(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) a study on adapting tasks in english 7 on the basis of communicative language teaching for students at minh khai secondary school, hoai duc, ha no

NGUYỄN THỊ NGA A STUDY ON ADAPTING TASKS IN ENGLISH 7 ON THE BASIS OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR STUDENTS AT MINH KHAI SECONDARY SCHOOL, HOAI DUC, HA NOI NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC ĐIỀ

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NGUYỄN THỊ NGA

A STUDY ON ADAPTING TASKS IN ENGLISH 7 ON THE BASIS OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR STUDENTS AT MINH KHAI SECONDARY SCHOOL, HOAI DUC, HA NOI

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC ĐIỀU CHỈNH CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRONG SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH 7 THEO HƯỚNG GIAO TIẾP CHO HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THCS MINH KHAI, HOÀI ĐỨC, HÀ NỘI)

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

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NGUYỄN THỊ NGA

A STUDY ON ADAPTING TASKS IN ENGLISH 7 ON THE BASIS OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR STUDENTS AT MINH KHAI SECONDARY SCHOOL, HOAI DUC, HA NOI

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC ĐIỀU CHỈNH CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRONG SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH 7 THEO HƯỚNG GIAO TIẾP CHO HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THCS MINH KHAI, HOÀI ĐỨC, HÀ NỘI)

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Nguyen Xuan Thom, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2014

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Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Ha Noi, and has not been included in any thesis submitted to any other university or institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications

Signature

Nguyen Thi Nga

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Assoc Prof Nguyen Xuan Thom, Ph.D for his continuous suggestions and enormously insightful comments I could not have imagined without his enthusiasm, this thesis would have fulfilled or not

My special thanks to all the teachers and students in grade 7 at Minh Khai Secondary School for their assistance and support during the process of data collection

Besides, I thank my family for their unconditional help and encouragement, both financially and emotionally during my learning process when I needed

Last but not the least, my appreciation goes to two closest friends of mine, Anh Tuan and Thu Huyen, who always provided me helpful tips and advice when I was stuck to write the thesis

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known how important English is in the development of the world in general and their career future in specific yet Hardly did students have chances to learn, practice or review English lessons in practical or joyful ways because they did not like English and found the lessons monotonous or worthless, either This research, therefore, was done to help students in grade 7 firstly, get involved the lessons as well as improve their English skills through task adaptation

A preliminary survey questionnaires, which was delivered to all 86 students

in grade 7, was the main implement to gather their opinions about their difficulties

in using textbook and their attitudes when the teacher adapt the tasks Parallel to this instrument, the researcher also interviewed two other English teachers in this school

to clarify their sentiments of task adaptation in Tiếng Anh 7

Based on the data, the 16 adapted versions were born and pilot teaching to examine their effectiveness Through this, the unsuitable tasks were then changed to make sure to get better results for further

In brief, the purpose of the research was to make a change in teaching and learning styles in this secondary school on the basis of communicative way, and the final results were 16 adapted tasks based on the 16 units in the textbook

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

 Communicative Language Teaching: CLT

 Teacher: T

 Students: Ss

 CUP: Cambridge University Press

 OUP: Oxford University Press

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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

 Chart 1: The results of the placement test

 Table 1: Specific results for the test

 Chart 2: Students’ opinions in terms of the textbook appearances

 Chart 3: Students’ opinions in terms of topics in the textbook

 Chart 4: Students’ opinions in terms of vocabulary and grammar in the textbook

 Chart 5: Students’ opinions in terms of tasks in the textbook

 Table 2: Students’ attitudes in terms of communicative activities

 Chart 6: Students’ opinions in terms of time settings per task and activity

 Chart 7: Students’ opinions in terms of time distribution

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

List of Abbreviations iv

List of figures and tables v

Table of contents vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Significance of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: Literature review 4

1 History of the study 4

2 Communicative language teaching 4

2.1 Definitions of Communicative language teaching (CLT 4

2.2 Roles of CLT in foreign language education 6

3 Task adaptation 7

3.1 Task definition 7

3.2 Adaptation definition 7

3.3 Purposes of adaptation 8

3.4 Adaptation techniques 9

Chapter 2: Methodology 10

2.1 Current context at Minh Khai Secondary School 10

1.1 Situational analysis 10

1.1.1 Settings of the study 10

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1.1.2 The teachers 10

1.1.3 The students 10

1.1.4 Facilities 11

1.2 Textbook analysis 11

2 Methods of the study 12

2.1 The participants 13

2.1.1 The teachers 13

2.1.2 The students 13

2.2 Research instruments 14

2.2.1 Instrument 1: Aptitude test 14

2.2.2 Instrument 2: Preliminary survey questionnaire 15

2.2.3 Instrument 3: Informal interview 15

2.2.4 Instrument 4: Observation sheet 16

2.3 Data collection procedure 16

2.4 Data analysis 16

2.4.1 The students’ opinions on the textbook 16

2.4.1.1 In terms of textbook appearances 16

2.4.1.2 In terms of topics 17

2.4.1.3 In terms of vocabulary and grammar 18

2.4.1.4 In terms of tasks 18

2.4.2 The students’ opinions on time 20

2.4.2.1 In terms of time settings per task and activity 20

2.4.2.2 In terms of time distribution 20

2.4.3 The teacher’s opinions on using communicative approaches 21

Chapter 3: Study results and discussion 22

1 What are the bases for adaptation on the basis of research results? 22

2 What specifically should be adapted in the textbook? 23

2.1 Unit 1: Section A, Task 4 (page 12) 23

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2.2 Unit 2: Section B, Task 3 (page 24) 24

3 Pilot teaching 32

PART III: CONCLUSION 38

1 Conclusion of the whole thesis 38

2 Limitations 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDIXES I

Appendix 1: Placement test I Appendix 2: Questionnaires III Appendix 3: Teachers’ interview V Appendix 4: Materials delivered to classes IX Appendix 5: Observation sheet of an English language class XV Appendix 6: Original tasks XVI

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PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

With the need for accessing the globalization, Viet Nam government has carried out many opening policies in order to integrate with other countries, including economy, politics, education and etc With these changes, our education has so many challenges in equipping second languages for learners to satisfy necessary requirements in the global trend nowadays

Facts have shown that English teachers need to renew their methodology and apply their teaching on the basis of communication for the purpose of increasing learners’ communicative skills Once learners can improve or master their English, they can achieve further academic purposes Therefore, textbook plays a very essential role in teaching and learning English because they can stimulate teachers and students’ effective education And, to gain a good result in English language teaching and learning, it is extremely necessary to find out, use and adapt appropriately textbook in terms of each context

It is the fact that English secondary education system in Viet Nam has a plenty

of limitation, including teaching quality, students’ attitude and level, testing assessment and etc Not only has the number of students had no much opportunity

to access English communicative schooling but also a large number of schools are unable to provide well-equipped facilities As the result, students feel less interested and demotivated with English, they do not concentrate on this subject and are not confident enough to communicate or speak out their voice

At Minh Khai secondary school, a really small school located a little far from the centre of the city, teaching and learning English on the basis of communicative language teaching (CLT) is a really new challenging job Besides the lack of facilities, teaching communicative methods are quite unfamiliar to teachers They have no much experience in teaching communicative methodology Equally important, student’s levels of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking and pronunciation are so normal That is the reason why they

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have trouble in learning English and feel less confident to speak out loud their voice successfully In addition, students in the same class are not at the same level, which makes some feel bored and uninterested in one activity while others feel down, tired and depressed due to its difficulty Therefore, I am of the belief that I should make groups of the same-level students and adapt the designed tasks according to communicative approaches Lastly, until now, there are some studies on adapting textbooks at high school, but no research on adapting textbook at secondary school has been carried out on the basis of CLT

All the things above urge the researcher to do this study in the hope of helping her low-level students in grade 7 get more chance to learn, practice, improve and enjoy the interest of learning English through the adaptation of some tasks on the basis of communicative learning during the course

2 Aims of the study

Tiếng Anh 7 was issued in 2012, which balances the skills taught and the kinds

of language practice the students take part in Therefore, to help the teaching and learning more effective and suitable with students’ ability in each context, using and adapting tasks in this textbook is really necessary And, this study is aimed to

achieve two central objectives:

o Apply teacher’s knowledge and experiences in teaching English in grade

(1) What are the bases for adaptation on the basis of research results?

(2) What specifically should be adapted in the textbook?

4 Scope of the study

As I mentioned above, this study is focused on investigating tasks in the Tiếng

Anh 7 Hence, the researcher will study teaching and learning situation basing on

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learner-centered and communicative learning approach with students in grade 7 at Minh Khai secondary school Since then, she will make recommendations for some specific adapted tasks in the textbook as an example basing on her theoretical

background, actual observations and experiences

5 Significance of the study

The study discusses about the adaptation of Tiếng Anh 7, which provides

samples in 16 units on the basis of CLT for teachers and chances to study in a different way from traditional one for students

One undeniable advantage of this study is that it also finds out strengths and weaknesses of English teachers in general and at Minh Khai secondary school in particular, since then they can have time to consider using and preparing lesson plans in a different kettle of fish

6 Design of the study

This study is divided into three main parts, namely Introduction, Development and Conclusion

Part 1, Introduction, presents reasons for choosing the topic, aims, scope and design of the study

Part 2, Development, consists of three chapters:

o Chapter one, Literature review, reviews the theories about CLT and textbook adaptation, finds what the researcher can learn and fix, finds some advantages and disadvantages in those researchers; hence, modify it

to fit students’ ability and needs at Minh Khai Secondary school

o Chapter two, Methodology, provides an overview of the school, including the teachers, students and facilities Methods of the study, data collection and analysis are presented in this chapter

o Chapter three, Findings and Sample adaptation, answers for the two research questions and suggests some adaptions (16 tasks on equal terms

with 16 units in Tiếng Anh 7) Pilot teaching is also reported

Part 3, Conclusion, gives a summary of the study and limitation is also discussed here

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PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 History of the study

CLT is now a worldwide teaching method which is mostly employed in the classrooms by the English teachers, but there are no books or unpublished materials that specifically dealt with CLT in secondary schools in Viet Nam The researcher just found a few theses related to this issue Nguyen Thi Trang (2002) studied

“adapting reading tasks in the textbooks Tieng Anh 12 for mixed-level students at

Van Noi High School in Dong Anh, Ha Noi” Luu Thi Thuy (2010) reviewed how to

“adapt English 10 textbook for students at Viet Duc Upper Secondary School” Mai Thi Hang Phuong (2008) had an interesting discussion on “organizing pair work

and group work in the context of high school classrooms at Pham Van Nghi Upper

Secondary school, Nam Dinh Province”

Even though learning English in secondary education plays a very essential role

in order to apply English in the real-life situations and help improve students’ communicative abilities, there are hardly any studies in adapting tasks on the basis

of CLT, in fact Up to now, I have just found out a foreign research on “the use of

English textbooks in Capeverdean Secondary schools: the relationship between use,

evaluation and adaptation of textbooks” by Dr Deanna Fernandes (2007)

Moreover, all these researches above are quite general and not focus on a

specific issue; therefore, this issue is still new, attracting and helpful for further

2 Communicative language teaching 2.1 Definitions of Communicative language teaching (CLT)

CLT has been widely studied by many researchers all over the world, which

is considered as a powerful theoretical model in ELT As a result, a huge number of various CLT definitions have been written

According to Larsen – Freeman (1986: 121), CLT is done “by making

communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledgment the interdependence of language and communication” In other words, interaction

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between teachers and learners or learners and learners are really important She also lists a plenty of communicative to help learners practice their communication skills such as authentic materials, scrambled sentences, games or role play

Other author shares the same idea that “language is acquired through

communication” (Howatt, 1984: 279) To illustrate, learners learn the structural

system, for example, as they learn how to use language to communicate This also means that teachers should provide learners chances to practice and communicate to each other via the real-life language

Canale and Swan (1980) add that a language teacher should “present

learners with the opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it

is actually used by native speakers” To say, in order to create useful language

items used by native speakers, authentic materials should be used in the English

class “Since language is a tool of communication, methods and materials should

concentrate on the message and not the medium”, Clarke and Silberstein (1977: 51)

adds in “Communicative Language Teaching Today” Richards (2006: 20) also lists four benefits of using authentic materials, including “provide cultural information

and real language, relate closely to learners’ needs and support creative approach

to teaching”

Richards (2006: 2) views CLT as “a set of principles about the goals of

language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom”

He also introduced a variety of activities using in the classroom and most are designed to make use of pair or group work’s activities Through this, learners are

more active than in the traditional learning way

To conclude, all professionals in the field tend to focus on the uses of CLT, which helps learners gain or build up their learning abilities to use in the real context In the following sections, the use of CLT as a tool in teaching English in schools will be discussed as the opinions of Richards (2006)

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2.2 Roles of CLT in foreign language education

Richards (2006) mentioned that “the ever-growing need for good

communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world” Nowadays, millions of people from the youngest to the oldest

desires to master or gain a high level of English Accuracy and fluency are the key

to succeed, so they take as much time as possible to practice, practice and practice English regularly With the increasing demand for learning English actively and practically, communicative language learning was born in the late 60s the traditional one and keeps developing and improving and now becomes the centre of

language learning CLT highlights “task-oriented and student-centered”, gives

learners communication opportunities

Secondary school students are in teaching energetic so that they can manage

to control the use of language fluency and accuracy in the best ways In that way, the teachers are not a real teacher any more, they take more responsibility, namely

as a facilitator, an advisor, a communicator and even a guide; and the roles of students has changed into all communicators In other words, the aim of CLT in secondary school is to develop their ability to use language to communicative with other in real life situations, to share their personal experiences with others To achieve this goal “learners need to develop communicative abilities” (Richards & Rogers, 1986)

On account of these benefits, CLT takes the forms of cooperation among learners to develop their confidence Hence, many classroom activities compatible with communicative approach are provided, including: accuracy versus fluency activities, mechanical, meaningful and communicative practice, information-gap activities, jigsaw activities, and others like task-completion activities, information- gathering activities, opinion-sharing activities, information-transfer activities, reasoning-gap activities and role plays (Richards, 2006: 14-19)

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3 Task adaptation 3.1 Task definition

Estaire and Zanon, 1994: 13-20 divided tasks into two types: learning tasks and communicative tasks If the former is focus on language form namely grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence structure, and the latter concentrates on real- world connection In the researcher’s study, she wants to adapt tasks on the basis of communicative tasks

As cited in Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2001:224), Jack

C Richards and Theodore S Rogers wrote “task as a central unit of planning and

teaching” Also in this book, Skehan (1996b:20) proposed the notion of tasks are

“generally bear some resemblance to real-life language use” or it takes “a fairly strong

view of communicative language teaching” Sharing the same idea, Estaire and Zanon

(1994: 13-20) mentioned task as “a piece of classroom work which, as far as possible,

resembles activities which our students or other people carry out in everyday life, thus reproducing processes of everyday communication” Nunan (1989:10) considered a

task as “any classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,

producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form” Prabhu (1987:17) said that “task is an activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allows teachers to control and regulate that process”

Although the notions of tasks are quite fuzzy, numerous or competing, it is undeniable that tasks play a very important role in the input and output of learning process for learners and teaching objectives for teachers

3.2 Adaptation definition

Tomlinson (1998:xi) stated that adaptation is “making changes to materials

in order to improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learner” Nunan (1991) also said that “most commercially produced materials can

be adapted to fit a range of needs and goals not originally envisaged by the materials writers” Madson and Bowen (1978) mentioned “adaptation made the

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important point that good teachers are always adapting the materials they are using

to the context in which they are using them in order to achieve the optimal congruence between materials, methodology, learners, objectives, the target language and the teacher’s personality and teaching style”

“The textbook is an almost universal element of ELT teaching Millions of

copies are sold every year, and numerous aid projects have been set up to produce them in various countries… No teaching-learning situation, it seems, is complete”,

said Hutchinson and Torres (1994:315) Hence, experimenting and adapting are really necessary to make them more accessible to a specific teaching and learning context

3.3 Purposes of adaptation

Textbook using is like a double-edges sword because it is not written for any particular classes This teacher may find it useful and suitable for his students while other thinks that it is not helpful at all Therefore, textbook adaptation aims to satisfy all teachers and students needs and levels according to a specific situation

As we know, textbook language is quite formal and they are not exactly applied in informal context In other words, its language models and dialogues are maybe inappropriate for communication in the real world Breen and Candlin

(1980) put that adaptation “offers more opportunities for communication” Nunan

(1999) shared the same idea that adaptation “makes materials more interactive” Textbook is usually applied for a long time, so it may go out of date and cannot satisfy teachers’ and learners’ needs or backgrounds Similarly, McDonough and Shaw (1993: 83-84) have listed 16 reasons for adaptation, which shows some of the

possible mismatches, such as “not enough grammar coverage in general, not

enough practice of grammar points of particular difficulty to these learners, reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary, comprehension questions are too easy because the answers can be lifted directly from the text with no real understanding… ” Likewise, Madsen (1978) added learner perspective

“adaptation is often required in order to increase motivation for learning by making

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the language more real, the situation more relevant, and the illustrations more vivid and interesting”

In brief, adapting textbook is necessary because there is no perfect textbook for a particular context or students’ needs and interests

3.4 Adaptation techniques

Madsen and Bowen (1978) bore in mind that “the good teacher is constantly

adapting” Also, he mentioned the three-level adaptation process, including: individualizing of material, modifying a text for purposes not intended or anticipated by the author and compensating for textbook defect He here listed some

detailed adaptation techniques in order to help teachers reach the levels mentioned above: supplementing, editing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing or modifying cultural/ situational context

McDonough and Shaw (1993: 36) proposed six ways of adaptation: adding, deleting or omitting, modifying, simplifying, re-ordering and re-placing Tomlinson (1998b: xi) shared the same ideas when giving some important ways: “reducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplementing”

However, Nunan (1991) gave two general view points of adaptation that is

“adaptation as addition (in a restricted sense) and adaptation as change”

In short, whatever the techniques are, their purposes are to help the English lessons more smoothly and effectively And in this thesis, the researcher will strictly follow the ways of adaptation of McDonough and Shaw (1993)

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

1 Current context at Minh Khai Secondary School

1.1 Situational analysis

1.1.1 Settings of the study

The study is conducted at Minh Khai secondary school, a local school far from Ha Noi 20 kilometers This school is quite small with only 9 classes, including

2 classes for grade 6, 8 and 9; and 3 classes for grade 7 Here, students are provided with a lot of general subjects like other secondary schools and English is also one of three important subjects as usual, but not compulsory one for the high-school

entrance examination

Students have three 45-minute English periods per week, including revision

periods, which are 54 in the first semester and 51 in the second semester

1.1.2 The teachers

There are only three female teachers with two at the middle-age, the other is still young The two others have experiences in teaching English for more than 10 years and the other just undergoes 2 teaching years

The two teachers graduated from Ha Tay Teacher Training College and the last one is from Ha Noi University of Languages and International Studies All of them are energetic and enthusiastic with well-qualified knowledge Nevertheless, one of them is a vice-principal, she just takes in charge of only one class (grade 9) Others two are in charge of eight classes With the workloads of around twelve periods per weeks as well as other jobs like the supervising teachers or the housewives, they have no much time spending on finding extra materials or adapting communicative methods in their classes

1.1.3 The students

There are nine classes in this school with two in grade 6, 8 and 9; three in grade 7 All of them have learnt English at the age of 8 (grade 3) with two main skills including reading and writing They are all in the same undeveloped village;

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therefore, they have no many opportunities to access the most effective learning English ways

The levels of students are not really good There are, of course, some excellent but this is a rather small amount Equally important, students in a class are with different English attitudes, motivation and backgrounds Some learns due to their interests, another learns because of the marks, teachers’ requirements or parents

In addition, not all but most of students tend to use book with answer keys They learn English passively and have no specific goals That causes a lot of difficulties for teachers in arousing students’ interests and teaching an effective lesson

1.1.4 Facilities

First and foremost, with appropriately 30 students in a class, it is not really too big for a class at secondary school However, with mixed-level students, it is not easy for teachers to cover all students just in 45 minutes

Secondly, desk arrangement is not ideal for teaching and learning in communicative approach because teachers are difficult in applying group work or pair work, for example This arrangement also prevents teachers interacting in effect with their students and among students as well

Thirdly, the numbers of equipments such as tapes, cassette players, overhead projects, pictures or teacher cards are limited, which causes many problems in process of teaching and learning Even worse, the quality of high technology devices is poor because there is not enough time to prepare or no one takes care them often

Finally, reference books, videos, magazines, newspapers for teachers and students in English are not available in the school library That unfulfilled facility causes a bad effect in teaching and learning progress

1.2 Textbook analysis

Textbook is widely accepted as a very crucial tool in language education

The seven-year English textbook 7, which was introduced in 2012 and written by

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Dang Duc Trung and Tran Thi Khanh, edited by Tran Thu Ha, Tao Thanh Huyen, Dang Minh Hien, Pham Tuan, Le Hoang Hai, Nguyen Tien Dung and Bui Quang Tuan, goes on helping students be familiar with and practice English to obtain a basic English achievement through a variety of English topics, useful structures and attracting dialogues

In the first place, this textbook is mainly focused on grammar and vocabulary with students’ daily-life’s topics, for instance, school, health, neighborhood, play or

the world, tenses or model sentences, ect Tiếng Anh 7 includes five Language focus

units, which aims to help students assess their own progress and 16 teaching units with different topics and all of them consist two main sections A and B, which are relevant to their main topics and include the following sub-sections, namely: introduce new lexical items and structural ones, practice, summary of the unit as well Likewise, there are a glossary part and a grammar review part at the end of the textbook to help students sum up the whole main points in grade 7 Accompanied with the textbook, there are two kinds of the recorders: one for teacher at school and other for students’ self-study pronunciation as well as listening skills at home

In the second place, in spite of its strengths mentioned above, there is no English pronunciation or phonetics section which is necessary to practice the real

language The section “Play with words” in the end of each unit concentrates on

intonation, but with the fast rhythm, students hardly follow In addition, with the limitation of the time and the have-to concentration on grammar and vocabulary, most teachers cannot cover this section and ignore this

From my points of view, the role of textbook is undeniable in foreign language teaching and learning However, teachers’ use of textbook is more significant because their students enjoy the lesson at class or not depend on the way

of teaching as well as the way of adapting tasks in the textbook

2 Methods of the study

According to Nunan (1992: 19), action research is conducted by seven steps, including Initiation, Preliminary investigation, Hypothesis, Intervention, Evaluation, Dissemination, and Follow-up This study also follows some basic steps of an

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action research as suggested by Nunan It is carried out through situation analysis, material collection, survey questionnaires, and aptitude test and class observations First and foremost, situation analysis is focus on the description of the current context at grade-7 students at Minh Khai secondary school She found that her students

did not enjoy her lesson, or they just followed inactively Thus, she asked herself: what

do her students actually wish to be done or included in an English lesson?

Secondly, the researcher is surely concerned about her students’ behaviors, which could affect the effectiveness of learning English She rechecked the results

of the placement test to make sure that how well her students are and then carried out a preliminary questionnaire survey to know how they thought about their textbooks, or their difficulties in using textbooks

Thirdly, once the data was collected, she confirmed a hypothesis that her students met such as their interest, learning strategies or motivation

Fourthly, the researcher then delivered some adapted tasks in the next lessons, which are in communicative way and suitable for their ability to intervene or fix the problems Later, she observed her students to record the results

Fifthly, after pilot teaching, the students enjoyed the lessons and were more active and comfortable This is also the way to evaluate the adapted tasks However,

in comparisons in terms of those strengths, weaknesses still remained

Next, the researcher disseminated the advantages and disadvantages of the adapted task to their students

2.1 The participants 2.1.1 The teachers

As the researcher mentioned above, there are three English teachers, but both of them were educated under the Grammar-Translation method The younger is luckier to access other modern methods, especially Communicative Language Teaching, at University of Languages and International Studies

2.1.2 The students

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There are exactly 86 students in grade 7 participated in this study with the girls in total of 37 and the boys of 49 The researcher, in fact, is in charge of grade 7 and one class in grade 9; however, she chose students in grade 7 instead because those in grade 9 are busy preparing for the Secondary School Graduation; especially, they hardly omit English in the second semester; so she may meet some obstacles in collect data or apply pilot teaching Another reason is that, grade-7 students are quite familiar and so excited with English learning style in secondary school; therefore, her lessons may be accepted comfortably

2.2 Research instruments 2.2.1 Instrument 1: Aptitude test

To get the main purpose of the study, the researcher uses an aptitude test to examine the levels of students in order to find out the better adaptations in pilot teaching progress The results are evaluated on the test of Hoai Duc Division of Education and Training (see Appendix 1) at the beginning of the term Then the results are ranked:

The bar chart shows the results of the placement test of grade 7 with operating 14 different bands of scores Overall, we can see significant differences in both bands and levels of students

4.7

10.4

17.4

20.9 17.4

9.3 4.7

1.2

4.7 3.5 2.3 1.2 2.3

0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 7 8

Chart 1: The results of the placement test

Mark

Percent

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To begin with, there were some commons between “average” and “high” grades This included band 4 and band 7.5 with the same percentage of 1.2, band 7 and 8 with the percentage of 2.3 By contrast, the rates of bands of scores that might

be classified as “weak” ones such as from band 1.5 to 2.5 are comparatively high, at 17.4% for band 1.5 and 2.5; and at 20.9% for band 2 Sadly, no students can get mark 9 or 10 and the rates of “average” or “below average” students are quite poor, which shows how bad they are at the beginning of the term And here are the specific results for each class:

Table 1: Specific results for the test

Looking at the table above, it is clear that the levels of students in grade 7A2 and 7A3 are quite similar and 7A1 is a little bit better Most of them feel stressful

with English and consider it as a terrible nightmare

2.2.2 Instrument 2: Preliminary survey questionnaire

A survey questionnaire has also been chosen as the main instrument for collecting data from the participants so as to investigate students’ difficulties in using textbook This helps the researcher save time or collect answers straightforward and quickly; and reduce pressure for students

The questionnaire is written in Vietnamese in order to make sure that all students can understand the questions clearly It is divided into 2 parts The first part provides some basic personal information The second part is to collect information about students’ problems toward using the Textbook 7 and their expectations of teaching methodology on basis of CLT

2.2.3 Instrument 3: Informal interview

The interview was conducted in English to find out what the teachers think about task adaptation on the basis of CLT and how often they adapt or apply CLT

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during their teachings, as well The interview consists of two parts, namely: the first for personal information and the other for the teachers’ attitudes and beliefs on using CLT approach in secondary school in general and in grade 7 in specific

2.2.4 Instrument 4: Observation sheet

Observation is an important part of learning how to teach Therefore, classroom observation sheets, which help teachers easily take notes anything happened in their classes, were used to evaluate or to see real-life teachers in real- life teaching situations In other words, this is a useful tool to assess students’ attitudes and interaction when working individually, in pairs or in groups, especially when teachers apply some new techniques The sheet (see Appendix 5) was mainly focus on the benefits and drawbacks of the tasks that were adapted and applied in every class

2.3 Data collection procedure

To collect information from students on time, the researcher firstly rechecked the test that students had done at the beginning of the term Then she gathered the results of the test to know the levels of students to find the best adaptation techniques Next, she asked permission from three supervising teachers of the class 7A1, 7A2 and 7A3 so that she could deliver 86 photocopied copies to students in the class meeting Before sending the questionnaires, she explained the main purposes of the questionnaires and readily answered any questions from students Luckily, she then got back all 86 copies without any problems After that, to ensure the findings of this study is valid and more reliable; the researcher conducted an interview to help reveal teachers’ attitudes and beliefs concerning this issue The results of the interview were noted for future purposes

2.4 Data analysis 2.4.1 The students’ opinions on the textbook 2.4.1.1 In terms of textbook display

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The chart shows how interesting the students gain through looking at the cover and the textbook displays Of the 80 students that were surveyed, most of students agreed that clear and comprehensible layouts and rich illustrations could motivate their interests with the percentage of 55.8 and 74.4, respectively By comparison, there were lower figures seen in other element, which students didn’t agree that textbook layout and picture can inspire their attention, with between 2%

to 7% However, the numbers of students were unsure whether an external look can motivate them or not were quite average On the whole, the textbook display is really necessary in stimulating students learning English

2.4.1.2 In terms of topics

The bar chart provides information on the topics in the textbook 7 Only 2.3% of them did not approve that the topics in the textbooks are fascinating and exciting while 66.3% of them saw the topics so interesting and familiar with their real life Meanwhile, 31.4% of them didn’t know or find out how interesting the

Chart 2: Question 1 and Question 2

Disagree Don't know Agree

2.3

31.4

66.3

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Topics

Chart 3: Question 3

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topics are Maybe they hardly paid attention to the topics or if not, they would forget how attracting the topics are soon

2.4.1.3 In terms of vocabulary and grammar

The graph provides information about lexical items and syntax grammar per unit At the first glance, the numbers of students choosing “agree” answers for there were many vocabulary and model sentence items in every sections were quite similar with over 60% The students disagreed with the amount of both vocabularies and grammars, which were suitable with their levels, were the same with the percentage of 7 This obvious choice demonstrated that they maybe were good or excellent ones Around 30% was not sure whether these items were a few or a lot because they would perhaps forget them soon

Vocabulary Model sentences

Chart 4: Question 4 and Question 5

Not difficult requirements

A variety of tasks

& activities

Communicative tasks

Chart 5: Question 6, Question 7 and Question 8

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The bar chart describes students’ feelings on doing tasks in class As can be seen from the chart, the numbers of students agreed that in the textbook 7 most requirements can be done because they are not too challenging accounted for a half while those who took issues with them were just 11.6% That the tasks and activities are quite mixed and wide-ranging became similar to the requirements with the rates of agreement over 65% and disagreement 9.3% 88.4% found that communicative tasks such as games, role play or crosswords should be added 11.6% of them, on the other hand, was not sure of adding such kinds of tasks or not, but they still chose some remarkable types and remarked that “depend on time or the purposes of the lessons, teachers should use and adapt communicative learning way” Especially, there was no one not approving adapting tasks The table below shows students’ attitudes on their favorite activities:

Table 2: Students’ attitudes on the communicative activities

The table illustrates the proportion of school students desiring such different types of communicative activities Overall, it is evident that most students want to play games or game-like activities, but much less on Survey and Interview The selection of Games was the largest with nearly all the students choosing, at 81/ 86 Similarly, half of them chose Crosswords, which is a really appealing learning way

To compare, this pattern was reversed for Survey and Interview with 18 and 19 choices, respectively In addition, 20 of them made a further remark that the teacher,

up to specific situation, could add more activities These could help them pay attention and feel more attractive

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2.4.2 The students’ opinions on time 2.4.2.1 In terms of time settings per task and activity

The pie chart illustrates the time distribution per task during a 45-minute lesson It is clear that the largest proportion (52%) approved the ideal time for one task or activity is from 5 to 10 minutes Whereas, 42% of the, thought the teacher should last 10 or 20 minutes to make sure that students, especially average-level ones, have chances to absorb the tasks Last but not the least, the remaining 6% gave more ideas To say, they added that how much time for each task is based on how long it takes

2.4.2.2 In terms of time distribution

The bar chart shows the students’ opinions on the time distribution of a

45-minute lesson It is evident from the chart that the amount of students disputed

50

39.5

10.5 0

10 20 30 40 50 60

Time distribution

Chart 7: Question 10

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over if a unit distributed into five lessons is a few far higher than the other two (exactly a half) In contrast, only around 10% of students thought that the time distribution is not enough They might feel how much the lexical items and syntax were, so they wanted to last the time for one unit to make sure they could grasp the lessons clearly The rest (29.5%) was uncertain, they might not care much

2.4.3 The teacher’s opinions on using communicative approaches

The results from the interviews show that although both teachers did not often use tasks or activities related to CLT in the past because they did have much time to prepare the lessons They really want to apply CLT approach, which they call group work, pair work, or role play in their lessons to alter the learning atmosphere They also realized that traditional learning ways can help students master grammar and practice doing exercises very well, but that cannot help them use the language smoothly or remember those long

Moreover, teachers here also know that the CLT method is widely used in English second language classrooms around the world Then they extremely utilize this style in their classroom to great effect upon actual communication rather than rule based learning as usual

Equally important, students in Minh Khai Secondary School are very shy and reserved, they don’t enjoy English lessons because they are not good at this subject or they find this one is not interesting enough to attract them Thus, the teachers do support the researcher’s opinion about making some changes in the

teaching styles It means that task adaptation in Tiếng Anh 7 is actually integral to

be suitable for students’ needs and levels here Moreover, they also added that not

to let the lessons take too much time of other parts, the teachers should prepare or control the adapted tasks as well as possible

In short, in this chapter, I have presented two main parts, two tables and seven charts The main thing withdrawn is students’ difficulties in language learning because of the poor conditions in the school, students’ low levels, learning attitudes and styles Thus, adaptation is necessary

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CHAPTER 3: STUDY RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1 What are the bases for adaptation on the basis of research results?

Textbook have been edited many times; therefore, the later one is usually better than the old one, not only the layouts but also the contents The current textbook, of course, has much strength, including an attractive design or interesting topics

Dr Ngo Bao Chau says on an article “The quality of English language teaching

is the basic unequal element in Vietnam education People coming from wealthy families are much better trained” This means that students in not-center areas or in

well-to-do families cannot get the best learning English ways; especially, can’t access the most modern methods due to poor equipments as the researcher mentioned in Part 1 – chapter 2

Most students at Minh Khai secondary schools had difficulty in learning English due to too many new words and grammatical structures in a unit They found that they can hardly recall all things they learnt in previous semesters and plus the current items they have to learn That is why they might stressful with English and found no interest in the lessons, and this was also performed undoubtedly in the result of the placement test with not really good outcomes Undeniable reason for their not-good results is that they almost have to help their family with such housework or field works, so even though they have the recorder (attached to the textbook) for self-study pronunciation and listening skills

at home, none of them spends time on it

As the result of the preliminary survey, the majority of the students wanted to change the learning style They desired to be funny, active and enjoyable in a student-centered environment According to the survey, some students even suggested more ideas like “up to the students’ needs, teacher can add more activities”, “funny activities can help students more enthusiastic and less stressful”

or “teacher should use games often instead of doing tasks or exercises passively”, and etc Furthermore, there are only five 45-minute periods for each unit The teacher did not have time enough to add more exciting activities, control 28 – 30

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students as well as help them practice language more or do the tasks correctly This led to the fact that they were lack of love for English

From the students’ needs mentioned in the preliminary, 16 adapted versions of

16 units were born to change their normal learning styles In other word, the researcher chose only one task of one unit and then adapted it to fit to the students’ levels and wants basing on the techniques by McDonough and Shaw (1993: 36): adding, deleting or omitting, modifying, simplifying, re-ordering and re-placing

2 What specifically should be adapted in the textbook?

Because of the time limitation and the length of the thesis, the researcher cannot

adapt all the tasks in Tiếng Anh 7 Therefore, she only chose one task in each unit

to adapt it to be suitable with her students With her one experiencing year, she picked the task that her students might feel boring or too difficult, or simply familiar to them Below, the researcher would like to offer some ideas of which

tasks were adapted

2.1 Unit 1: Section A, Task 4 (page 12, Tiếng Anh 7)

Rationale for adaptation: This task is so useful and familiar to Ss and it can

attract Ss’ interest as well The researcher decided to add another funny activity to make her class enjoy the lesson and feel free at the beginning of the term

Adapted version:

- Type of task: Who are you? (whole class)

- Type in CLT: mechanical practice

- Aims: review greetings

- Teaching aids: none

- Time: 5 minutes

- Procedure: Call student A standing face to face to the board, pointing

to another one and ask him/ her to greet student For example, “Good

morning, Lan/ Nice to meet you, Lan, etc The student A has to listen

to, respond that greeting, and make a guess what the name of that

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person is If it is correct, the student can be back to the seat If it is false, he/ she must do it again

2.2 Unit 2: Section B, Task 3 (page 24, Tiếng Anh 7)

Rationale for adaptation: The purpose of the task was to review how to write

the months in the correct order without any practicing chances to speak out loud; hence, the teacher modified the task to motivate students

Adapted version:

- Type of task: Remembered days (whole class)

- Type in CLT: Accuracy

- Aims: practice in talking about dates of the year

- Time: 8 minutes

- Procedure: T speaks out some popular events and calls out some Ss to read out loud the date of that event For example, T says “Valentine”, then Ss will response “the fourteenth of February”

Rationale for adaptation: There are two parts in the task, its purpose is to

revise the words they learnt in the previous lesson and also practice grammar structure Because of the time limitation, the researcher decided to replace it with only one activity, instead

Adapted version:

- Type of task: Chain game (group work)

- Type in CLT: Meaningful practices

- Aims: Use “There is ”, “There are ” to describe rooms and houses

- Teaching aids: picture (in the textbook)

- Time: 15 minutes

- Procedure: T divides class into groups of 6 or 8 The first student (in

each group) says a sentence (basing on the picture), such as “In the

living room, there’s a TV” The second one repeats the first student’s

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and adds more: “In the living room, there’s a TV and cat” The game

continues until the last student

Rationale for adaptation: The task aims to develop both listening and reading

skills; however, most teachers just focus on the latter but neglecting the former For that reason, the researcher replaced it by the following way

Adapted version:

- Type of task: Fill in the form (Individual)

- Type in CLT: Information-gap activities

- Aims: listen to the tape for details

- Teaching aids: hand-outs (see Appendix 4)

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: T gets Ss to close books, gives hand-outs and lets Ss listen

to the tape twice to fill in the form, then calls some Ss to read the answers T lets them listen again and checks

Rationale for adaptation: Due to some tricks of the monologue in this task,

most Ss in low levels cannot distinguish what the true information and what the wrong one are For example, the speaker still speaks the name of the

subject, but he/ she added “not”, and if Ss cannot hear this, they surely choose

that subject Hence, the researcher adapted the task to make it easier

Adapted version:

- Type of task: Bingo (Individual)

- Type in CLT: Task-completion activities

- Aims: listen to the tape for specific information

- Time: 7 minutes

- Procedure: Ask Ss to draw a 3x3-grid table in their notebooks, look at the pictures on page 54 and speak out loud the names of the subjects

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basing on the pictures Ss then fill in the table with 6 subjects T plays the record once or twice, the first Ss tick three subjects mentioned first will win the game

Rationale for adaptation: This task is to practice reading skill about pastime

activities, then Ss will answer four questions The researcher wishes all her Ss

to enjoy the reading text instead of reading passively and answer the questions grudgingly, so she decided to add something new in this task

Adapted version:

- Type of task: re-ordering (Group work)

- Type in CLT: Jigsaw

- Aims: skimming/ scanning

- Teaching aids: hand-outs (see Appendix 4)v

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: Divide class into groups of 5 and ask Ss to close the textbooks T takes the text on page 62 in the textbook and divides it into 6 different sections Each student in a group gets one section Ss take time reading their sections, then read loud their summary to others Next, they decide where their section belongs to and put the entire story together Make sure that all Ss have to read the text instead of showing their cards

Rationale for adaptation: In this task, there are four pictures corresponding to

four public holidays Ss can do this task without listening because it is too uncomplicated To make the lesson more vivid and inspire Ss with such an interesting topic, the researcher omitted and replaced with other activity

Adapted version:

- Type of task: guessing (group work)

- Type in CLT: Information-gap activities

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- Aims: describe pictures and make guesses

- Teaching aids: 6 types of different pictures (see Appendix 4)

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: Ss work in groups of 6 The different pictures are distributed to all members (one picture/ one member) In turn, Ss describe their pictures and others have to guess what holiday/ festival

it is

Rationale for adaptation: Ss simply have to answer four questions in this

task For that reason, the researcher made a decision to replace it with other communicative activity

Adapted version:

- Type of task: shopping game (whole class)

- Type in CLT: role plays

- Aims: practice asking and answering about the prices in the shops

- Time: 15 minutes

- Procedure: Ss write down 10 things like with the right amounts T divides class into two groups: buyers and sellers, and introduces the rules: the sellers need to sell out all their goods they wrote before and the buyers also need to buy all their needed things They will use the

model sentences learnt in the previous tasks like “I’d like ”, “How

much ” After that, T checks who sells out and who buys all (see

model dialogue: Appendix 4)

Rationale for adaptation: This task is to help Ss review the previous reading

text while listening This is useful but the researcher also wanted to add another one to review the simple past forms and develop their imaginary

Adapted version:

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- Type of task: story telling (group work)

- Type in CLT: reasoning-gap activities

- Aims: practice writing skills as well as simple past form

- Teaching aids: blank sheets

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: Divide class into groups of 4-6 T then writes a sentence

on the board (using simple past form): “Once upon a time, there was

a beautiful princess” The first students in each group have to write

down one more sentences related to the teacher’s one When the

teacher says “Move”, they deliver the sheet to other members The

story keeps being created until the last members They read out loud their story after that

Rationale for adaptation: The task is usually done in written forms, which

makes Ss do passively and no motivations The researcher, hence, modified it

so as to provide her Ss chances to extend their speaking skill

Adapted version:

- Type of task: noughts and crosses (group work)

- Type in CLT: task-completion activities

- Aims: review “Why ? – Because ” and simple past tense

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: T draws a quick 4x4 grid on the board (see Appendix 4) and divides class into 2 groups and shows symbols for groups (group

1 = X, group 2 = O) Two members from each group in turn choose a

square (one asks, one answers) using “Why ? – Because ” with the

given cues If they are correct, they will get “X or O” The group getting four Xs or Os either horizontally, vertically or diagonally will win the game

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Rationale for adaptation: This task is focus on skimming skills to make Ss

answer the questions in the textbook However, the researcher wanted to add another game-like activity to make the lesson funnier and more vivid

Adapted version:

- Type of task: DVD buttons (group work)

- Type in CLT: task-completion activities

- Aims: concentrate on pronunciation

- Teaching aids: color chalk

- Time: 7 minutes

- Procedure: Divide class into groups of 4 or 6, then draw a DVD player style control panel on the board with a series of buttons: play, pause, slow motions, fast and volume “on/ off” (see Appendix 4) Teacher has Ss read out the text When T hits a button, Ss must adapt their reading style according

Rationale for adaptation: In task 2, Ss ask and answer questions with a

partner about their favorite food using too, so, neither, either But the

researcher wanted to make a change with a slightly different omit to be suitable for their Ss’ ability

Adapted version:

- Type of task: survey (pair work)

- Type in CLT: opinion-sharing activities

- Aims: review “neither, either, too, so”

- Teaching aids: hand-outs (see Appendix 4)

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: T lets Ss move around to ask two friends some questions (see Appendix 4) If they agree, put a tick () If they disagree, put a

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cross () Their findings will be presented to the class later For

example: Mai and Lan studies Math well So do I

Rationale for adaptation: This task lets Ss practice the use of some modal

verbs But with their limitation of their languages as well as the use of Để học

tốt Tiếng Anh 7, they simply copy the answers The researcher thought about

deleting and re-placing by another one

Adapted version:

- Type of task: catch and say (pair work)

- Type in CLT: communicative practice

- Aims: practice modal verbs in real context

- Teaching aids: a scrunched ball of paper

- Time: 10 minutes

- Procedure: T gives a scrunched ball of paper to one student This

student starts saying “I’m cold” and throws the ball to another That

student responds making a statement with “should/ shouldn’t/ ought

to/ ought not to” like “You shouldn’t drink cold water” The same student makes another statement “I’m tired” and continues throwing

the ball to another The game keeps in the same way

Rationale for adaptation: This task mentioning TV in Viet Nam, which is

quite familiar to Ss For that reason, after Ss finish the task the researcher wanted them to take time to discuss this topic with their friends, so she added another activity

Adapted version:

- Type of task: discussion (group work)

- Type in CLT: communicative practice

- Aims: know more television in Viet Nam

- Teaching aids: four sub-boards and chalks

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