(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) Student''''s attitudes towards the integrated approach to grammar teaching, a quasi experimental research on the first year students at Hanoi College of Economics and Technology

Theoretical background of grammar teaching 1.2.1 Definitions of grammar and the place of grammar in English language teaching 1.2.2 The brief view of grammar teaching approaches 1.2.

VŨ THỊ SÂM

STUDENT’S ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO GRAMMAR

TEACHING, A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT HANOI COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS ANDTECHNOLOGY

(Nghiên Cứu Thử Nghiệm Thái Độ của Sinh Viên năm thứ nhất trường Cao Đẳng Kinh Tế Kỹ Thuật Hà Nội đối với việc Giảng Dạy Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Anh bằng

Phương Pháp Tích Hợp)

M.A Minor Program Thesis

Code: 60 14 10

VŨ THỊ SÂM

STUDENT’S ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO GRAMMAR

TEACHING, A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT HANOI COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS ANDTECHNOLOGY

(Nghiên Cứu Thử Nghiệm Thái Độ của Sinh Viên năm thứ nhất trường Cao Đẳng Kinh Tế Kỹ Thuật Hà Nội đối với việc Giảng Dạy Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Anh bằng

Phương Pháp Tích Hợp)

M.A Minor Program Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Dr Duong Thi Nu

4 Scope of the Study

5 Method of the Study

6 Organization of the Study

1.1.1 Definitions of learning attitudes

1.1.2 The role of attitudes in language learning

1.2 Theoretical background of grammar teaching

1.2.1 Definitions of grammar and the place of grammar in English

language teaching

1.2.2 The brief view of grammar teaching approaches

1.2.3 Stages of a grammar lesson at the current trend of ELT

1.3 Rational for the Integrated Approach

1.3.1 There is no best method

1.3.3.3 Student’s specific learning needs

1.3.4 Practical suggestions for the application of integrated approach

1.4 Conclusion to the chapter

Chapter II: METHODOLOGY

2.1 The context of the study

3.2 Findings and discussions

3.2.1 Teachers’ beliefs and knowledge in teaching pronunciation

3.2.2 Formal curricula description

3.2.3 Teaching pronunciation’s goal and assessment

3.2.4 Approaches and techniques of teaching pronunciation

3.2.5 Teachers’ roles in teaching pronunciation

3.3.6 Teaching and learning materials

PART 3: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

3.1 Summary of major findings

3.2 Implications of the Study for Teaching pronunciation

3.2.1 Improving teacher’s knowledge and opinion of different approaches to TEFL

3.2.2 Enhancing and varying teacher’s roles in teaching

3.2.3 Not to depreciate the appropriate uses of L1 in the classroom

3.2.4 Some suggestions for the integration of approaches in grammar teaching

3.2.5 Improving Facilities and Teaching/Learning Environment

Conclusion to the chapter

4 Limitations of the Study

5 Suggestions for further research

I

I

V VII VIII

IX

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

A2 English for the second semester (Pre-Intermediate)

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ELT English Language Teaching

ESL English as a Second Language

ESP English for Special Purposes

UTC University of Transport and Communications

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rational

Teaching and learning grammar has been regarded as crucial to the ability to use a language In other words, grammar gains a prominence in language teaching, as much as without a good knowledge of grammar, learners’ language development will be severely constrained By studying grammar learners come to recognize the structure and regularity which is the foundation of language and they gain the tools to talk about the language system (Burns and de Silva Joyce, 1999, p.4-5) This is undeniable, and can be strongly agreed by any ESL teachers, who have paid much attention to teaching grammar in their classroom It is clear for all that, by teaching grammar, teachers not only offer learners the means to express themselves but also fulfill learners’ expectations of what learning a foreign language involves

However, how to teach grammar effectively is not easy at all This is the big concern

of any language teachers, especially those who teach English to students with practical purposes of communication and work in the future As a teacher at a newly born college as the Hanoi College of Economics and Technology (hereafter in referred as Hanetco), where English is considered the most dominant and essential subject, the researcher and all of her colleagues at the college have the absolute consensus that grammar is something that needs putting to the top of priority Unfortunately, we found that there are many constraints, regarding institutional, learner perspectives, and teaching context perspective, that prevent us from teaching English grammar best communicatively Moreover, as referred from well- known linguists, the author has an idea that many of the approaches to grammar teaching, currently popular or has been waned, all have the advantages and availability and suitability to

be utilized in different teaching situations That is why in this small research, the researcher tries to make a suggestion of an integrated approach to teaching grammar to students at Hanetco

Learning attitudes has recently received considerable attention from both first and second language researchers Most of the researches on the issue have concluded that learner’s attitude is an integral part of learning, and that should be, therefore, become an essential component of second language learning pedagogy There are several reasons why research on

student’s attitudes towards language learning is important First, attitudes towards learning are believed to influence behaviors (Kaballa & Crowley: 1985) (Source: Weinberg 1998) such as selecting and reading books, speaking in a foreign language Second, a relationship between attitudes and achievements has been shown to exist Schibeci and Riley (1986), (Source: Weinberg 1998) report that there is support for the proposition that attitudes influence achievement, rather than achievement influencing attitudes The reason is that attitudes influence one’s behaviors, inner mood and therefore learning So it is clear that there is an interaction between language learning and the environmental components in which students grew up Both negative and positive attitudes have a strong impact on the success of language learning The attitudes of an individual depend heavily upon different stimuli Stern (1983) claims that the affective component contributes at least as much and more often to language learning than the cognitive skills, and this is supported by recent researches All studies adduce that affective variables have significant influences on language success (Eveyik, 1999; Skehan, 1989; Gardner, 1985; Spolsky, 1989) Discovering student’s attitudes about language will help both teacher and learner in the teaching-learning process Therefore, we have to

consider the crucial role of this affective domain, attitudes

1.2 Aims of the study

The aim of the study was to investigate what the attitudes of the students at Hanetco towards English grammar learning are and how their attitudes would change after some grammar lectures with the integrated approach Thanks to the findings of the study, the researcher hopes to leave some suggestions for further study in this very interesting topic

1.3 Research questions

Focusing on a case with a target on the first year non-English-major students at Hanetco, this research examined the learning of grammar before and after the experiment of the integration of approaches To achieve this, three research questions were proposed:

(1) What are the reasons for a change in approach to grammar teaching to students at Hanetco?

(2) What are students’ expectations towards grammar teaching and learning?

(3) What are the students’ attitudes towards the new integrated approach?

(4) 1.4 Scope of the Study

This study plays the role as a quasi-experimental study Due to the time limit and financial constraint, the author was unable to carry out the experimental study on a larger scale Therefore, the researcher intends to describe the student’s attitudes and beliefs towards English learning and teaching in the real context of first-year students at Hanetco

1.5 Method of the Study

A qualitative and quantitative methodology was selected for this quasi-experimental research This involves the following instruments for data collection:

(1) Survey questionnaires (pre-experiment and post-experiment questionnaire)

(2) Interviews and discussions The collected data come from 138 first year students, gathering in two groups of banking faculty, interviews and discussions with random students Then the analysis is carried out in the light of finding out the answers to the research questions and the interviews

1.6 Organization of the study

The study includes three parts:

- Part 1, INTRODUCTION, introduces the rational for the research, the aims of the study, the

scope, the methods and the organization of the study This part also provides a brief description of the thesis topic and information related to English grammar teaching and

learning at the author’s teaching context, which is background of the study

- Part 2, DEVELOPMENT, consists of three chapters as follows:

- Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This part offers the reviews of literature related to studies on learning attitudes, the effect of attitudes on learning result, as well as the brief description of English grammar teaching histories together with the sketchy analysis of some popular approaches to grammar teaching Those help to provide the rational for the supposed integrated approach

- Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY

The actual procedures of the study are presented in this part: study design, subject of the study, data collection instruments as well as data collection analyzing process

- Chapter 3: ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This part focuses on presenting, analyzing and discussing the results obtained from the study

- Part 3, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS, summarizes some major

findings, provides recommendations for a possibly applicable approach to teaching grammar, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further research

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

I 1 Learning Attitudes

I.1.1 Definitions of attitudes

There have been considerable researches on attitudes towards language learning and, according to Gardner (1979), there is an undeniable mutual relationship between attitudes and motivation in language learning

There are many definitions of the term Among them, Gardner (1985:91-93) claims that attitude is an evaluative creation to some referent or attitude objects, inferred on the basic

of individual’s beliefs or opinions about the referent In addition to that, in Gibb’s opinion (1988), attitude is generally defined as a state of mind, which is influenced by feelings, experiences of the world and belief More clearly, Hallorah (1967) states that attitude represents an individual like or dislike towards an item Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an “attitude object”, i.e a person, situation or event People can also be

“ambivalent”, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitudes in question

The above definitions show people’s attitudes towards certain referent object, a behavioral intentions component and a cognitive component involving belief about the object

In language learning, we can see students’ attitudes in their feelings and belief about the way

of acting towards the lessons, learning style, teachers and the course books

I.1.2 The role of attitudes in language learning

Attitudes and learning always go side by side Garder and Lamper (1972) both agree that “success in mastering a foreign language would depend not only on intellectual capacity and language aptitude, but on one’s attitudes towards representatives of that language as well.”

It has been proved that those with less positive attitudes towards second language learning drop out of further language study, while those who continue have more favorable

attitudes Students may become bored and inattentive in class, do badly on tests and get discouraged from the course if they keep negative attitudes in learning In one of their studies, Gardner and Smythe (1976) found that the dropouts in study demonstrated less positive attitude and lower motivation than students who continued with their language study the next year

Besides, Lightbrown and Spada (1999) state that attitude is fundamental to the success

or failure that we experience in learning Depending on the learners’ attitudes, language learning can be a source of enrichment or a source of resentment Agreeing with the role of attitudes, Brown (1994) says that language learners benefit from positive attitudes while negative attitudes may lead to unsuccessful attainment of proficiency Moreover, Gardener (1985: 41) emphasizes that favorable attitudes would be expected to result in better performance than negative attitudes If learners hold positive learning attitudes, they will be willing to participate in it, and they themselves find motivation and inspiration in learning

To summarize, it would be better to quote Marzano et all’s (1994) emphasizing the importance of positive attitudes in learning that “without positive attitudes and perceptions or holding negative attitudes towards the learning students have little chance of learning proficiently, if at all”

I.2 Theoretical background of grammar teaching

I.2.1 Definitions of grammar and the place of grammar in English language teaching (ELT)

Defining the term “grammar” is actual a challenge as it has been defined in a various ways by different linguists According to Penny Ur (1988: 4), grammar maybe roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form a longer units

of meaning Grammar is a field of linguistics that involves all the various things that make up the rules of language Different linguistics schools have different views on grammar depending on their particular fields of interests

Fromkin et al (1990: 12) defined grammar as “the sounds and sound patterns, the basic unit of meaning such as words and the rules to combine them to form new sentences constitute

the grammar of a language These rules are internalized and subconsciously learned by native speakers.” Besides, David Nunan in his work once defined grammar as “a set of rules specifying the correct ordering words at the sentence level”

Richards, Platt and Platt (1992: 161, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Linguistics) define grammar as “the description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units as the words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language It usually takes into accounts the meanings and functions these sentences have in the overall of the language It may or may not include the description of the sounds of a language.” The definition shows that grammar implies both meanings and functions and includes both of its linguistic and social nature This can be considered as the most appropriate concept of grammar to teaching at the current era of language teaching

The role of grammar in ELT has been controversial due to the different view on the relationship between explicit and implicit language teaching approaches Some researchers (Krashen (1982); Lightbown and Spada (1990: 60)) say that we do not need to teach grammar because learners can acquire it by themselves, meaning that acquisition is separate from learning However, many other researchers think that it is important to teach grammar because

we cannot master a language without the knowledge of its grammar Affected by those opinions, in the recent years, the view on grammar teaching has changed According to Canale and Swain (1980), grammar competence is one of components in the model of communicative competence

To sum up, the place of grammar in English language teaching is currently because of the development of communicative goals in teaching and learning However, from the perspective of the author of this small study, the researcher would like to raise her voice claiming that it is essential to teach grammar to Vietnamese learners, for the following reasons: firstly, Vietnamese learners are not learning English just for basic communication Many of them learn English to read and write or translate for their academic purposes Secondly, the English language examinations that they have to take, and to pass, at school, have a lot of grammatical elements to get marks

Next, it is worth mentioning that Krashen’s view that the effect of grammar learning is peripheral or fragile and that conscious knowledge of grammar is available only as a monitor,

or editor may be true to ESL context where immigrant learners are extensively exposed to the target language However, in a poor-input setting like Vietnamese non-English majored schools, where students learn English for outside the natural linguistic environment, grammar teaching must still have important place in the classroom We cannot expect our students who learn English probably not more than three hours a week to acquire the target grammar naturally For those arguments, the author hopes to be persuasive with the opinion that at the moment, grammar teaching cannot be ignored or even depreciated in English teaching in Vietnam, in general, and in her own teaching context, in particular

I.2.2 Brief view of grammar teaching approaches

In the last over one hundred years, language teaching methodology has changed a lot with the development of many different methods and approaches to grammar teaching What follows is a brief description of how grammar has been taught in some of the most widespread used second language teaching methodologies, as well as the brief analysis of pros and cons of some most popular ones

From the mid to the late 19 th century, the dominant trend was a non-communicative

approach With the Grammar-Translation Method, grammar was taught deductively in an

organized and systematic way, by studying grammar rules Pronunciation and oral practice activities were almost ignored However, at the present time, the Grammar Translation Method is still common in many countries – even popular Brown in his book Incremental Speech Language (1994) attempts to explain why the method is still employed by stating:

“Grammar rules and Translation Tests are easy to construct and can be objectively

scored.” “Many standardized tests of foreign languages still do not attempt to test communicative abilities, so students have little motivation to go beyond grammar analogies, translations and other written exercises.” Moreover, another benefit of the approach is that the

phraseology of the target language is quickly explained Translation is the easiest way of explaining meanings or words and phrases from one language into another Meanwhile, the

biggest disadvantage of the approach is that it makes the language learning experience uninspiring and boring when students do not find much joy and motivation in learning the language, and the communicative competence in the learnt language is hardly developed

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, The Direct Method based on the belief that

a language could best be taught by its vivid use in the classroom reflected the Reform Movement There is no translation any more and the silent study of literature was replaced by actual use of spoken language practice, and explicit and deductive grammar instruction was replaced by an implicit and inductive approach In this light, there should be lots of oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation, and little if any analysis of grammatical rules and syntactic structures

The most remarkable advantage of the method is that it brings the process of learning the target language close to that of first language acquisition Thanks to that, learner’s ability

to think in target language is developed River (1981) claims that:

At its best, the Direct Method provides an exciting and interesting way of learning a language through activities It has proved to be successful in releasing students from the inhibitions all too often associated with speaking another tongue, particularly at the early stages

Meanwhile, regarding its disadvantages, it was claimed that learning with the method, students may develop inaccuracies if they are not fully instructed This is the result if they are trying to express themselves in target language with insufficient knowledge about the language This weakness of the method is also stated in River (1981):

In the pure form of the Direct Method, insufficiency is made for systematic practice and requesting – practice of structures in a coherent sequence As a result, students often lack

a clear idea of what they are trying to do, and they make haphazard progress

Thus, after a period of decline, the method has been revived, leading to the emergence

of the Audio-lingual Method The Audio-lingual Method laid emphasis on the mimicry of

forms and memorization of certain sentence patterns which are used intensively instead of grammatical explanation or talking about the language It was based on linguistic and

psychological theory and one of its main premises was the scientific descriptive analysis of a wide assortment of languages On the other hand, conditioning and habit-formation models of learning put forward by behaviorist psychologists were married with the pattern practices of

the Audio-lingual Method

However, the method fell short of promoting communicative ability as it paid undue attention to memorization and drilling, while downgrading the role of context and world knowledge in language learning After all, it was discovered that language was not acquired through a process of habit formation and errors were not necessarily bad or pernicious

During the 1960s to 1980s, there was the appearance of the pragmatic version of the

Audio-lingualism, called the Structural-Situational method The key difference from the

Audio-lingual approach was the language presentation and practice was situationalised and so was always given social meaning; speaking and listening were the most important skills Remarkably, it has been believed that an analysis of English and a classification of its principal grammatical structures into sentence patterns (or situational tables) could be used to assist learners to internalize the rules and sentence structures

Communicative Language Teaching, (referred as Functional method at the first

stage) which aims at focusing on communicative proficiency by replicating contextual features

of real communication in the classroom, has been the dominant language teaching methodology since the mid-1970s

Regarding its strong points, it focuses mainly on helping learners create meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire native-like pronunciation It emphasizes communication and real-life situation Moreover, CLT involves equipping students with vocabulary, structures, and functions, as well as strategies, to enable them to interact successfully Learners, thanks to that, will be much more interested in the lesson

However, the Communicative Language Teaching approach does not cater to learners

who come from cultures with traditional educational systems and different learning styles They are primarily interested in studying English through controlled grammar and vocabulary

drills and do not like uncontrolled practice They do not see CLT activities as an opportunity

to use language they have learned in class and they are not always able to draw on any other grammar or vocabulary taught in previous lessons in order to get their message across

Another disadvantage of CLT is that CLT does not focus on error correction This is

a disadvantage as learners are forced to practice with classmates who are not fluent in English

Besides, it focuses on fluency but not accuracy In fact, “students may talk and listen but

unless explicitly taught grammar, they may not speak correctly” (Ur, 1996)

Moreover, from the beginning of the 1980s there have been the applications of many other approaches, which can be considered as supportive to the CLT, and have been widely

utilized by teachers to get the best benefit of CLT, such as the Test-Teach-Test approach, the Negotiate Syllabus, the Output-Feedback, the Noticing, Task-based approach (which is quite

popular for teaching language naturally, whose outstanding point over the others is that the students are free of language control A natural context is developed from the students' experiences with the language that is personalized and relevant to them And the more

important is, it is motivating and enjoyable), or Consciousness-raising, which has been

developed from the mid-1990s

As we may notice, each time a new approach develops, it adds a slightly different perspective and expands our understanding All of these approaches were seen to work at some point, and so none can be discounted It is my absolute conviction that every one still has its place in the grand pantheon of language teaching approaches, and that aware experienced teachers can be able to utilize all of them in an intuitive, and yet consciously integrated way,

to best fit their teaching classrooms Moreover, the author does think that it is essential to judge the most recently marketed approaches in the light of what has gone before Following that, her suggestion is that we integrate and take account for, rather than sweep away, past approaches, together with the modern ones

I.2.3 Stages of a grammar lesson at the current trend of ELT

According to Celce-Murcia (1988: 27), a grammar lesson usually covers four stages:

Presentation, Controlled Practice, Production and Teacher Feedback and Correction

In the presentation stage, the grammar structure is introduced either inductively or

deductively According to Jeremy Harmer (1987: 18), a good presentation should be clear, efficient, lively and interesting, appropriate and productive Basing on the teacher’s strengths, student’s interests, and the nature of the structure, the teacher can make appropriate selection

of approach to access the grammatical item

The presentation is always followed by controlled practice in which students

manipulate the structure under consideration Celce-Murcia (1988) state that the purpose of this stage is to allow the students to gain the control of the form for further use The teacher still directs and corrects at this stage, but the classroom should be more learner-centered

Production stage is seen as the culmination of the language learning process The

rational of this stage is to provide students experience in applying their acquired knowledge in practice by making meaningful utterances On the one hand, this may also serve as a motivation technique, since learners can actually see what they can do with what they have learned On the other, the expression stage gives them the opportunity to practice communicating under the teacher's supervision, which usually assures the students that they can produce a correct utterance

The last stage is teacher’s feedback and correction Although this is seen as the final

stage, this must be taken place throughout the lesson However, the teacher’s correction strategies should vary from stage to stage Celce-Murcia (1988: 28) state that “during the second part of the lesson, correction should be predominantly straightforward and immediate During the third part, however, communication should not be interrupted Instead, the teacher should take notes of errors and deal with them after the communicative exercises.”

The four above stages are to be referred later, when the author will suggest some typical techniques or specific method for each stage, once the integrated approach is applied

I.3 Rational for the Integrated Approach

I.3.1 There is no best method (Prahu 1990)

As language teachers, we are very much concerned about teaching method because we need to employ the most effective way to teach so that we can help our learners to achieve their learning objectives In order to clarify the rational for the integrated approach, the author

firstly wishes to prefer to Prahu (1990) who explicitly discusses the notion that “there is no best method” under three explanations: a) that different methods are best for different

teaching contexts; b) that all methods are partially true or valid; and c) that the notion of good or bad methods is itself misguided Prahu also states that no single method is best for

everyone, and that different methods are best for different people and different teaching contexts Moreover, Prahu argues that what is best depends on whom the method is for, in what circumstances and for what purposes

Moreover, Jack Richards and T Rogers in their well-known work “Approaches and Methodologies in Language Teaching” vowed that it is now time of the post-method era, and

that “teachers and teachers in training need to be able to use approaches and methods flexibly

and creatively based on their own judgment and experience” No fix method or approach can

be applied in every teaching situation

I.3.2 Related studies

The integrated approach proposed here by the author possesses the similar soul to the

Eclectic Approach which has been paid quite much attention by researchers and linguists so

far "Eclectic", remarks Atkinson (1988, p 42), "is one of the buzz words in TEFL at present,

in part due to the realization that for the foreseeable future good language teaching is likely to continue to be based more on common sense, insights drawn from classroom experience, informed discussion among teachers, etc., than on any monolithic model of second language acquisition or all-embracing theory of learning " The idea of choosing from different methods to suite for one's teaching purposes and situations is not a new one For example,

Memorandum on the Teaching of Modern Languages published in 1929 on the basis of a

British study by Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools recommended the eclectic "Compromise Method" as a solution to the language teaching method debate (Stern, 1983, p 101)

A main proponent of the Integrated or Eclectic Approach is Rivers (1981, Teaching

Foreign Language Skills) According to Rivers, an eclectic approach allows language teachers

"to absorb the best techniques of all the well-known language-teaching methods into their

classroom procedures, using them for the purposes for which they are most appropriate" (p

55) This is necessary and important because teachers "faced with the daily task of helping

students to learn a new language cannot afford the luxury of complete dedication to each new method or approach that comes into vogue." (1981, p 54)

The main criticism of the eclecticism is that "it does not offer any guidance on what

basis and by what principles aspects of different methods can be selected and combined.”

(Stern 1983, p 512)

I.3.3 Institutional reasons for the integrated approach

Base on the deep comprehension of the importance role of grammar in teaching English, the careful analysis of specific traits of the author teaching environment (As will be

mentioned in the Context of the Study, the author now is working in such a specific teaching

context, with many differentiated features to others Those features are: low ability students, large-size classes, mixed level students, and typical learning needs due to the learning majors), and the brief study of some popular approaches to teaching grammar, this paper suggests an integrative approach to teaching grammar in a low level environment, which means the

synthesis of some popular approaches together with some teaching techniques generated

from the teaching environment Different approaches will function interactively or in combination to meet the teachers and learners conditions and needs Some practical techniques are also suggested to improve student’s ability to memorize grammar and to meet their learning needs

In the following part, the author is going to present some reasons as the rational for the choice of integrated approach applied to her teaching environment

I.3.3.1 Low level students

It’s easy to motivate good learners, they memorize words and structures well and successfully use them in practice activities, and more importantly, they have more interests

and motivation taking part in learning activities But things are more complicated with weak students, who are incapable or hardly capable of learning something as smoothly as others; and/or those who own negative awareness of learning They are passive at the lessons, often

“forget” to do homework, cannot remember new English words and structures, do not answer teacher’s questions, and have big anxiety in speaking activities to practice language at the class Together with the problem of large size class, the sole learning purpose for examination, and the poor corporation among group members, low level students are unwilling to communicate in the target language as they are afraid of being ridiculed, or simply, of being wrong

I.3.3.2 Large-size and mixed level class

The targeted group of the study includes 70 students Other groups at the college have the average of 65 – 70 students all According to Smart (2006), large multilevel classes are class with more than 30 learners in elementary, secondary, adult or tertiary settings Also, they are classes that have been roughly arranged according to ability

In one of her work, Zakia Sawar (1989) lists four problems faced by teachers of size classes: firstly, they feel uncomfortable Secondly, large classes pose disciplinary and class management problems, in which the noise level must be kept down so as not to disturb others Thirdly, it is difficult to evaluate the oral or written work of so many learners And lastly, teachers feel that because the individual attention cannot be given, very little learning

large-can take place (127-136)

Nevertheless, the most considerable point here is that, according to Sato (2003), introducing communicative activities with an average of 40 students is quite a hard job, and it

is even become impossible with more students, as it generates too much noise and, in the process, may distract teachers and students studying nearby This is the very dominant reason promoting another form of teacher-centered environment

Other problems that may arise from a large size classes are different learning approaches that students have brought from their former learning environment, leading to different expectations from teaching, different learning behaviors and participation, as well as

different social and cultural contexts, and different interests which may also leads to very different learning attitudes at the class

I.3.3.3 Student’s specific learning needs

Another question should be regarded before the choice of teaching approach to students at Hanetco is the student’s specific learning needs As we, the teachers and education instructors all know that learning needs is the first and the biggest question to regard before

teaching As mentioned above, the targeted groups major in baking The other majors at the

college are accounting, business administration, computing and Internet technology, the fields which may require much English knowledge during future occupation However, most staff of those fields now in Vietnam are required to use English for writing, reading and translating skills rather than speaking and orally communication Therefore, grammar teaching is considered the virtual element for the student’s language use, and during classroom learning and practice of grammar, teachers are oriented not to focus much on oral practice, but equally focus on all skills Thus, it is not a good idea just to apply the Communicative Language Teaching approach only, as this approach ignore much of language skills as writing, reading, and accuracy Meanwhile, the other approaches may provide students with other necessary elements of language use, such as diversified vocabulary, academic writing skill, reading comprehension ability and translation competence

In conclusion, basing on the above analysis of the current teaching approaches, and her own teaching context, the author arrives to the conclusion that it is the best to apply the integrated approach to teach grammar, rather than just one of any recently used approaches It

is noted here that teachers should develop student’s awareness of the integrated approach and encourage them to involve in the integrated activities at the class to take all advantages of the integration

I.4 Conclusion to the chapter

In conclusion, this chapter briefly presents the literature related to the study Not only the definitions, the roles of attitudes towards English learning were discussed, but also the definitions and roles of “grammar” in language teaching, brief history of approach

development was overviewed By presenting the most remarkable features of almost gone over and currently used approaches to ELT, the author hoped to make a note that each of those approaches can be adaptable and utilized in a specific teaching condition, rather than being swept away Besides, the author also referred the well-known idea of Prahu (1990) stating that

“there is no best method”, from which he suggested that a good teacher should be flexible in

choosing the most suitable method for different lesson and different groups of learners Moreover, the author also presented the brief analysis of her specific teaching environment, which can be considered as the rational for her hypothesis of the integrated approach in her own teaching context

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

II.1 The context of the study

The Hanoi College of Economics and Technology was founded in 2007, by a group of retired Doctors and Professors of Economics, and is surely at its very primitive stage of development Everything here is on the early stage of formation: infrastructure, curriculum, syllabus, evaluation and testing system, principles, regulations, promotion policies for the

teachers, etc

Students are unsuccessful candidates at university entrance exam, invited to join the college without any admission tests At the second year of development, the college now has about 2,000 students, studying at 5 professional faculties: accounting, banking, business administration, computing and Internet techniques, of which banking is the biggest faculty, with more than a half of the students majoring in it

English is not a major subject here, but it is paid quite much attention and favorite by the leaders of the college They show apparent opinion towards English as one of the most important subjects to teach and to learn, as Mr Principle of the college once said that “English

is the first tool that teachers must provide students before they start to earn for their living”

(Professor Pham Gia Thieu, Principle of Hanetco)

At the college, like many other subjects, English is taught in a formal setting, namely a classroom The teaching of English is divided into two stages During the first stage, students

study General English which focuses on four language skills, using the popular textbook New

Headway Elementary by John & Liz Soars, the second Edition After the stage, students get

the level of Pre-intermediate English, during which they learn their ESP Each stage lasts two academic terms

Last academic year, there were nearly 1000 new comers to the college who are to study English as a compulsory subject (Statistics from the Academic Training Department, Hanetco, 2009) They come from different learning background and they have already learned

English at secondary school, however, there is no classification of levels of English at this very beginning time Each group is usually larger than 60 students together

All materials and learning and teaching aids are the textbook New Headway

Elementary as mentioned above, some cassettes and self-prepared teaching materials by the

teachers All can be said as very poor support to the learning and teaching process

II.2 Study design

The study aims at measuring the effect of the integrated approach on students’ attitudes The researcher gives pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire The following design

is applied to carry out this study:

II.3 Research questions

1 What are the reasons for a change in approach to grammar teaching to students at Hanetco?

2 How are the approaches integrated?

3 What are the students’ attitudes towards the newly integrated approach?

II.4 The participants

The study was carried out with 138 first year students at the college, belonging to 2 big groups of banking faculty 101 of them are females and 37 are males According to the survey,

49 of them come from and had secondary education at big cities 42 others come from rural

areas or even mountainous areas where some of them (5) were not even taught any English before All of them are aged from 20 to 21

II.5 Data collection instruments

In order to get results showing the differences in attitudes of the students towards the usual approach and the new integrated approach, two questionnaires (a pre-experimental and a post-experimental) were delivered to the group of participants After the questionnaires, students were chosen randomly for the interviews before and after the experiment

II.5.1 The questionnaires

The pre-experimental questionnaire was designed with 14 questions to get information about the student’s beliefs and attitudes Collected demographic data included gender, age, years of teaching English, and professional qualifications The post-experimental questionnaire was expected to explore the changes in student’s attitudes towards the integrated approach to grammar teaching

II.5.2 The interviews

After each questionnaire was fulfilled by the students, an interview to five of them began These five students for each interview were chosen randomly The researcher interviewed them separately when she met them right after the class time In addition, formal and informal discussions and free talks with the group leaders to collect data for this study were also carried out

II.6 Data collection procedure

The experiment was conducted during 8 weeks, from the beginning of the second term

of the academic year 2009-2010 The data was collected in following steps:

Week 1: Pre-treatment questionnaire and interview:

Pre-treatment questionnaire and interview were conducted with the involvement of 138 students in the first week of the experiment to identify the student’s current attitudes towards English grammar learning, the current approach and their possible expect to a change in

teaching approach The researcher clearly explained the purpose of doing research before the participants fulfilled the questions The participants were also encouraged to raise questions if there was something in the questionnaire they did not understand They were instructed to take

as much time as they needed to complete it

Week 2 – 7: Experimental lessons:

The time for quasi experimental teaching was 6 weeks Each week had 5 periods of English, and 2 of 5 were assumed to teach and learn grammar The researcher herself was in charge of teaching 30 periods to the two experimental classes with the application of the integrated approach Students were all made clear about the intention of the researcher to apply the integration of approaches in experimental teaching periods

Week 8: Post – treatment questionnaire and interviews:

After the application of the integrated approach during 6 weeks of experiment, the post-treatment questionnaire and interview were given to 138 students of the two experimental classes to identify the change in the students’ attitudes towards English grammar learning and

teaching after the experiment

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

III.1 Data analysis

To answer the three research questions, data from the two questionnaires and the interviews and discussions were classified into five different categories as follows:

 Student’s beliefs and attitudes towards grammar learning

 Student’s attitudes towards current teaching approach

 Student’s grammar learning situation

 Student’s expectations in grammar learning and teaching

 Student’s attitudes towards the new teaching approach

The data were collected and coded in pages of transcripts, tables, field notes, descriptive statistics and interpretations This coding, sorting and grouping of data by categories allowed a balanced description of the student’s attitudes before and after the experiment of the integrated approach

III.2 Findings and discussions

In this part, the collected data will be analyzed, presented and discussed to answer the research questions that the researcher has proposed

1 Student’s beliefs and attitudes towards English grammar learning

As discussed above, learning and attitudes always go side by side and have strong interactive relationship As Chamber (1999) asserts in his work that learning occurs more easily, when the learner has a positive attitude towards language and learning First of all, the author would like to explore the students’ general attitudes towards English as a compulsory subject in their learning curriculum It is easy to see that more than a half of the students (76=54%) considered English as an interesting and useful subject while some (8%) of them

confessed that it is a frightening subject to learn Some other (45 =35%) showed that they did not have much interest in the subject but they tried to learn it as a compulsory subject There

are also some students attributing English to a boring subject (See table 1 in the Appendix E)

The other data above show that students have quite different attitudes towards English learning as a subject at the class Half of them own a positive attitude towards the subject, and the other half conserve a quite negative attitude Discussing with the leader of the group, the author finds out that positive attitude towards English belongs to those who are quite good at

English, and have good perception to English lectures “I see that some students like English

and love learning English not as a compulsory subject but as their favorite Those students are usually better ones in the subject, who learnt English in Hanoi before.” (the group leader) The

negative attitude towards English is raised by two causes: the attribution to English as a so

hard subject “impossible to study” (a male student, coming from a rural area), and the bad

learning awareness of some students Another reason mentioned by the students explaining for

the negative attitude towards English is that “the teaching style of the teacher is not interesting

and motivating, so that we do not feel interested in learning the subject” (a male student, aged

20) This is one of the biggest constraints presented before which was taken into serious consideration by the author before the experiment

A close concept to attitudes is learning belief Belief in learning is the direct factor affecting learning attitudes Beliefs towards subjects and learning are, in addition to cognitive factors, the basic of learning Beliefs have to do with factors such as motivation, self- confidence, and how positive students are (Pehkonen & Safuanov, 1996; McLeod & McLeod, 2002.) Learning processes and strategies are developed based on one’s beliefs and will be congruent with one’s learning beliefs In order to explore students’ beliefs in the goals for their grammar learning, the questionnaire provided the most popular beliefs of most EFL learners in

their purposes to learn English (See table 1 in the next page)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

For better results in exams;

especially w ritten exams For better speaking and listening For being more confident in communicating in English For better reading and translation

No use

Table 1 Student’s goals for learning grammar

The figures reveal that the students are fully aware of the roles of grammar in their language learning 86 of 138 participants (55%) believe that grammar helps them to get good result in English writing exam, meanwhile more than a half of them (72=52%) think that grammar can be useful for them in their speaking and listening skills and better communication in English In addition, a big number of the students indicate that grammar is also necessary for reading comprehension and translation activities Moreover, being asked what they thought if grammar learning was removed from their English learning, and it was no

surprise to see that all of the interviewees rejected the idea They believe that “without it, I

don’t know how we can make sentences, to write, and to speak” and “I believe that grammar knowledge is the first thing we must learn, because it is the foundation of language learning.”

The truth that none of the students depreciated the importance of grammar can be a positive attitudinal factor affecting their learning awareness much

There are many factors affecting student’s attitudes towards grammar learning Being

asked to indicate the most affective factor, students have quite different opinions Some of the

participants showed that if the grammatical lessons are easier and less complicated, they may

have more positive attitude towards learning them A few (10%) of them indicated that if the distribution of grammatical lessons is more proper, and if the teacher show more interesting social knowledge, those can also change their attitudes toward grammar learning Explaining

for this point, some of the students interviewed indicated that the teacher usually spends so long time for grammar presentation, which makes them tired and stressful after the class Some of the students shared that their attitudes are affected by the class learning atmosphere

and other conditions “I wish the class is more exciting, so that I will be more motivated to

learn”; and the variety of practice activities organized by the teacher Noticeably, more than a

half of the students (96=70%) argued that it is the teaching methodology of the teacher that

best impacts on their attitudes towards grammar learning (See table 3 in the Appendix E) This

was made clearer by student’s answer to the next question of the questionnaire

2 Student’s attitudes towards current grammar teaching approach

Being asked to describe their evaluation to grammar teaching at the class by the current teacher, 91% of the students argued that it is boring, tiring (58%) or stressful (67%) Very few

of them indicated that grammar lessons are interesting, motivating or relaxing

Table 4: student’s attitudes towards current approach