strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies in english of freshman students in thai nguyen university bais for a proposed drill exercises (sum)

Thai Nguyen University Batangas State University Socialist Republic of Vietnam Republic of Philippines NGUYEN THI THANH HONG STRATEGIC, LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC COMPETENCIES IN ENGLISH

Thai Nguyen University Batangas State University

Socialist Republic of Vietnam Republic of Philippines

NGUYEN THI THANH HONG

STRATEGIC, LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC

COMPETENCIES IN ENGLISH OF FRESHMAN

STUDENTS IN THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY:

BASIS FOR A PROPOSED DRILL EXERCISE

Speciality: English language and literature

Ph.D DISSERTATION SUMMARY OF ENGLISH

THAI NGUYEN, 2014

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Advisor: Dr Amada G Banaag

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 THE PROBLEM 1.1 Introduction

English language is considered a significant tool for communication in the 21st century as the world becomes global business and communication such as news and information, business, finance, entertainment, maritime and air traffic communication It is also the language that plays an important role in government diplomacy, science, medicine and other profession

Further, often referred to as the world‟s language, English is widely spoken Knowledge also of the English language to enhance educational attainment through improved communication ability is also important It enables people of different countries to converse and do business with each other One of the biggest advantages of a country in a global job market is the proficiency of the skilled workers in the English language In the field of education, proficiency in the English language also improves academic performance of students

Proficiency in the English language has been identified as a requisite in the globalized economy; with countries having a large number of its population capable of communicating in English being rewarded with economic advantages In Asian countries, this trend has been realized by both governments and individuals and are thus pushing the wide interest in English language study in the last ten years Vietnam is no exemption to this trend considering that it is one of the non-native speakers of the English language In the 2011 study of the organization EF Education First Ltd., Vietnam was

shown to have an EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) of 44.32 or very low proficiency close to Thailand that is 39.41 This EF EPI is the first of its kind index comparing the English proficiency of non-native English speaking countries calculated from 2,368,730 test takers across 42 countries and two territories, accumulated from 2007

to 2009 In the following year that is in 2012, Vietnam showed and

EF EPI of 52.14 or low proficiency, an improvement from the previous year in comparison with Thailand which got a value of 44.36 or very low proficiency

Vietnam issued the Government Decision 1400 in 2008 whose goal is to renovate thoroughly the tasks of teaching and learning foreign languages within the national educational system and through its Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) National Foreign Language 2020 Project, or Project 2020 which aims to embark on an ambitious education reforms where all school levels will be required

to have a minimum level of English by 2020 Under this program, Vietnam does not only want majority of its students to be able to use

a foreign language, especially English, confidently in their study, daily communication and work by 2020, but demands that its high school teachers are competent on the second highest skill level (C1), the elementary school teachers on the fourth highest level (B1) and middle school educators the third-highest (B2)

According to Dr Diana l Dudzik, a senior fellow at an education ministry project on foreign language improvement, students who have studied English for seven years beginning in grade six are often not able to use English beyond simple greetings and questions such

as “hello”, “good-bye” and “what‟s your name?” This problem is

magnified when the students enter the tertiary level, as freshman students, when they definitely will be handicapped to tackle more advanced tasks in learning not only in the English language but in other subjects such as Science and Mathematics where English is the medium of instruction

As an applied component of language, communicative competence is the ability of the speakers to use different functioning rules of the system It involves speaker‟s grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology and phonology It also includes the social knowledge of the speaker in the appropriate use of language Knowing English involves speaking, writing, listening and reading Producing the language correctly as well as using the language for a particular purpose is part also of communication in English When speakers are able to perform the needed communicative functions, they achieve communicative competence in the language

A person‟s knowledge of the language and his ability to use that language in order to interpret and produce meaningful texts appropriate to the situation in which they are used manifests that person‟s language competence This can be developed through activities or tasks utilized in real situations or practical applications

In the case of students, they can develop their language competencies through meaningful classroom activities and language use in contexts based on their needs, interests, and experiences As students are involved in various aspects of the task itself, not in isolation, it is necessary to teach, practice and assess the vocabulary, grammatical structures, text forms, and social conventions important to carry on this task Thus, the objective of the Vietnamese L2 learners is to

achieve a certain level of communicative competence in the areas of grammatical, socio linguistic, strategic competence and discourse competence

Based on the researcher‟s observation and as an English teacher teaching the subject for several years, most of the students encounter difficulties along grammar and vocabulary as well as their inability to use varied communication strategies Through this study, student problems along these areas would be identified and remedied through drill exercises designed to enhance their strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies

1.2 Statement of the Problem

1.2.1 What are the strategic competencies of Freshman students?

1.2.2 What is the level of students‟ lexical competence relative to:

- vocabulary;

- idioms;

- word formation; and

- antonyms/synonyms?

1.2.3 What is the level of students‟ syntactic competence in terms of:

- subject verb agreement

- verb tenses

- direct and indirect speech

- phrases and clause

- pronoun references

1.2.4 Are there significant relationships between each pair of

students‟ lexical and syntactic competence?

1.2.5 Are there significant relationship between lexical and syntactic competencies?

1.2.6 How do teachers assess the students‟ lexical and syntactic competencies?

1.2.7 What drill exercises may be prepared toward improving the students‟ communicative competence?

1.3 Scope, Delimitation and Limitation of the Study

This study covered the responses of 382 freshman students selected randomly from five different universities in Thai Nguyen as well as the responses of 57 English teachers who have experience in teaching freshman students The responses of the students to the validated lexical and syntactic questionnaire were gathered and statistically analyzed The study was conducted in an urbanized setting covering a period of six months from July to December 2013 The students and teachers demographic background were not included in this study nor the identity of the respondents be gathered Stratification of the students and teacher respondents were not done nor their gender was considered The respondents includes freshman students who are currently enrolled in an English course in the University The teacher respondents also included those who are currently teaching freshmen English courses This study covered the three competencies namely strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies It does not include discourse competence

1.4 Significance of the Study

1.4.1 The Students

Students will largely benefit from the findings of this work as it will establish their current level of lexical and syntactic competencies and thus identify their areas of handicap which will be used as basis for the design of remedial strategies

1.4.2 Teachers

Through this research, college leaders, teachers of English are aware of students‟ strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies in Englishand their responsibilities for designing a suitable curriculumn

as well as learning materials to improve students‟ competencies in english

1.4.3 Administrators and Policymakers

The college leaders, college managemers of the universsities

in Thai Nguyen in general and in the foreign languages departments

in particular may refer to the results of dissertation to enhance the training quality and improving the students‟ competencies in english

to meet the demand of National Foreign Language 2020 Project This study is also important to them to institute teaching reforms and insure the implementation of innovative strategies towards the

improvement of English language teaching

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Synthesis

The a literatures review of the study provided rich background on the constructs regarding strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies

Maleki and Richard constructs enrich the explanation of the topic about strategic competence Further, Parbakht, Bachman, Canale and Swain, Brown and Jenkins et.al insights on the importance of strategic competence in compensating problems in communication supported the discussion relative to stated concepts The ideas on syntactic competence as explained by Brown, Loban, Hunt, Smith, Chomsky, Burgess, Baker, Miller and Radford contributed very much in the discussion on the importance of having syntactic competence in the English language The elaboration of the concepts

on lexical competence was provided by Laufer, Meara, Doller et al, Segler et.al, Gass, Richards, Robinson and Alejandro Further, ideas along this topic were also provide by Far, Faerch et.al, laufer et al, Lafford et.al and Marconi As regard to the discussion on the concepts regarding drill exercises in language teaching, the constructs

of Rivers, Nelson, Bratt and Bruder, Carroll and Politzer provided ample background

For the research studies reviewed, the following find similarities and differences to the present study: The studies of Abdaqui, Miyakoshi and Nizonkiza , the studies of Gonzales and Butler

In addition, the studies of Lorimor on conjunctions and grammatical aspect as well as that of Matsuzaki in verb meanings and their effects on syntactic behavior find similarity to the present study

as the level of syntactic competence in terms of subject verb agreement, verb tenses, direct and indirect speech, phrase and clauses and pronoun references are covered in the present study Zareva‟s study on the other hand is also similar to the present study as both

studies deals with lexicon but differs on the respondents as well as

the output of the study

2.2 Theoretical Framework

The study is anchored in Stephen D Krashen theory of second

language acquisition (SLA), Lyle F Bachman‟s theory of

communicative competence and Simon Dik‟s functional grammar

2.3 Conceptual Framework

The components of the study were classified as input, process and

output as presented in Figure 1

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT

Figure 1: Research Paradigm

Drill exercises to improve the student‟s communicative competence

Assessment made through:

Test Questionnaire for students Survey Questionnaire For Teachers

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD AND PROCEDURE

3.2 Subjects of the Study

The subjects of the study comprised of 382 college students selected through random sampling out of 8,540 total population and

57 teachers of the five universities in Thai Nguyen City The students were enrolled in a freshman English course at the time of sampling or had taken a freshman English course in the previous semester The distribution of the respondents is shown in Table 1

Table 1: Distribution of the respondents of the study

51 students were chosen out of 1,140 population from 17 classes Meanwhile, in the University of Sciences, 62 students were selected out of 1,400 population from 23 classes, while in the University of Communication and Information Technology 59 students were taken

as respondents out of 1,300 population from 22 classes In the University of Agriculture and Forestry out of 2, 500 population,111 students were selected from 41 classes, a total of 382

As for the teacher respondents, their total number for the five universities are 57 distributed as follows: 19 teachers from the University of Education, seven from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, eight from the University of Sciences, 15 from the University of Information Technology and eight from the University

of Agriculture and Forestry, a total of which is 57

3.3 Data Gathering Instrument

The following were the data gathering instruments used in the study:

Teacher Made Test This was used to assess the level of

Freshman students‟ lexical competencies in terms of vocabulary, idioms, word formation, as well as antonyms and synonyms; and syntactic competencies which cover subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, direct and indirect speech, phrases and clauses as well as pronoun references

Survey Questionnaire This was used to elicit data from teachers

handling English subject as to their assessment of the Freshman students‟ strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies

For the teacher responses on the frequency of use, the score ratings were based on a Likert scale where the numerical values were assigned to corresponding frequencies as follows: