04051001843 tóm tắt tác Động của việc Áp dụng phương pháp học tập kết hợp Đối với sự phát triển kĩ năng nói và viết tiếng anh của học sinh trung học phổ thông

04051001843 tóm tắt tác Động của việc Áp dụng phương pháp học tập kết hợp Đối với sự phát triển kĩ năng nói và viết tiếng anh của học sinh trung học phổ thông

VVIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ THUÝ LOAN

THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYING BLENDED LEARNING MODEL

ON HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS’ DEVELOPMENT

OF ENGLISH SPEAKING AND WRITING SKILLS

(Tác động của việc áp dụng phương pháp học tập kết hợp đối với

sự phát triển kĩ năng nói và viết Tiếng Anh của học sinh trung học phổ thông)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS – TYPE 1

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Dr Trần Thị Duyên

HANOI – 2022

ABSTRACT

Despite its popularity worldwide, blended learning was not very popular in Vietnam before 2019, especially at the high school level It was only until the first wave of the COVID19 pandemic worldwide that the majority of teachers were coerced to teach in online platforms to maintain the schooling Teachers started to familiarize themselves with the online mode of teaching, and from that basis, many high schools began to

integrate online to face-to-face learning during the new normal time (trạng thái bình thường mới) as a pedagogical innovation and also a method to cope with

emergencies On that backdrop, the researcher wants to investigate the effects of

employing blended learning model on high school students’ development of English competence, specifically in speaking and writing skills in a sample of 47

students from two EFL classes of grade 10 in a high school in the city center of Hanoi Employing quantitative experimental research design, this study aims to measure the changes in students’ performance in speaking and writing skills The findings show that the students in the blended classroom performed better in the speaking and writing post-tests than those who had the usual classroom hours, although the overall speaking score of the treatment group is not significantly higher than the control group Blended learning model should hence be considered as an effective method in English language teaching and learning

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

This chapter states the rationale of the study, research’s aims, the scope of the study, how it can contribute to the current research landscape in the impact of blended instruction in English learning It also proposes the research question that serves as the guiding line for the whole research

1.1 Rationale of the study

Blended learning has been acknowledged worldwide as an effective approach in EFL

teaching and learning (Ginaya, Rejeki & Astuti, 2018; Kikgoz, 2011; So & Lee,

2013; Geta & Olango, 2016) In its weak form, blended learning includes giving

assignments on the internet, communicating via email, using presentation tools in the classroom; meanwhile its strong form maintains both online and offline environments

as indispensable constituents for learning and teaching (Yoon, 2011) Teachers adopting the strong form of blended learning really have to keep online and offline platforms cohesive to each other They therefore experience some major changes in their lesson plans as well as teaching techniques compared to the conventional face to face teaching

The implementation of blended learning has provided some certain benefits to the learners such as increasing motivations , reducing anxiety , boosting confidence (Liu, 2013; Susanti, 2017; Rybushkina & Krasnova, 2015; Kintu, 2017), and enhance their language competence (Banados, 2006; Ginaya, Rejeki & Astuti, 2018; Kikgoz, 2011;

So & Lee, 2013; Geta & Olango, 2016; Challob et al., 2016; Isda, Purwati, & Imran, 2021) Specifically, blended learning helps reduce learner’s anxiety, motivate them to participate in group work and encourage their independent learning (Liu, 2013; Susanti, 2017) For some students, blended learning provides a meaningful and interesting environment for them (Yen, Hien & Huyen, 2019; Vu & Bui, 2020; Rybushkina & Krasnova, 2015) and even serves its role as an intrinsic motivation (Kintu, 2017) It even enjoys the number one rank of favour in the research of Dziuban et al (2018)

According to Challo, Bakar and Latif (2016), blended learning outweighs either online learning or face-to-face learning by offering an optimal and effective

environment for teaching and learning of foreign language The reason is, blended learning enables the flexibility of learning in terms of time and space, the personalization in which feedbacks are tailored to each student in a personalized space rather than in an open physical classroom, as well as the collaboration in group work and peer review activities (Krasnova & Ananjev, 2015) Alseweed (2013) conducted a study to investigate the effect of three delivery modes (traditional, blended, virtual) on the attitude of 37 EFL students at Qassim University by collecting data from pre- and post-tests and questionnaires The finding showed that blended learning was also more favored than traditional and virtual modes of learning

People are very optimistic about the use of blended learning In the American context, it is regarded as a solution to close the educational gap between students from high socio-economic backgrounds and their lower counterparts because it has the ability to provide more educational access (Dziuban et al., 2018) However, one important point to note is that blended learning does not replace, or in a more deterministic expression, cannot replace the traditional classroom practices but only

“has the proven potential to enhance both the effectiveness and efficiency of meaningful experiences” (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004, p 95) The traditional classrooms should be maintained as the skeleton of educational practices, from which

we could think about optimizing its effectiveness and efficiency

1.2 Objective and research questions

1.2.1 Objective

Despite its popularity worldwide, blended learning was not very popular in Vietnam before 2019, especially at the high school level It was only until the first wave of the COVID19 pandemic worldwide that the majority of teachers were coerced to teach in online platforms to maintain the schooling Teachers started to familiarize themselves with the online mode of teaching, and from that basis, many high schools began to

integrate online to face-to-face learning during the new normal time (trạng thái bình thường mới) as a pedagogical innovation and also a method to cope with

emergencies

1.2.2 Research questions

On that backdrop, the researcher wanted to investigate the effects of employing

blended learning model on high school students’ development of English competence, specifically in speaking and writing skills In other words, it deals with

the two research questions:

1 What are the effects of the employment of blended learning model on the speaking and writing skills of high school students?

2 On which aspects of speaking and writing do blended instructions have the most significant effect(s)?

Research worldwide so far has shown the effectiveness of blended learning model in tertiary level as well as secondary level; however, it is still a new teaching reality in high schools in Vietnam This study is therefore to fill in this research gap and extend the scope of the field of blended learning Added to this scholarly purpose, this study serves as an investigation of the researcher, in the role of an EFL teacher, to help students improve their language ability, especially the two output skills of speaking and writing Though the topic in this research is not a new one, the researcher believes that its findings will add values to the research domain of blended learning and be meaningful to the researcher as well as the EFL high school teachers in Vietnam and worldwide

1.3 Scope of the study

This paper investigates the application of blended learning model at a high school Although blended learning model is implemented comprehensively in the teaching of all four skills of English language, the researcher focuses only on the evaluation of speaking and writing skills and treats the other two as the requisite input for the output skills

1.4 Significance of the study

The findings of this study will add values, firstly, to the researcher’s concerns about the effects of such a new pedagogical innovation on the speaking and writing skills of her students and, secondly, to the language teacher community that also struggle to find innovative and adaptive teaching methods, and thirdly, in the larger picture, to the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) field

To be honest, the application of blended learning in English language teaching field has been omnipresent worldwide for many years; however, in Vietnam, due to various factors including the preference of teachers for the conventional grammar translation method, blended learning has not received enough attention from the language teacher community By conducting this research, the researcher takes it as

an opportunity to gain further expertise and to share her teaching experience with other teachers in her immediate teaching community

1.5 Organization of the thesis

This chapter has indicated the motivations for this study, the objectives of the research and the scope of investigation The remaining chapters are organized as

follows:

Chapter II contextualizes the study in the relevant literature of blended learning

In chapter III, the methodology of the research with details about the statistical analysis is described

Chapter IV is a presentation of research findings of the impact of blended learning on the speaking and writing performance of students

In chapter V, a thorough discussion in comparison with previous literature Conclusions, implications, some limitations and suggestions for further research will

be presented in chapter VI

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides an overview of the contextual background of the study It also gives the working definition of blended learning and flipped classroom model, reviews some applications of this approach in English classrooms and presents the findings of previous studies

2.1 Blended learning

Blended learning has its very first trace in the emergence of information communication technologies (ICTs) and later on the increasing popularity of online learning As ICTs provide the flexibility of time and place, they allow employees in the corporate sector to study while keeping up with their work (Sharma, 2010) They were then employed in the education sector thanks to the pedagogical potential of ICTs for teaching (Hong & Samimy, 2010) The employment of ICTs in teaching resulted in online learning, distance learning, and massive open online courses Later

on, the conception of online learning developed and opened up the possibility of blended learning (Senge, 1990)

“Blended” could hold many different meanings (Sharma, 2010) It either refers to the combination of teaching modes (online and face-to-face) or to the implementation of multiple means of technologies such as emails, forums, websites, mobile phone applications (Mendieta-Aguilar, 2012) In some cases, it even means the mixture of pedagogical methodologies such as presentation - practice - production, project-based learning, game-based learning and inquiry based learning In its advanced form, blended learning includes learning analytics, adaptive learning, calibrated peer review, and automated essay scoring (Balfour, 2013) These high-tech interfaces take over some technical tasks of teachers like scoring multiple choice questions, underlying common mistakes or sending/collecting assignments, thereby allowing teachers more time for face-to-face feedback and mentoring Despite multiple ways

of defining “blended’, the researcher would adopt the most common blended mode – the combination of online and face-to-face – in this mini research

Within such fundamental blended mode, four models of blended learning namely Rotation, Flex, A La Carte, and Enriched Virtual were proposed by Horn and Staker

in 2014 In the Rotation model, a course is facilitated with equal rotation between four learning modalities of which at least one is online learning The three other learning modalities are full-class instruction, group projects and individual tutoring

That equal rotation occurs in a fixed schedule basis In Flex model, online learning is

the backbone of student learning Not only recordings of teachers’ lectures are always

available online but other learning modalities are also flexible and adaptive to the

needs and wants of students Students could slide among different learning modalities

on an individually-customized schedule In A La Carte model, students take entirely online courses to accompany their experiences at a school The online courses are

therefore not compulsory courses In Enriched Virtual model, students are required to attend some face-to-face learning sessions with their online teacher yet then have free choice to complete the remaining coursework by learning via their teacher’

recordings Compared to the Rotation model, this model offer fewer options of learning modalities Also, the time spent with teachers face-to-face is also much less

Of the four given models, only Rotation model is based on a fixed schedule basis while the rest gives students a lot of freedom to choose the most suitable time and space for learning It hence aligns the most with the context of this study, as the group of participants are high school students and therefore follows a predetermined timetable For that reason, Rotation model of blended learning is employed in this research

2.2 Flipped classroom

Within the Rotation model is four sub-models namely Station Rotation, Lab Rotation, Flipped Classroom and Individual Rotation (Horn & Staker, 2014) The difference between the Station, Lab and Individual Rotation is its scale of rotation in which the rotation happens within a contained classroom or groups of classroom, within a lab,

or within individual schedules respectively Regarding the Flipped Classroom, students participate in online learning to complete some certain tasks, then attend the classroom with teachers to fulfill other tasks (see Figure 1) The online-offline conduct is interleaved Thanks to its utilization of both modalities of learning, Flipped Classroom best suits the goals of this study and is therefore chosen as the topic of research

Figure 1: Procedure for organizing classrooms with the model of flipped classroom (Hung et al., 2017) [Image]

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter first gives detailed description of the research context and the informants It then describes how the data used in the study were collected and analyzed

3.1 Research context

3.1.1 Setting of the study

This study investigates the application of blended learning model among a high school in the city center of Hanoi The researcher focuses on the evaluation of speaking and writing skills and treats the other two as the requisite input for the output skills As it is a semi-state school, the curriculum follows the standardized curriculum executed by the Ministry of Education and Training, with total 105 periods of English lessons per semester There are three periods of English per week, with frequency of 1 period of speaking and 1 period of writing in 6 weeks The EFL materials are the textbook called “English Grade 10” published by the Ministry of Education and Training In overall, the first semester covers six main topics: Family life, your body and you, music, for a better community, inventions and gender equality Though the topics seem separated from each other, they are linked in skill-based development The last three topics: for a better community, inventions and gender equality are chosen for the time of treatment The adapted procedure for organizing a classroom with the model of flipped classroom used in this research is exemplified in Appendix E This study aims to investigate the effects of employing blended learning model on high school students’ development of English competence, specifically in speaking and writing skills so that the school can consider integrating online learning, especially the model of flipped classroom to face-to-face learning after the Covid time

3.1.2 Research participants

For the convenience of data collection, the method of sampling employed in this research is convenience sampling They are 47 students from two EFL classes of

grade 10 in a high school in the city center of Hanoi Students of those two classes are at A2 CEFR level as judged by the placement test at the start of their entry to the school All students have passed the high school entrance examinations from the Hanoi Department of Education and Training in 2020 for English After that, they were classified into different levels of English, ranging from A2 to B2 level in CEFR

by a test conducted by the school The chosen participants’ English competence are A2 level in CEFR

Each class consisted of approximately 40-45 Vietnamese EFL students; however, not all students participated in the research as the participation is voluntary To call for participation, students were firstly informed about my research topic, outline and some tasks that they should complete if they agreed to join Students were allowed to think for a week and made their decision In the end, the number of students claiming their participation was 23 and 24 respectively for each class They were then given a consent form in Vietnamese that included both their signature and their parents’ (See Appendix A for English translated version) The awareness of parents in this case is necessary as students are under 18 years old Besides, they were also informed that they could withdraw from this research study whenever they wanted to without penalty The study participants were ensured that their information was considered confidential

3.2 Research design

This research followed a quantitative experimental research design and was conducted in six weeks This quantitative research design was very potential in helping the researcher deal with her concern about the impact of blended learning on the students’ speaking and writing skills because the researcher could measure the progression of students who attend the blended-learning class and therefore could evaluate how effective the blended learning approach is in the teaching and learning

of two output skills of the English language

3.3 Research procedure

3.3.1 Description of treatment

As this study focused on speaking and writing skills, data were collected from two