limit errors made by Vietnamese students when learning the Reported Speech, Conditional sentences and the Passive voice

Some practical recommendations were introduced to make Contrastive Analysis

be most suitably and efficiently exploited for the tenth graders

TABLE OF CONTENTS page

iv

List of tables ix

List of figure ix

List of abbreviations x

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 The problem 1

1.2 Background to the study 3

1.3 Statement of purpose 4

1.4 Significance of the Study 4

1.5 Limitations and delimitations 5

1.6 Organization of the thesis 5

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Contrastive analysis 7

2.1.1 An overview of Contrastive Analysis 7

2.1.2 An overview of the Vietnamese language and English language 8

2.1.3 Language transfer 10

2.1.4 How to compare two grammatical structures 11

2.1.4.1 The definition of Grammar 11

2.1.4.2 Grammatical structure, a system of habit 12

2.1.4.3 Problems in learning a foreign grammatical structure 12

2.1.4.4 Procedures in comparing two grammatical structures 14

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2.1.5.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese Reported

speech 23

2.1.6 Conditional sentences 24

2.1.6.1 English Conditional sentences 24

2.1.6.2 Vietnamese Conditional sentences 24

2.1.6.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese Conditional sentences 26

2.1.7 Passive voice 27

2.1.7.1 English Passive voice 27

2.1.7.2 Vietnamese Passive voice 29

2.1.7.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese Passive voice 30

2.2 A review of teaching methods and their application in grammar teaching 30

2.3 Teaching teenagers 34

2.3.1 Intellectual development 34

2.3.2 Factors influencing learners’ process in grammar lessons 34

2.4 Summary 35

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 36

3.1 Hypothesis 36

3.2 Research questions 36

3.3 Research design 36

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3.3.2.3 Quasi-experiment 42

3.4 Summary 44

Chapter IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 45

4.1 Data analysis 45

4.1.1 Responses to the questionnaires 46

4.1.1.1 Questionnaire for students 46

4.1.1.2 Questionnaire for teachers 58

4.1.2 Results from the classroom observation 66

4.1.3 The interviews 67

4.1.4 The Quasi-experiment 69

4.2 Findings 74

4.2.1 The real situation of teaching and learning English grammar at NDSUS 74

4.2.2 The application of contrastive analysis 76

4.2.3 The students’ expectation of grammar lessons 77

Chapter V: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 79

5.1 Conclusions 79

5.2 Suggestions 81

BIBLIOGRAPHY 85

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Questionnaire for students 89

Appendix 2: Questionnaire for teachers 95

Appendix 3A, 3B: Observation evaluation forms 99

Appendix 4: Questions for interviewing students 108

Appendix 5: The first test 110

Appendix 6A, 6a, 6B, 6b, 6C and 6c: lesson plans of the Language focus sections of units 8, 10 and 11 117

Appendix 7: The second test 135

LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Three types of conditional sentences 24

Table 2.2: Passive forms of an ordinary verb 27

Table 3.1: Students’ studying time of English 38

Table 3.2: The results of the English test at the beginning of the new school year 42

Table 4.1: The students’ attitude to learning English grammar 47

Table 4.2: The reasons why the students do not like learning English grammar 47

Table 4.3: The reasons why the students learn English grammar 48

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Table 4.4: Students’ assessment of English grammar lessons 51

Table 4.5: Activities the students expect in a grammar class 55

Table 4.6: The teachers’ opinions on the nature of language teaching 58

Table 4.7: The teachers’ belief about grammar teaching 59

Table 4.8: Teachers’ awareness of English and Vietnamese Reported Speech 63

Table 4.9: Teachers’ ideas of English and Vietnamese Conditional sentences 64

Table 4.10: Teachers’ awareness of the English and Vietnamese Passive voice 65

Table 4.11 Comparison of the test results of the 1st test and the 2nd test 70

LIST OF FIGURE Figure 4.1: Comparison of Students’ mean score of the 1st test and 2nd test 71

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

For the purpose of simplification and convenience in reference, the following abbreviations are utilized in the thesis:

NDSUS Nguyen Du Specialized Upper Secondary School

T Teacher

Ss Students TWC Teacher With the whole Class

GW Groupwork

PW Pairwork L1 The first language (Vietnamese)

ix

L2 The second language (English)

x

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 The problem

English has proven itself to be one of the most popular languages in the world and thus it is a compulsory subject at high school Students must complete at least seven years of studying English before graduating from high school where the four English skills are not equally focused (reading and writing skills outweigh speaking and listening ones) To be more precise, the component of Grammar is strongly emphasized In fact, it cannot be denied that if one wants to speak or write well in English, one has to master grammar rules Richards, J., (1992) shows the importance of grammar through the following definition:

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 It usually takes into account the meanings and the functions these sentences have in the overall system of the language It may or may not include the description of the sounds of language

Consequently, although it is only a component not a skill among the four basic skills (reading, listening, reading and writing) that any learner must master, grammar plays a very important role in the learner’s successful acquisition of English That is the reason why grammar is paid a lot of attention to by most teachers and students, especially those at high school Teachers want to help students pass important exams consisting of grammar-task tests So it seems that the main purpose of learning English at high school from urban schools to rural ones is to grasp as many grammatical structures

as possible Moreover, the Vietnamese examination system at every level makes students tend to learn English not so communicatively Therefore, the traditional approach (grammar-translation approach) still has a stable position in the researcher’s school, Nguyen Du Specialized Upper Secondary School (NDSUS) Meanwhile, the application

of contrastive analysis (CA) to grammar lessons has been said to help students recognize the differences and similarities of grammar rules between English and Vietnamese, resulting in the better and quicker ability of grasping grammar rules and limiting grammar errors In fact, according to Lado (1957), contrastive analysis could predict and

describe the patterns that would cause difficulty in learning, and those that would not cause difficulty, by systematically comparing the language and culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student Besides, Fries (1945) points out that the most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native

language of the learner However, comparative analysis was later considered to be “very

superficial” and “of little or no help at all in the learning task” (Wardhaugh, 1970) He argues: “all natural languages have a great deal in common so that anyone who has learned one language already knows a great deal about any other language he must learn Not only does he know a great deal about the other language even before he begins to learn it, but the deep structures of both languages are very much alike, so that the actual differences between the two languages are really quite superficial.” Considering contrastive analysis “superficial” in teaching and learning a foreign language seems to be reasonable in the case the mother tongue and the target language share a great deal of things in common Does this assumption sound persuasive when the mother language and the target one have many differences? It cannot be denied Vietnamese and English greatly differ from each other And many Vietnamese students are reported to habitually make errors in English due to the interference of Vietnamese So can contrastive analysis prove itself to be useful when applied to English grammar teaching and learning in Vietnam?

Thus, it is necessary to carry out an empirical investigation into teaching grammar with the support of contrastive Analysis As the sample of the thesis focuses on the 10th

graders, the grammatical issues in the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” are analyzed Of all grammatical matters presented in the new English textbook, the Reported speech, Conditional sentences and the Passive voice are recommended This investigation is to find out if contrastive analysis works in helping learners of English as

a foreign language gain good knowledge of grammar rules And hopefully it may be helpful for both teachers and learners of the English language

1.2 Background to the study

1.2.1 English at NDSUS

NDSUS in Daklak province was founded in 1996 As a specialized school, both teachers and students are carefully selected; i.e., the teachers are good at their majors and the students have to take part in a very tough entrance exam before becoming students in this school English and French are taught in this school but the former always has a better position than the latter

There are 10 classes of grade 10 in this school Class 10CA and 10AP study the English advanced textbooks because the students in these classes specialize in English The others use the Standard English textbooks English subject occupies 9 periods a week in the timetable of the students of class 10A and 10AP, and 3 periods a week in classes 10 A1, 10A2, 10L, 10H, 10 T, 10TT, 10V and 10S

1.2.2 Aims of the syllabus

The new English text book has been introduced since 2006, which means that only the 10th graders have the chance to study the new textbooks with new content and the emphasis on the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) There are

16 theme - based units and 6 “test yourself” sections in this textbook Each unit has five sections namely reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus The old edition only focuses on the reading skill, especially on the component of grammar Therefore, the coming of the new edition, in spite of some unavoidable shortcomings, has brought to students, especially students in remote areas, chances to study more thoroughly with the focus on communicative competence

1.2.3 Means of assessment

The assessment for English at NDSUS is one oral test, three fifteen - minute written tests, two one-period written tests (45minutes) and one final written test (45 minutes) in each semester Most of the tests are multiple-choice ones The fifteen-minute tests focus on skills alternatively; the one-period tests and the final tests stress on grammar, vocabulary and reading tasks Certainly, the students are not allowed to use any kinds of materials during testing time

1.2.4 Teaching and learning facilities at NDSUS

NDSUS is the most well-equipped school in Daklak Province with a LAN network, two computer rooms, three projectors, one lab-room, one digital projector, three televisions and five CD players The library has 15 computers and the students are

allowed to buy library cards for internet at cheap price However, these facilities do not seem much with 30 classes (more than 1000 students) Thus, the teachers and the

students have to register in advance if they want to use these things

1.3 Statement of purpose

It is required that students master grammatical rules in the most efficient way As a result, the objectives of this study are, (1) to identify the situation of English learning and teaching as a main subject for students at grade 10 at NDSUS in Dak Lak province, (2) to look into the feasibility and effectiveness of applying contrastive analysis to the teaching and learning of English grammar at NDSUS

1.4 Significance of the Study

As little research has been done on the field of applying contrastive analysis to teaching and learning English grammar, this study hopes to be a springboard for future research in the future Hopefully, this study can also bring a new insight of the usefulness

of contrastive analysis that seems to be ignored by many teachers

1.5 Limitations and delimitations This study confined itself to the teaching of three grammatical structures namely

the Reported Speech, Conditional sentences and the Passive voice, which are presented

in the textbook Due to the lack of time and conditions, the study just investigates the students presently studying at the 10th form at NDSUS The purposive sampling procedure limits the generalizability of the findings As a matter of fact, the study will not be generalizable to the teaching and learning English grammar of all students at NDSUS (the 11th and 12th form of NDSUS are learning the old English Textbooks) and the findings and implications for teaching and learning suggested in this thesis are

mainly useful to the teachers and students who are using the new textbooks “English 10”

Moreover, the performance of the teachers and the students during the observations should have been recorded on video This could not happen as the teachers and the students refused to be recorded

1.6 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters Chapter one offers the introduction including the problem, the background to the study, the statement of purpose, the significance of the study and limitations and delimitations of the study

Chapter II presents a review of the literature and research relevant to this study It includes nine parts: an overview of the Vietnamese language and English language; an overview of contrastive linguistics; language transfer; how to compare English and Vietnamese grammatical structures; Reported Speech; Conditional sentences; the Passive voice; grammar teaching; and special features of teaching teenagers

Chapter III deals with the design and methodology of the study The procedures and techniques which consist of questionnaires for teachers and students, interview, class observations and test results are described clearly

Chapter IV discusses and fully analyses the questionnaire and interview responses, class observations and test results

Finally, Chapter V provides a summary and conclusion of the study with recommendations for improving the teaching and learning English grammar at NDSUS The last section of this chapter is the suggestions for further researches

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to understand the matters concerning the study, first of all, it is necessary

to have an overview of Contrastive Analysis, the Vietnamese language and English language, language transfer and how to compare two grammatical structures Then, some relevant literature on Reported speech, Conditional sentences and the Passive voice are presented A review of teaching methods and their application in grammar teaching as well as some factors concerning teaching teenagers are also mentioned in this chapter

2.1 CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

2.1.1 AN OVERVIEW OF CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

Contrastive Analysis or simply CA is the comparison of the linguistic systems of two languages, for example the sound system or the grammatical system Contrastive Analysis was developed and practiced in the 1950s and 1960s, as an application of STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS to language teaching, and is based on the following assumptions:

a The main difficulties in learning a new language are caused by interference from the first language

b These difficulties can be predicted by contrastive analysis

c Teaching materials can make use of contrastive analysis to reduce the effects

of interference (Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics,

p.83) Fries (1945) also confirmed that the most effective materials were based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner

Lado (1957) made this view clearer when saying that the comparison between native and foreign language offers the key to ease or difficulty in foreign language learning

Carl James (1980) also stated that CA is always concerned with a pair of languages and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared

2.1.2 AN OVERVIEW OF THE VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE

In order to have an overview of the matter studied in the thesis some information

about the Vietnamese language and the English language is going to be presented in this part First, some characteristics of the Vietnamese language and its roles in the life of Vietnamese people are shown Following is a summary of features of the English language

• The Vietnamese language

The Vietnamese language is considered the national and official language of

Vietnam (There are about fifty-four ethnic groups in Vietnam.) Bright (1992) stated that

the Vietnamese language is a tonal language but it is considered a member of the Asiatic language family and has syntactical similarities to the nontonal Mon- Khmer

Austro-languages of this group (Mon: spoken in Burma; Khmer: spoken in Cambodia) Many

Chinese words and phrases were introduced into the Vietnamese vocabulary after Vietnam had suffered one thousand years of Chinese dominance (from 111 BC to 939 AD) In the fourteenth century, the Nom script appeared and developed And in the seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionaries came to Vietnam to preach the doctrine of Catholicism to the Vietnamese people Finding the difficulties in using the current Vietnamese language, Jesuits wrote a lot of documents in which many Vietnamese words were written in Roman script Among these people was Alexandre de Rhodes, whose

two famous books are Dictionarivm annamiticvm, lvsitanvm, et latinvm; and Cathechimvs The Vietnamese Roman script has developed and after the August

Revolution 1945, it has officially been used in Vietnam In short, during the Chinese and French domination times, the Vietnamese tried to fight against both the invaders’ occupation and their assimilation of languages However, the vestige of French,

especially Chinese still exists through a large number of loan-words Despite these facts, Vietnamese remains a distinct language with its own characteristics

Vietnamese is a tone language; that is, pitch changes distinguish word meaning Most words in Vietnamese consist of only one syllable and there are fewer consonants than in English and there are no consonant clusters On the other hand, the Vietnamese vowel system makes a large number of distinctions Significantly, Vietnamese is the only language in Indo-China using a Romanized alphabet Moreover, Vietnamese is an isolating language, i.e., all the words are invariable, therefore, grammatical meanings and relations are primarily expressed by word order or function words Last but not least, Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language in which the border between its syllables coincides with that of its morphemes Basically it is a syllable-timed language The syllable is the most obvious unit for the native speaker and usually has meaning or potential meaning, therefore, Vietnamese is quite different from other languages like English, Chinese or French

•The English language

The English is the native or official language of one fifth of the earth’s land surface And at present it is one of the most international languages in the world ranging from trade, politics to scholarship or scientific research It has some following features: The English language belongs to the West Germanic subgroup of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family

First, the structural units of the English language are the word and the sentence Other units are the morpheme, which is the smallest unit of the language including free morphemes and bound ones The words in English are divided into nine classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections A phrase is a group of words having a grammatical relationship to each other and operates as an element in a clause structure Coming between the phrase and the sentence is the clause which must always contain a verb The sentence, the highest grammatical level in the grammatical hierarchy, consists of one or more clauses and in writing marked off by a capital letter at the beginning and a full stop at the end Second, The English language tends to distribute the word stress to the root syllable or as near to its beginning as possible Besides, English in contrast with Vietnamese is strongly

inflectional (the division of its verbs into irregular and regular and so on) Finally, English is a stressed-time language in which the stressed syllables recur at a regular interval of time, regardless of the number of intervening unstressed syllables Especially, intonation plays a great part in English phonology and grammar

Therefore, it can be easily seen that the Vietnamese language finds itself quite different from the English one This assumption is confirmed by Nguyen Luong Ngoc (1997) In his doctoral thesis, he pointed out a lot of differences between English and Vietnamese grammar: the differentiation of Vietnamese words from groups is much more complex than that of English corresponding ones Meanwhile the relationship of English morphemes in connection with units of different levels is much more complex than that of Vietnamese Besides, the primary distinction of English tense system is between present, past, future, while in Vietnamese it is between marked and unmarked and so on Going further into grammar problems, Nguyen Xuan Quang (1999) also pointed out some of the Vietnamese people’ difficulties in understanding and applying some concepts in English grammar system such as, difficulties in word order; in expressing time, tense, and aspect; in using gerund or infinitive forms in English; in

structures with direct and indirect objects; in the impersonal IT; in English articles; in

adjectival comparison; in subordinate clause; etc

2.1.3 LANGUAGE TRANSFER

There are two types of language transfer: negative and positive transfer Lado (1957) called grammatical structure a “system of habits”, which is based on laws of language learning such as exercise familiarity of response In learning a second language, the learner has already acquired a language system, a fixed set of habits and values which may be a source of interference or negative transfer Therefore, most of the difficult areas

of the L2 are those that differ most from the L1 (negative transfer), and the areas that are most similar to the native language are the easiest ones (positive transfer) In another way, positive transfer involves the facilitation of subsequent learning, i.e., the learner will find it easy to produce or receive a similar feature between two languages For example, both French and English have the word “table”, which can have the same meaning in both languages Contrariwise, negative transfer impedes it and may easily lead to making errors For example, a French learner of English may produce the

incorrect sentence I am here since Monday instead of I have been here since Monday because of the transfer of the French pattern Je suis ici depuis lundi (“I’m here since Monday”) (Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, p.205)

In fact, the contrastive analysis approach of comparing two languages to predict interference shows a partial picture of L2 learning According to Selinker (1992), learners fall back on structures of L1 patterns in order to get a message across and this is also a communication strategy which helps them to get over the deficiencies of L2

2.1.4 HOW TO COMPARE TWO GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES 2.1.4.1 The definition of Grammar

Richards, J., and others (1992, p.161) have mentioned 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 It usually takes into account the meanings and the functions these sentences have in the overall system of the language It may or may not include the description of the sounds of language

2.1.4.2 Grammatical structure, a system of habit

Lado (1957:p.58) confirmed that the use of a grammatical structure by a speaker depends heavily on habit and that we simply do not realize the strength and the complexity of the habit system we have acquired through all the years of daily use of our native language

2.1.4.3 Problems in learning a foreign grammatical structure

Lado (1957) pointed out six main factors leading to the learner’s problems in learning a foreign grammatical structure: transfer; similarity and difference as determiners of ease and difficulty; production versus recognition; what constitutes

‘difference’ and therefore difficulty as to form; what constitutes ‘difference’ and therefore difficulty as to meaning and problems caused by differences in distribution

™ Transfer

The learner tends to transfer the sentence forms, modification devices, the

number, gender and case patterns of his native language Unluckily, this transfer occurs

so subtly that the learner is not even aware of it unless it is called to his intention in specific instances

™ Similarity and difference as determiners of ease and difficulty

The similarity and difference between languages and the learner’s habits of

transferring his native language structures to the foreign language result in the major source of ease or difficulty in learning the structure of a foreign language Those structures that are similar will be easy to learn because they will be transferred and may function satisfactorily in the foreign language and vice versa

™ Production versus recognition

The effects of native language transfer are not identical when the learner speaks the foreign language and when he listens to it When he speaks he chooses his meanings and then produces the forms that in the native language would signals those meanings In listening, he hears the forms and attaches the meanings they would have in his native

language

™ What constitutes ‘difference’ and therefore difficulty as to form

When a grammatical meaning is the same in two languages, for example,

‘modifier’, ‘subject’, ‘statement’, the form that signals it may be different on two levels The lesser difference remains within the same ‘medium’ for example function word, inflection, word order, to be found between different items: a different function word, a different inflectional ending, or a different word order The greater differences between two languages go from one medium in one language to a different medium in the other language; for example, function words in the native language but inflection in the foreign language, or word order in one language but a function word in the other, etc

™ What constitutes ‘difference’ and therefore difficulty as to meaning

Lado (1957) stated that in some cases, the meaning signals in the two languages

are in some way equivalent even if not identical The difficulties in such cases depend on differences in the formal devices used in the two languages to signal the same meanings However, there are cases in which a grammatical meaning in one of the languages cannot

be considered the same as any grammatical meaning in the other language The difference in two grammatical systems will constitute a learning burden and will therefore be part of our attempt to predict and describe problems in learning a foreign language

™ Problems caused by differences in distribution

Lado (1957:p.66) concluded that sometimes a structure that constitutes no particular difficulty as to meaning and form turns out to be a problem because of different distribution between two languages

2.1.4.4 Procedures in comparing two grammatical structures Lado (1957:p.67) presented clearly the procedures in comparing two

The grammatical structure of a language is best attested in spoken

communication among the speakers of a language community Therefore, dialect differences and problems of style should be paid attention to in the comparison of the two languages According to Jacek Fisiak (1990), complete contrastive grammars do not exist What we have are partial, unidirectional and selective descriptions, the majority of which focus on the syntactic level, or rather on subsystems of the syntactic level Pragmatics has been virtually neglected

2.1.4.5 Necessity of validating the results of the Theoretical comparative analysis

According to Lado (1957: p.72), the list of problems resulting from the comparison of the foreign language with the native language will be the most significant list for teaching, testing, research, and understanding Yet, it must be considered a list of

hypothetical problems until final validation is achieved by checking it against the actual speech of students The final check will show in some instances that a problem was not adequately analyzed and may be more of a problem than predicted

2.1.5 Reported Speech

2.1.5.1 English Reported speech

According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics, the style used in writing to report what a speaker actually said, without

introducing any grammatical changes In English the speaker’s words may be written between quotation marks For example:

Actual utterance: “you are a thief.”

Direct speech: He said “you are a thief.”

This may be contrasted with indirect speech also called reported speech, in which the speaker’s words are not reported as they were actually said but are reported,

for example, in the form of a that clause For example: He said that you were a thief

According to Collins Cobuild (1990), in ordinary conversation, we use report structures much more often than quote structures This is because we usually do not know, or cannot remember the exact words that someone has said Quote structures are mainly used in written stories Whereas, report structures can be used to report almost any kind of thought because thoughts do not usually exist in the form of words

™ Basic rules for indirect speech

Swan (1995) presents some basic rules for indirect speech

•Change of situation

Words that are spoken or thought in one place by one person may be reported in another place at a different time, and perhaps by another person Because of this there are often grammatical differences between direct and indirect speech

Bill (on Saturday evening): I don’t like this party I want to go home now

Peter (on Sunday morning): Bill said that he didn’t like the party, and he wanted to

go home right away

•Pronoun

A change of speaker may mean a change of pronoun In the example above, Bill

says I to refer to himself Peter, talking about what Bill said, naturally uses he

•‘here and now’ words

A change of place and time may mean changing words like here, this, now, today, last, next Peter, reporting what Bill said, does not use this and now because he is no

longer at the party

Bill said that he didn’t like the party (NOT Bill said that he didn’t like this party)

• Tenses

A change of time may mean a change of tense: the person reporting uses tenses that relate to the time when he/ she is making the report, not to the time when the original words were used

Bill said that he didn’t like the party (NOT Bill said that he doesn’t like the party)

So after past reporting verbs, the verbs of the original speech are usually ‘back

shifted’-made more past

Original words Reported words

Will you marry me? I asked him if he would marry me

You look nice I told her she looked nice

I can’t swim He pretended he couldn’t swim

I’m learning French She said that she was learning French

I’ve forgotten He said he had forgotten

John phoned She told me that John (had) phoned

After present, future and present perfect reporting verbs, tenses are usually the same as in the original (because there is no important change of time)

He says he doesn’t want to play any more

• Dropping that

The conjunction that is often dropped, especially after common reporting verbs (e.g say, think) in informal speech

She said that she’d had enough

That cannot be dropped after certain verbs (e.g reply, telegraph, shout) and it is

not usually dropped after nouns

•Questions and answers

In reported questions the subject normally comes before the verb in standard

English, and auxiliary do is not used (except in negative questions- She asked why he didn’t work harder) The same structure is used for reporting the answers to questions,

and in other uses of questions-word clauses

He wanted to know when I was leaving (NOT….when was I leaving.)

Question marks are not used in reported questions

Yes/ no questions are reported with if/ whether

I don’t know if/ whether I can help you

Say and Tell are not used to report questions but can introduce the answers to

questions

Please say whether you want to go to the town centre

• Actions: promises, orders, requests, advice etc

Speech relating to actions (e.g promises, orders, requests, advice and suggestions)

is often reported with infinitives, or object + infinitive

He promised to write

I told Andrew to be careful

The structure question word + infinitive is common

He asked her how to make a white sauce

We do not use infinitive structures after suggest or say

He suggested that I tried the main car park

(NOT He suggested me to try…)

Advanced points

• Direct speech: word order with reporting verb

Reporting verbs can go before sentences or at other natural breaks (e.g between clauses or after discourse markers)

So I said ‘What are you doing in our bedroom?’ ‘I’m sorry’, he said

‘Your information’, I replied, ‘is out of date’

•Indirect speech: word order with who, what, which

When we report questions constructed with who/what/which + be + complement,

be can be put before or after the complement

Direct: Who’s the best player here?

Indirect: She asked me who was the best player

She asked me who the best player was

•Reporting past tense

In indirect speech, a speaker’s present perfect and past tenses are often reported using past perfect tenses)

Direct: I’ve just written to John

Indirect: She told me she had just written to John

However, it is often unnecessary to show the time relationship between the events

spoken about and the original speech When this is so-when the reporter sees the past events from the same point of view as the original speaker- past perfect tenses are not used

This man on TV said that dinosaurs were around for 250 million years (NOT … that dinosaurs had been around…)

•Reporting present and future tenses

If somebody talked about a situation that has still not changed- that is to say, if the

original speaker’s present and future are still present and future- a reporter can often choose whether to keep the original speaker’s tenses or change them Both structures are common:

Direct: The earth goes around the sun

Indirect: He proved that the earth goes/ went around the sun

•Modal verbs in indirect speech

Would, should, could, might, ought, and must are usually unchanged after past

reporting verbs in indirect speech This is also true of modal need and had better

Direct: I might be too late

Indirect: I was afraid that it might be too late

•Conditionals

After past reporting verbs, conditional sentences referring to ‘unreal’ situations

are often reported with past conditionals

Direct: If I had any money I’d buy you a drink

Indirect: She said if she had had any money she would have bought me a drink

•Embedded reporting expressions

Complicated structures can be produced in informal speech when reporting

expressions are put into sentences with question-words clauses or relatives

She’s written I don’t know how many books

•Indirect speech without reporting verbs

In British newspaper, radio and TV reports of parliamentary debates, records of conferences, minutes of meetings etc, the indirect speech construction is often used with very few reporting verbs The use of tenses is enough to make it clear that a text is a report

The Managing Director began his address to the shareholders by summarizing

the results for the year Profits on the whole had been high, though one or two areas had

been disappointing

In literary narrative, similar structures are common The reported speech may be

made more vivid by using direct questions structures and ‘here and there’ words

At breakfast, Peter refused to go to school Why should he spend all his time sitting listening to idiots? What use was all that stuff anyway? If he stayed at home he could read books He might even learn something useful

2.1.5.2 Vietnamese reported speech

Mr Cao Xuan Hao, a famous Vietnamese linguist, says there have not been any

books that thoroughly written about Vietnamese reported Speech So the following Vietnamese reported speech examples are collected from literary works

- Mới đầu Văn không biết, nên thấy có bà cụ chống gậy lại bảo bác sĩ coi bệnh giùm, Văn hỏi bà bị gì, bà cười, tui nghĩ chưa ra (p.20,

Thương Quá Rau Răm, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư)

Ỉ At first, Van didn’t know about it; so when seeing an old lady with a stick approaching him to ask for a medical examination, he asked her what was wrong with her She smiled and said she hadn’t thought out

- Bữa xưa ấy, chị bảo sắp lấy chồng (p.59, Miếu Làng, Đức Ban)

Ỉ At one time she said that she was going to get married

- Bà Lan, mẹ của Khoa giục con rửa mặt rồi ra dùng bưã sáng, Khoa

nói chàng chỉ muốn ngủ thôi ( p 111, Quả tim người tử tội, Quý Thể)

Ỉ Mrs Lan, Khoa’s mother urged him to wash his face and have breakfast Khoa said that he only wished to sleep

- Hôm đó ông bí thư huyện uỷ tỏ ra rất vui, ông chúc mừng tôi và

động viên tôi cố gắng hoàn thành nhiệm vụ (p 217, Mẹ chồng tôi,

Nguyễn Minh Chính)

- Hôm sau mẹ tôi dạy rất sớm Bà bảo tôi chờ bà về rồi hãy đi làm,

bà đi có việc (p 221, Mẹ chồng tôi, Nguyễn Minh Chính)

Ỉ The secretary to the district was very pleased that day He congratulated me and encouraged me to fulfill my duty

Ỉ The next morning, my mother got up very early She told me not to go to work until she came back because she had to do something

Nguyen Luong Ngoc (1997) in his doctoral thesis pointed out some rules of Vietnamese Reported speech (αβrep) 1

- There seems to be no tense constraint:

E.g Hôm qua nó nói nó sẽ đi (Yesterday he said he would go.)

Past future

Hôm qua nó nói nó đã đi (Yesterday he said he had gone.)

Past past Both sentences can be synonymous with Hôm qua nó nói nó đi

- When the binder is an “interrogative mood-maker” (“ai”, “khi nào”, etc.) B at β has the same form as interrogative clause

E.g - Tôi không biết ai lấy cái đồng hồ (I don’t know who took the watch.)

- Ai lấy cái đồng hồ? (Who took the watch?)

(There is little difference in intonation.)

- There is a tendency to omit binders (that) E.g – Anh ấy nói họ sẽ xét đơn của chúng ta

(He said they would be considering our application.)

•Componence

- α normally contains such “reporting” verbs as + verbs of saying: “nói”, “kể”, “bảo”, “khuyên”, etc

+ verbs of thinking: “nghĩ”, thấy”, “nhận thấy”, etc

+ Nominal group: (là) Điều đáng ngạc nhiên là… (It’s a surprise that…) Sự thực là… (It’s true that …

- β can be identified by such binders as:

+ là, rằng,…

e.g Nó nói là nó không đi (He said he didn’t go.)

Họ nghĩ rằng anh ta đã hành động một cách dại dột

(They thought that he had acted foolishly.)

+ Interrogative mood markers: (“ai”, “khi nào”, “ở đâu”, etc.)

e.g – Tôi không biết vì sao họ không chấp nhận (I don’t know why they didn’t accept it.)

- Tôi biết ai đã đến thăm họ (I know who came to see them.)

+ Absence of binder:

e.g – Nó nói nó không đi (He said he didn’t go.)

2.1.5.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese Reported speech

Nguyen Luong Ngoc (1997) in his doctoral thesis contrasts English and Vietnamese Reported Speech in terms of:

•Syntactic features

- Differences + There is no serious problem with regard to the possible sequences of α and

β

+ There is normally a tense correspondence between α and β in English reported sentences but not in Vietnamese ones

- Problems

The learner is likely to use the wrong tenses

e.g I knew she will come He said he will go I thought you are some one else

Vietnamese: Tôi không biết anh là ai

+ The pattern B -> Wh-word + “to-form” is foreign to Vietnamese:

E.g He wonders what reason to give

- Problems + The learner should know various forms of reporting clause including S P C

structure

+ He tends to use interrogative mood for the bound clause after Wh word:

E.g – I don’t know when did he come

2.1.6 Conditional sentences

2.1.6.1 English Conditional structures

According to Azar (1989: p.347) there are three types of conditional sentences

MEANING

OF THE “IF CLAUSE”

VERB FORM

IN THE “IF CLAUSE”

VERB FORM

IN THE

“RESULT CLAUSE”

True in the present/ future

Simple present

Simple present Simple future

every week

(b) If I have enough time tomorrow, I will write to my parents tomorrow

Untrue in present/ future

simple form

(c) If I had enough time now, I would write to my parents (In truth, I do not have enough time, so I will not write to them.)

Untrue in the past

past participle

(d) If I had had enough time, I would have written to my parents yesterday (In truth I didn’t have enough time, so I did not write to them.)

Table 2.1: Three types of conditional sentences

2.1.6.2 Vietnamese Conditional structures Hoang Trong Phien (1980) stated that the relationship between two clauses in a

conditional sentence is between the “proposal” and the “result” Some popular

connectors are if, if only, supposing that, provided that, unless, etc He also divided

conditional sentences into some types:

a Obvious conditional sentences: The main clause confirms the result drawn

from the facts in the “if clause”

Ex “Nếu không có nước tưới, lúa sẽ chết rụi”

(If there is no water, the rice will be withered.)

b Supposed Conditional sentences: The main clause has to be hypothesized or supposed by the subordinating clause

Ex Em mà giỏi như chị thì em làm được nhiều việc hơn nữa

(If I were good like you, I could do more things.)

c Some conditional meanings are expressed by some words or phrases like any, whatever, however, etc

Ex Bất cứ khó khăn nào, chúng ta đều có thể vượt qua

(However difficult it is, we can overcome it.)

He summarized that the basis Vietnamese Conditional sentences is: Nếu (C-V)

thì (C-V) He put Conditional sentences into thirty-one groups

Nguyen Luong Ngoc (1997) in his doctoral thesis wrote that there seems to be no tense constraint between two clauses in a conditional sentence

Ex “Nếu nó mời thì tôi đi.” If he invites, I will go

There may be various ways of interpretation depending on the context:

Past -> Hôm qua nếu nó mời thì tôi (đã) đi

Present - > Bây giờ nếu nó (mà) mời thì tôi đi

Future > Ngày mai nếu nó mời thì tôi (sẽ) đi

There is a tendency to omit subjects of both clauses in the so-called “impersonal” way of speaking or in the case where the speaker or the hearer coincides with the subject:

Ex Phải kiên trì và quyết tâm thì mới thành công

You must be patient and determined if you want to succeed

If binders are absent, modifying functors for verbs/ adjectives function as typical binders They are normally correlative:

Ex Có đi mới biết dường dài

Only if you are on your way can you tell how long it is

Trời có mưa tôi cũng đi

Even if it rains I will go

2.1.6.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese Conditional sentences Nguyen Luong Ngoc (1997) confirms that there is tense constraint between the

“if clause” (α) and the “main clause” (β) in English but there is not in Vietnamese So, the learner is likely to ignore the tense correspondence between α and β in English conditional sentences

Possible errors:

* If I am you, I will go

* If I went with you yesterday, I know the truth

* If I pass the exam in 1980, I am an engineer now

Moreover the subject (whether in α or β) in the English conditional sentences is not normally omitted, while in Vietnamese, even the Subject of α can be omitted if the speaker and the hearer refer to the same person

Possible errors:

* If go there, you will see

Good for you if practice everyday

One more thing that Vietnamese learners often find strange is the structure of inversion in English conditional sentences

Ex Had he not interfered in this sister’s marital problems, there would have been peace between them

2.1.7 Passive voice 2.1.7.1 English passive voice

Swan (1995) clearly stated the form and meaning of English active and passive structures

a Active and passive structures Active verb forms are used when we want to say what people and things do and

passive verb forms are used to talk about what happens to people and things-what is done

to them

The object of an active verb corresponds to the subject of a passive verb

Active: They built this house in 1948

Passive: This house was built in 1948

In most cases the subject of an active verb is not expressed in the corresponding passive sentence If it does have to express, this usually happens in an expression with

by; the noun is called the ‘agent’

b Passive verb forms

We normally make passive forms of a verb by using tenses of the auxiliary be followed by the past participle of the verb A list of all the passive forms of an ordinary English verb, with their names is presented in the following table

painted

past perfect had + pp I knew why I had been chosen

Table 2.2: Passive forms of an ordinary verb

c Verbs not used in the passive

Passive structures are impossible with intransitive verbs (die, arrive, etc.) and

some transitive verbs, especially “stative verbs” (fit, have, lack, resemble, etc.)

d Verbs with two objects

Many verbs like give, bring, send, show can be followed by two objects: indirect

object referring to a person and direct object referring to a thing Two structures are possible

A active: She gave her sister the car

passive: Her sister was given the car

B active: She gave the car to her sister

passive: The car was given to her sister

e Sentences with infinitive and clause objects

Some sentences have infinitives or clauses as their objects These cannot normally become the subjects of passive sentences

Ex active: They all thought that she was a spy

passive: * That she was a spy was thought by them all

Æ She was thought to be a spy

Æ It was thought that she was a spy

f Infinitives without to

Hear, see, make and help can be followed, in active structures, by object +

infinitive without to In passive structures to infinitives are used

Ex active: I saw him come out of the house

passive: He was seen to come out of the house

g preparatory there

With some verbs like say, think, feel, report, presume, understand, etc., the passive structure is possible with there as a “preparatory subject”

Ex There was said to be disagreement between the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary

2.1.7.2 Vietnamese passive voice Hoang Van Van (2005) pointed out the differences and similarities between

Vietnamese passive structures and active ones:

Active: NP1 + V (active) + NP2 Passive: NP2 + V1 (passive) + NP1 + V2

ex Giáp đánh con ngựa (Giap hit the horse.)

Ỉ Con ngựa bị Giáp đánh (The horse was hit by Giap.) However, some grammarians like Bouchet (1912), Cordier (1932), T T Kim (1940) (cited in H V Van (2005)) did not approve of the existence of the passive voice

in Vietnamese They proved that there were no changes of tenses, persons, plural and single forms in Vietnamese while there were in English Therefore the contrast of the forms of active and passive verbs (give/is given, gave/was given) can find no equivalents

in Vietnamese Moreover, Thomson (1985, cited in H V Van (2005) called “bị”,

“được” in Vietnamese “meaningful verbs”

Ex Active: Quân được điểm tốt (Quan got high marks.) This conception is made clearer by Nguyen Kim Than (1997) (cited in H V Van, (2005)) when he stated that it was the structure that made the meaning of passive voice in Vietnamese

Ex Active: Pha bưng mâm cơm lên (Pha carried a tray of food.) Passive: Lúc mâm cơm bưng lên (a tray of food is carried.)

H V Van (2005) pointed out the “willing system” consisting willing or unwilling choice in the Vietnamese passive voice

Ex Passive: Cơm này được Cường nấu ngon (This rice was cooked deliciously by Cuong.) (willing)

Passive: Tuyết bị hắn đánh ( Tuyet was hit by him.) (unwilling) So we can see that “bị” and “được” can be used in both Vietnamese active and passive sentences

2.1.7.3 Comparison of English and Vietnamese passive voice

N.L Ngoc (1997) found out some interesting differences between English and

Vietnamese passive structures (eg E: Affix Hopping rule, by insertion, number agreement rule, etc V: NP insertion, NP deletion and so on.) In English only transitive clauses can passivise so such mistakes are often made by Vietnamese students:

Ex * He was fallen (died/ slipped/ stumbled/ sneezed, etc.)

* He was broken his arm

* She was hurt her hand

* She was borrowed a car

He concluded that the absence of “Intransitive causative” verbs, which are derived from intransitive ones such as “work”, “break”, “sail”, “sit”, “grow”, ‘hurry”, “rush”, etc, the discrepancies between the English passive evidence to account for many kinds of mistakes possibly made by the Vietnamese learners

2.2 A review of teaching methods and their application in grammar teaching

The question how to teach grammar efficiently has been controversially discussed for generations A few prefer the old style discrete and explicit explanations of the English syntax while many prefer the Communication syllabus and the implicit teaching

of grammar In this part a quick view of the development history of language grammar teaching approaches will be presented

•The Grammar Translation method

In the early days of grammar teaching, the grammar translation method required students to do the tedious tasks of translating sentences into English based on grammar rules which are presented and studied explicitly However, many critics found fault with this method as it was too methodical and arithmetic Thus, students may end up constructing sentences that are grammatically correct but would be perceived as 'unacceptable' by most native speakers

•The Direct Method

The Direct Method, posited by Charles Berlitz confirms that second language learning is similar to first language learning In this light, there should be lots of oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language and no translation According to Krashen (1987: 135), this method focuses on inductive teaching of grammar Besides, it insists on accuracy and errors are corrected in class The Direct Method enjoyed great popularity at

the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth but it was difficult to use, mainly because of the constraints of budget, time, and classroom size and its weak theoretical foundations Yet, after a period of decline, this method has been revived, leading to the emergence of the Audiolingual Method (Brown:2000: p45)

•The Audiolingual Method

In the 1940s and 50s the Audio-lingual method was popularized by behavioral psychologists such as Skinner and Watson Teaching grammar was simply making students learn language habits through numerous drills and pattern practices (Brown, 1994) Krashen (1987:132) also stated that this method results in inductive learning; i.e the student attempts to work out a conscious rule on the basis of the dialogue and pattern practice But again, this method get into troubles because there was no focus or emphasis

on "the intentions, thinking, conscious planning and internal processes of the learner" (Stern, 1984, p.305) After all, it was discovered that language was not acquired through

a process of habit formation and errors were not necessarily bad or pernicious (Brown: 2000: p.75)

•The Communicative Approach

In the 1970s and 80s the Communicative Approach, came into being thanks to collective works of many linguists like Krashen, Halliday and Hymes replacing the Audiolingual method Language was seen as a system for the expression of meaning rather than as a system of abstract syntactic rules since it was believed that it is meaning which drives language acquisition and development (Nunan: 1999) Brown (2000:267) pointed out that in Communicative Language Teaching, less attention is paid to the overt presentation and discussion of grammatical rules In fact, this approach emphasizes the learner's ability to use the language appropriately in specific situations It tries to make the learners 'communicatively competent' So, learners should be able to select a particular kind of language and should know when, where and with whom they should use it Nevertheless, one of the main challenges of the communicative approach is to integrate the functions of a language (information retrieval, problem solving, and social exchanges) with the correct use of structures The question is how to combine

communicative fluency with formal accuracy To answer that question, communicative teachers built on the notional-functional syllabus which organizes teaching units according to the communicative 'notions' a learner requires in order to communicate successfully It has been shown that other fields that can relate to the principles of the communicative approach are the cooperative learning approach, the learner-centred approach

•Suggestopedia (Lozanov method)

Vocabulary, readings, role-plays and drama are presented with classical music in the background and students sitting in comfortable seats In this way, students became

"suggestible." (cited in Brown:2000: p.105) The Lozanov method requires three essential elements: (1) an attractive classroom (with soft chairs and lightning) and a pleasant classroom atmosphere; (2) a teacher with a dynamic personality who is able to act out the materials and motivate the students to learn; (3) a state of relaxed alertness

…(Bancroft 1978 cited in Krashen 1987:p.143) Suggestopedia attempts to make students relaxed and comfortable and to lower students’ inhibition However, grammar is

not sequentially taught, for example, dialogues do not seem to focus on specific points of

grammar

•The Natural Approach

This approach was aimed at the goal of basis interpersonal communication skills It

is designed to help beginners become intermediates and to depend on learner needs Group techniques are similar to Communicative Language Teaching The initial task of the teacher was to provide comprehensible input Moreover, learners did not need to say anything during this “silent period” until they felt ready to do so Especially, grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order and it does little good to try to learn them in another order However, the most controversial aspects of this method were its “silent period” and its reliance on the notion of comprehensible input And the syllabus for the Natural Approach is a communicative syllabus

•Total Physical Response (TPR)

This is a language learning method based on the coordination of speech and action

It was developed by James Asher, a professor of psychology at San Jose State

University, California To him, second language learning is parallel to first language learning and should reflect the same naturalistic processes:

+ Listening should develop before speaking + Children respond physically to spoken language, and adult learners learn better if they do that too

+ Once listening comprehension has been developed, speech develops naturally and effortlessly out of it

+ Adults should use right-brain motor activities, while the left hemisphere watches and learns

+ Delaying speech reduces stress The objectives of this approach is teaching oral proficiency at a beginning level; using comprehension as a means to speaking and using action-based drills in the imperative form And grammar will be learnt inductively The syllabus of TPR is a sentence-based grammatical syllabus Activities where a command is given in the imperative and the students obey the command is the main activity in TPR This method

is considered far better than methods such as audio-lingual and grammar- translation (Krashen: 1987)

2.3 Teaching teenagers 2.3.1 Intellectual development

Krashen, Long, and Scarcella (1979 cited in Krashen,1987) review the available empirical research on the effect of age and second language acquisition and conclude that older children (adolescents/teenagers) acquire faster than younger children (time and exposure held constant) This idea is approved of by Scarcella and Higa (Krashen,1987) These authors noted that the older acquirers were better able to regulate both the quantity and quality of their input They were better at encouraging speech and at getting the native speaker to modify it for greater comprehensibility They could, for example, ask for help, change the topic, and direct the conversation better They had, in other words, more “conversational competence”

2.3.2 Factors influencing learners’ process in grammar lessons

Brown (2000:p.143) presented some affective factors strongly influencing students’ attitudes and behaviors in the second language learning: self-esteem, inhibition, risk