NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ SINH VIÊN NĂM TƯ GẶP PHẢI KHI THỰC HIỆN HOẠT ĐỘNG DẠY VI MÔ TRONG MÔN LÝ LUẬN GIẢNG DẠY NGOẠI NGỮ II

Microteaching is a training technique which has been proved its effectiveness in familiarizing students with real teaching practice. Consequently, it has been officially brought into ELTM II course for the fourthyear students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, in the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University. However, during microteaching, students encountered a lot of difficulties. Due to the fact that this issue has not been thoroughly t investigated so far, the researcher attempts to provide a closer look at difficulties facing students in the microteaching process, their causes and some treatments. Thanks to a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, valid and reliable results can be yielded from the study. Overall analysis of the findings indicates that the fourth year students faced with difficulties in both preparation stage and performance stage. Specifically, the two biggest problems facing students in preparation stage were Designing teaching activities and Writing a lesson plan while in performance stage, some major problems were Explaining instructions clearly, Motivating mock students, Interacting with mock students, Black board writing skill, and Observing mock students’ attitude towards microlesson. Besides, many students found it hard to handle time management, control their voice projection and body language, and cooperate with their partner(s). In an attempt to identify the causes of the difficulties, the researcher understood that the difficulties originated from not only student teachers themselves but also mock students in class and the policy of the course as well. Among them, Lacking teaching experience, Having a few opportunities to practice microteaching, and mock students’ unexpected mood were major ones. Accordingly, some highly recommended measures to improve the performance in a microteaching practice were Strictly assigning roles of mock students, Increasing opportunities to practice microteaching for students, Practicing and Rehearsing before real performance.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

PROBLEMS FACING THE FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS IN DOING

MICRO-TEACHING IN ELTM 2

Supervisor: Pham Hoang Long Bien, M.A.

Student: Bui Thi Nguyet

Year of enrolment: QH2010.F1.E2

HA NOI, MAY 2014

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ SINH VIÊN NĂM TƯ GẶP PHẢI KHI THỰC HIỆN HOẠT ĐỘNG DẠY VI MÔ TRONG MÔN LÝ LUẬN GIẢNG DẠY NGOẠI NGỮ

I hereby state that I: Bui Thi Nguyet, class QH2010.E2, being a candidate for thedegree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accepts the requirement of the College relating tothe retention and uses of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the libraryshould be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with thenormal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of thepaper

Signature

Bui Thi Nguyet

I am also thankful for the support I have had from my family during the four years of

my study in ULIS and their encouragement when I conducted this research

Micro-teaching is a training technique which has been proved its effectiveness

in familiarizing students with real teaching practice Consequently, it has beenofficially brought into ELTM II course for the fourth-year students in Faculty ofEnglish Language Teacher Education, in the University of Languages and InternationalStudies, Vietnam National University However, during micro-teaching, studentsencountered a lot of difficulties Due to the fact that this issue has not been thoroughly

t investigated so far, the researcher attempts to provide a closer look at difficultiesfacing students in the micro-teaching process, their causes and some treatments

Thanks to a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, valid andreliable results can be yielded from the study Overall analysis of the findings indicatesthat the fourth- year students faced with difficulties in both preparation stage andperformance stage Specifically, the two biggest problems facing students in

preparation stage were Designing teaching activities and Writing a lesson plan while in performance stage, some major problems were Explaining instructions clearly,

Motivating mock students, Interacting with mock students, Black board writing skill, and Observing mock students’ attitude towards micro-lesson Besides, many students

found it hard to handle time management, control their voice projection and body

language, and cooperate with their partner(s) In an attempt to identify the causes of thedifficulties, the researcher understood that the difficulties originated from not onlystudent teachers themselves but also mock students in class and the policy of the course

as well Among them, Lacking teaching experience, Having a few opportunities to

practice micro-teaching, and mock students’ unexpected mood were major ones.

Accordingly, some highly recommended measures to improve the performance in a

micro-teaching practice were Strictly assigning roles of mock students, Increasing

opportunities to practice micro-teaching for students, Practicing and Rehearsing

before real performance

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement……….……… i

Abstract……… ii

List of abbreviations, tables, figures and appendices……… vii

PART I: INRODUCTION……… 1

1 Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study……… 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study……… 2

3 Scope of the study……… 3

4 Significance of the study……… 3

5 An overview of the rest of the paper……… 4

PART II: DEVELOPMENT……… 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW……… 5

1.1. Theoretical background……….… 5

1.1.1 Micro-teaching……… 5

1.1.1.1. Definition of micro-teaching……… 5

1.1.1.2. Stages of micro-teaching……… 6

1.1.1.3. Importance of Micro-teaching Program in Teacher Education Program………

8 1.1.2 The application of microteaching in ELTM II in FELTE - ULIS - VNU context………

10 1.1.2.1. The application of microteaching in ELTM II for TEFL fourth-year students in ULIS………

10 1.1.2.2. The practice of micro-teaching in ELTM II course……… 11

1.1.3 Related studies……… 12

1.1.3.1. Overseas studies……… 12

1.1.3.2. Vietnamese studies……… 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY……… 15

2.1. Participant and sampling methods……… 15

2.1.1 Participant……… 15

2.1.2 Sampling methods……… 15

2.2. Research design……… 16

2.3. Data collection method and procedure……… 17

2.3.1 Phase1: Questionnaires……… 18

2.3.1.1. Data collection method……… 18

2.3.1.2. Data collection procedure……… 19

2.3.1.3. Data analysis method and procedure……… 20

2.3.2 Phase 2: Interview……… 21

2.3.2.1. Data collection method……… 21

2.3.2.2. Data collection procedure……… 21

2.3.2.3. Data analysis procedure……… 22

2.4. Anticipated challenges……… 23

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION……… 24

3.1 Background of the application of the fourth-year students in conducting microteaching in ELTM II………

24 3.2 Research question 1: What are the difficulties in conducting microteaching activity among the fourth year students of FELTE, ULIS, VNU in ELT II? 28

3.2.1 Preparation stage……… 29

3.2.2 Performance stage……… 34

3.3 Research question 2: What are the causes of the difficulties in conducting

microteaching activity among the fourth year students of FELTE, ULIS,

40

VNU in ELT II?

3.3.1 Regarding the mock students……… 40

3.3.2 Regarding the course……… 42

3.3.3 Regarding the mock teacher……… 43

3.4. Research question 3: What are the solutions for the fourth year students in TEFL to improve the quality of microteaching activity?

44 3.4.1 Changing types of micro-teaching applied in ELTM II course………… 44

3.4.2 Plausible solutions address to the problems regarding the mock students 46

3.4.3 Plausible solutions address to the problems regarding the course……… 47

3.4.4 Plausible solutions address to the problems regarding the mock teacher 49

PART III: CONCLUSION……… 53

4.1. Summary of the findings……… 53

4.2. Limitations……… 55

4.3. Suggestions for further study……… 56

REFERENCES……… 57

APPENDICE……… 61

LIST OF TABLE

Table 1: ELTM II Course’s assessment

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BA: Bachelor of Arts

ELT: English Language Teaching

ELTM II: English Language Teaching Methodology 2FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher EducationMA: Master of Arts

SD: Standard Deviation

TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language

ULIS: University of Languages and International StudiesVNU: Vietnam National University

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Questionnaire

Appendix 2: Interview questions for students

Appendix 2A: Interview questions for student A

Appendix 2B: Interview questions for student B

Appendix 2C: Interview questions for student C

Appendix 2D: Interview questions for student D

Appendix 2E: Interview questions for student E

Appendix 2F: Interview questions for student F

Appendix 3: Interview schedule for teachers

Appendix 3A: Interview schedule for teachers 1

Appendix 3B: Interview schedule for teachers 2

1 Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study

Teaching foreign languages in general is usually viewed as a stressful situation

in which many problems are faced by teachers in the classroom, which requiresteachers to have a great deal of specialized knowledge in the field of teaching andlearning, as well as high standards of professional conduct Moreover, teachereducation programs offered in universities are usually quite theoretical and abstract(Heublein et al., 1998; Seferoğlu, 2006) Even prospective teachers who have strongmethodological and field knowledge still have difficulties in putting their knowledgeinto practice as not only is their theoretical knowledge required the real classroomenvironment, but many other skills such as classroom management, voice projectionand behaviors As a result, there has been an increased demand for language teachers tohave opportunities to train these teachers Thus, micro-teaching has been developedand become an effective and popular technique for students to present a sample micro-lesson of what/how to teach and to get some feedback from colleagues about how it hasbeen conducted

First developed by Dwight Allen and his colleagues at the Stanford TeacherEducation Program in 1960s, micro-teaching has been adopted in a great number ofprofessional education programs in the world It is a laboratory technique of teachertraining in which the complexity of normal classroom teaching is simplified It allowsprospective teachers to try and improve certain teaching skills (material utilization inlessons), and behaviors (e.g using voice, tone, mimics) in a controlled way in

laboratory environment (Şen, 2009), so the risks encountered in the teaching practicumcan be reduced With great effort to catch up with international education worldwide,the University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University(ULIS – VNU) has officially introduced micro-teaching into the Teaching English as aForeign Language (TEFL) Bachelor program for some academic years The fact is thatdespite many undeniable advantages of micro-teaching activity, students haveencountered a number of obstacles in conducting a micro-lesson as they areexperienced to that new kind of class activity Furthermore, many scientific researchesbodies have investigated the application of micro-teaching (Miltz, 1978; Dam, 2005)and its effectiveness (Simbo, 1989, Saban, 2013), but not much attention has been paid

to difficulties student teachers in TEFL have faced when conducting micro-teachingactivity All these conditions, henceforth, offered the researcher a chance to conduct a

study on “Problems facing the fourth- year students in doing Micro-teaching in ELTM II”.

2 Aims and objectives of the study

First of all, the study is expected to discover the difficulties facing fourth yearstudents in performing micro-teaching activity, and investigate the reasons for theseproblems Based on the result of the study, the researcher plans to propose somesolutions with the hope of enhancing the effectiveness of micro-teaching in studentteachers’ performance in ELTM II in TEFL, ULIS, VNU In brief, these objectivescould be summarized into three research questions as follows:

1 What are the difficulties in conducting microteaching activity among the fourth year students of FELTE, ULIS, VNU in ELTM II?

2 What are the main causes of the difficulties in conducting microteaching activity among the fourth year students of FELTE, ULIS, VNU in ELTM II?

3 What are the solutions to the difficulties facing the fourth year students in ELTM II?

3 Scope of the study

The participants are the fourth- year students majoring in TEFL in ULIS, VNU,who are conducting micro-teaching activity in ELTM II and ELT teachers in TEFL inULIS Since microteaching is not an easy work, the fourth–year students may havedifficulties in teaching a real class with problems involved Therefore, the studyprimarily looks at what difficulties students experience in the process of conductingmicroteaching activity as well as why they have such difficulties With two main datacollecting instruments (questionnaire and interview), the information about thoseaspects can be analyzed thoroughly

4 Significance of the study

If the above-mentioned objectives could be achieved, this paper is expected to

be great benefits for the target population, their teachers, policy makers and otherresearchers interested in the topic To begin with, as the current research on problemsthat may arise when the fourth year students engage in micro teaching activity, thisstudy will partly fill the gap in the literature and serve as a reliable source of referencefor other researchers who share an interest in the same related issues Secondly, thefindings from the study can provide ELT teachers in ELTM II course with descriptiveinformation on students’ perspective on difficulties they encounter when conductingmicro-teaching, reasons for those problems and some proposed solutions Thisinformation can be of some help for teachers and policy maker to make necessarychanges to make full use of microteaching activity With regard to the students in theirTEFL Bachelor course, this paper will help them to “develop experiential knowledge

of professional action” (Wallace, 1991, p.87) Besides, through examining the findings

of encountered problems and suggested solutions, teacher trainees will have chance toprepare themselves more carefully before conducting real teaching practice

5 An overview of the rest of the paper

The rest of the paper includes two parts:

Part II- Development is comprised of three chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review provides the background of the study, including

definition of key concepts, description of the context in which micro-teaching isconducted in FELTE, ULIS, and discussions of the related studies

Chapter 2: Methodology describes the participants and instruments of the

study, as well as the procedure employed to carry out the research

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion presents and analyzes and discusses the

findings that the researcher found out from the data collected according to threeresearch questions

Part III – Conclusion- summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, the

limitations of the research as well as some suggestions for further studies Followingthis chapter are the References and Appendices

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is aimed at providing a brief overview of the literature on the research topic as well as forming the theoretical basis for the whole study Moreover, related studies will also be reviewed to contextualize the research paper, and discover the research gaps and; hence, justify the implementation of this study.

Allen (1966) defined micro-teaching as “a scaled- down, simulated teachingencounter designed for the training of both the pre-serve and in-serve teachers” Manis (1973) claimed that the term micro-teaching implies a condensed andsimplified teaching situation and provides teacher candidates with opportunities tosystematically study and practice specific teaching behavior in a simulatedenvironment

Passi (1976) stated that “the most important point in micro-teaching is thatteaching is practiced in terms of definable, observable, measurable and controllableteaching skills”

Wallace (1991) defined micro-teaching as a training context in which a teachingsituation has been reduced in scope and/or simplified in some systematic ways.Accordingly, there are three main ways in which the teaching counter may be scaleddown: the task is simplified, the length of lesson may be shortened and the size of classmay be reduced

Among all the above definitions of micro-teaching, Wallace’s definition is adopted since it is the most specific one, clearly and thoroughly reflecting the nature of microteaching activity

1.1.1.2 Stage of micro-teaching

The process of micro-teaching for skill development is in the form of cycle usuallyknown as microteaching cycle Despite many different ways of definingmicroteaching cycle with different names of stages, all of them have a commonnature, including six steps As shown in Figure 1, the cycle is a process of planning,teaching, criticizing, re-planning, re-teaching, re-criticizing (Peker, 2009)

Planning

Re- criticizing Teaching

Re-planning Figure 1: Stages of micro-teaching Planning stage: involves the preparation of a micro-lesson which should be well

thought sequentially in written form It may revolve single concepts to be taught Thecontent should be concise, appropriate, relevant, and could cover the specifiedduration

Teaching stage: the student teachers perform micro-lesson to mock students that were

planed and prepared by him/her While one student teacher is teaching, all the otherstry to note down all their comments on the teaching session, often with a checklisthanded out at the beginning of the course (Moore, 1979, p.64) Simultaneously, theyare also advised to behave as naughty and stupid students

Criticizing stage: the supervisor facilitates other student teachers to give feedback on

the micro-lesson However, it is recommended that the teacher of micro- lesson should

be given a chance to self-comment first about what he/she has planned to do, what hasbeen achieved, what has not (Wallace, 1991, p.102) After that, the supervisor andfellow student teachers give criticism and suggestions in order to improve theforthcoming micro-lesson In Stanford model, 2 + 2 system of feedback was used Eachparticipant started his feedback with two positive comments followed by two

suggestions for his improvement However, in order to guarantee the objectivity,comprehensiveness, accuracy, and effectiveness of feedback, 2 + 2 +1 system offeedback should be used It means that when giving comments, each participant willstart with two positive comments, two corrections and one suggestion.

Re-planning stage: after receiving feedback from the supervisor and participants, the

student teacher prepares the lesson plan again to maximize the strengths and removethe limitations in the light of the discussion and suggestions of the supervisor to seekfor improvement

Re-teaching stage: the student teacher teaches again to the same group of pupils or to

a different group of pupils with the revised lesson for the same class duration trying toavoid the mistakes he/she have made in the previous micro-lesson

Re-criticizing stage: in the end of the cycle, micro-teaching practices gives

pre-teachers opportunities to evaluate their strengths, weakness and try to improve weaksides (Sari, Sakal & Deniz, 2005) It seemed that most of the fear of teachersdisappeared at the end of the application, and extended micro-teaching practices areseen to be equivalent to a one-year trainee teacher is emphasized

1.1.1.3 Importance of Micro-teaching Program in Teacher Education

Program

The major goal of a successful Teacher Education Program is to exposeprospective teachers to effective teaching strategies and experiences The place ofmicroteaching in Teacher Education Program has been examined for a number ofyears by researchers in different countries in the world (Fernandez, 2010; Ogeyik,2009; Seferoglu, 2006; Amobi, 2005; Wilkinson, 1996) Since its introduction inthe1960s, the practice of microteaching has been rapidly expanded to other teachereducation programs Recently, micro-teaching components have been introduced inmany pre-service teacher education programs in order to orient prospective

teachers and provide them with practical teaching experiences (Fernandez, 2010,Bell, 2007, Amobi, 2005) Micro-teaching is considered a tool for learning the art

of teaching which has attracted a number of educators and researchers toinvestigate its impacts on prospective teachers’ teaching experiences and how theyperceive it as a practical learning tool

According to Maheshwari (2011), micro-teaching makes the TeacherEducation Program more goal-oriented and helps to decide common objectives forthe program It provides individualized training with more realistic evidence tostudents, which enables them to develop competency in using specific teachingskills in view of their unique needs Specifically, microteaching prepares pre-service teachers skills in small group settings and real experience in teaching In aprotected environment of friends and colleagues, they not only can safely adoptnew teaching and learning strategies and simultaneously through assuming thestudent role, to understand students’ needs and expectations, but also receivecorrective feedbacks from supervisor and other peers As a result, some of thecomplexities of learning to teach in the classroom situation such as time constraint,the scope and content of the lesson, and some students’ uncooperative behaviorsare reduced Furthermore, they can observe and comment on other people’sperformances as well, so it is a good chance for pre-service teachers to learn fromother peers and enrich their teaching methods By microteaching activity, a facility

of supervision which is not critical on threatening type, but is a helpful andsuggestive type is provided

However, micro-teaching experiences may not be as effective withoutoffering prospective teachers opportunities to reflect on their performance Thegoal of any successful pre-service teacher education programs is to prepareeffective and reflective teachers Novice student teachers in training programalways possess preconceptions about teaching Those students have the experience

of sitting in classes for number of years, observing instructors teaching them with avariety of teaching methods Hence, it is very crucial for teacher-trainers to listen

to the preconceptions of prospective teachers and have them promote teachingstrategies (Amobi & Irwin, 2009) The use of reflection strategies provideseducators with an opportunity to correct any misconceptions that might interferewhile student teachers are practicing effective teaching strategies Reflectivepractices, such as critically observing a video-recorded lesson can offer valuableopportunities for student teachers to revisit their executed lessons and makethoughtful decisions for improvement and develop teaching strategies

1.1.2 The application of microteaching in ELT in FELTE - ULIS - VNU context 1.1.2.1 The application of microteaching in ELTM II for TEFL fourth-year

students in ULIS

ELT Methodology II (ELTM II) is a practical course, based on ELTMethodology I and following it It is targeted at the fourth-year students who major inTEFL in ULIS The course aims at providing learners with the knowledge and skillnecessary for teaching various classroom teaching and learning activities As stated inthe course objectives, learners learn how to share experiences, teach each other,evaluate each other, and criticize each other They also learn how to be competentobservers, how to use technological equipment including different types of visual aids,software, hardware, Power point presentation, games and role playing, etc.Additionally, learners are given opportunities to practice lesson planning, prepareworksheets, design visual aids, and carry out actual classroom lessons Moreover, inthis course, learners are given the chance to teach micro-lessons to their peers in asimulated environment, while they receive prompt feedback from their teacher andtheir peer students, and they have opportunities to watch their teaching performanceswhich furnishes However, in this course, microteaching is not really a cycle as itsoriginal nature was Commonly, each student teacher has one chance to perform their

teaching, or in other words, the microteaching here only includes three steps namelyplanning, teaching, and criticizing After receiving feedback from the supervisor andpeers, student teachers do not have another chance to re-teach in order to maximizetheir strengths and remove the limitations in previous micro-lesson Thus, this can beconsidered a limitation of this course.

When the study is conducted, fourth-year students are those who enrolled in theTEFL Bachelor course in ULIS in 2010 Their target career is teaching English forupper-secondary school students after their graduation The academic year 2013-2014

is their last year at university in which they do micro-teaching in the first semester and

go on with teaching practicum in the second semester

1.1.2.2 The practice of micro-teaching in ELTM II course

The assessment of teacher trainees based on micro-teaching in ELTMethodology II in FELTE-ULIS is balanced with other assessments The specificgrading is as follows:

Table 1: Course’s assessment and grading

- To assess students’

understanding of therequired texts and theirability to critically reflect

on what they have read

- To assess students’

ability to apply theirknowledge of the subject

work) microteaching and

evaluate their peers andtheir own teaching intheir class

in classroom practice

Final exam 50% Students answer both

theoretical and practicalquestions

- To assess students’

understanding of thetopics covered in thecourse and their ability toapply this understanding

to solve practicalproblems

Source: ESL/EFL classroom techniques and practices course book, 2012, p.2-3

1.1.3 Related studies

As micro-teaching has been applied in many teacher training programs, therehave been a great number of studies related to this area of teacher education, some ofwhich are given below so as to justify the significance of this study

 Observing and evaluating other students based on the given criteria

 Black board writing skill

 Time management, lesson note, and explaining the content with fluency

 Stimulus variations

Based on the results from the survey questionnaire, the researchers proposedthree solutions:

- A special coaching or guidance is necessary about black board to the students

to develop their black board writing

- More skills should be introduced in microteaching program

- Time span of a micro-lesson should be increased to perfect teaching

However, in this study, the researchers did not find out the reasons for theseproblems, so their suggested solutions were quite general, and did not embrace all thesides of these problems Furthermore, this research was conducted in an Indianuniversity; it was different from Vietnamese universities Hence, the findings of thisstudy cannot be applied in Vietnamese context

1.1.3.2 Vietnamese studies

In Vietnam, the number of studies in micro-teaching is quite limited Moreover,all of them focused on using micro-teaching techniques and application of micro-teaching for pre-service teachers and in-service teachers

 Using micro-teaching techniques to improve effectiveness of teacher training - Sửdụng kĩ thuật dạy học vi mô nhằm nâng cao hiệu quả bồi dưỡng giáo viên (Phung,2006)

In this study, micro-teaching was evaluated as a technique to furnish teacherswith major teaching skills Micro-teaching, therefore, is not a stereotype, is especiallysuitable for novice teachers It can be inferred that the application of micro-teachinghere is for in-service teachers who have completed their teacher training but not yetmastered teaching techniques

 The value of ELTM micro-teaching from perspective of the fourth-year students(Dam, 2005)

This research investigates the situation and the application of teaching technique

in micro-teaching sessions, some advantages and disadvantages of microteachingpractice during micro-lessons in the context of the English Department, ULIS, andsuggests some possible changes to improve the practice of microteaching The results

of the research indicate that individual and group- of- three micro-teaching are the twopopular and favorite types of micro-teaching among students From the reality, somepractical suggestions are proposed by participating students with a view to furtherimproving the application of micro-teaching

Both these studies focused on application of micro-teaching but with twodifferent subjects: pre-service teachers and in-service teachers in different contexts.Apparently, importance of micro-teaching in teacher training program is undeniable.However, difficulties in conducting micro-teaching have been still unknown

While a popular activity in more developed countries, in Vietnam, teaching can be considered a newly introduced activity in ELT It has not been widelyapplied in large scale in the colleges and universities As a result, there has not beenany whole paper about the difficulties students face when carrying out micro-teaching.This limitation prompted the researcher to conduct this study to furtherinvestigate the issue as well as to bridge the gap about difficulties of students incarrying out micro-teaching

micro-Summary: This chapter has laid the theoretical background for the whole study

through defining keys terms and reviewing related studies.

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides a detailed picture of the methodology of this study by describing and explaining the research design, sampling, participants, data collection instruments (including questionnaires and interviews), data collection procedure as well as data analysis procedure.

2.1 Participant and sampling methods

2.1.1 Participant

With the aim of addressing the difficulties in conducting microteaching activity

of the fourth-year students majoring in TEFL, the researcher intentionally regarded thefourth-year students from twelve classes of FELTE, in ULIS, VNU (except for classQH2010.E2 because microteaching activity was not included in their schedule inELTM II) as the target population to gather data

The very important reason why these above students were chosen for this study

is that they have just taken the ELTM 2 course in semester 7, in which they had tofollow the procedure of Microteaching Therefore, these students were willing toparticipate in the survey and contributed in-depth opinions to answer the researcher’squestions

2.1.2 Sampling methods

The very first step needed for a perfect research is to have a good sample whichmeets the requirement so-called “representative” and must be large enough to correctlyrepresent a population From initial investigation, there are about 295 fourth-yearstudents (except for students in QH2010.E2) majoring in English Teaching in FELTE,ULIS in the academic year of 2013-2014 who are divided into 12 classes According toBechhofer and Paterson (2000), in order to find out characteristics of that wholepopulation, it was not necessary to measure the whole population but a relative smallone sample Thus, the researcher randomly chose to interview 12 students, and deliver

questionnaires to 132 out of 295 students This number guaranteed therepresentativeness of the whole population.

With regard to the questionnaire surveyed, the handouts were delivered to 132fourth-year TEFL students The number of students to be surveyed in each class wasequally ten who were chosen as follows After the number of each class wasconfirmed, the students who had even numbers in class list were asked to do thequestionnaire

In addition, Stratified Random Sampling was found the most suitable one for thesituation of the study The key characteristic of this strategy is the equal andindependent chance of being selected of each member of the population (Cohen,

Manion & Morrison, 2000, p.100) Therefore, random sampling provides “a degree of

generalizability” (Cohen et al., 2000, p.99) which contribute the precise findings of the

study

2.2 Research design

In this research, the developed approach was triangulation which has recentlybeen widely applied a lot of researchers Triangulation, is known as a mixing designwhich contains “the combination of two or more theories, data sources, methods orinvestigators in one study of a single phenomenon to converge on a single construct,and can be employed in both quantitative (validation) and qualitative (inquiry) studies”(Yeasmin & Rahman, 2012, p.156) Since quantitative and qualitative approach havetheir own limitations, there is mounting evidence shown that mixing these two types ofmethods can contribute to a better understanding of the problems rather than eitherapproach alone (Greene & Caracelli, 1997) By which, a large amount of informationcan be collected and the responses of the students will be also more deeply discovered

in order to bring the most effective results Therefore, in this research, both qualitativeand quantitative approaches were applied as the researcher divides the whole research

procedure into two stages Firstly, a questionnaire was provided to the population toexamine the different difficulties they had met in microteaching activity Secondly, anumber of samples were randomly picked from the above population and invited toparticipate in interviews in order to specify the collected difficulties

Quantitative research method attempts to maximize objectivity, replicability,and generalizibility of findings (Harwell, 2011, p.149) Moreover, this methoddemands random selection of the sample from the study population and the randomassignment of the sample to the various study groups In this research, quantitativeapproach can help the researchers figure out the implemented strategies and differentchallenges they often meet in microteaching activity, etc

Qualitative approach was also applied as one of the main methods in thisresearch As a widely-used research design, it “focuses on discovering andunderstanding the experiences, perspectives, and thoughts of participants” (Harwell,

2011, p.148) In this research, the researcher intended to thoroughly study whatdifficulties they often encounter while conducting microteaching activity and how theyresolve those problems

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are advantageous and essential forthis research in solving the research questions That is the reason why the researcherdecided to implement the triangulation approach for the research design

2.3 Data collection method and procedure

To conduct the research, a combination of questionnaires (quantitative method)and interview (qualitative method) was utilized in the study The combination wouldhelp researchers feel confident about the results and thus, making the studytrustworthy

2.3.1 Phase1: Questionnaires

2.3.1.1 Data collection method

In this first phase of the study, questionnaire was employed Questionnaire isproved “one of the most widely used social research technique” (Blaxter, Hughes &Tight, 2006, p.179) It is advantageous to gather information on large scale as it hasunprecedented efficiency in terms of research time, research effort and financialresources (Le, 2012) With a well-constructed questionnaire and the sincerecooperation of participants, researchers succeeded in getting reliable and validfindings Therefore, survey questionnaires were decided to be an important method ofthe study With the aim of addressing the problems posed in the research questions, thequestionnaire investigated:

1 Difficulties student teachers face when conducting microteaching activity

2 Reasons for these difficulties

3 The solutions to deal with the problems when conducting microteaching activityThe face-to-face questionnaire was applied as the instrument to carry out thequestionnaire

Face-to-face questionnaire, as compared to mail and online questionnaire, is thetype of questionnaire that is administered to respondents directly by the researcher onpaper It has been stated in a good number of research that using face-to-facequestionnaire can help improve the quality of data collection, especially the responserates Dykema, Basson and Schaeffer (2008, p 241) claimed that “response rates forface-to-face surveys remain substantially higher than those for other modes”.Apparently, high response rate to questionnaire is very crucial to achieving highvalidity; thus, face-to-face questionnaire is the most preferable instrument for thisresearch

Most of the questions were in the form of close-ended questions which onlyrequired respondents to do multiple choice, rating and quantity items, which enabledthe researcher to “generate frequencies of response and make comparisons” among agreat deal of respondents (Cohen, Manison & Morrison, 2000, p.207) However, onlyusing “close-ended” questions can limit the variety of answers to the scope on whichresearch focuses because the respondents are not required to provide any free writinganswers; instead, they will choose one of the alternatives, regardless of whether theirpreferred answer is among them (Le et al., 2012) As a result, the questionnaire alsohad some open-ended questions which allowed respondents to express an opinionwithout being influenced by the researchers This kind of question assisted researchersgather unexpected situations and the number of missing items will decrease.

The questionnaire was adapted from the questionnaire by Dam (2005) since thestudy by Dam (2005) investigated advantages and disadvantages of microteaching inperspective of the ULIS fourth-year students in ELTM 2 course Hence, the researcherdecided to use and adapt some questions in Dam’s questionnaire for this study

2.3.1.2 Data collection procedure

Step 1: Preparing

The questionnaire was formed with around 10 multiple- choice questionsregarding the student teachers’ difficulties, causes and solutions based on choicesprovided by the researcher, two more open-ended questions asking about their ownsuggested solutions

Step 2: Revising the questionnaires and selecting respondents

Before being given to respondents, the questionnaire was piloted on 3-5 studentsfrom QH2010.E1, who are in the population of the study A piece of paper forcomments and suggestions was enclosed with the piloting questionnaire Thecomments collected should be on all aspects of the questionnaire: format, rapport with

respondents shown in the questionnaire, clarity and validity of questions, etc Based onthe pilot questionnaires and comments collected, the researchers revised thequestionnaire accordingly Consultation from some previous respondents and researchsupervisor for evaluation on the revised version was obtained.

The participants to answer the questionnaire had been identified earlier (thewhole population of the study) and were contacted at this phase a week in advance toarrange convenient date, time and place to administer the questionnaire This was done

in groups, which means the researchers went to each of the classes to hand out thequestionnaires instead of contacting each participant individually

Step 3: Administering the questionnaires

The questionnaire was handed out for participants at the time and placearranged After an appropriate amount of time (which was decided beforehand), thecompleted questionnaires were collected The researchers also asked for the contactdetails of the absent participants for later individual contact, and also asked forpermission to contact some respondents for the later interviews

Data collected from the questionnaire will be analyzed both quantitatively andqualitatively

Firstly, questions are divided into two groups: close-ended and open-endedones With the first group, data will be analyzed quantitatively by SPSS software, andthen presented in tables after converted into a numeral score There exist threedirections according to which researchers will conduct analysis: difficulties and causesand solutions The scores for questions were counted so that researchers can identifythe most frequent problems that students usually cope up with when conductingmicroteaching, their major reasons, and solutions which most students agree with.Then, statistics were then presented in the form of tables, chart and figures which werecreated by Excel program The second one, according to qualitative strategies the

answers of open-ended questions were gathered, compared and contrasted byresearchers themselves in order to identify some common opinions on whichresearchers would base on to implement semi-structured interview.

2.3.2 Phrase 2: Interview

2.3.2.1 Data collection method

Along with face-to-face questionnaires, semi-structured interview was chosen to

be a valuable research instrument to examine the target population Nguyen, Pham andLuong (2007, cited in Phan 2011, p.50) believed that semi-structured interviewprovided interviewers with a great deal of flexibility while offering the respondents

“adequate power and control” throughout the interviews Hence, researchers intended

to hold interview after collecting survey so that researchers can gain clearerinformation from answers completed in the survey

As mentioned above, interviews were conducted in form of face-to-face structured interview and were recorded for further investigation The interviews wereconducted in English because both the interviewer and interviewees possessed a certainlevel of English proficiency In total, there were two interview versions for teachersand students Through the interviews for students, the researcher aimed at elaborating

semi-on the causes of and solutisemi-ons to the difficulties they reported to encounter in thesurvey questionnaires Whereas data collected from these interviews with teacherswould be the evaluation of the students’ performance, their explanation on the causes

of and solutions to difficulties the students encountered The design of this interviewversion was divided into parts: problems and suggested solutions The content of theinterview as well as transcribe of each interview can be found in the Appendix

2.3.2.2 Data collection procedure

Step 1: Preparing

Based on information collected and analyzed, the semi-structured interviewschedule was constructed and then asked peers and supervisors for evaluation andsuggestions Then, the researchers contacted the representatives several days inadvance to arrange convenient date, time and place to conduct face-to-face interviews

as well as prepared a tape-recorder and some pieces of paper to take notes

Step 2: Conducting the interviews

In this step, the interviewing process was carried out with one chosenrespondent at a time Researchers interviewed the respondents with an informal manner

so that it would be easier for them to share their true thoughts The information is typed

or transcribed right after to ensure the value data Then the data would be examinedbefore interpreting to reach the conclusion

2.3.2.3 Data analysis procedure

The analysis of the interview was broken into three smaller steps

Step 1: Transcribe the interviews

All the responses recorded by field notes and tape recordings were transcribedinto written form Especially with field notes, after being carefully read, they weretyped up immediately to avoid the missing of information because of memory lost

Step 2: Classifying answer

Different categories are formed in order to classify received answers

Step 3: Rendering data:

After data are grouped, they will be compared, contrasted to find out theconnection between them Finally, researchers will be able to arrive at conclusions

2.4 Anticipated challenges

During the process of collecting data, some possible problems may arise.Firstly, some participants are reluctant to complete the survey or take part in theinterview Moreover, some may invent their answers, or give dishonest answers, ormisunderstand the questions which can significantly affect the result Hence, havinggood strategy to make students friendly with researcher is crucial The researcher has tomake sure with the participants that their sharing will only be used for researchingpurposes, not for other ones In addition, if the research is not sure about the accuracy ofinformation given by some participants, the researcher may contact them again and askthem to check their answers again whether they are true with their experience Anotherproblem is unsuitable time and location Although the researcher contacts respondents

to arrange time and location before giving the questionnaire or conducting theinterview, sometimes time constraints still happen because of researcher’sunderestimation or respondents’ hesitation Other possible situation is the location beinginaccessible because the lecturer in the class does not allow or respondents cannotcome

All things considered, the researcher believes that only by working hard andwith serious attitude, can the researcher complete the research successfully

Summary: So far, this chapter has justified the methodology applied in this

paper by elaborating the setting and the two groups of participants involved in the process of data collection Furthermore, the combination of two data collection instruments was also clarified in the process of data collection and the process of data analysis in this chapter These justifications of the methodology would have make the way for the findings and discussion in the next chapter

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, all the data collected from the instruments (i.e questionnaire and interview) will be revealed and discussed in detail, which will be integrated to support each other all in forms of answers to the three research questions.

3.1 Background of the application of the fourth-year students in conducting

microteaching in ELTM II

Although the first six questions in the questionnaires did not directly answer any

of three research questions, they played a crucial part to reinforce the rationale of thestudy To know the application of micro-teaching in ELTM II course done by thefourth-year students in TEFL, ULIS

Question 1was posed to help the researcher make sure that all of the participantshad conducted at least a micro-teaching in ELTM II course Therefore, the datacollected could be more valid and reliable

In order to investigate which types of micro-teaching student teachers used inELTM II course, the researcher addressed question 2

Figure 2: Types of micro-teaching applied in ELTM II

As can be seen from the chart, 46.70% of the students conducted micro-teaching

in groups of three or four, 37.10% conducted pair micro-teaching, and 16.20%conducted individual micro-teaching These figures indicated that based on students’different levels of proficiency and different learning styles of students, in each class,ELT teachers applied different types of micro-teaching

Question 3 and 4 aimed at getting some factual information about the time(s)each student could do micro-teaching in ELTM II course and the amount of timeallocated for one micro-lesson

> three times

Figure 3: The time(s) a student did micro-teaching in ELTM II course

It is clear that more than a half of the sample (61.91%) had only one chance toconduct micro-teaching activity It means that those students teachers did not havechance to re-teach to develop their strengths as well as overcome their weakness afterreceiving the comments about their first micro-teaching from the supervisor and peers.25.71% shared that they had two chances to conduct micro-teaching in ELTM IIcourse, and the other 12.38 % conducted micro-teaching three times

Time allowance for one micro-lesson 0

40 - 50 minutes Others

Figure 4: Time allowance for one micro-lesson

In this course, among 105 participants, two thirds of them stated that they wereallocated about 40-50 minutes for one micro-lesson, which was the same as a session inreality 15 participants said that their each micro-lesson was allocated by 30-35minutes Meanwhile 10 among them said that they had only about 20-25 minutes foreach micro-lesson Besides, it was said by 10 participants that the time allowance foreach micro-lesson ranged from 20-45 minutes depending on different skills such asteaching vocabulary (about 20-25 minutes), teaching reading, writing and listeningskills (45 minutes)

Question 5 investigated whether students applied the theories of ELTM II intotheir micro-teaching activity, and the results were visualized in the following chart:

So - so Not really Not at all

Figure 5: Students’ ELTM II theories application in micro-teaching activity

It is noticeable that more than a half of the participants (57.14%) said that theyapplied considerable amount of ELTM II theories into their micro-teachingperformance, 24.76% a moderate amount, and 15.24% of the sample used a lot oftheories, only about 2.86% shared that they did not really apply ELTM II theories intotheir micro-lesson

Regarding question 6, the result revealed that all of the students in the sampledid have some problems in micro-teaching activity either in preparation stage or inperformance stage or both

Therefore, it is crucial to thoroughly investigate the difficulties they faced

3.2. Research question 1: What are the difficulties in conducting microteaching

activity among the fourth year students of FELTE, ULIS, VNU in ELTM II?

In the following part, the researcher will go deeply into kinds of difficultiesarising to student teachers when they conducted micro-lessons The entire process of amicro-lesson can be divided into two main stages: preparation stage and performancestage.

3.2.1 Preparation stage

Firstly, because in TEFL, students were required to submit their lesson plan formicro-lesson at least one week before their real performance, so they had a certainamount of time to prepare for their performance in class The questionnaire wasdesigned to identify the level of difficulty, in which the participants were asked tochoose a number from 1 to 4 for each item in a likert-scale In this scale, 1 is equivalent

to “not at all”, 2 is equivalent to “very little”, 3 is “somewhat” and 4 is “to a greatextent” The results are presented in the below chart

Findi

ng te

achi

ng mat ials

Selec

ting a

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Figure 6: Students’ difficulties in preparation stage