oral and written discourse analysis in the preparation of integrative activities for basic english course at thai nguyen university

Thai Nguyen University Batangas State University Socialist Republic of Vietnam Republic of Philippines VU KIEU HANH ORAL AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE PREPARATION OF INTEGRATIVE

Thai Nguyen University Batangas State University

Socialist Republic of Vietnam Republic of Philippines

VU KIEU HANH

ORAL AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE

PREPARATION OF INTEGRATIVE ACTIVITIES

FOR BASIC ENGLISH COURSE AT

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Specialty: English Language and Literature

Ph.D DISSERTATION SUMARY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

THAI NGUYEN, 2014

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Advisor: Dr Matilda H Dimaano

Reviewer No.1: Reviewer No.2: Reviewer No.3:

The Dissertation will be evaluated at the State Council held at:

………

At: hour date month year 2014

Dissertation can be found at the libraries:

- National library of Vietnam;

- Learning Resource Center - Thai Nguyen University;

- Library of International Training and Development Center;

- Library of Batangas State University, Philippines

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

College English is one of the foreign language courses required

in the tertiary level curriculum to be taken by freshmen students This course is known in various titles like Basic English Course, Basic College English, Freshman English or College Composition Discourse analysis is defined as the analysis of language beyond the sentence This type of analysis is different from those done by modern linguistics, which mainly involves the study of grammar: the study of smaller bits of language, such as sounds which include phonetics and phonology, parts of words or morphology, meaning or semantics, and the order of words in sentences or syntax Discourse analysis is concerned with larger chunks of language as they flow together This is exemplified by two sentences that when taken together as a single discourse can convey meaning quite different from the meaning conveyed by each sentence taken separately The difference in meaning arises from the context they were considered, such that a frame analysis is a type of discourse analysis that would

be able to shed light on context that mediate this change in meaning Discourse analysis is important for various reasons For the linguists, it helps to find out how language works, to improve their understanding of this important human activity; for the educators in finding out how good texts work, so that they can focus on teaching the students these writing and speaking strategies; and for the critical analysts, to discover meanings in the text which are not obvious on

the surface such as analyzing a politician’s speech to see their preconceptions

Considering the need of the students for a quality English education, and evaluating the current curriculum for College English,

it would seem reasonable to evaluate and analyze the oral and written discourse among the College students These two aspects are important to the development of oral and writing skills, one aimed at developing the sentence to sub-sentence level of knowledge and skills development and the other on the supra sentence level appealing to the intuitive sense of the individual

As a college teacher teaching observe difficulties among college student include writing effective sentences in a paragraph, conceptualizing a topic in composition as well as difficulties in accuracy, comprehension, vocabulary and phonological aspects in oral discourse This prompted the researcher probe deeper into the learning aspects of the college students

1.2 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDIES

This study aimed to analyze the oral and written discourse of college freshman students in basic English course at Thai Nguyen University

Specifically, this study sought answers to the following research questions:

1 What is the demographic profile of Freshman students in terms of 1.1 Gender;

1.2 parent's educational attainment;

1.3 student's place of origin

1.4 type of school attended (high school); and

1.5 exposure to English media?

2 What is the level of oral and written discourse competencies of the student’s?

3 Are there significant differences between the students’ competencies and characteristics?

4 How do teachers assess the students' oral and written discourse competencies?

5 Is there any significant difference between the students' oral and written discourse competencies and the teacher’s assessment in the same areas?

6 What integrative activities may be proposed to enhance students in oral and written discourse competencies?

1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study will be useful to different individuals, administrator and policy makers

Students They will benefit from the results of the study particularly, the teaching learning materials that will be developed The students participating in this survey will have a chance to try the test and assessment schemes

Teachers This will be significant to the teachers not only because they will be participants of the study but they will also learn something from the results and will have a chance to utilize the developed teaching/learning material to their students

Administrator The administrators will benefit from this study through insights gathered as this will guide them in what decisions they will make regarding the student’ skills assessment The administrators also will benefit from the teaching learning materials

that will be developed as they can implement them in the classes of their schools

Policy-makers The policymakers will be benefited from the knowledge gathered in this study This will aid them in formulating policy/ specific and relevant laws that could influence the current educational system as they will have a concrete basis for doing so 1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

This study analysed the responses of 200 first year English language students from tertiary schools in Vietnam and 30 of their respective English teachers The students made to validate grammatical and discourse analysis questionnaire while the teachers were asked to answer to a student’s skill assessment questionnaire where rating was based on their perception on the skill level of their students These two questionnaires served as the source of quantitative data that would be analysed statistically The study sites were the tertiary schools in an urbanized area

Demographic information was gathered from the students and teachers through the questionnaires but their names were not revealed Stratification on the students and teachers responses were done according to their demographic profile and the data were consolidated The respondents were enrolled in an English course The teacher respondents were the respective teachers of the evaluated students for they would give their assessment of their students’ cognitive skills Statistical tools used include mean comparisons, t-test correlation analysis Demographic data were presented in tables

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

2.1 REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES

This section present of some literatures related to the topic

2.2 RESEARCH PARADIGM

This study was used a systems approach to represent the flow of the study The components are grouped into input, process and output as presented in Figure 1

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT

Figure 1 Conceptual Paradigm of the study

Proposed Integrative English Activities

Assessment made through:

Teacher Made Test

Survey Questionnaire

A Demographic

profile of students in

terms of:

1 gender

2 parent's educational

attainment

3.place of origin,

4 type of school

attended

5 student's exposure to

English

media

B Students’ level of

competencies

1 oral

2 written discourse

C.Teachers’ assessment

of the students'

competencies:

1 oral

2 written discourse

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

This study made use of descriptive type of research According

to Ariola (2006) descriptive research is used to describe data and characteristics about what is being studied as well as present behaviour or characteristics of a particular population where the data are collected to describe persons, organizations, settings, or phenomena Descriptive-comparative method was also used in the study to predict the significance and difference of the two variables

as well as to identify, analyse and explain their similarities and differences

This study made use of two types of questionnaires, the survey questionnaire and teacher -made test The subjects’ responses to the questionnaire served as data subjected to statistical analysis

SUBJECTS OF THE STUDY

The subjects of this study were the 200 first year English students and at least 30 first year English teachers from tertiary schools in an urbanized area The students were enrolled in a first year English

course and demonstrate willingness to share their demographic profiles

DATA GATHERING INSTRUMENT

The study made used of the following research instrument:

Teacher- made Test This test was designed to assess the level of oral and written discourse competencies of college freshman students

Survey Questionnaire This instrument was designed to assess teachers’ perceptions as to the level of students’ oral and written discourse competencies

DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

Two sets of questionnaire the teacher made test for the student respondents and survey questionnaire for teacher respondents were designed to assess the level of competencies of freshman students in their oral and written discourses The initial validation of the two sets

of questionnaire was performed The student questionnaire were pilot tested to first year college students not the respondents of the study

to determine the strength and weaknesses of the constructed test while the survey questionnaire were submitted to twenty English teachers of Batangas State University for comments and suggestions and for the degree of appropriateness with the help of the research adviser

As soon as the two sets of questionnaire were improved based

on the comments and suggestions in the initial validation, letters of requests for content validations were sent to the members of the panel and expert on the field With the validated questionnaires, letters of requests to administer the tests to the respondents to the identified research environment were sent to the administrators for permission

When permission was secured the teacher -made test was administered to student respondents and a short briefing was given to

all participants to explain the study’s objectives, procedures and the importance of completing the questionnaires The questionnaires were administered to the subjects given a maximum of one-hour to answer Proper classroom conduct was observed the entire time of testing The completed questionnaires was then collected by the examiner and compiled in sealed envelopes

The survey questionnaire on the other hand was also given to teacher respondents Schedule for the test administration and giving

of survey questionnaire were set in order to have organization As soon as the conduct of the test and survey questionnaire was accomplished, the test items for students were checked and both the scores of the students and the items in the survey questionnaires were tallied for analysis and interpretation

STATISTICAL TREATMENT OF DATA

The data were subjected to the following statistical tools for meaningful interpretation and analysis of the study:

Data were analyzed using the SSPS software

Cronbach alpha This was used to measure internal consistency

of the scores of the respondents

Correlation This was performed to determine the relationship

of the teachers’ assessment scores and the students’ skills

Mean This was used to determine the average score of the students in the teacher -made- test

Percentage This was used to determine the magnitude of the frequency in relation to the whole responses

Ranking This was used to determine the positional importance of responses

Standard Deviation This was used to determine the variation

of scores of students in the teacher made-test results with respect to the mean score

T- test This was used to find out the significant mean difference of the treatment being compared

CHAPTER IV RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1 Demographic Profile of Students

As regard to gender profile of student respondents majority of them are females comprising 91.5 percent or 183 of the 200 total population There were seventeen male respondents comprising 8.5 percent This indicates the general pattern in most government universities in Vietnam where gender-based population were predominant, that is, either there was all male with little female student population or all female with little male student population

In parents’ educational attainment majority or 48.7 percent of the students’ parent have educational attainment in the other level or education higher than tertiary This was followed by tertiary with 41.2 percent and lastly by secondary with 10.1% percent There were

no parents that are of elementary level This indicates the importance given by the parents of the student respondents to education

For place of origin majority or 21.0 percent of student respondents came from others or different places in Vietnam, followed by Ha Noi with 15.9 percent, then by Nam Dinh 14.6 percent, then by Vin Phuc with 13.9 percent, then by Thai Binh 11.7 percent, and the rest from the remaining 8 different places as shown

in the table This indicates that the University campuses under study cater to students coming from different places in Vietnam and therefore handles a heterogeneous student population

With regards to the type of high school attended, all of the respondents came from public high school This indicates that the