000029189 THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE REMOTE AREAS OF CANTHO PROVINCE: A CASE STUDY ỨNG DỤNG GIẢNG DẠY NGÔN NGỮ GIAO TIẾP Ở VÙNG XA XA TỈNH CẦN THƠ: MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU TRƯỜNG HỢP

000029189 THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE REMOTE AREAS OF CANTHO PROVINCE: A CASE STUDY ỨNG DỤNG GIẢNG DẠY NGÔN NGỮ GIAO TIẾP Ở VÙNG XA XA TỈNH CẦN THƠ: MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU TRƯỜNG HỢP

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

TRAN THAI NHAT LAM

THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE REMOTE AREAS OF CANTHO

PROVINCE: A CASE STUDY

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Master of Arts (TESOL) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses and field Study reports deposited in the Library

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I certify my authorship of the Study Project Report submitted today entitled:

THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE

REMOTE AREAS OF CANTHO PROVINCE: A CASE STUDY

in terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses and Field Study Reports in Masters' Programmes issued by the Higher Degree Committee

I am, first of all, particularly indebted to my supervisor, M A Le Thanh Dung, for his considerably valuable advice, instructions and correction, excellent suggestions and constant encouragement during the research period Without his guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished

My appreciation and gratitude are extended to M.A Nguyen Thai Ha for her kind assistant, criticism and helpful advice

My profound thanks also go to Dr Pham Kim Ninh, Dean of Post- Graduate Department; Mrs Pham Thu Huong; and staff members of Post- Graduate Department, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies for their useful lectures and especially for their valuable comments and suggestions

I would like to send my sincere thanks to my friends: Ms Xuan Hoa, Mrs Kim Loc, Mr Viet Khoa, for their great enthusiasm while the work was in progress

My special thanks go to leaders and my colleagues in CanTho Teachers’ Training College for their support and encouragement I also want to extend my sincere thanks to teachers who have provided the data for this study and to many others who helped me a lot during my field research in Phung Hiep district

Last but not least, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to my parents, my sisters and my husband, who cared for my daughter in my absence without which my studies could have never been realized Their great encouragement and unconditional love have helped me to overcome the difficulties during mystudy

Foreign and second language teaching methodology in the world is now in the era of “communicative approach”, and towards this move, teachers of English worldwide now focus on training learners who not only have a good knowledge of the target language but also are communicatively competent In Vietnam in recent years, a number of teacher training workshops and seminars on communicative language teaching have been organized for teachers in language training institutions as well as for those who are teaching in the school systems It

is often taken for granted that once the teachers have attended those workshops

or seminars they will be able to change their mindset and to apply new methods successfully in class However, from the a u th o r's experience, the application of communicative language teaching (CLT) in the remote areas of Cantho province

in the MeKong River Delta might still be a problem This case study aims at investigating if CLT is actually applied in the teaching situations in a secondary school in the remote area; what are the attitudes of the teachers towards this new approach, and if CLT is applied then what are the difficulties/ constraints teachers of English face with in their teaching Basing on the findings, some recommendations will be suggested to improve the teaching and learning situation in that school

2.2.4.1 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) versus 19

English as a Second Language (ESL)

CHAPTER 3: THE CASE STUDY 33

of and misconceptions about CLT

4 2 2 Problem 2: CLT application under current situation may not 54

be feasible because teachers of English at secondary school have many constraints/ difficulties

4.2.2.2 The current Grammar- based examinations do not support CLT 56

4.2.2 4 Lack of suitable CLT teaching materials, facilities and funding 59

5.1.2 Reform of Teaching Methodologies and Testing 635.1.3 Renovation of Teaching Materials and Facilities 63

Teachers and Students

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 2: The frequency of activities used in the classroom 39Table 3: The activities that students would like to learn 41

Table 5: The difficulties/ problems teachers have experience 43

Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 Background to the study

Traditionally, the teaching of English in Vietnam has emphasized gaining knowledge about the English language rather than using the language for genuinely communicative purposes Traditional approaches (still very common in secondary and post secondary programs throughout Vietnam) blend elements of grammar translation and audiolingual methods and tend to be teacher-centered Among the four language macro skills, listening and speaking are largely neglected; reading and writing are regarded as means of language study more than as means for obtaining information and communicating ideas Any English lesson may consist of a core text (reading selection) and a list of language points (grammar, vocabulary) drawn from the text, which students study In the lesson, the students read new words aloud after the teacher The teacher explains the entire text, sentence by sentence, analyzing difficult grammar structures, rhetoric, and style for the students, who listen, take notes and answer questions They study new words; do grammar drills; answer comprehension questions; and do textbook exercises on pronunciation, grammar, spelling, sentence-making and translation English language learning in the remote areas in the MeKong River Delta is no exception Learners who are taught English in this way typically develop habits of reading English texts word by word, looking at reading as a way of learning new words and grammatical structures rather than as a way of accessing information Moreover, writing in English with a focus on producing correct language rather than

on selecting, organizing and presenting ideas for effective communication to a reader For teachers, the ultimate aim of the lessons is to help students just to pass exams or do well in their grammar tests T h 'i students, therefore, try as much as possible to grasp only grammar points found in various books or taught by teachers Consequently, many students obtain very high marks at the English exams but fail to communicate effectively in real life

Obviously, traditional methods produced unsatisfactory results Students became almost structurally competent but communicatively incompetent Faced with this backward situation, educational administrators feel an urgent need to change Early in 1992 the government decided that English learning would begin at earlier age (from grade 3 in some elementary schools in Can Tho city), and drew a plan for training elementary and secondary teachers Realizing that the grammatical syllabus does not help much to develop learners “communicative competence”, Ministry of Education Training (MOET) decided to apply Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in English teaching at the primary and secondary school levels Communicative-based methods need to be established soon to help learners communicate confidently in a particular situation.

To meet the needs of improving teachers’ teaching methodologies, in the middle of

1999, many secondary school teachers of English in Can Tho province got the chance to attend a methodology-training course in Cantho Teachers’ Training College (CTTC) This training course was designed by the British Council and MOET especially for secondary school teachers of English in the Mekong River Delta provinces in using CLT This course was 8 weeks (about 200 hours), intensive, residential and included compulsory teaching practice in a local school The course focused on communicative methodology for teaching the four language skills, grammar, vocabulary, classroom management within the constraints of the school curriculum (PETS/ MOET textbook allocation) and the English 6-9 textbooks

In the context of the current teaching and learning situation in Cantho province, effective application of CLT in English Language Teaching (ELT) is necessary However, can we be optimistic to conclude that, after attending a training course in CLT, teachers of English return to their everyday teaching environment and there

Vi ill be a powerful, sweeping change of the methodology in the language classrooms, especially in the remote areas in this province?

1.2 O bjectives of the study

The author carried out this case study at one of the secondary schools in the remote area of Can Tho, the Long Thanh Secondary School in Phung Hiep District

to find out whether the teachers could apply what they had learnt or not Especially,

it tried to find out whether the answers to the following assumptions are correct:

1 The general belief and attitude towards CLT o f teachers o f English in this

school are positive They think that CLT application is feasible, at least under current teaching and learning conditions, which facilitates the

likelihood o f successful application o f CLT in the school;

2 Although the teachers o f English at this school have attended an intensive training course on communicative language teaching, their understanding

and awareness o f the basic principles, characteristics and techniques o f CLT are still limited, which may contribute to the limited application o f CLT in the school.

It is hoped that the findings based on this case study will help to make some general conclusions about and also recommendations for the current situation of CLT application in the remote areas of the Mekong River Delta

1.3 Organisation of the study

The thesis is organised as follows:

Chapter 1 is the Introduction that provides the background of the case study and statement of the assumptions of the study Chapter 2 presents an overview of the

relevant literature It starts with the brief history of language teaching methods This is followed by analysis of CLT basic principles, and characteristics as well as conditions for its successful application including the role of teachers’ beliefs and

attitudes towards CLT Previous studies related to the difficulties of applying C_T in

EFL contexts will also be reviewed Chapter 3 presents the methodology cf the

case study including descriptions of the population, the instruments for data collection (the questionnaires and classroom observations) and methods for data

analysis In Chapter 4 presents preliminary results, major findings and discussion

In Chapter 5, recommendations are made basing on the major findings and discussion in Chapter 4 for the improvement of CLT application for the teaching

and learning of English at secondary schools in the remote areas of Can Tho Province

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter reviews the theoretical framework for the study It gives a brief overview of key methodological approaches The focus of the chapter is on Communicative Language Teaching with definitions, characteristics, principles, conditions for the application of CLT It also touches upon the issues of CLT in EFL versus ESL contexts as well as the role of teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards CLT, which are relevant to the purpose of this study A number of previous studies related to the application of CLT are also reviewed

2.1 Approaches to Language Teaching

The fact is that in many language classes in the world traditional language teaching approaches and methods are still influential Each method has its own advantages

as well as disadvantages in application Though we tend to support the latest approach or method, which is quite reasonable, it would be necessary to have a bird's eye view of the other methods In this section, therefore, some methods with their characteristics are mentioned in order to explain why CLT has been advocated all over the world

The Grammar- Translation Method is a method of foreign or second language teaching, which makes use of translation and grammar study as the main teaching and learning activities In the 19th century, it began to be used to teach “modern" languages such as French, German and English, and it is still used in many countries today A typical lesson would consist of the presentation of grammatical rule, a study of lists of vocabulary, and a translation exercise The learners understand a word or phrase in English through the equivalent word or group of words in the first language No doubt this method is common and easily applied in the foreign language classroom where the number of students is big The advocates of this method think that after mastering grammatical rules and understanding the meanings of the words or phrases in the target language, the

learners can read and write successfully in that language Because the Gramnar- Translation Method emphasizes reading rather than the ability to communicate in a language, there was a reaction to it in the 19th century, and there was a g'eat emphasis on the teaching of spoken language later.

The dissatisfaction with the Grammar- Translation Method brought about the Reform Movement in the second half of the 19th century The proposed reforms were known under a variety of names: ‘Reform Method’, ’Natural Method’, Psychological Method’, ’Phonetic Method’ etc (Stern,1983:457), but the most persistent term for labeling this new approach was the term “Direct Method” Introduced as the direct result of the revolt against the Grammar- Translation, the Direct Method was characterized by the replacement of the mother tongue by the target language as a means of instruction and communication in the language classroom and by the ban on translation as a technique The introduction of the Direct Method into the field of language teaching in the second half of the 19th century may, thus, be understood as a language teaching revolution intended to dethrone the Grammar- Translation Method completely, in the hope of achieving more effectiveness for the language teaching and learning Because the target language is used all the time in class, this method provides a great deal of comprehensible input It presumes that conscious control is necessary for acquisition and conscious knowledge of grammar can be accessed at all times by all learners The learners are given the tools for interaction in the classroom in the target language They are soon able to initiate discussion with the teacher and ask questions about grammar The Direct Method has been very successful with learners who have a strong desire to get good knowledge for language study and who believe that the study of conscious grammar is essential

However, the exclusion of the mother tongue from the classroom created the problem of how to convey meaning and prevent misunderstanding of meanings on the part of the learners without reference to the mother tongue Another problem confronted by the followers of the Direct Method was how to apply the method at

the advanced level of language learning where description and analysis of abstract problems were needed for the progression of learning and teaching.

“Critics pointed out that strict adherence to Direct Method principles was often counterproductive, since teachers were required to go to great lengths to avoid using the native language, when sometimes a simple, brief explanation in the student’s native tongue would have been a more efficient route to comprehension” (Richards and Rodgers, 1990:11)

With these disadvantages, the role of the Direct Method in language classroom began to decline in the 1920s

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Audio- Lingual method was prominent The theory of language underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a view that came to be known as structural linguistic, which viewed language as a system of structurally related elements for the decoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes, morphemes, words, structures and sentence types Moulton (1961) proclaimed the linguistic principles on which language teaching methodology should be based

"Language is speech, not writing A language is a set of habits Teach the language, not about the language A language is what its native speakers say, not what someone thinks they ought to say” (quoted in Rivers 1964:5)

Audiolingualism was based on a theory of language drawn from a school of psychology - behaviorism, which views language learning as habit forming To the behaviorists, the human being is an organism capable of a wide repertoire of behaviors of which the occurrence depends on three crucial elements in learning: a stimulus, which serves to elicit behaviors; a response - triggered by a stimulus; and reinforcement, which serves to make the response as being appropriate and encourages the reception of the response in the future (Skinner, 1957; Brown,1980)

A representation of this can be seen in this figure:

Reinforcement (behavior likely to occur again and become a habit)

Stim ulus-» Organism-» Response behavior

No reinforcement/ Negative

reinforcement (behavior not likely to occur again)

Figure 1: the linguistic principles o f Skinner, 1957; quoted in Brown, 1980

Unlike the Traditional Grammar- Translation method, which views the description

of the target language as the end of the whole teaching process, the Audio-Lingual Method emphasizes the role of speaking, listening and drills in teaching structures and discourages the use of the mother tongue in the classroom This method can help learners get used to some structures and patterns in English They implicitly learn grammatical rules through sentence models, dialogues, drills and more drills (Hockett, 1959) The learners have to spend a lot of time on practice in order to have a good habit in reacting to any situation in speaking and writing

Compared with the traditional Grammar- Translation Method, it is obvious that the teaching and learning of languages has been considerably facilitated once the important role of structures and drills is given due attention The reality of the English teaching in many parts of the world, however, has revealed the fact that structures and drills alone are not sufficient to make the task fruitful, especially when the goal of learning a language has become more and more practical And

" practitioners found that the practical results fell short of expectations Students were often found to be unable to transfer skills acquired through Audiolingualism to real communication outside the classroom, and many found the experience of

studying through audiolingual procedures to be boring and unsatisfying”(Richards and Rodgers, 1986:59)

Along with Chomsky's theory of Transformational Grammar and theory of language

as communication, the theoretical foundations of Audiolingualism were attacked as being unsound both in terms of language theory and learning theory Chomsky’s theory proposed that the fundamental properties of language derive from innate aspects of the mind and from how humans process experience through language because language is not a habit structure The structural theories of language were incapable of accounting for the fundamental characteristic of language- ‘the activity and uniqueness of individual sentences’ It is this theory that focuses the attention

of linguistics and psychologists on the mental properties that people bring to bear

on language use and language learning “Ordinary linguistic behavior characteristically involved innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy”(Chomsky, 1966:153)

By the middle of the century, cognitive psychologists bring up theories that explain the effectiveness of the traditional prescriptive and mechanistic approaches to language teaching and later serve as a basic for the new natural- communicative approaches The communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the Grammar- Translation, Audiolingual and Direct methods of foreign language instruction They felt that students were not learning enough realistic language They did not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures or expressions; in brief, they were at a loss to communicate in the culture of the language studied Interest

in and development of com municative - style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another became quite popular

The Communicative Language Teaching has opened up a wider perspective on language and language learning W ith this approach, the com municative ability is the goal of language teaching Indeed, the traditional Grammar- Translation

Method, which views the language as an end in itself, and the Audio- Lingual Method, which gives so much emphasis on the mechanistic aspects of language learning and language use, have failed to enable the learners to use the foreign language as a mean to achieve a number of practical purposes in their life.

Also according to Richards & Rodgers (1986), CLT is best considered an approach rather than a method Thus “although a reasonable degree of theoretical

consistency can be discerned at the levels of language and learning theory, at the levels of design and procedure there is much greater room for individual interpretation and variation than most methods permit” (Richards & Rodgers, 1986:83)

This is the reason why the communicative language teaching has come into existence and so far has been widely considered an effective approach to adopt in various aspects of language teaching Following is a discussion of principles and characteristics of CLT It also touches upon the issues of CLT in EFL contexts and conditions for the application of CLT

2.2 Communicative Language Teaching

2.2.1 Definition of CLT

Communicative Language Teaching makes use of real- life situations that necessitate communication Unlike the Audio- Lingual Method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses The real- life simulations change from day to day Students’ motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate

in meaningful ways about meaningful topics

According to Richards and Rodgers (1986), CLT starts with a theory of language

as communication, and its goal is to develop learners’ communicative competence

The underlying assumption of CLT is that the goal of language study is to

communicate in that language, with a contrasting approach being to approach the

language as a study of form rather than “function interrelated with form” (Candlin,

1981) Canale and Swain’s (1980) definition of communicative competence is

probably the best known They identified four dimensions: grammatical,

sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence The definition of

communicative competence has undergone some modifications over the years,perhaps best captured in Bachman’s (1990) schematization of what he calls

language competence The most significant difference between the two models

(namely communicative competence and language competence) is that Bachman

takes a far broader view of the roles of strategies than Canale and Swain do and

separates strategic competence completely from what he calls language

competencies (Bachman, 1990; North, 1997)

To others, CLT may mean the use of procedures that develop the four language

skills through working in pairs or groups in problem solving tasks Richards and

Rodgers (1990) illustrate this by a quotation from a national primary English

syllabus based on a communicative approach, which says:

“Communicative purposes may be of many different kinds What is essential in all

of them is that at least two parties are involved in an interaction or transaction of

some kind where one party has an intention and other party expands and reacts to

the intention”

Wilkins (1983: 24) acknowledges that:

“There are many people in the field of language teaching especially in Britain and

continental Europe who feel that their ideas and their work contribute to the general

aim of making language ‘more communicative’ This feeling is not based on any

precise definition of what constitutes CLT and, as a result, the range of more or

less practical proposals that authors claim to reflect a communicative orientation is

very wide Thus, communicativeness may be seen to lie in the priority of

conversational interaction over other modes of language behavior, in a syllabus of

‘notion and functions' as opposed to 'structures’, in the basing of learning on

individual and group needs rather than on generalized language content, in the use

of 'authentic’ as opposed to 'non-authentic’ materials, in an emphasis on 'process' rather than 'product' or in the desire to base learning on genuine communication rather than on participation in pedagogically motivated and structured activities All

of us working in these areas probably see the general aim of language teaching as being to create a capacity to communicate in a second or foreign language We probably also feel that our particular proposals succeed in capturing the essence of our understanding of the nature of the process of communication and in exploiting it

in the form of materials, methods, or language teaching organization Perhaps, for the present, we shall have to be satisfied that this is as close as we can get to a definition of CLT”

Another fundamental dimension of language has been emphasized- the functional and communicative potential of language British applied linguists saw the need to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures Of the most characteristic features of CLT, Littlewood (1981: 1) states: 'One of the most characteristics features of CLT is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language” Similarity, Lee and VanPatten (1995) define communication as “the interpretation, expression, and negotiation of meaning, both in and out of the classroom’ Stone (1991) defines communicative activities as those which “have a goal or purpose that requires the use of the target language, but it is not itself centered on that language” Berns, an expert in the field of CLT, writes in explaining Firth’s view that

“language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)” (Berns, 1984:5)

These definitions share a common idea - that language should be used to communicate effectively to exchange messages in order that the language acquisition can take place

So far, we have looked at some definitions of CLT which have been drawn from different CLT theories by various researchers Now it is useful to have a closer look

at principles and characteristics of CLT to know how important they are in application CLT in EFL context.

2.2.2 Principles of CLT

The Communicative Approach starts from a theory of language as communication The goal of language learning is what Hymes (1971) refers to as communicative competence So teaching procedures adopted should be congruent with such an objective

Littlewood (1981) presents the methodological framework of the communicative approach in the following diagram:

social interaction activities

Figure 2: Littlewood's communicative approach framework

According to this theory, the acquisition of communicative competence in a language is the process of skill - development that involves both cognitive and behavioral aspects

"The cognitive aspect involves the internalization of plans for creating appropriate behavior For language use, these plans derive mainly from the language system - they include grammatical rules, procedures for selecting vocabulary and social conventions governing speech The behavioral aspect involves the automation of these plans so that they can be converted into fluent performance in real life This

occurs mainly through practice in converting plans into performance” (Littlewood, 1984:74).

The diagram suggests a teaching procedure The pre- communicative activities train students in the forms of the language through practice in which they learn to relate language forms to their potential functional meanings And communicative activities give them opportunities to use language as effectively as they can with resources available, provided that their language is socially appropriate In other words, pre- communicative activities emphasize grammatical accuracy (the cognitive aspect), and communicative activities emphasize social acceptability (the behavioral aspect of language) The framework suggests an integration of activities into a coherent methodology

2.2.3 Johnson and Morrow’s Principles

To be more specific, Johnson and Morrow (1981) propose a set of five principles of communicative m ethodology as a criterion to be taken into consideration in developing teaching procedures

Principle one: Know what you are doing.

In real life people talk to each other because they really want to talk, otherwise they would be quiet But people do not talk just for the sake of talking, they have something to communicate W hen someone says, “ Nice day, isn’t it?” to a stranger

at a bus stop, he may mean to be friendly to the person and signify that he is ready

to talk or he may really want to express appreciation of the weather which has been nasty for several days

Therefore need and purpose constitute the nature of communication Thus, “when organizing communicative activities we will try to ensure that these activities share the characteristics of communication” (Harmer, 1986:43)

In class, what is taught should be closely related to what the learner is most likely

to perform in real life communication This applies to ESL learners rather than EFL learners, which may make the application of CLT in EFL context difficult because students may not see the clear relationship between what is learnt to real life communication

To give students (in a secondary school in an EFL context like Vietnam) a chance

to use language and to learn more about the language through using it, the teacher

in this case may have a challenging job of creating situations which are likely to occur in life Johnson and Morrow (1981: 61) suggest:

"Every lesson should end with the learner being able to see clearly that he can do something which he could not do at the beginning, and the “something" is communicatively useful”

Principle two: The whole is more than the sum o f the parts.

In discussing “whole task practice” (Littlewood, 1981:17) cited an example of learning to swim which “ involves not only separate practices of individual movement- part skills, but also actual attempts to swim short distances- whole task practice.” Similarly, in language teaching, communicative activities should provide students with practice in total skills rather than only in part- skills If they are only involved in drill or repetition, their objective will be the accuracy of utterance rather than its content in a meaningful context

Students should have the opportunity to deal with a variety of language rather than just a number of grammatical structures, since there is no corresponding one - to - one equivalence between language forms and communicative functions For example, the affirmative sentence: “ He is a good student” could be a statement conveying the speaker’s proposition, but it could also be a question expressing doubt

Thus, “a crucial feature of a communicative method will be that it relates with stretches of language above the sentence level, and operates with real language in real situations”(Johnson and Morrow, 1981:61).

Principle three: The process are as important as the forms.

Whether an activity is viewed as communicative or mechanical depends on the processes required from the student doing it Fulfilling a communicative exercise involves the student in filling the information gap between the speaker and the listener; making a choice from his repertoire of language of what to say and how to say it; and evaluating feedback from what he has done

Information gap in a communicative activity means that one person must be in a position to tell another something that the other does not know The following exchange would not have an information gap, since both the teacher and the student know clearly that the chair is in the classroom

Teacher: Where is the chair?

Student: The chair is in the classroom

But if the teacher comes into the classroom and cannot see the chair and asks:

Teacher: Where is the chair?

Student: Someone has taken it away

That is the genuine communication incorporating an information gap

The concept of information gap seems to be one of the most fundamental in the whole area of communicative teaching Any exercise or procedure, which claims to engage the students in communication, should be considered in the light of it And one of the main jobs for the teacher can be seen as setting up situations where information gaps exist and motivating the students to bridge them in appropriate ways”(Johnson and Morrow, 1981:62)

Communicative activities also require the student to decide for himself what he will say and how he will say it appropriately in a certain situation under the pressure of time during the conversation Exercises such as drills, repetition, substitution or guided exercises in which students are controlled in the use of language do not practice this aspect of communication.

Another process involved in communication is feedback which tells the student whether his utterance has been understood as he intended or not, and what criteria are necessary during a particular procedure For example, if the student says,” Did you went to the cinema yesterday?" he may get the feedback “Did you go to the cinema yesterday?” or “Yes, I did” The first one focuses the student’s attention on language form and the second on meaning The nature of activities dictates the teacher’s selection of appropriate kinds of feedback

Littlewood (1981:91) says: “ It is, therefore, important for the teacher to monitor the kind of feedback that his learners receive, from himself or from others, so that it supports the methodological purpose of the activity”

Principle four To learn it, do it.

There is a French proverb saying that one learns to be a blacksmith by being ablacksmith

In language learning, the connotation is obvious The teacher may try to provide students with a lot of language items, which will then be stored in their brain If there is no demand for using language, those items will be the end in themselves

If students are required to produce and use language, they will select items of language appropriate to the purpose of communication By so doing, their knowledge of the language is developed accordingly

Widdowson (1978:144) states:

“What the learner needs to know how to do Is to compose in the act of writing, comprehend in the act of reading, and learn techniques of reading by writing and techniques of writing by reading.”

Students can only learn to communicate by communicating and develop skills by using skills When there is a need to communicate and there is experience of communication, communicative skills are developed and consequently, language skills are also acquired In other words, the practice of communication encourages the ability to communicate To design classroom activities for students to communicate and develop skills is a challenging job for teachers It is even more difficult for teachers to make these activities in the context like secondary schools

in Vietnam where students do not have the needs to perform what they have learnt

in real life communication outside the classroom

Principle five: Mistakes are not always a mistake.

The traditional method concentrates on formal accuracy, whereas the communicative approach focuses on success in communication The traditional method avoids mistakes by tightly controlling students’ language but the communicative approach encourages communication even at the expense of making mistakes

Trying to express something they are not sure of, students may make mistakes But “errors are regarded as a completely normal phenomenon in the development

of communicative skills” (Littlewood, 1981: 94)

If students are corrected constantly, they may lose interest and will “find it frustrating if the teacher’s reaction to their ability to communicate ideas is focused solely on their ability to get the grammar right” (Harmer, 1986:37)

This does not mean that accuracy is unimportant in the communicative approach, but “it requires the flexibility to treat different things as "mistakes" at different stages

in the learning process”(Johnson and Morrow, 1981: 65) Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983: 93) say that in communicative language teaching “ language is created by the individual often through trial and error”

In short, the communicative language teaching does stress the importance of both the forms and the uses of language But it does not specify under what circumstances it may be more appropriate to teach the forms through the uses, or

to attach the uses to the forms, or to integrate them for communicative purposes Perhaps it is the teacher’s responsibility to judge and decide which priority is relevant in his own condition

2.2.4 Characteristics of CLT

The communicative activities make the learners “break into” the communication At first, it is just a condition for the learners to practise using a foreign language but in fact they get the learners involved in learning a foreign language with a strong need to communicate with the world by what they have learnt In whatever way, knowing the characteristics of CLT is necessary to improve the understanding about CLT in EFL contexts Firstly, this section will make a distinction between EFL and ESL, and then focus on some major characteristics of CLT as meaningful tasks, communicative functions, the use of group activities and authentic materials

2.2.4.1 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) versus English as a Second Language (ESL).

The target language, or language being learned, can be either a second language

or foreign language This "second versus foreign” distinction is often difficult to

teachers, students, parents a n d'th e general public However, it is important to

understand the different historical and national contexts in which intentional English language teaching methods are applied to students.

In ESL situations, the students have a tremendous advantage They have an instant "language laboratory” available to them 24 hours a day (Brown, 1994) As a result, the student will have a far greater need to communicate At the lower levels,

he has the opportunity to immediately test out or practice new language skills in authentic situations At the higher levels, a great deal of language acquisition will occur outside the classroom, and the ESL teacher will act more as a facilitator, providing structure, explanations, and a forum for discussion

In EFL situations, on the other hand, English has no official role in the society In some cases this means that it may be difficult to see or hear it in use outside schools and the students do not have an English environment for practicing what they have learnt at school And the EFL teacher is cast in the somewhat hard role

of sole provider of experience in the target language Without the reinforcement of

an English - speaking environment, motivation becomes a product of the teacher’s initiative on the one hand, and the student’s will to succeed - or fear of failure - on the other (Ellis, 1996)

Whereas ESL is integrative, in that it is designed to help individuals function in the community, EFL is a part of the school curriculum, and therefore subject to contextual factors such as support from the local community and government policy, etc It is also dependent on the teacher’s language proficiency, teaching resources, the availability of suitable materials, national curriculum goals and the ability to test communicative competence of the learners By contrast, ESL teaching is primarily designed to develop communicative competence, with little or

no curricular demands and pressure of examinations Reconsidered in this light, the EFL teacher could be doing the student a disservice by focusing on oral skills when, for example, the examination is testing for translation skills

In short, CLT in an EFL context is clearly a greater challenge for students and teachers Brown (1994: 121) states that “ intrinsic motivation is a big issue since students may have difficulty in seeing the relevance of learning English.” Classroom hours are sometimes the only hours of the day when students are exposed to English and the language that the teachers present, model, elicit, and treat takes on great importance Therefore, their immediate uses of the language may seem far removed from their own circumstance.

2.2.4.2 Characteristics of CLT

Due to the limit of the research, this section introduces the very common characteristics of CLT These are meaningful tasks, communicative functions, the use of pair and group activities, and authentic materials

Firstly, CLT focus on meaningful tasks and communicative function A goal is to have the students become communicatively competent So meaning is paramount

in CLT Wilkins (1972) classifies meaning into notional and functional categories and views learning a L2 as acquiring the linguistic means to perform difference kinds of functions Meaning is what is communicated; therefore, CLT is tailored to get at meaning Learners are given opportunities to negotiate meaning in class A CLT classroom is learner- centered “Far from being a ‘transmitter’ of knowledge, the teacher is a ‘facilitator’ Far from having minimal teacher- student interaction, a communicative classroom holds such interaction to be indispensable” (Nguyen, 1999) Characterized by high participation, the CLT classroom becomes a place for students to engage in meaningful language use

According to Larsen- Freeman (1986: 132), the most obvious characteristic of CLT

is that "almost everything that is done is done with a communicative intent” Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role- plays and problem-solving tasks Activities that are truly

communicative, according to Morrow (in Johnson and Morrow 1981), have three features: information gap, choice and feedback (See also 2.2.3)

With this characteristic, the fundamental orientation to language teaching is

"communicative”, but the majority of students in secondary schools may have expectations which are rather different They want to grasp only grammar points to get good marks and pass all exams Applied to the ELT context in rural schools in Vietnam in such expectations, this characteristic poses many problems to be solved such as grammar- based examination, students’ little motivation for communicative competent, all problems which will be referred to in chapter 4 of the study

Secondly, “activities in the Communicative Approach are often carried out by students in small groups” (Larsen- Freeman, 1986:132) Students are expected to interact with one another, either through pair and group work or in their writings (Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983) CLT favors interaction among small numbers of students in order to maximize the time each student has to learn to negotiate meaning

Group work is a cooperative activity In group, students tend to participate more equally, have more opportunities to talk or to use the language and more importantly co-operating among themselves than they are in the whole- class arrangement (Ur, 1996; Harmer, 1991)

Pair work has many of the same advantages “Pair work seems to be a good idea because it immediately increase the amount of students practice” (Harmer, 1991: 244) It is attractive since the moment students get into pairs and start working on the problem or talking about something, and it is also more effective than the process in which the teacher works with the whole class where only one student talks at the time

In general, group work and pair work give students more chances for greater independence and give teacher more opportunities to work with individual student.

However, they are not without problems when setting these activities in ELT context in rural schools in Vietnam As with “separating table” seating, student may not like the people they are grouped or paired with Sometimes, teachers fear they may lose control, that there may too much noise and in any group or pair, one student may dominate while others stay silent (Ur, 1996) On the other hand, in a class where the students share the same first language, they may revert to their first language rather than English when the teacher is not working with them (Harmer, 1991)

Thirdly, CLT is “its learner - centered and experience - based view of second language teaching” (Richards and Rodgers, 1986: 69) According to CLT theory, individual learners possess unique interests, styles, needs, and goals that should

be reflected in the design of instructional methods (Savignon, 1991) Teachers are

to develop materials based on the demonstrated needs of a particular class Students must be made to feel secure, unthreatened, and nondefensive in a CLT classroom, so teachers using CLT should avoid adopting a teacher- centered, authoritarian posture (Taylor, 1983)

The last characteristic of CLT is the introduction of authentic materials (Dubin, 1995; Larsen- Freeman, 1986; Long & Crookes, 1992; Nunan, 1991; Reid, 1995; Widdowson, 1996) In CLT, it is considered desirable to give learners the opportunity to respond to genuine communicative needs in realistic second language situations so that they develop strategies for understanding language as actually used by native speakers (Canale & Swain, 1980) Defining authentic materials, Morrow (1977:3) says:

"A stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker or writer for a real audience, and designed to convey a real message of some sort In other word, it is not a made up text”

Those materials offer students more varied forms of language, help them develop mastery of the language and cultural understanding with which they learn to recognize that people of different cultures have things in common and they also have differences which are closely related to their patterns of life In fact, they bring the learners into contact with the language as it is used in its culture to meet the needs of communication.

Unfortunately, in the English- teaching context of Vietnam where there is no English language environment, it may not be possible to use authentic language materials such as these Some learners can express themselves quite intelligibly in English, but they have great difficulty in understanding native speakers Probably, they are more accustomed to classroom English than hearing or reading the language as it is produced by native speakers for native speakers This suggest that in English courses more attention needs to be paid to the use of authentic materials which could help to improve learners’ receptive skills

Thus, CLT is characterized by:

1 A focus on communicative functions;

2 A focus on meaningful tasks rather than on language per se (e.g grammar or vocabulary study);

3 The use of group activities;

4 The efforts to make tasks and language relevant to a target group of learnersthrough an analysis of genuine, realistic situations;

5 The attempt to create a secure, nonthreatening atmosphere

6 The use of authentic, from- life materials;

Generally speaking, the understanding about these characteristics helps the teachers the direction to obtain the way of teaching English in CLT

2.2.5 C onditions for the application of CLT

So far, we have distinguished EFL versus ESL and looked at some characteristics

of CLT which will improve the understanding about CLT However, we have not yet accounted for all the factors that determine teaching and learning It is useful to have a closer look at some conditions for the application of CLT such as the teacher’s own qualities (e.g his/ her English language competence, teaching abilities, etc.), the environmental factors of teaching and learning and other conditions in which the teacher has to work

CLT requires the teacher to be a facilitator of his/her students’ learning (Brumfit, 1991) and in order to fulfill this role, the teacher has to work both as a manager of the classroom activities and as a co-communicator with his students The role of the students in CLT is changed from the role of passive listeners (as in Audio- Lingualism) to that of active communicators The techniques characteristic of CLT,

as listed by (Larsen- Freeman, 1986), are as followed: language games, role- play, and simulation, problem solving tasks, use of authentic materials and group work The mere mentioning of these techniques suggests that the demands (the teacher’ own qualities, the ability to control classroom activities or to monitor group work, ) made by CLT upon the teachers and the students are unquestionably great

As a consequence, it is impossible to think of CLT without well- trained language teachers “The one important variable in the learning situation is the teacher him se lf (Wilkins, 1974:53) Because the teacher’ skills, knowledge, personality and proficiency in the target language play an important role in the communicative class whereas many teachers of English in EFL contexts, especially the teachers in the remote areas of Mekong River Delta provinces are not well- trained and insufficient in training about CLT, the application of CLT in secondary schools is not an easy task to perform

One of the important environment factors is time (Wilkins, 1974; Spolsky, 1989) The students really need to have enough time to update the knowledge and to practise what they have taught in class Therefore, in the designing of a language course or syllabus the question of how many hours that are available for teaching will obviously do much to determine what level of attainment can be reached If the students have only two or three periods to study a foreign language a week, it will

be difficult to inculcate a sense of progress and achievement and there will be serious lack of interest in learning It is clear that time plays an important role in teaching and learning a foreign language To master or use a new language fluently, the students need to have enough time to digest it However, in EFL contexts, for example, in Vietnamese secondary schools, time is limited With only

3 periods of English a week available, classroom hours are sometimes the only hours of the day when students are exposed to English Especially, time is even more important for students in the remote areas like Mekong River Delta provinces

to immediately test out or practise new language skills because they have no English speaking environment except the classroom and they would soon forget what they learn in a communicative class

A much more com monly discussed variable than time is the number of students in the class In a large class it is very difficult to arrange for every individual to have

an opportunity to contact with the language (especially spoken language) that is necessary for student's inductive processes to operate effectively There is much evidence that class size has a significant effect on student learning (Glass et al., 1982; Noli, 1980) It is obvious that the smaller classes are the more likely that CLT application will be successful The final element in the physical context for CLT is the stock of resources of which the teachers will be able to make use A language teaching situation may be characterized by the presence or absence of all or any of the following: textbooks, tapes, tape- recorders, language laboratories, wall- pictures, wall- charts, flannel- boards, other display facilities, slides, filmstrips, cine- films television, radio, record- player, video- recorders, closed- circuit television and libraries Naturally enough, what can be achieved in any situation will depend

on the resources that are available Resources are not an adjunct, but an integral part of the teaching and learning situation.

In addition, for CLT, the social context can be seen to be of great importance because language itself must be treated in a social context and languages are taught and learnt to establish contact and communication across language boundaries (Stern, 1983) Particularly important in the case of language learning are certain attitudes, which are characteristic of the society to which the learner belongs If social attitudes are negative, the overall achievement can be relatively poor no matter how well the teacher does his/her job If social attitudes are positive, learning may proceed even where teaching is not particularly efficient The achievement will be highest where attitudes and teaching together promote effective learning and lowest where attitudes are negative and teaching is weak (Wilkins, 1974)

In EFL context like Vietnam in which CLT is being implemented in secondary schools, teachers’ attitudes have a very important role Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs are the single strongest guiding influence on teachers’ instruction (Freeman, 1998) When they have positive attitudes towards CLT, they will be ready to accept and implement this new approach in their classroom practice However, in the teachers’ understanding about CLT, changing the role of the teacher in the language classroom (from teacher- centred into teacher as facilitator) is very difficult although they have attended the workshops or seminars on using CLT and have been persuaded that CLT is effective in teaching English There is no doubt that if they do not believe that CLT can be carried out in their conditions, or they have negative attitudes towards this new approach, CLT application in their classroom practice will be unsuccessful

The introduction of a new method or program will be in competition with well- established theories of language teaching and learning which are the product of previous teaching and learning experiences, prejudices and beliefs (Freeman and

Richards, 1993) Teachers’ educational attitudes and theories, although in many cases unconsciously held, have an effect on their classroom behavior, influence what students actually learn, and are a potent determinant of teachers’ teaching style (Bennet, 1976; Burns, 1990; Clark and Peterson, 1986; Nunan, 1990) Even when teaching methods are effective in helping a student understand concepts, something more subtle can leave him/ her with the feeling that s/he is incompetent

or that learning is boring So, when introducing a new approach in the classroom it may be necessary for the teacher to revise, refine, or change his/her attitudes which may not be suitable with the principle of that approach Within the context of curriculum innovations: “ It is not enough for people to act differently, which is a surface phenomenon, they may also be required to change the way they think about certain issues, which is a deeper and more complex change” (Kennedy, 1988:329)

On others word, attitude change is an essential and inevitable part of any pedagogical innovation If inappropriateness between the philosophy of an approach and teachers’ theories exists, teachers will tend to explain new information in the light of their own theories, and will tend to translate new ideas to conform to their own style of teaching (Wagner, 1991)

Despite the importance of teachers’ attitudes in determining the successful application of CLT and in understanding teachers’ classroom behavior, teacher attitudes have been neglected in second language classroom research (Kleinsasser and Savignon, 1991; Nunan, 1991) As Kleinsasser and Savignon (1991: 299) argue:

“In our quest for the improvement of language teaching, we have overlooked the language teacher Exploration of teachers’ perceptions of what they do and why they do it holds promise for understanding the frequently noted discrepancies between theoretical understanding of second/ foreign language acquisition and classroom practice”

Change in thinking may be difficult, but, at the very least, an awareness of how teachers’ attitudes can affect students can lead to change in lesson plans Although attitudes do not have direct influence on learning and teaching, better attitudes lead to better learning and teaching.

Language learning will also be much influenced by attitudes towards cultural aspects of language In one sense language cannot be properly learned without familiarity with features of the culture, since language and culture are inextricably connected Methods of teaching may not be influenced directly by such considerations, but learning objectives cannot be set without regard for cultural factors, and methods are at least partly dependent on objectives Hence, language- teaching materials will reflect attitudes towards the desired cultural context of language learning

In summary, Communicative Language Teaching is used widely in teaching English nowadays because it seems to meet the need of learners in using English

to communicate The main method used in this approach is that the learners are given an authentic situation in which they use English to communicate with one another Then the learners study the language used in this situation in order to understand the meanings of the words or sentences together with their rules In this way, besides understanding the meanings of the words and the grammatical rules, the learners can also know how to use language in reality Therefore, CLT in most classrooms today focuses on learners coming to know language through doing, and through using language for meaningful interactive purposes The next section will be previous studies related to CLT in EFL contexts