The chanllenges of teaching english at primary schools a survey in one province

The research aimed to identify the challenges that faced teachers inteaching English at the primary schools, the challenges learners encounter.. As a foreign language specialist in a Pro

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

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

TRAN THI GIANG

THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING ENGLISH

AT PRIMARY SCHOOLS: A SURVEY IN ONE PROVINCE

(Những thách thức trong việc dạy tiếng Anh

tại các trường tiểu học: Khảo sát tại một tỉnh)

M.A Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi – 2019

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES *****************

TRAN THI GIANG THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING ENGLISH

AT PRIMARY SCHOOLS: A SURVEY IN ONE PROVINCE

(Những thách thức trong việc dạy tiếng Anh

tại các trường tiểu học: Khảo sát tại một tỉnh)

M.A Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Assoc Prof.Dr.Le Van Canh

Hanoi – 2019

I, Tran Thi Giang, declare that the thesis entitled “The challenges ofteaching English at primary schools: A survey in one province” reportsthe result of the study conducted by myself The thesis is submitted toCollege of Foreign Languages-Vietnam National University for Degree ofMaster in TESOL It has not been published anywhere

SignatureStudent

Tran Thi Giang

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those who gave

me the possibility to complete this thesis Furthermore, I am grateful to his closeguidance and generous help, which have been great encouragement to me duringthe process of writing and completion of thesis

I wish to take this opportunity to express my heart-felt thanks to Mr Le VanCanh whose lectures provided me with a great deal of pedagogical knowledge inlanguage teaching His initial suggestion inspired me conduct this study

I am deeply indebted to the teachers who were willing to give me information via survey questionnaire, face-to-face and facebook interview My thanks also go to

my colleagues, officers in Ninh Binh Provincial DOET, who gave me favorable condition of time for pursuing MA course and completing the research.

Last but not least, I would like to offer my deepest thanks to my familywhose affection and support enable me to complete this work

The research aimed to identify the challenges that faced teachers inteaching English at the primary schools, the challenges learners encounter Set ofquestionnaire is designed and the survey is launched in primary schools in aprovince The samples of the study were 100 teachers from 100 public schoolsthroughout the province, interview with 8 selected teachers from districts, andobservational data collected in 10 schools The results of the study indicated thatthe low motivation and the shallow, negative, and passive teaching, learningstrategies lead to the low outcome In addition, from the results of the study,some pedagogical suggestions related to creating a classroom atmosphere,praises and rewards, opportunities of success, activities and techniques, andmore learning strategies, are offered for teachers of English

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Teachers’ advantages in teaching

Table 3 Teachers' difficulties in teaching English at primary schools

Table 4 Teachers’ solutions to their difficulties

Table 5 Teachers’ proposals

Primary English foreign language teachers

Teaching English as a foreign language

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF APPREVIATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

2 Significance of the study

3 Aims of the study

4 Research methods

5 Participants

6 Scope of the study

7 Organization of the thesis

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Teaching English to primary school children as a global phenomenon

1.2 Challenges in teaching English to primary school learners

1.3 How do young learners learn English?

1.4 Challenges on the part of teachers

1.5 Previous studies on primary school English teaching in Vietnam

1.6 Summary

CHAPTER 2: THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING ENGLISH TO PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN IN THE PROVINCE

2.1 English instruction to primary children in Vietnam

2.1.1 Policy 19

2.1.2 Implementation 20

2.1.3 The way forward 20

2.2 Introduction to the province context of teaching-learning English at primary schools 21

2.3 Teachers and their background 22

2.4 Summary 23

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 24

3.1 The data collection instruments 24

3.2 The participants 25

3.3 Data collection procedure 25

3.4 Data analysis 26

3.5 Findings 26

3.5.1 Teachers’ experience of English teaching at primary school level 27 3.5.2 Teachers’ self-judgement of training workshops they have attended 27 3.5.3 Teachers’ advantages in teaching 28

3.5.4 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching at primary schools 28

3.5.5 Teachers’ solutions to their difficulties 30

3.5.6 Teachers’ proposal 31

3.5.7 Teachers’ performance in the classroom 32

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 39

REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX

(iii) The pressure from parents in the national context who want theirchildren to benefit socially and economically from learning English (Brock-Utne

& Holmarsdottir, 2004; Enever & Moon, 2009; Gimenez, 2009)

In an effort to become more competitive in the global market, Vietnam, asmany other countries in South Asia, has declared English the dominant foreignlanguage to be taught in schools across the country As a result, in the last 10years, the government has launched out the project teaching and learning foreignlanguages – Project 2020, in the 3321 decision, the primary curriculum has beenrevised and emphasis has been given on learning English English is beingtaught in almost primary schools from grade 3 all over the country The mainobjectives of teaching English in primary level education in Viet Nam are toenable students to understand simple commands, requests and instructions inEnglish and carry them out The students can speak and converse in simpleEnglish and also can read to comprehend the textbooks set for their age groupand level They also write words, simple sentences, passages, paragraphs,informal letters and numbers according to their age group and level

Unfortunately many students, especially students of the rural primary schoolsare unable to attain the primary English language competencies due toprevailing challenges in our education system A survey is intended to do atprimary schools in a province to find out: challenges that teachers,students encounters; what strategies they use to deal with thosechallenges and how effective they are.

Teaching English to primary children did not receive little concern inVietnam, it was introduced to grade 3 students National and local educationprofessionals, now, have a more serious look at the situation Teaching English

to primary children is by nature far different from teaching to other groups oflearner Thus, if teachers are not qualified to work with primary children, theymay not be able to motivate the children to study, or to use appropriate, effectivetasks to develop students’ communicative competence

As a foreign language specialist in a Provincial Department of Educationand Training, the author saw a great number of challenges of teaching English toprimary children in her province To successfully manage the English teaching-learning throughout the province, the researcher feels the urge to study thechallenges perceived by the teachers so that some feasible solutions to theproblems can be employed

2 Significance of the study

Since this study is concerned the researcher hope that it willcontribute to the province’s duty people a general review of difficulties inteaching English at primary schools after some years to do the Decision

3321, therefore there will be policies to help to solve the problems

For the researcher: With the deputy of English Specialist in Teaching

English to primary school students of the province, the researcher can havebetter understanding about the difficulties of teaching, learning English in

primary schools and can be the consultant for teachers, for schools, canpropose some methods to have better out come.

For the teacher: This study can support the teacher to develop their

teaching abilities They can adjust strategies to teach the students Inorder students will be interested in learning process

For the students: New teaching strategies can help to motivate students to learn English better.

This study points out challenges of teaching English at primary schools.Although the survey was conducted in one province, the author believes thechallenges are similar in other provinces throughout the country Thus, theresults of the study will be of some contribution to education managementregarding teacher development and language policy implementation

Professionally, the findings and comments of this study are believed to berelevant to improving the primary English teachers’ quality in Vietnam ingeneral and in the province in particular The study may be of great suggestionsfor the enhancement of primary English education in Vietnam

3 Aims of the study

This study aims to investigate challenges of teaching English at primaryschools as perceived by the teachers To be more specific, the objectives of thisstudy are:

- To find out the challenges that English teachers at primary schools are facing with

- To explore the challenges in learning English that children at primary schools are encountered

- To suggest solutions to reduce the problems and challenges of teaching English at primary schools

These aims are formulated into 2 following research questions:

1 What challenges are teachers facing when teaching English at primary schools?

2 What challenges do children at primary schools have in learning English?

4 Research methods

This study is a survey study Three main instruments of data collection are:

- Questionnaire administers to 100 teachers of English from 100 primaryschools within the province to find out the challenges they are faced with as well

as the strategies they use to deal with those challenges

- Interviews with selected teachers to gain more in-depth information about issues raised in the questionnaires responses

- Classroom observations to find out the challenges learners have in

learning English

5 Participants

Participants are 100 teachers from 100 primary schools throughout theprovince and their students Data collected from questionnaires were analyzedquantitatively Data from interviews and class observation were qualitativelyanalyzed into corresponding topics for triangulation and for answering questions

6 Scope of the study

Dealing with challenges of all types is too broad for a study of this size.Therefore, the focus of this study is to investigate some challenges relating toprofessional supports that primary teachers receive from local and national level

in their teaching of English at primary schools

7 Organization of the thesis

This minor thesis consists of four chapters

The first part is the introduction which reveals the rationale, significance,

aims, methods, participants, scope and organization of the study

The second part includes chapters Chapter 1 is the literature review

centering on Teaching English to primary school children as a globalphenomenon, challenges in teaching English to primary school learners, how doyoung learners learn English, challenges on the part of teachers, privious study

on primary school English teaching in Viet Nam and a brief introduction ofteaching English to primary students in Vietnam context

Chapter 2 provides information about the research context which is the

teaching of English to primary school children in one province

Chapter 3 presents the information about the study including the research

methodology, participants and research procedures, research findings and thediscussion of those findings

Chapter 4 is the conclusion.

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Teaching English to primary school children as a global phenomenon

With the belief that foreign languages prepare today’s youth fortomorrow’s opportunities by supporting basic skills instruction, developingcross cultural understanding and preparing the youth to enter the globalmarket place, English has become a worldwide language and is used asthe medium of international communication and is the language ofprofessional advancement It has become the number one foreign language

to be taught both inside and outside the formal educational systems ofmany countries The fact is that in most countries, children are learning English atyounger and younger ages In many countries, English is a compulsory subject inthe early primary grades (Nikolov, 2009; Pinter, 2006) In a recent survey of EYLteachers from 55 countries around the world, Shin and Crandall (2011) 3 1Teaching English to Young Learners found that more than 50 percent of thesecountries introduced compulsory English language courses by third grade Even incountries where families may choose the foreign language for their children tostudy, English is “overwhelmingly the first choice” (Garton, Copland, & Burns,

2011, p 5) The growing demand for English, plus parents’ belief that English skillsprovide their children with a better education and better employment opportunities,have led to an increase in the number of EYL programs (Enever & Moon, 2009;Gimenez, 2009) As English becomes the world’s lingua franca, countries all overthe world have adopted English language instruction as part of their educationsystem Many countries begin at the primary level, and students are studying thelanguage at younger and younger ages (Jenkins, 2009)

1.2 Challenges in teaching English to primary school learners.

Moon (2000) argues that children are capable of learning foreign languagefrom any age providing that the right conditions are in place to enable younglearners to be successful Some of the most important conditions are:

(1) Realistic aims/expectation and expected outcome

(2) Well-trained teachers fluent in English

(3) Age appropriate curricula and materials

(4) Appropriate assessment and monitoring

(5) Enough time

(6) Continuity and Transfer to secondary level

Concerning the effectiveness of language learning at primary level, Isabel

& Elisabeth (1997, p 23) emphasized the following factors which are

considered to be of great importance for successful early language learning:

(1) Well-trained teachers (language competence and

methodological skills)

(2) Well-organized in-service training

(3) Well-structured curriculum with adequate timetable

(4) Suitable and motivating materials

(5) Continuity of language learning within the primary school and from primary to secondary stage

(6) Quality assurance measures

Considering all the above factors helps to identify the challenges For over adecade, a number of studies investigating early language programmer have beenconducted in various countries Nikolov M and Curtain H (2000) summarized anumber of issues relating to teaching English to primary children around the world.Through their collection, a concrete picture of teaching English to primary childrenwas formed with a number of similar issues among which the most popular onesare related to teachers’ quality and continuity of the programmer

1.3 How do young learners learn English?

With regard to primary school children, it is necessary to first specify that children have both features of new beginners and the peculiar characteristics of their age group, children have their own characteristics in learning foreign languages To achieve success in teaching English in primary schools, it is very important to know the characteristics of students Teachers should understand young learners’ instincts, interests, cognizance, emotional aspects and especially their characteristics These issues play a crucial role in guiding teachers’ planning a lesson in an attempt to make sure that the young learners are interested in and fully engaged in the whole process of learning.

According to Paradowski (2007, pp 52-247) young learnerspossess the following features:

Involuntary attention

Children do not pay attention to the language system They have

involuntary attention and memory, which means that their mind will be

engaged with the semantics - the task, topic, or situation, but will not focus onthe linguistic code

Weak memory

Children cannot control what they are taught; the younger the learner, the

patchier storage and recall, which again makes recycling activities necessary,

whereas age improves language capacity Memory consists of three phases:registering, storing (based on repetition, which may be passive) and recalling(based on active repetition) In order to be able to say that we have learnt a givenitem successfully, all three stages must be available (actually, the learners whoprogress most rapidly may be adolescents, as they may have better memoriesthan adults)

Limited experience

Children have limited life and learning experience Adults, in comparison, bring

in a wealth of background knowledge and a long history of learning experiences on which the teacher can effectively capitalize to facilitate their learning; especially as

they are all already masters of one language, frequently having the additionalinvaluable experience of learning another (Pratt-Johnson 2006, p.14).

is based on mechanical, short-term memory (the memory for rhyme and rhythm,

which relies on frequent exposure and repetition, the earliest type of memory and

therefore predominant in young children), grammar is based on logical, long-term

memory – a memory for patterns, which develops very slowly (between around 11and 14 years of age, in conjunction with abstract thinking tied to biologicaldevelopment) and does not reach full competence until around puberty (exceptdyslexic children, whose semantic memory comes first, but the mechanical onemust be trained) Learners under the age of 12-13 can ably repeat and memorizelong words and expressions, but are not able to analyze them as logical memory isnot well developed yet

Undeveloped interactional skills

It is also conceivable that, as Krashen (1992) speculated, in as much asolder learners are prone to be more involved in sustaining a conversation, theywill progress more rapidly than younger ones (After all, few children displayfascination with the meaning expressed through the exhaling noises produced byanother person, while lengthy debates of intellectual and other nature form ourdaily bread.)

In addition, Halliwel (1992 pp.3-5) clarified the characteristics of children which are special characteristics that differentiate them from adult learners He said that children are already very good in interpreting meaning without

necessarily understanding the individual word They already have greatskill in using limited language creativity Children tend to frequently learnindirectly rather than directly For example, they remember new words ontheir favourite cartoons far better than which are taught by teachers.One more outstanding characteristic of children is taking goodpleasure in finding and creating fun in what they do They also obtain aready imagination, children’s words are full of imagination and fantasy,and it is more than simply matter of enjoyment.

Furthermore, the characteristics of young learners were mentioned

by Clark (1990 pp.6-8):

Children are developing conceptually: they develop their way of thinking from the concrete to the abstract thing.

Children have no real linguistics: Different from the adult learners who

already have a certain purpose in learning a language, for instance, to have a better job, children rarely have such needs in learning a foreign language They learn a foreign language just as a subject that the school provides for them.

Children are still developing: they are developing common skills such as turn talking and the use of body language.

Young children very egocentric: they tend to resolve around themselves. Children get bored easily: Children have no choice to attend school The lack of the choice means that class activities need to be as fun,

interesting and exciting as possible by setting up the interesting activities

These characteristics of young learners are diversified and complexand quite different from adults Therefore, people who are working withyoung learners including teachers and parents should spend timediscovering their characteristics to get higher results in learning English

Mary Slattery and Jane Willis (2001: 4-5) pointed out 12 characteristics as follow:

1 Children learn through seeing, listening, copying and doing

2 Children are unable to understand an explanation of grammar rules, for example, rules of using tenses of verbs

3 Children can understand the meaning partly through non-verbal

communication activities

4 Copying exactly

5 Love playing and using their own imagination

6 Short attention, so changes needed

7 Curiosity

8 Enjoy repetition of activities

9 Independent thinking is being developed

10 Ability to distinct between reality and imagination

11 Ability to organize the best to implement any activity

There is evidence that children have sensitivity to pronunciation and aregood at imitating and picking up whole phrases of language, but if their teacherslack fluency or have difficulties with pronunciation, then children will not beable to make use of that particular instinct

Therefore, it is noticeable to identify what should be done in the classroom.Carol Read (2003) proposes some of the optimal conditions for helping younglearners to learn:

- learning is natural

- learning is contextualized and part of real

event

- learning builds on things the child knows

- learning makes sense to the child

- learning is multi-sensory

- learning is interesting and enjoyable

- learning is social

- learning atmosphere is relaxed and warm

-learning takes account of multiple

intelligences

- the child wants to learn

Besides, Read (2005) also suggests an integrated framework called theseven Rs for managing children positively and creating a happy workingenvironment for them:

Relationships - creating and maintaining a positive relationship with

learners is at the heart of establishing a happy learning environment

Rules - establish a limited number of rules and make sure they are clear, as

well as the reasons for having them

Routines - classroom routines make it clear to everyone what is expected

of them and what they should do

Rights and Responsibilities - although these may not be stated explicitly

with very young learners, teachers can model through their own actions which

of these they value

Respect - students who are treated respectfully by the teacher will respond

in a similar way to the teacher If the children feel that the teacher treats them asindividuals, they will also respond to the teacher as an individual and not with acollective group mentality

Rewards - reward systems can be an effective way of reinforcing

appropriate behavior e.g using stars, stickers, points, smiley faces, raffle tickets

or marbles in a jar

Children will only be able to sustain their enthusiasm through primaryschool if they can develop an intrinsic interest in learning English throughenjoyable and interesting activities and a good rapport with their teachers Ifteaching in primary school is overly formal and just another version of what isdone in secondary school, it will kill children’s early enthusiasm (Moon, 2005).Teaching English to primary children is much different to teaching English

to the other learners Without being aware of these can threaten the learning implementation in the classroom

teaching-1.4 Challenges on the part of teachers.

Amongst other knowledge and skills, teachers of young learners need:

- An understanding of how children think and learn

- Skills and knowledge in spoken English to conduct whole lessons orally,

and to pick up children’s interests and use them for language teaching

- To be equipped to teach initial literacy in English

It is not easy to teach children effectively, and the reliance on oral languagemeans that teaching children a foreign language may, in some ways, be moredemanding at primary level the at higher levels If children are to kept attentiveand mentally active, the teacher must be alert and adaptive to their languagelearning opportunities that arise on the spot This requires a high level of fluencyand a wide knowledge of vocabulary

Furthermore, since children reproduce the accent of their teachers withdeadly accuracy, pronunciation skills are vitally important at the early stages.

Demanding the highest levels of spoken English for teachers of theyoungest learners goes against much policy and popular assumptions aboutteaching children How this challenge is met will vary from country to country.The Ministry of Education in Oman, for example, is collaborating to carry out amassive programmer of upgrading primary English teachers to degree level.Where the resources to undertake such retraining are not available, it wouldseem important for policy makers to be realistic about what can be achieved atprimary level

The most important problems in many contexts are related to teachers’ lowlevel of communicative competence In Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia and Croatia,there are not enough qualified teachers More than 76% of foreign languageteachers at Czech basic schools were unqualified (Nikolov & Curtain, 2000, p.86) In Hong Kong, 55% of primary English teachers are not subject-trained.The untrained language teachers tend to experience two main difficulties.Firstly, their own language proficiency is insufficient for them either to be agood model of language use or to teach consistently through the target language.Secondly, their lack of awareness of appropriate language teaching methodologyinhibits pupil learning and has a negative impact on the teachers’ ownprofessional development Most classes are taught using predominantlytraditional teacher-centred, whole-class methods Teachers have tended to seetheir main role as to impart knowledge to pupils, who are generally expected tosit quietly and absorb information Teaching is often text-book dominated Manyteachers, perhaps as a result of perceived or actual pressure from the school orfrom parents, try to “finish the textbook” with little regard to the ability of thestudents In the context of teaching, this reliance on the textbook is also related

to the fact that many teachers lack confidence in their own English proficiencyand so the textbook becomes a crutch on which to cling

The challenges faced by teachers working with ESOL learners, in spite offeeling sympathy towards ESOL learners, educators felt frustrated working withthem, because of heavy workloads As they first had to teach the language andvocabulary for specific content, they found it impossible to complete thesyllabus for the year Also having learners in the class with better Englishabilities, educators reported having to teach on diverse language and academiclevels (see also DuPlessis& Naudé,2003) Educators reported being required togive extra attention to learners who were not keeping up, as well as adequatelychallenging stronger learners, in order to ensure that all learners in their classhad an equally effective education Large numbers of ESOL learners in theirclasses increased the workload in all teaching areas such as marking andpreparation of lessons, leaving educators feeling over-worked and resentful.Many educators reported frequent problems with discipline, identifyingtheir main problem with the size and demographics of classes As class sizesincreased, the frequency of problems increased: Educators with large classes(more than 30 learners) were more likely to experience these problemsfrequently than educators with smaller classes (less than 30 learners) Mosteducators had more than 30 learners in their class and they felt that not onlywould smaller classes make their responsibilities easier, they would be of morebenefit to the ESOL learners: the smaller classes “It is not because we have such

a load and you know we want the easy way out It’s not like that You know thechild … who learn language … they need so much of time to talk …”

A statistically significant association was found between class size and feltcompetency of the participants when teaching ESOL learners More educatorswith classes above 30 ESOL learners felt competent only in some circumstancescompared to educators with smaller classes Conversely, significantly moreeducators of smaller classes felt competent, in most circumstances, thaneducators with larger classes

1.5 Previous studies on primary school English teaching in Vietnam

In order to find out the effective ways of teaching English to primaryschool children, some research had been done to explore the use of modernequipments and techniques to raise quality of teaching These researchersidentified some problems relating to the current practice of teaching English inthe classroom employed by teachers

Vu Thi Luong (2002) and Dang Quang Sang (2007) put an emphasis onusing games in teaching English to primary children to meet children’s interests,characteristics and capacity in acquiring a foreign language Such an importantpart that games play in primary English language teaching, teachers, however,had many different opinions about them as well as difficulties in using them.90% of teachers in the study sample agreed that games are effective to languageteaching but almost all teachers complained that they had not got any book ormaterials including a game collection so they used only some games repeatedly(Vu Thi Luong, 2002) Thus among 70% of the teachers using games in teachingonly 20% used games frequently 30% of the teachers had never used gamesbecause they thought that the secondary school students were so anxious to learnEnglish in order to pass the exams so the primary teachers should only focus onvocabulary and grammar and then asked students to do as many exercises aspossible (Dang Quang Sang, 2007) Given this, the teachers spent no time forstudying or collecting games for their learners As a result, “games were notused frequently and usefully in teaching English to primary school children” (VuThi Luong, 2002, p 23)

Nguyen Minh Ha (2001) conducted a study on Teaching English onComputer to Primary School Children in a school in Hanoi According to herfindings, one of the problems with the uses of the computer in TEYL was that

“most teachers are not qualified enough to meet the demands of teaching

English on computer Their major short-comings are poor English, lack ofcomputer skills, inexperience and weak teaching methods.” She showed a factthat many teachers abused computers and became too dependent on computers.The teachers had difficulty choosing appropriate programme, setting up asustainable syllabus or applying techniques relevant to students’ level Sheprovoked a conclusion that “teaching English to children not only fails but putspressure on children’s attitude towards English language.” (p 27) because mostprimary teachers considered English a school subject like Maths, Vietnamese sothey asked children to learn by heart a list of words and structures.

Ta Van Diep (2003) explored the uses of video clips as an effective means

of developing communicative competence for primary school children in Hanoibecause “video clips create a natural language environment with thecombination of sound and pictures” (p 19) However, the question of usingvideo clips surprised many teachers because they had never considered videoclips a means of teaching, instead, a means of entertainment Moreover, mostschools in Hanoi were not equipped with video so both the teachers and learnersdid not have chance to enjoy video clips in English lessons

In an exploratory study on the situation of English Bilingual Education(EBE) in East Asia, To Thi Thu Huong (2010) gave an insightful discussionabout the implementation of EBE in Vietnam from preschool to tertiary level As

a response to the pressing need of society, a strong political will be from leaders

of the country, “EBE will move very fast in years to come” (p 112) However,introducing EBE at primary level may cause some challenges for Vietnameselanguage maintenance Moreover, some obstacles to the implementation of EBEare identified as:

- lack of understanding and support from leaders and managers

- teacher quality and professional competence

- programmer finance

- programmer facilities and equipment

- the English and Vietnamese proficiency levels of the learners

1.6 Summary

In short, this chapter provides relevant literature which is needed to formthe theoretical and the conceptual framework for the study First, an overview onthe teaching English to primary children is given Second, the challenges inteaching English to primary school learners Two most common issues ofprimary education are identified through a variety of context worldwide, i.e.teachers’ quality and continuity of the programmer Thirdly to say is about theways young children learn English, in which typical characteristics of children;the optimal conditions for helping children to learn and an integrated frameworkfor positive and happy classroom environment are discussed The challenges onthe part of teachers are also recommended Last, an overview on Englishprimary introduction in Vietnam from policy to practice is discussed

Having looked at the related literature, it is an urge to investigate thechallenges of teaching English to primary children in the province since therehas never been any investigation into how teachers are teaching English toprimary children and what difficulties they are facing It is, therefore, essentialfor the present researcher to fill the gap by investigating what challenges areperceived by the teachers and students so that proper solutions can be adopted tohelp reduce these challenges