AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRADE 11 STUDENTS’ AUTONOMY IN ENGLISH AT CHAU VAN LIEM HIGH SCHOOL

5 ABSTRACT The purposes of this study are to investigate the reality of students’ autonomy in English, the amount of time students spend in self-studying, difficulties students encount

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

- -

AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRADE-11 STUDENTS’ AUTONOMY IN ENGLISH

AT CHAU VAN LIEM HIGH SCHOOL

B.A Thesis

Field of study: ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Supervisor: Chung Thi Thanh Hang Researcher: Luong Thi Ngoc Diem

Student code: 7062897 Class: NN0652A1

Can Tho, May 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents Page 2

Acknowledgements 4

Abstract (English) 5

Abstract (Vietnamese) 6

List of Tables 7

Chapter I: INTRODUCTION……… …8

1.1 General statement of the problem……… 8

1.2 Research aims……….……… 9

1.3 General organization and coverage of the study………….……… 9

Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW 10

2.1 Related literature 10

2.1.1 The definition of self-study 10

2.1.2 The reasons why learner autonomy 10

2.1.3 Ways to help language learners to become autonomous 11

2.1.4 Common problems of language learners 12

2.2 Related studies ………13

2.3 Justification of the present study ………… ……… 14

Chapter III: METHODOLOGY……….15

3.1 Research questions.……….………15

3.2 Research design ……… … ………15

3.3 Participants……… … ………15

3.4 Instruments……… … ………15

3.5 Research procedure ……….… 17

Chapter IV: RESULTS……… … 17

4.1 Overview of statistical procedure………18

4.1.1 Collecting data……… …… ……… ………18

4.1.2 Coding students‟ responses……… …….……… 18

4.1.3 Computing data 18

4.2 Descriptive statistic for the whole questionnaire……… …… 19

4.3 Descriptive statistic for each research question……… ….…… 19

4.3.1 Research question 1……… ……….…………19

4.3.2 Research question 2……… …… ………… …………20

4.3.3 Research question 3……… ……… ……… 20

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4.3.4 Research question 4……… ……… … …………21

Chapter V: SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION … ……….21

5.1 Discussion………… ……….……….……22

5.2 Implication……… ……… … 22

5.3 Limitations and recommendation for further research………24

5.3.1 Limitation…… …… ………… ……… …………24

5.3.1.1 Participants.……… ……… …………24

5.3.1.2 Methodology ……… … ……… …………24

5.3.2 Recommendation for further research ……… ……… 24

5.4 Conclusions……… 24

References 26

Appendices 27

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the process of carrying out this research, I have received a lot of contribution and support from many people to all of whom I would like to acknowledge

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Chung Thi Thanh Hang, who has provided me with valuable sources

of material Without their helpful instructions and insightful comments, my research would not be accomplished

Second, I extend my special thanks to the English Education Department for offering me a chance to conduct this research, and to the teaching staff for their assistances and support, especially, Ms Ngo Thi Trang Thao, who gave me invaluable support to analyze the data with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science)

Third, I also would like to thanks truthfully to my counselor, Mrs Bui Minh Chau who encouraged my classmates and me to determine on doing research

My special thanks are sincerely sent to all students of class 11A2 at Chau Van Liem High School who helped me a lot with data collections to conduct the research

Last but not least, I wish to acknowledge my parents, my little sister and brother who brought me a great source of motivation Also, I would like to thank my friends who give me a lot of useful advice as well as encouragement when I met some problems during the time of doing this research

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ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study are to investigate the reality of students’ autonomy

in English, the amount of time students spend in self-studying, difficulties students encounter in their process of self-study Also, this research gives some suggestions to help students develop their abilities of autonomy to learn English effectively and to be good at English The subjects of the study consisted of 42 eleventh-graders at Chau Van Liem High School They aren’t majored English students The main instrument used in this research is questionnaire consisting of 43 items, adapted mostly from Benson & Völler (1997) The results of the study show that the majority of students participate in extra English class to learn to deal with this subject Furthermore, students only study before tests or exams They don’t spend much time in self-studying at home It means students aren’t aware of the importance and benefits of self-learning although they are the main factors in that process The big problems that students encounter in their process of their self-studying are most of students don’t know how

to self-study and pronounce English sounds correctly Moreover, they want their English teacher to have new teaching methods to help students understand more

easily

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TÓM TẮT

Mục đích của nghiên cứu này là để khảo sát tình hình tự học tiếng Anh của học sinh, thời gian học sinh tự học, những khó khăn họ gặp phải khi tự học Ngoài ra, nghiên cứu cũng đưa ra những giải pháp giúp học sinh tự học tiếng Anh hiệu quả và giỏi môn tiếng Anh Đối tượng nghiên cứu bao gồm 42 học sinh lớp 11 trường THPT Châu Văn Liêm Họ không phải là học sinh chuyên môn tiếng Anh Công cụ chính dùng trong nghiên cứu là bảng câu hỏi gồm 43 mục, chủ yếu theo Benson và Völler (1997) Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy đa số học sinh tham gia lớp học thêm tiếng Anh

là để đối phó với môn học này Ngoài ra, học sinh chỉ học trước khi kiểm tra hoặc thi

Họ không dành nhiều thời gian để tự học ở nhà Điều đó có nghĩa là học sinh không

có ý thức về tầm quan trọng và lợi ích của việc tự học mặc dù họ là nhân tố chính trong quá trình đó Khó khăn lớn mà học sinh gặp phải khi tự học tiếng Anh là họ không biết cách tự học và không biết cách phát âm những âm tiếng Anh thế nào cho đúng Ngoài ra, họ muốn giáo viên tiếng Anh thay đổi phương pháp dạy để giúp họ dễ

hiểu hơn

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Questionnaire‟s items in sections 16 Table 2: Descriptive statistics for the mean score of the whole questionnaire 19 Table 3: Descriptive statistics of the reasons why students participate in extra English 19 Table 4: Descriptive statistics of the amount of the time students spend in self-studying English 20 Table 5: Descriptive statistics of the obstacles students have when they learn English

by themselves 20 Table 6: Descriptive statistics of the expectations students have to help them learn English by themselves effectively 21

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins with (1) general statement of the problem It introduces the importance of learner autonomy as the rationale of this research and the context of leaner autonomy in Viet Nam (2) The research aims and (3) the organization of the study are presented, too

1.1 General statement of the problem

According to a large body of empirical research in social psychology, autonomy – “feeling free and volitional in one‟s actions” (Deci 1995, p.2) – is a basic human need It is nourished by, and in turn nourishes, our intrinsic motivation, our proactive interest in the world around us This explains how learner autonomy solves the problem of learner motivation: autonomous learners draw on their intrinsic motivation when they accept responsibility for their own learning and commit themselves to develop the skills of reflective self-management in learning; and success in learning strengthens their intrinsic motivation Precisely because autonomous learners are motivated and reflective learners, their learning is efficient and effective (conversely, all learning is likely to succeed to the extent that the learner is autonomous) And the efficiency and effectiveness of the autonomous learner means that the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom can be applied to situations that arise outside the classroom

In fact, autonomy is one of the most important factors which helps students not only get a good result of learning but also have wide and deep knowledge If students only study in class without self-studying at home, it can be hard for them to get good results Therefore, they need to know how to self-study However, nowadays in stead

of self-studying, students in Viet Nam often join extra English classes for better score and they don‟t spend much time in studying at home by themselves There are too many extra English classes This causes a lot of controversy Although extra English classes are too many, the students‟ quality of studying is not high In contrast, the students‟ quality of studying depends on teacher This reality should be noticed because students won‟t have ability to solve their problems by themselves and take responsibility for their own decisions; especially grade-11 students are going to have the most important exam in the following year This is graduation exam

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1.2 Research aims

The aims of this study are to investigate the reality of students‟ autonomy in English, the amount of time students spend in self-studying, difficulties students encounter in their process of self-study Also, this research gives some suggestions to help students develop their abilities of autonomy to learn English effectively and to be

good at English

1.3 General organization and coverage of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters Chapter I mentions the general statement of the problem Then it presents research aims Lastly, the general organization and coverage of the study is introduced in this chapter

The literature review in chapter II discusses related literature, related studies and justification of the present study The related literature presents the definition of the term “Learner autonomy”, the reasons why learner autonomy, ways to help language learners to become autonomous and common problems of language learners There are six related studies mentioned in this chapter Lastly, the justification of the present study states the motivation of the researcher to conduct this study

Chapter III describes the research questions, the research design, participants of the study, instruments and research procedure

Chapter IV reveals the results of the study answering the four research questions

It includes the overview of the statistical procedures, descriptive statistics for the whole questionnaire and descriptive statistics for each research question

Chapter V includes discussions about the results The implications are discussed

in this chapter, too It also presents the limitations so as to withdraw recommendations for further research Last, the conclusion is presented

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

The related literature, related studies and the justification of the present study will be introduced in this chapter The definition of the term “Learner autonomy” will

be firstly introduced The reasons why learner autonomy, ways to help language learners to become autonomous and common problems of language learners will be introduced then Some related studies are presented in this chapter, too The last part

in this chapter is the justification of the present study

2.1 Related literature

2.1.1 The definition of autonomy

The concept of autonomy has been much defined as many different angles

by scholars and educational researchers (Holec, 1981; Wenden, 1987; Little, 1991; Crookall, 1995; Benson, 2001; Cotterall, 1995; Dam, 1995; Cough & Benson, 1996;

Le, 2000; Chan, 2001; Vanijdee, 2003) One of the most common definitions of learning ability is of Benson 2001)

self-Learner autonomy is a problematic term because it is widely confused

with self-instruction It is also a slippery concept because it is notoriously difficult to define precisely The rapidly expanding literature has debated, for example, whether learner autonomy should be thought of as capacity or behaviour; whether it is characterised by learner responsibility or learner control; whether it is a psychological phenomenon with political implications or

a political right with psychological implications; and whether the development

of learner autonomy depends on a complementary teacher autonomy

2.1.2 The reasons why learner autonomy

According to David Little, there are two general arguments in favour of trying to make learners autonomous First, if they are reflectively engaged with their learning, it is likely to be more efficient and effective, because more personal and focused, than otherwise; in particular, what is learned in educational contexts is more likely to serve learners' wider agendas Second, if learners are proactively committed

to their learning, the problem of motivation is by definition solved; although they may not always feel entirely positive about all aspects of their learning, autonomous learners have developed the reflective and attitudinal resources to overcome

of discourse roles on which effective spontaneous communication depends

2.1.3 Ways to help language learners to become autonomous

Attempts to theorise the process of 'autonomisation' (e.g., Little 1999, 2000a, 2000b) have been strongly influenced by neo-Vygotskian psychology, which sees learning as a matter of supported performance and emphasises the interdependence of the cognitive and social-interactive dimensions of the learning process According to this model, the teacher's role is to create and maintain a learning

environment in which learners can be autonomous in order to become more autonomous The development of their learning skills is never entirely separable from

the content of their learning, since learning how to learn a second or foreign language

is in some important respects different from learning how to learn maths or history or biology

Dam's (1995) account of the gradual 'autonomisation' of teenage learners

of English in a Danish middle school provides a classic illustration Her key techniques are: use of the target language as the preferred medium of teaching and learning from the very beginning; the gradual development by the learners of a repertoire of useful learning activities; and ongoing evaluation of the learning process, achieved by a combination of teacher, peer and self-assessment Posters and learner logbooks play a central role in three ways: they help learners to capture much of the content of learning, support the development of speaking, and provide a focus for assessment How to support the development of learner autonomy is also a key issue for self-access language learning schemes Where self-access learning is not embedded in a taught course, it is usually necessary to provide learners with some kind of advisory service: learner counselling is central to the self-access literature The most successful self-access projects tend to be those that find effective and flexible ways of supporting learners; particularly worthy of note is the approach developed at

the University of Helsinki (Karlsson et al 1997)

Hunt, Gow & Barnes (1989) also offer guidelines for the "enhancement of self-management skills":

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 Encourage the students to decide their own goals

 Intervene only when necessary

 Teach general rules and principles and when to apply them

 Invite students to take responsibility in the key areas of their learning

 Enhance motivation by:

 Selecting topics of intrinsic interest

 Minimising external rewards

 Ensuring active participation

 Ensure ecological validity of tasks and settings

 Give explicit feedback on the purpose and usefulness of cognitive strategies (1989, p.212)

2.1.4 Common problems of language learners

Learning a foreign language is a attractive task, so many students spend their entire lives trying to achieve native-like fluency They spend much time studying vocabulary, phrases, pronunciation, structure, and so on from textbooks However, despite their efforts, they still can not speak the language fluently

NACOS began to analyze the reasons for this and found some typical problems:

 Students have only a vague goal or reason for learning the language, which inevitably leads to a lack of motivation to study it Also, even if students do have a clear goal, but they study from a textbook, they will have these same results They lack motivation because the topics and situations are focused on the textbook, not on the individual students (It is interesting to note that even many advanced language learners are not confident about what to say or how to react in some cultural situations) Therefore, NACOS works together with individual students to help them find a clear direction for their studies and express themselves in their own personal style This creates the necessary motivation for a life-long language experience

 Students do not realize the difficulties of learning a foreign language

At first glance, it looks attractive and easy to obtain, but actually the language world stretches very far There seems to be an endless amount of information to be learned When language students see all of this

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information, they become overwhelmed and feel that they can gain confidence only after learning all of it So, NACOS chooses a small piece

of that information which is related to the student in some way and uses it

as a focus to study the new language

 Also, many students can not organize their notes and want to acquire new information quickly Because of this, their valuable experiences and hard work disappear with time So, NACOS organizes the activities of each student into a text booklet and advises them how to use it in their daily lives

2.2 Related studies

Importance of self-study has been mentioned by many research projects as well

as books and magazines According to Boud (1988), Kohonen (1992) and Knowles (1975), people who may be able to promote their self-study is always held the initiative in their studies, can offer many useful ideas for the learners Similarly, in the opinion of Rathbone (1971), people having the ability to self-study is a positive factor

in the process of their learning and is a person deciding what happens in that process

as their subjective desire Omaggio (1978) also made the seven attributes describing the man having ability to self-study and many other factors contribute to the development of this process as the learner‟s desire, motivation, learning strategies and the perception of language is also mentioned

It is sometimes assumed that the central research question to be answered is: 'Does learner autonomy work?' But this is to confuse 'autonomy', which works by definition, with attempts at 'autonomisation', which can take many different forms and may or may not succeed Similarly misguided are attempts to measure the development of autonomy in learners as if it could be detached from the goals and content of learning

For more than a decade Leni Dam and Lienhard Legenhausen have studied the linguistic development of Dam's learners using empirical techniques derived from second language acquisition research They have provided a wealth of evidence to show how and why Dam's approach is more successful than mainstream teacher-led approaches (see, e.g., Dam and Legenhausen 1996, Legenhausen 1999a, 1999b, 1999c) Approaches that equate the process of 'autonomisation' with 'strategy training' have been less successful: the benefits of teaching learners strategies have still to be demonstrated

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Another important research question has been whether learner autonomy is an exclusively Western cultural construct and thus alien to learners in other cultures There is convincing evidence to support the view that learner autonomy is a psychological phenomenon that can transcend cultural difference, though learning behaviour is always and inevitably culturally conditioned (see, e.g., Aoki and Smith

1999, Littlewood 2001)

2.3 Justification of the present study

The similarity between my study and the studies of the researchers above is to investigate autonomy in language learning The differences between my study and the studies of the researchers above are participants I investigated eleventh-graders at the high school and I based on the context of learner autonomy in Viet Nam to conduct this study.

In fact, autonomy is one of the most important factors which helps students not only get a good result of learning but also have wide and deep knowledge If students only study in class without self-studying at home, it can be hard for them to get good results Therefore, they need to know how to self-study However, nowadays in stead

of self-studying, students in Viet Nam often join extra English classes for better score and they don‟t spend much time in studying at home by themselves There are too many extra English classes This causes a lot of controversy Although extra English classes are too many, the students‟ quality of studying is not high In contrast, the students‟ quality of studying depends on teacher This reality should be noticed because students won‟t have ability to solve their problems by themselves and take responsibility for their own decisions; especially grade-11 students are going to have the most important exam in the following year This is graduation exam

Therefore, the researcher conducted this study to investigate the reality of students‟ autonomy in English, the amount of time students spend in self-studying, difficulties students encounter in their process of self-study Also, this research gives some suggestions to help students develop their abilities of autonomy to learn English

effectively and to be good at English

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

The aim of this chapter is to describe the method of doing research In this chapter, I will present (1) the research questions, (2) the research design, (3) the participants, (4) the research instruments, and (5) the procedure of the study

3.1 Research questions

Although autonomy has become an interesting topic for many researchers during previous years, there are few studies on high school participants This is the reason why the present study aims to investigate autonomy in English of high school students The present research aims to answer four following questions:

(1) Why do students participate in extra English class?

(2) How much time do students spend in self-studying English or when do students self-study English?

(3) What obstacles/ difficulties do students have when they learn English by themselves?

(4) What solutions help students promote their abilities to learn by themselves?

3.2 Research design

This study followed a qualitative approach Wiersma (1995, in Kim, 2003) defined the qualitative approach as an implementation for researchers that investigate phenomena in descriptive way The present study used the descriptive survey method

to investigate autonomy in English of high school students

3.3 Participants

My participants include one class of grade eleven at the high school From results of 1st semester, I see that most 42 students are good at English because their scores of English subject are from 7.0 to 9.3 These participants were randomly chosen among 4 classes (2 eleventh-grade classes, 2 tenth-grade classes) I was permitted to teach English during the time I did my practicum at the high school

3.4 Instruments

According to McDonough and McDonough‟s (1997, p.53, cited in Kim, 2003), a

“qualitative research usually gathers observations, interviews, field data records, questionnaires, transcripts, and so on” Following the descriptive approach to collect data, we take McDonough and McDonough‟s (1997) description of the qualitative

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research as a guideline in selecting the instruments Therefore, in the study, the employed instrument is the questionnaire on grade-11 students‟ autonomy in English

at Chau Van Liem high school The questionnaire was divided into 4 sections:

o (Section 1) The first eight items are used to investigate the reasons why students participate in extra English class Each item in part 1 includes a two-point checklist items as follows: 1-„Yes‟, 2-„No‟

o (Section 2) The next eight items are used to investigate the amount of time students spend in self-studying

o (Section 3) The next fourteen items are used to investigate the obstacles students have when they learn English by themselves

o (Section 4) The rest items are used to investigate the expectations students have to help them learn English by themselves effectively

Each item in section 2, 3 and 4 includes a five-point checklist items as follows: 1-„Strongly disagree‟, 2-„Disagree‟, 3-„Neutral‟, 4-„Agree‟, 5-„Strongly agree‟ However, item 16 and item 30 include a five-point checklist items as follows: 5-„Strongly disagree‟, 4-„Disagree‟, 3-„Neutral‟, 2-„Agree‟, 1-„Strongly agree‟ because item 16 and item 30 are different from other items

In conclusion, the questionnaire was designed in form of a two-point scale checklist and a five-point scale checklist for students to check () in their choices (See Appendix 1)

Table 1 displays the items with the aim(s) underlying each item or group of items:

Table 1: Questionnaire’s items in sections

1

(REASON)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 The reasons why students participate

in extra English class

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The questionnaire was first designed in English (adapted from Benson & Völler (1997)) However, I created the Vietnamese version of the questionnaire when delivering to high school students to make sure that the students understand the items

of the questionnaire correctly See Appendix 2 for this Vietnamese version The reliability value of the questionnaire for pilot data was computed to be 710 so it was reliable to use on the study

3.5 Research procedures

First, a questionnaire was designed on the background information from literature review Second, the questionnaire was piloted at Chau Van Liem High school with the participants of 4 students in grade 11A2 to find out the problems of the questionnaire After piloting the questionnaire, I edited the questionnaire and translated it into Vietnamese to help them understand more deeply about the items in the questionnaire because they aren‟t English majored students Then, the Vietnamese version of questionnaire was handed out to 42 students in grade 11A2 at Chau Van Liem High school Before the students completed the questionnaire, I had given careful instructions to them After they had finished the questionnaire, I collected the completed 42 questionnaires Finally, I used SPSS 14.0 software as a tool to analyze the data Descriptive statistics were computed to summarize the students‟ responses in the questionnaire

This chapter has presented the research methodology of the study In the following chapter, I will present the results of this study

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CHAPTER IV RESULTS

The research methodology of the study reported in this thesis was introduced in the previous chapter I will present overview of statistical procedure and the results of the collected data in this chapter

4.1 Overview of statistical procedure

4.1.1 Collecting data

The questionnaire was first given to 4 students in grade 11A2 at Chau Van Liem High school as a pilot study After piloting, the researcher discussed the questionnaire with these students to improve the questionnaire Then, the main data was collected from 42 students in grade 11A2 at Chau Van Liem High school from Vietnamese version of questionnaire to help them understand more deeply about the items in the questionnaire because they aren‟t English majored students I let students one day to complete the questionnaire After they had finished the questionnaire, I collected the completed 42 questionnaires

4.1.2 Coding students’ responses

The first eight items used a two-point scale to decode students‟ responses: 1-„Yes‟, 2-„No‟ The rest items used a five-point scale to decode students‟ responses: 1-„Strongly disagree‟, 2-„Disagree‟, 3-„Neutral‟, 4-„Agree‟, 5-„Strongly agree‟, but item 16 and item 30 included a five-point checklist items as follows: 5-„Strongly disagree‟, 4-„Disagree‟, 3-„Neutral‟, 2-„Agree‟, 1-„Strongly agree‟ These points were used on SPSS analysis

4.1.3 Computing data

After collecting data and decoding students‟ responses, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) software was used to estimate the reliability of the questionnaire Next, descriptive statistics for mean score of the whole questionnaire were analyzed Then, descriptive statistics for mean score of each part were analyzed Finally, descriptive statistics of each cluster of each part was used to illustrate related issues

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4.2 Descriptive statistics for the whole questionnaire

Reliability analysis of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software showed a high reliability ( = 841) This reliable statistic affirmed the practicality of the study

Descriptive statistics of the mean score of the whole questionnaire in Table 2 show that the whole questionnaire receives a quite high mean score (M= 3.1789, SD= 43161)

Table 2: Descriptive statistics for the mean score of the whole questionnaire

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std

Deviation

4.3 Descriptive statistics for each research question

4.3.1 Research question 1: Why do students participate in extra English

class?

Section 1 (Cluster 1) in the questionnaire consists of eight items Descriptive

statistics for the mean score is presented to find out the main reason why students

participate in extra English class The result is presented in Table 3

Table 3: Descriptive statistics of the reasons why students participate in extra English

be lost to keep up with new lesson

Table 4: Descriptive statistics of the amount of the time students spend in

4.3.3 Research question 3: What obstacles/ difficulties do students have

when they learn English by themselves?

To help students to self-study more effectively, first I find out difficulties students encounter in their process of their self-studying Section 3 (Cluster 3) in the questionnaire consists of fourteen items Descriptive statistics for the mean score is presented to find out the obstacles students have when they learn English by themselves The result is reported in Table 5

Table 5: Descriptive statistics of the obstacles students have when they learn English