An exploratory study on the influence of the mother tongue (l1) on the english acquisition of thai students at thai nguyen

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIESFACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* CẦM THỊ KIỀU ANH AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE IN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

CẦM THỊ KIỀU ANH

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE (L1) ON THE ENGLISH ACQUISITION OF THAI STUDENTS

AT THAI NGUYEN MEDICAL COLLEGE

Tìm hiểu về tác động của tiếng mẹ đẻ đối với việc học tiếng Anh của sinh viên dân tộc Thái tại trường Cao

đẳng Y tế Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

CẦM THỊ KIỀU ANH

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER

TONGUE (L1) ON THE ENGLISH ACQUISITION OF THAI

STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN MEDICAL COLLEGE

Tìm hiểu về tác động của tiếng mẹ đẻ đối với việc học tiếng Anh của sinh viên dân tộc Thái tại trường Cao

đẳng Y tế Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: NGUYỄN HUY KỶ, PhD

Hanoi - 2014

I, hereby certify that the thesis entitled „An exploratory study on the influence of

the mother tongue (L1) on the English acquisition of Thai students at Thai Nguyen Medical College‟ is the result of my own research in the fulfilment of the requirement for

the Degree of Master of Arts of the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University ofLanguages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Hanoi, 2014

Researcher

Cam Thi Kieu Anh

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First and foremost, I would particularly like to express my deepest gratitude to mysupervisor, Dr NGUYẾN HUY KỶ for his precious advice, remarkable, suggestions, kindguidance and careful correction

Next, I would like to acknowledge all my teachers at University of Languages andInternational Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, especially those who areworking at the Faculty of Post - Graduate Studies for their interesting lectures which enable

me to gain a great deal of theoretical knowledge and practical experience

I am also indebted to all the students and teachers at Thai Nguyen Medical Collegefor their cooperation and participation in this study

Last but not least, my heart-felt gratitude goes to my family for theirencouragement and support during the process of study

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English language teaching in a non-native environment has experienced a variety ofobstacles, one of which is the interference of English learners‟ mother tongue Theimpediment is doubled when English is taught in a multi-lingual environment likeVietnam, and this fact forces Vietnamese instructors of English to seek ways of teachingtheir cohort of minority students effectively In an attempt to improve of English languageteaching in Vietnam, this thesis investigates the possible impacts of Vietnamese Thai onthe English written production of Thai students at Thai Nguyen Medical College, with adetailed contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese Thai which English teachers canuse in their practice The study employed a written production questionnaire, which hasbeen widely accepted as a tool for data collection in an interlanguage study The resultssuggest that Thai non-English major students heavily rely on their mother tongue in theirEnglish writing Several suggestions for minimising the influences of Thai learners‟mother tongue on their English production are provided

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

Table1.1 English and Thai types of verbs 6

Table 1.2 English and Thai types of words following a verb 7

Table 1.3 English and Thai use of adjectives and adverbs 7

Table1.4 Formation of tenses in English and Thai 8

Table1.5 Subject-verb relation in English and Thai 9

Table1.6 Negation in English and Thai 9

Table1.7 English and Thai nouns 11

Table1.8 English and Thai articles 12

Table1.9 English and Thai word order 14

Table 1.10 Comparison of errors and mistakes 16

Table1.11 Dušková’s L1-transferred error classification 18

Table1.12 Keshavarz’s L1-transferred error taxonomy 18

Table1.13 Possible L1 interference of the Thai learners of English 19

Table 3.1 Summary of the total number of errors

25 Table 3.2 Errors in verbs

26 Table 3.3 Errors in nouns

29 Table 3.4 Errors in articles

30 Table 3.5 Errors in prepositions

32 Table 3.6 Errors in word order

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

PART A - INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Significance of the study 3

6 Research methods 3

7 Thesis structure 3

PART B - DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 The Thai people and language in Vietnam 5

1.1.1 The Thai people 5

1.1.2 The Thai language 5

1.2 A contrastive analysis of Thai and English 6

1.2.1 Verbs 6

1.2.2 Nouns 10

1.2.3 Articles 12

1.2.4 Prepositions 13

1.2.5 Word order 13

1.3 Distinction of errors and mistakes 15

1.3.1 Errors 15

1.3.2 Mistakes 16

1.3.3 Distinction of errors and mistakes 16

1.4 Language transfer and L1 transfer in L2 acquisition 17

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1.5 Possible errors committed by Thai students in their learning of English 18

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 20

2.1 Research setting 20

2.1.1 An overview of the research site 20

2.1.2 The students 20

2.1.3 Learning materials 21

2.2 Participants 21

2.3 Data collection instrument 22

2.4 Data collection procedure 22

2.5 Data analysis procedure 22

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 24

3.1 Data analysis and discussion 24

3.1.1 Identification of interlingual errors 24

3.1.2 Description and discussion of identified errors 24

3.2 Major findings 35

PART C - CONCLUSION 37

1 Recapitulation 37

2 Conclusions 37

3 Pedagogical implications 38

4 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 39

4.1 Limitations 39

4.2 Suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES I

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PART A - INTRODUCTION

This part presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions and the methods used to achieve the research objectives The scope, significance and the organization of the study are also stated.

1 Rationale

Today, English becomes an important and influential language worldwide, withover 300 million native speakers and between 400 and 800 million non-native users(Manivanan, 2006) It is considered as a tool for international communication and world-wide data sharing English proficiency is of significance for individuals since it enablesthem to update their knowledge and share their practices and experiences or seek help fromother people around the world in case obstacles arise at study and work English, thus, can

“contribute to students‟ personal, linguistic, social, and cultural development” (Canh Le,

2004, p.167)

Apparently, everybody would like to learn English; however, not so many peoplecan study English well (Tam Nguyen, 2011) since L2 learning depends on various factors.Perhaps, of all the difficulties shared by Vietnamese learners of English, e.g lack ofsupportive learning environment, lack of infrastructure and facilities, etc., minoritystudents have suffered distinctive obstacles in their learning of English, one of which isteachers‟ low English proficiency and low proficiency of the Thai language, which causedifficulties in explaining new grammar terms and language areas to the Thai students.Additionally, students‟ knowledge gaps resulting from their lower levels of learning andlearning both Vietnamese and English simultaneously cause lots of difficulties for Thailearners of English

Actually, the above hindrances could be solved if finance is granted and teachers‟qualification is improved, but there exist impediments–the linguistic differences betweenL1 and L2-cannot be alleviated even with a complete disappearance of the above obstacles.This claim is strongly supported by L2 researchers who found that L2 learners heavily rely

on their L1 in their L2 learning (Dechert, 1983; Ellis, 1997) Specifically, George (1972)found that one-third of the deviant sentences from L2 learners could be attributed tolanguage transfer In other words, the L1 interference, which causes interlingual errors,

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rooted from the differences of the two languages A distant relation between the L1 and L2could cause negative transfersinto language learners‟ L2 acquisition, which hamperslanguage learners‟ intelligibility Research suggests that negative transfers from L1 into L2does happen to Vietnamese learners of English, whose L1 is very similar to Thai (Hao Cao,2000; Dat Huu, Doi Tran, & Lan Đao, 1998; Huyen Nguyen et al., 2004) The abovediscussion suggests that the interference of Thai learners‟ L1 into their English learning isdefinitely existent.

There might be a variety of aspects which are different between the two languages,but Saporta (1966) argues that the grammar of the learners‟ L1 plays a crucial role on theirdiscovery of a new language Supporting this view, Corder (1969) argues that learning anew language is a simpler task, where language learners only need to find out if thesystems of the new language are the same or different from those of the language theyknow, and if different, what their nature is Owing to the great importance of L1 grammarinto L2 learning, this research aims to investigate the relationship of Vietnamese Thai andEnglish and its possible effects on Thai learners of English with respect to grammaticalaspects only

2 Aims of the study

In an attempt to improve the quality of teaching English to the Thai students at ThaiNguyen Medical College, this study aims:

between the Thai grammar and its English counterpart

learners of English may encounter in their learning of English

3 Research questions

The present research aims to answer the following three questions:

the word and sentence level?

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2 How may these differences affect the Thai students‟ English learning at the tertiary level?

interference in their English learning?

4 Scope of the study

Due to the nature of a minor study, the scope of the present study is limited to asmall number of students at Thai Nguyen Medical College, and its very focus is on theimpacts of Thai learners‟ L1 on their English written production at the word and sentencelevel only

5 Significance of the study

As discussed previously, foreign language learners often heavily rely on L1 in theirL2 learning; and the greater the differences between L1 and L2, the more errors foreignlanguage learners could make in their L2 production In other words, language learners‟ L1could be a major resource of their L2 errors It is, thus, of great significance to carry out aninvestigation to figure out students‟ possible L1 transfer into their L2 learning process.This could be the strength to inform language teachers of the language areas that theirstudents could encounter difficulties in the process of learning and teaching so that theycould have appropriate adjustments to their lesson plans and seek strategies to help theirstudents overcome such negative transfers

6 Research methods

This study employed a qualitative approach, and data were collected via a writtenproduction questionnaire which was designed to examine whether the Thai students at ThaiNguyen Medical College suffered from L1 transferred in their learning of English

a Chapter 1: Literature Review

The chapter provides an overview of the Thai people, the Thai language and acontrastive analysis of English and Thai, which serves as a theoretical basis forthe whole study

The chapter includes an overview of the approach used in conducting the study

It also provides a thorough description of the data collection procedure and theanalytical procedure

The chapter reports the findings of the study and discusses the prominent aspects to answer the research questions stated in the previous chapter

This part states the conclusions of the major findings, recommendations, limitations

of this research, and suggestions for further studies

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PART B - DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter establishes the theoretical background for the study It first provides an overview of the Thai and their language then presents a contrastive analysis of English and Thai, the definition of ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’ and their distinction followed a prediction of the errors likely committed by Thai learners of English.

1.1 The Thai people and language in Vietnam

1.1.1 The Thai people

The Thai people originated from China (Wyatt, 2003) and emigrated to Vietnam

Vietnamese Thai people have a common origin with the Thai group in South China, Laos,Thailand and Burma The number of the Vietnamese Thai people is more than one million,and they mainly populate the South West of the Red River Other groups belonging to thislanguage family include the Giay, Lu, San Chay, Tu Di and Bo Y

Vietnamese Thai communicate with each other in their own language but they alsoconsider Vietnamese as a second and necessary language that they need to acquire.Although tourism and modern life have been introduced to Thai people from the 1990s,Thai people have maintained their traditional culture, customs and their own language aswell Moreover, they also know how to use their language advantages in cultural exchange,tourism and foreign trade to ensure a better life for themselves and the maintenance of theirculture The Thai have their own Sanskirt-style writing system, so they have many ancientwritten works on their history, traditions, customary laws, and literature

1.1.2 The Thai language

The Thai speak Thai that belongs to the original Thai-Kadai language system Inthis group, there are the Thai language (Thailand), the Lao language (Laos), the Shanlanguage in Myanmar and the Choang language in the southern China In Vietnam, thelanguages of eight ethnic minorities (Bo Y, Giay, Lao, Lu, Nung, San Chay, Tay and Thai)are classified in the Thai language family

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Vietnamese Thai is placed into the community sector of the Tay-Thai language

family, including many branches, and each of which is divided into several groups, with

different names depending on the locality However, the most obvious and common of all

is the division of the Thai people with two branches: the Black Thai and White Thai (Tay

Don and Tay Dam) In fact, Vietnamese Thai, Laos and Thailand people have a common

origin and speak Thai-Kadai languages

The original language of the Thai people has always been preserved and handed

down from generation to generation Vietnamese Thai children are taught in their native

language, and they will be learning Vietnamese at their school age The Vietnamese Thai

people are one of a few Vietnamese ethnic minorities who had their own writing system

1.2 A contrastive analysis of Thai and English

It is easily recognised that two languages often contain a great number of

similarities and differences at different level and in various areas This section only

outlines major similarities and differences between Thai and English with respect to their

verbs, nouns, articles, prepositions and word order

1.2.1 Verbs

Thai and English originate from different language families, but their verbs share a

number of similarities, especially the types of verbs that the two languages possess These

similarities between the two languages are summarised in the following table:

Table1.1 English and Thai types of verbs

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adverb

adjective

Another big difference is that English verbs receive morphological marks for tenses

while words are normally added to the verbs or the ending of sentences to show tenses in

Thai, which is summarised in the table below:

Table1.4 Formation of tenses in English and Thai

(T3):

The agreement between a subject and its verb is another big difference between

Thai and English In Thai, there are no such a relationship between a subject and its verb in

a sentence, but it is a marked grammatical aspect in English The table and instances below

clearly state this contrastive feature between the two languages:

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Table1.5 Subject-verb relation in English and Thai

phại chu mự)every day

Singular

(Ải ễm mẵn

lẽwatches

xẽdancing

chu cữn)every night

-ES

(T4):

The negation in English is also far different from that in Thai English uses

auxiliaries plus the word ‘not’ to form a negative form while the negation in Thai is formed

English) in front of a verb:

Table1.6 Negation in English and Thai

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1.2.2 Nouns

Along with verbs, nouns are a major part of speech of both English and Thai.Despite sharing the same functions in a sentence and usually being made up of one, two oroccasionally several words, the noun in both languages have lots of differences Thefollowing table summarise the differences between English nouns and Thai counterparts:

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Table 1.7 English and Thai nouns

Note: ‘+’ means ‘existent’; ‘-’ means ‘nonexistent’

The most striking point to notice is that English nouns are divided into „countable

nouns‟ (e.g., book, pen, umbrella, and computer) and „uncountable nouns‟ or „mass

nouns’ (e.g., water, milk, salt, and rice)‟ By contrast, Thai has no such classification This

distinction results in many other differences between English and Thai nouns Normally,

morphological marks are added to English singular nouns to establish their plural form or

change into a different form to show plural, while that of the Thai language is created by

Another distinctive feature of English nouns is that they must agree with its

pre-modifiers, that is, the use of pre-modifiers in front of an English noun impacts on the kinds

of noun to be used and its form Conversely, this does not occur in Thai

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Additionally, the Thai language also has some characteristics that do not exist in English

such as the use of classifiers in front of a noun For instance:

-Note: ‘+’ means ‘existent’; ‘-’ means ‘nonexistent’

Thai has an equivalent translation of English indefinite articles „a/an‟, but it does

not always satisfy the characteristics of its English counterparts: (1) to indicate a specific

person/thing that is unfamiliar to the addressee or is first-mentioned and (2) to indicate a

whole class of entities (Jacobs, 1995) They are added before a noun The Thai

specific and generic cases, but they are added after a noun

(E): A buffalo is the property of the whole family.

As regards the definite article ‘the’ of English, it appears that there is not an

equivalent translation in the Thai language Instead, it is omitted in Thai

Example 1:

(T):

(Mững àu pặp xừ nẳng Ma-ry lẹo hễ?)

(E): Did you get the book from Mary?

Example 2:

(T):

(Khảng đàng hưỡn nặn mẵn xự pì cài chí đảy tã xi xìa)

(E): The house that he bought last year need to be repainted.

1.2.4 Prepositions

Similar to English, Thai also has a category of word which is similar to Englishprepositions This category can be considered to be the Thai equivalents of Englishprepositions, but a preposition in the their L1 may be equivalent to a variety of English

‘càng’- ‘among, between, within, among, between, in the middle of, in the midst of’.

As a result, in the mind of the Thai learners of English, many different English prepositionscan be used when their English production requires a preposition They might confusionover their selection of an appropriate preposition for their sentences The simple examplebelow presents this point:

(T):

(Khỏi/ cù vạy pặp xư

(E): He put the book

on, upon,

English and Thai share a basic word order „subject-verb-object (S-V-O)‟ and theirdominant position is that a subject lies before a predicate Similarly, when the copula verb

„to be‟ is used to link a noun to another, its position can be changeable.

Examples:

(T2):

Despite those similarities, English and Thai have many differences The moststriking variance between the two languages is the possible position of the elements of anoun phrase An English adjective precede the noun which it modifies, whereas Thaipossesses a reverse word order, stated as follows:

Table1.9 English and Thai word order

the beginning, middle or end of the sentence whereas those of Thai only take at the end ofthe sentence Similarly, both Thai and English adverbials of time, direction and frequency,and purpose share their position in a sentence Let‟s look at the examples below:

adv of direction adv of manner

In English language teaching, numerous definitions have been given to the notion

of „error‟ Corder (1973) defined an error as a breach of the code, and they deviate fromwhat is regarded as the norm In the words of James (1998), a language error is anunsuccessful bit of language Similarly, an error is “the flawed side of the learner speech orwriting, they are parts of conversation or composition that deviates from selected norms”(Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982, p.138)

In short, an error is a piece of language produced by a non-native speaker of aforeign language, which can cause failures or unintelligibility in communication

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1.3.2 Mistakes

Like the notion of „error‟, a mistake is also defined in lots of different ways In thewords of Corder (1967), mistakes are defined as adventitious, random errors inperformance due to memory lapses, physical states, etc., of which the speaker may beimmediately aware Similarly, a mistake is an inconsistent deviation that is sometimes thelearner „gets it right‟ but sometimes wrong (Norrish, 1983) According to Richards et al.(1984), a mistake is an inappropriate use of a piece of language made by a learner whenwriting or speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or someother aspect of performance

To sum up, a mistake is a linguistic failure, which might occur in a particularsituation but may not appear in another one, and language learners could overcome them ifattention is paid

1.3.3 Distinction of errors and mistakes

Both errors and mistakes can be seen as linguistic failures, but linguists andscholars reach agreement that they are different in many aspects Their differences areillustrated in the table below:

Table 1.10 Comparison of errors and mistakes

of performance (Richards et al.,

1967)

to language

learning

It can be concluded a mistake refers to the failures to use the language system

correctly caused by some factors such as carelessness, memory lapses, and physical

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condition while error refers to the failure to use the system correctly caused by the lack ofthe learners‟ competence, ignorance of appropriate rules of the target language.

1.4 Language transfer and L1 transfer in L2 acquisition

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary CD-ROM (8th Edition) by

Paragon Software Group (2010), the word „transfer’ means: to move from one place to

another, to move sth/sb from one place to another…

As a linguistic concept, in the view of Selinker (1972), interference means transfer,which happens in language learning situations when L2 learners use the L1 rules andstructures because of the belief that this will help them to learn L2 better In the words of(Dulay & Burt, 1977), language transfer could become automatic if language learners usetheir L1 structures and rules in the target language regularly, and it results from thelearner‟s assumption of language equivalence In fact, there are not two languages that areidentical regarding structures, lexicons, and systems; therefore, the students‟ prediction ofequivalence guides to the cause of error and mistake production in their L2 production(Nooshin, Behjat, & Rostampour, 2014; Beebe, 1988; Seligar, 1988; Ellis, 1997; Dechert,1983)

Behaviorists argue that language transfer implies transferring the skill of learningprocedure from one language to another, and it can be positive or negative Gass andSelinker (2008) claims that language learners tend to transfer the meaning, structures andculture of their L1 to L2 and its culture L1 transfer into L2 acquisition with respect togrammatical aspects has been of interests of a large number of language researchers It isgenerally accepted that there are at least some effects of L1 on the learning of the L2grammar (White, 1985; Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1996) Besides, Camacho‟s findings(1999) suggest that L2 learners also use their L1 word order in their L2 writing Morerecently, Franceschina (2001) points out that writers use L1 structures during L2 writing,mainly in the form of translating from L1 to L2 Fujieda (2006) suggest that a lot of errorsand mistakes occur in syntactic level because of learners‟ limited linguistic knowledge ofand their L1 interferences into L2 writing

In the present study, the L1-based error classification used by L Dušková (1969)and the L1-transferred error taxonomy suggested by M H Keshavarz (2012) is adapted to

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assist the process of diagnosing the participants‟ English writings As the present researchfocuses on English as L2 writing, just morphological-syntactic errors will selected andstudied.

Table 1.11 Dušková‟s L1-transferred error classification

Table1.12 Keshavarz‟s L1-transferred error taxonomy

1.5 Possible errors committed by Thai students in their learning of English

The prediction of the Thai students‟ possible errors in their English production isimplemented using the classification of cross-linguistic similarity relations suggested byRingbom (2006): there are three different types of cross-linguistic similarity relations, each

of which has different impacts on L2 learning

 A similarity relation, where the learner is able to establish a one-to-one relationship

with another unit, usually in the L1

 A difference relation, where the learner can perceive both similarity and difference.

In the other words, there exists some category in language learners‟ L1 and the target language,but there are certain differences between them

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 A zero relation, where the learner cannot relate the TL aspect to previous linguistic

knowledge This is a situation confusing the learner, who will have considerable time-consumingorganisational problems at the beginning

Based on the above classification of the possible L1 transfer into L2learning and a contrastive analysis of Thai and English, a prediction of Thaistudents in their process of learning English is illustrated in the table below:

Table1.13 Possible L1 interference of the Thai learners of English

Relationship Likelihood

classification

-* In fact, there is a minor difference between the two languages.

Note: ‘+’ means that the Thai students are likely to make errors in the category, and

‘-’means NOT.

Dušková (1969) argues that contrastive analysis predicts learning problems not only

in areas where the source and the target language differ, but also in the case of linguisticfeatures unknown in the sources language The above table suggests that the Thai learners

of English could encounter a large number of difficulties when they learn English sincethere are many differences between English and their L1 As a result, it could be predictedthat the Thai learners‟ productions of English could contain many different types of errors

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides information about the overall settings of the study and the methodological aspects of the study It starts with an overview of the research site, the students at Thai Nguyen Medical College and their learning materials Then it gives basic information about the participants and clarifies the data collection and the data analysis procedure of the study.

2.1 Research setting

2.1.1 An overview of the research site

Located in a mountainous area, Thai Nguyen Medical College suffers lots ofdisadvantages to its mission to produce qualified human resources for the region despite itsendless efforts The learning environment is complicated since the college has students ofvarious ethnic backgrounds

As regards of English teachers‟ qualification, most graduated from localuniversities ages ago, and their working in a remote region does not allow them to updatetheir knowledge of English language teaching and learning

Methodologically, since communicative language teaching method has intensivelyapplied the tertiary level, which is in fact required by Vietnamese Ministry of Training andEducation (An Nguyen, 2011) Consequently, teachers of English at Thai Nguyen MedicalCollege are now more communication-oriented However, lack of learning materials andteaching facilities, together with large class size, seriously impede the application of thisteaching method in the context of the college Accordingly, their teaching method more orless reflects the traditional teaching methodology, and their teaching becomes teacher-centered, book-centered and grammar-oriented, with a focus on rote memorisation ofknowledge

2.1.2 The students

The students at Thai Nguyen Medical College have a diversification of ethnicbackgrounds, one of which is the Vietnamese Thai Researchers indicate that a largenumber of ethnic minorities have quite a low level of Vietnamese English proficiency (HoaTran, 2010) This is certainly the case for their English proficiency since there are lots of

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