A MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS OF GIVING CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS BY UILS STUDENT TEACHERS DURING THEIR PRACTICUM AT HIGH SCHOOL AGAINST a SET OF GENERATED CRITERIA

A MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS OF GIVING CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS BY UILS STUDENT TEACHERS DURING THEIR PRACTICUM AT HIGH SCHOOL AGAINST A SET OF GENERATED CRITERIA A MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS OF GIVING CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS BY UILS STUDENT TEACHERS DURING THEIR PRACTICUM AT HIGH SCHOOL AGAINST A SET OF GENERATED CRITERIA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

A MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS OF GIVING -CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS BY UILS STUDENT TEACHERS DURING THEIR PRACTICUM AT HIGH SCHOOL AGAINST A SET OF GENERATED

CRITERIA: A QUALITATIVE OBSERVATION OF

FIVE CASE STUDIES

Supervisor: NGUYỄN CHÍ ĐỨC, M.A

Student: NGUYỄN HẰNG NGA Year of enrolment: QH2009.F1.E5

Ha Noi, May 2013

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Nguyen Hang Nga from QH2009.F1.E5, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL), accept the requirements of the college retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation paper deposited in the library

In terms of the conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Hanoi, May 29th 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On the completion of this paper, I would like to express my deep gratitude to many people First and foremost, I would like to shoe my special thanks to my supervisor, Mr Nguyen Chi Duc, for his enthusiastic guidance, valuable comments as well as encouragement, without which my scientific research would not have been accomplished

Secondly, my sincere thanks are also for three supervising teaches and the students from four classes at Vietduc High School who enthusiastically participated in the research

Furthermore, it would be a serious shortcoming if I forget to thank ULIS student teaches who had the practicum at Vietduc High School for their participation in the observations

Last but not least, I would like to send my warm thanks to my family, my old teachers, my friends and my classmates who have given me great encouragement which helps me overcome the difficulties during the process of doing research

ABSTRACT

Giving- checking instruction skills was concerned not only by teachers but also by many researchers However, few studies investigate the effectiveness of giving and checking skills and construct a set of criteria for effective instructions

With the deep concerns about this situation, the researcher carried out the study

titled “ A measurement of effectiveness of giving- checking instructions by ULIS

student teachers during their practicum at high school against a set of generated criteria: a qualitative observation of five case studies” The aims of the research were to

construct a set of criteria for giving effective instructions, then to use the criteria for investigating the effectiveness of giving instructions, to make comparisons and contrasts between the successful and less successful student teachers and then to form implications for related pedagogy The instruments adopted were observations as main instrument to measure the effectiveness of giving instructions and self- reflections for reflecting the effectiveness of checking instructions The study yielded significant findings in response

to the effectiveness of giving instructions by five cases according to four components of instructions: the content, the organization, the language use and the facilitating techniques To be more specific, four out of five cases made the successful performance

in giving- checking instructions With regard to the differences between two groups of student teachers, the successful ones frequently employed adequate information, separate the long instructions into smaller ones, use simple verbs, combine both first and second language and utilize more facilitating techniques in giving- checking instructions rather than the less successful ones did Based on those findings, the implications were made for current and future student teachers or any researchers who take interest in the same field

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Rationale of the study……… 1

2 Research purpose ……… 1

3 Methods ……… 2

4 Significance of the study……… 2

5 Structure of the study……… 2

PART II- DEVELOPMENT 3 Chapter 1- Literature Review 3 1.1 Key concepts……… 3

1.1.1 Teaching practicum……… 3

1.1.2 Instructions and giving- checking instructions ……… 3

1.1.3 Criteria for effective instructions……… 5

1.2 Related studies……… 9

1.2.1 In the world ……… 9

1.2.2 In Vietnam……… 10

Chapter 2- Methodology 12 2.1.Setting of the study……… 12

2.2.Participants……… 12

2.3.Other participants……… 14

2.3.1 Pupils from high schools……… 14

2.3.2 The supervising teachers from high schools……… 15

2.4 Data collection instruments……… 15

2.4.1 Observation……… 15

2.4.1.1 Justification for the use of observation……… 15

2.4.1.2 Observation scheme……… 16

2.4.1.3 Observation procedure……… 17

2.4.1.4 Inter- rater reliability check……… 18

2.4.2 Interview ……… 18

2.5 Data analysis ……… 19

2.6 Limitations of the methods……… 19

Chapter 3- Findings and Discussion 20

3.1 Checking inter-rater reliability……… 20

3.2 Quantitative findings……… 20

3.3 Qualitative findings……… 22

3.3.1 The content……… 22

3.3.2 The organization of the instructions……… 24

3.3.3 Language of instruction……… 25

3.3.4 The use of facilitating techniques ……… 28

3.4 Checking instructions……… 29

PART III- CONCLUSION 31

1 Summary of finding……… 31

2 Limitations……… 32

3 Suggestions for further study……… 32

References……… 34

Appendix 1……… 36

Appendix 2……… 41

Appendix 3……… 46

Appendix 4……… 51

Appendix 5……… 52

Appendix 6……… 54

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4 The results from the observations judged by three observers 20

iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

VNU: Vietnam National University

ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies

FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education

ELT: English Language Teaching

ELT 2: ESL/ EFL classroom techniques and practices

ELT 4: Pedagogical techniques

EFL: English as Foreign Language

L1: First Language

L2: Second Language

iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Many researchers made their suggestions or techniques on effective instructions (Walker and Walker, 1991, as cited in Wright, 2005; Cotton, 1995; Harmer 1995 &

1998, Ur, 1996; Ur, 1996; Gerhard, 1996, as cited in Boom, 2003; Buchanan and Huczynski, 1997, as cited in Boon, 2003; Nguyen et al., 2003, cited in To et al., 2011; Harmer, 1998; Holmes (as cited in Susana, 2002); Boon, 2003; Scrivener, 2005; Brashaw(n.d.) ) However, few studies integrated those suggestions and techniques into a set of criteria to investigate the effectiveness of giving and checking instructions Other researchers carried out studies in giving- checking instrument skills They mainly focused on finding the problems and the solutions to those problems (Susana, 2002; Vo, 2009; Nguyen, 2010; Dinh, 2011; Hoang, 2012) without measuring the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions In addition, none of the studies discussed the differences in giving- checking instructions between the successful performers and less successful ones Last but not least, the collected data of the previous studies were not checked for the inter- rater reliability Instead, they mainly came from the subjective judgments of the researchers

Those concerns have led to the constitution of this study:

A measurement of effectiveness of giving- checking instructions by ULIS student teachers during their practicum at high school against a set of generated criteria: a qualitative observation of five case studies

2 Research aims

This study aims to achieve four aims follows

To construct a set of criteria to judge the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions

To investigate the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions against a generated set of criteria in five case studies

To find out the differences between the successful and less successful performers

To form implications for related pedagogy

3 Methods

In order to conduct this study, the researcher uses the following methods

Firstly, the researcher uses a set of generated criteria for the observation scheme which investigates the effectiveness of giving instructions by five cases and interviews for measuring the effectiveness of checking instructions

Moreover, the study applies the correlation index to check inter- rater reliability of collected data If the gathered data is related well, the researcher uses her results for data analysis

4 Significance of the study

Once completed, this research paper is expected to serve as a referential source for teachers and researchers who take their interest in investigating into the same or related subject Furthermore, this research paper can be beneficial for teachers or student teachers who have difficulty in giving and checking instructions or for those teachers who would like to improve this skill

5 Structure of the study

The rest of the paper includes two parts:

Part II- Development- consists of three chapters

Chapter 1- Literature Review- provides the background of the study Chapter 2- Methodology- presents the research setting, participants, instruments of data collection and the procedure to carry out data analysis

Chapter 3- Findings and Discussion - analyzes data and discusses the outcomes

Part III- Conclusion- summarizes the major findings of the study, the

limitations of the research and the suggestions for further studies

PART II- DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1- Literature Review

1.1 Key concepts

1.1.1 Teaching practicum

After seven semesters at ULIS, students at FELTE need to take part in their teaching practicum Many researchers and educators (Wallace, 1991; Gower, Phillips and Walkers, 1995; Hu, 2005; Yilmaz & Cavas, 2007; Lingadu, n.d as cited in Dinh, 2011) claims that teaching practicum plays an important role in the whole curriculum

of teacher education and is highly regarded as “a required course”( Ishihara, 2005, as cited in Dinh, 2011, p.6) Purdy and Gibson (2008) (as cited in Ong, 2009) highly appreciate teaching practicum because it is similar to “internship or field attachment”

in other professions According to Wallace (1991) ( as cited in Dinh, 2011); Purdy and Gibson (2008) (as cited in Ong, 2009); Vo (2009), since student teachers are not offered a chance to work with real students, it is absolutely essential for them to be familiar with real teaching situation and deal with teaching experiences in the classroom Moreover, those also agree that student teachers will gain great support from their experienced supervising teachers at high schools As a consequence, teaching practicum is of great importance because it provides student teachers with practical teaching context and experiences

1.1.2 Instructions and giving- checking instructions

As regards instructions in pedagogical field, a number of researchers also have

explained this term According to Ur (1996), instructions are “the directions that are given to introduce a learning task which entails some measure of independent student activity” Sharing the same opinion with Ur (1996), Huitt (2003) believes that instruction is “the purposeful direction of the learning process and “one of the major teachers’ class activities (as cited in Dinh, 2011, p.13) In terms of the elements of the instructions, Harmer (1995) proposes that the instructions should contain the main content of the given tasks In other words, he advises teachers to tell students what to

do with the tasks Dinh (2011) in her research agrees that the models and time requirement should be included in the instructions, which can help students know how

to deal with the tasks within time limit

From those researchers’ views and the researcher’ experience, instructions are described in this study as directions of activities which consist of six elements delivered to students for the purpose of helping them accomplish those activities Six

components of instructions are What to do, How to do, How long to do, With whom to

do, How to present the outcomes of the activities and How to assess the outcomes

Giving instructions is part of teaching process in which teachers deliver explanations, guides and requirements to their students This part is followed by checking instructions to make sure that students understand clearly their assignments According to Nguyen et al., (2003, as cited in To, T.H., Nguyen, T M H., Nguyen, T

M & Luong, Q T , 2011, pp.16- 17), there are four popular techniques for giving- checking instructions: “step- by- step ” or “feed- in” approach, demonstrate it, model it

or “show- don’t- tell”, “say- do- check” and “student recall”

“Step - by - step” or “feed – in ” approach: The teacher gives the students

one instruction at a time, not a list of instructions all together Breaking down instruction into small, separate steps to help students to understand them completely, especially when there is a lot of information in instructions and the teacher wants students to understand every word

Demonstrate it, “model” it or “show – don’t – tell”: The teacher does not

talk about what students must do: instead he/she them what to do by giving a demonstration A demonstration is easier to understand than an explanation, and reduces teacher talking time

Say – do – check: The teacher follows three steps for each instruction

First, he/she says the instruction, then he/she gets the students to do it, then he/she checks that they’ve done it correctly before going to the next instruction Using Say – do – do – check the teacher can tell straight away if students have not understood something and can take action to make sure that they understand

it

Student Recall: After giving instructions in English, the teacher checks

that the students understand by saying, “Tell me what you have to do in Vietnamese” Asking students to recall what they will do in Vietnamese is helpful at lower levels as they may not fully understand the instructions It makes them remember what they have to do and follow the teacher to check that they understand what to do

1.1.3 Criteria for effective instructions

The purpose of this part is to generate a set of criteria for effective instructions

In regard to giving instructions, a number of researchers discuss four factors of instructions: content, organization, language and teaching aids

Discussing the content and the organization of instructions, Harmer (1995) proposes that activities given by teachers are successful if their students know the main content and the procedure for doing those activities He also mentions “the main aim of the teacher is to tell students what they are going to do, give clear instructions about what exactly their task is” (p.239) On his advice, teachers may start with grouping of students, and then follow with demonstration of activities before giving instructions or translations of the instructions Concerning giving instructions, Harmer

(1998) indicates two rules in which instructions must be kept as simple and logical as possible Cotton (1995) advises teachers to give “clear and focused instructions” Walker and Walker (1991) (as cited in Wright, 2005) and your (1996) suggest effective instructions be brief Gower et al (1995) and Scrivener (2005) (as cited in Dinh, 2011) agree that teachers should draw attention from students before giving simple instructions Boon (2003) in a research on effective procedural instructions suggests instructions should be logical, structured and clear Brashaw (n.d.) reckons that instructions must contain essential or focused information and must be broken into short sentences, each containing a key step; steps must be logical and sufficient In summary, those researchers recommend that instructions should be focused, short, simple and logical

When it comes to the use of language, both verbal and non- verbal language are discussed in this study Walker and Walker (1991), Gower et al., (1995) ”(as cited in

Vo, 2009), Harmer (1998) and Vo(2009) advise teachers to use simple and specific language with less complex grammatical structures and concise expressions For example, Holmes (as cited in Susana, 2002) finds out imperative is the most effective speech form for giving instructions Gower et al., (1995) and Cotton (1995) highly recommend verbal directions with a same set of words for same instructions like

“listen, try again, look at the board, stand up, turn to page In addition, Boon (2003) suggests discourse markers should be included in long instructions; Vo (2009) shows that one needs signal words in effective instructions Furthermore, those researchers especially Harmer(1998), Buchanan and Huczynski(1997) (as cited in Boon, 2003), Vo(2009) highly appreciate the employment of nonverbal language in instructions such as gestures, mine, tones of voice, stress, intonation and speed of speech which help save time in presenting instructions In addition to the use of foreign language, the translation of instructions into mother tongue is suggested by Harmer (1995) Discussing the same subject of first language, Willis (1982) proposes that mother tongue can be employed but should be “minimized” and used “occasionally only” (as

cited in Dinh, 2011, p 54) Dinh (2011) also clarifies the occasion in which mother tongue and second language should be used She finds out that Vietnamese should be utilized for “complicated activities” (p 53) To sum up, verbal language in giving instructions must be kept simple, concise and supported strongly by many factors of non- verbal instructions As regards the selection between the first and the second language, the former should be used for less complicated activities and the latter for long and complex ones More importantly, the combination of those can possibly help facilitate the instruction- giving process

In regard to teaching aids, Gower et al., (1995) (as cited in Vo, 2009), Boom (2003) and Vo (2009) recommend visual aids should be utilized in giving instructions

to save time in repeating instructions and make it clearer Along with visual aids, written ones can be used like written pieces of papers and pre- written cards according

to Gower et al., (1995) and Boon (2003) With regard to writing clues, Gerhard (1996) (as cited in Boon, 2003: 45) suggests “write down the instructions, letting the students read them silently, then having them tell you what it is you expect from them” In addition to visual and written aids, human demonstrations such as examples and models are more preferable than long verbal explanations as mentioned in the studies

of Cotton(1995), Gower et al (1995), Boon(2003), Scrivener(2005)(cited in Dinh, 2011) and Vo(2009) Brashaw (n.d.) also introduces three options of demonstrating: the teacher demonstrates with a student, the teacher use a pair/ group to demonstrate and the teacher demonstrates alone In fact, a variety of teaching aids should be employed in order to deal with students’ different learning styles Therefore, the employment of three kinds of illustrative aids (visual aids, written aids and human demonstrations) could yield effective instructions

On the process of checking instructions, Willis (1982, as cited in Dinh, 2011), Harmer (1995& 1998) and Brashaw (n.d.) would prefer to use mother tongue rather than second language To be more specific, Harmer (1998) provides three ways to check students’ understanding of instructions: ask students to explain again, get to

show other how the exercise works and translate into mother tongue Ur (1996) also shares several methods to check instructions They are to “paraphrase or to provide further illustrations” (p.17) With regard to comprehension checking questions, Hoang (2012, p 41) finds out that Yes/No questions are “not effective enough” to examine students’ understanding In this study, the researcher does not construct a set of criteria

to investigate the effectiveness of checking instructions Instead, she mainly checks students’ understanding about the instructions in the lessons at the end of the lessons

In summary, the criteria for giving instructions suggested by many researchers

are included in the following table

Table 1 Criteria for giving effective instructions

Criteria Standard

Focused and clear content

(Gower & Walters, 1983;

How long to do?

With whom to do?

How to present the outcomes?

How to assess the outcomes?

Simple and concise language

llis, 1982, as cited in Dinh,

2010;Walker and Walker,1991;

Gower et al.1995; Ur, 1996;

Gerhard(1996) (as cited in

Boom,2003; Buchanan and

Huczynski(1997) (as cited in

Non- verbal language:

- Using appropriate gestures, mine, tones of voice, intonation, speed

Choice between first and second language:

- L1 for complicated activities

- L2 for simple ones

- Combining two => effective instructions

Illustrative teaching aids

(Gower et al.(1995) (as

cited in Vo,2009);

Gerhard,1996,as cited in

Boon(2003); Cotton(1995),

Boon (2003) and Vo(2009)

Using visual clues (real objects, pictures, flashcards…) Using written clues(written pieces of papers and pre- written cards)

Human demonstrations: examples and models

Basing on those criteria, the researcher constructed the observation form –the main research instrument (Appendix 1 and 2)

In order to investigate the effectiveness of checking instructions, the researcher applied semi- structured interviews to check students’ understanding of instructions at the end of the lessons

1.2 Related studies

In general, few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of giving and checking instructions Their main findings are the difficulties encountered during instructions- giving process and the corresponding solutions

1.2.1 In the world

In 2002, Susana conducted research on difficulties of student teachers in giving oral instructions to EFL young learners during their practicum The major findings of this paper concern student teachers’ speech modification and physical demonstration

To be more precise, it is the same mother tongue between students and student teachers that has negative influence on giving instructions in second language; the disappearance of physical movement or modeling in giving instruction poses difficulties for student teachers on the process of giving instructions However, it was great regret that Susana did not clarify how L2 and physical demonstrations affect giving instructions

Boon (2003) on his research on effective instructions offered five suggestions

on giving effective instructions Instructions are considered effective if their content and organization are logical, structured and clear Giving instructions is effective when teachers draw attention from students and create effective learning atmosphere Moreover, they should be backed up with examples and checked for comprehension especially with complex instructions

1.2.2 In Vietnam

Vo (2009) carried out a study concerning giving and checking instruction skill

by fourth- year students to students at Luong Van Tuy High School and found its problems, reasons and suggestions The major problems are lengthy and unclear instructions, teachers’ unsuitable voice and students’ negligence She finds out three solutions in proportion to three issues above They are clear instructions with brief wording, visualizing, modeling and signal words, flexible teachers’ voice and careful comprehension checking Those solutions can be integrated into the criteria for giving effective instruction in the study

Dinh (2011) did a study on giving and checking instruction skills among student teachers during their practicum at English Division, FELTE, ULIS, VNU Like

Vo (2009), its main purpose is to find problems (language use, time, techniques and checking instructions) encountered by final- year students when they delivered instructions to first- year students at ULIS To be more specific, she found that student teachers frequently used full sentences, complex polite request at unsuitable time and ineffective checking techniques Additionally, some corresponding suggestions are to

a large number groups of students both inside and outside the classroom like an English center or an English club can “make their instructions more comprehensible”

to students (Hoang, 2012, pp.43) As a result, teaching experience can possibly be one variable in the current study

Studying those related studies, the researcher finds out four research gaps as follows First and foremost, few studies constructed a list of criteria to measure the problems Secondly, their judgments mainly originated from the subjective opinions of the researchers and were not checked for reliability Moreover, those did not see the differences between the successful and less successful performers as regards giving- checking instructions Finally, the major problems of giving- checking instructions were studied from the student teachers themselves, not from their pupils

From those research gaps, the study will focus on four goals as follows

Goal 1: To construct a set of criteria to judge the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions

Goal 2: To investigate the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions against

a generated set of criteria in five case studies

2.1 Setting of the study

The study was conducted at Vietduc High School, where the researcher along with another 31 student teachers has the practicum, which facilitates the process of administering research instruments to collect data Moreover, as a member of the research context, the researcher is offered a great chance to understand, interpret and apply the setting into analyzing the data This setting also offers real teaching environment for student teachers, which is absolutely appropriate for the objectives of this study

2.2 Participants

Five cases were chosen because of following reasons Firstly, they were exposed to the knowledge and practice of classroom management including giving and checking instructions in ELT 2 and ELT 4 To be more specific, they learnt four techniques to give and check instructions Then they applied those techniques into two activities of micro- teaching in ELT 2 and ELT 4 Secondly, in 8th semester, they got

an opportunity of having a teaching practicum, which provides them with a real teaching environment in upper secondary school During their teaching practicum in Vietduc High School, they are supposed to conduct their ability to give and check instructions in a real context Therefore, we can see how their learnt knowledge and skills actually work In the third place, the study is a qualitative one, so a case study is

appropriate for researcher, according to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007) In addition, within the modest scope of the BA graduation paper, five cases can be a reasonable choice since it enables the researcher to manage and work with the collected data Finally, the selection of five cases increases the possibility of dividing into two groups of successful and less successful student teachers, which enables the research to achieve the aim 3 in the study

Five cases were chosen relying on simple random sampling strategy This sampling method is extremely beneficial for this study in many ways Firstly, according to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007), random sampling guarantees that everyone in the population is given an equal and independent chance of being chosen, compared to convenient sampling As a result, bias can be avoided in this research to great extent

The five student teachers were coded as ST1, ST2, ST3, ST4 and ST5 The following table provides the information of five cases

Table 2 The information of five cases

Name ELT2’s microteaching results and average

results (knowledge)

Teaching experience (experience)

factor affecting giving- checking instruction skills Therefore, two variables will be examined in correlation with the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions carried out by five cases in order to find out how they relate

With regard to experience, five cases are divided into two groups of experienced student teachers (ST1, ST3, ST4) and inexperienced ones (ST2, ST5) ST1, ST3 and ST4 all have experienced in working as private tutors for one or two students

2.3 Other participants

2.3.1 Pupils from high schools

Pupils who took part in this study come from four classes in grade 10 in which five cases are in charge of teaching them The classes were coded as C1, C3, C4 and C5 C1 was taught by ST1, C3 by ST2 and ST3, C4 by ST4 and C5 by ST5 C1 and C3 are English gifted classes in which the majority of the pupils are good at English C4 and C5 are not English- gifted ones in which the majority of the pupils have difficulty

in learning English The information of average English score is included in the table

3

Table 3 The information of pupils

Class Number of

surveyed pupils

Average English score ( 1 st 45 minute- written test in semester 2)

The average English scores were collected against 45 minute- written tests of the similar level As seen from the table 2, in two English gifted classes (C1, C3) around two- thirds pupils are good at English, compared with about 10%- 25% in the others Therefore, it could be concluded that the level of language proficiency of two gifted classes is higher than the others

In addition to ELT 2 results and teaching experience, students’ language proficiency can possibly be a variable which needs examining in correlation with the effectiveness

of giving- checking instructions

2.3.2 The supervising teachers from high schools

The teachers’ names were coded as T1, T4 and T5 T1 works as a supervising teacher for ST1, ST2 and ST3 T4 is a supervising teacher for ST4 T5 is a supervising teacher for ST5 Three supervising teachers (T1, T4 and T5) will be invited to evaluate the effectiveness of giving instructions against the classroom observation form ( Appendix 1)

Two student teachers (additional observers)

Like three supervising teachers, two student teachers also will be chosen randomly and then invited to assess the classroom observation form (Appendix 2)

2.4 Data collection instruments

2.4.1 Observation

2.4.1.1 Justification for the use of observation

According to Cohen, Manion and Morrison(2007), observation methods are powerful tools for getting insight into situations because they allows the researcher to collect “live” data from real situations (p 396) Patton (1990) also supposes that data gathered from observations facilitates the researcher in terms of understanding the situation (as cited in Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2007) Moreover, the current study

is conducted for two following objectives The first one is to measure the effectiveness

of giving- checking instructions To be more specific, the main purpose of this research is to study how five student teachers behave in instructions- giving and

checking process and not to find out what they report or retell in questionnaires and interviews The second is to make comparison and contrast in giving- checking instructions between the good and weak performers Thus, the use of observation is extremely appropriate

On the other hand, there are several drawbacks of employing observations concerning the validity and reliability of the data gathered (Wilkinson, 2000; Moyles,

2002; Shaughnessy et al 2003, as cited in Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2007) In

fact, the data collected cannot be valid and reliable due to observers’ subjective judgments, which is similar to the limitations of the previous studies As a consequence, the observation scheme of this study has been designed carefully and the researcher uses five other observers consisting of three supervising teachers and two student teachers when conducting observations to limit biased judgments In each lesson, the researcher along with another two observers (one is the supervising teacher and the other is the student teacher) carries out an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of giving instructions by the student teacher based on the given observation form Then the researcher will collect those data and check the inter- rater reliability of the results from three observers Additionally, the research applies interviews to triangulate the collected data

2.4.1.2 Observation scheme

Due to “ a complex second language environment” like high schools and lack

of experience in case- study research, structured observation is utilized to enable the researcher to “compare behaviors across research contexts in a principled manner”(Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.175)

Firstly, a set of criteria for effective instructions was employed so that the researcher and other observers could make judgments and take notes of student teachers’ giving instructions- related data The set is generated from previous studies and related theories of classroom management (Harm, 1995, 1998; Gower et al 1995; Cotton, 1995; Ur, 1996; Boon, 2003; Vo, 2009; Nguyen, 2010; Dinh, 2011) and the

researcher’s additional ideas The set of criteria is provided in the appendix1 and 2 The observation coding scheme comprises two main parts: the class profile concerning general information about student teachers, the observers and the class and a set of generated criteria for effective giving instructions

Thereafter, the pilot was carried out in the first week of the practicum in order

to examine whether the observation form worked well To be more specific, two student teachers and one supervising teachers were invited to work with the initial version of observation forms and then gave their comments on this form The result was that the first one worked well and thus was applied in the study

On the second week of the practicum, the researcher started training other observers to use the observation forms before conducting five actual observations on the five target cases

In order to support for data analysis, video- recording was also employed

2.4.1.3 Observation procedure

First of all, the researcher sought official permission for classroom observation from the supervisors , the student teachers and the students in order to reduce the influence of the observation on “lesson planning and implementation”( Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.188) She made contact with the supervisors, the student teachers and the students to know the appropriate time for the observations At the same time, she sent the consent forms to three supervisors and two student teachers to ensure all those involved understand and volunteer to join the research project (Appendix 5) The researcher also sent the invitation letter to the students from five classes (Appendix 4)

Next, the researcher acted as a non- participant observer in the class Each single case was observed once on the third week and the fourth week of the practicum

by three observers: the researcher, the supervisor of the case or the teacher of the class and one student teacher from ULIS who were trained on how to score the observation form Additionally, the use of video recording was so helpful that the researcher could watch those videos many times to find more uneasily identified behaviors right in the

class and help further research With the aim of supporting video recording, the portable camera was used It was placed at the back of the class for the purpose of not affecting the student teachers and students’ activities in the class

With regard to checking instructions, the researcher measured its effectiveness through the observation on students’ understanding in the class with the support of videos

The data from observations is used to achieve three goals as follows

Goal 2: To investigate the effectiveness of giving- checking instructions against

a generated set of criteria in five case studies

Goal 3: To find out the differences between the successful and less successful performers

Goal 4: To form implications for related pedagogy

2.4.1.4 Inter- rater reliability check

2.4.1.4.1 Purpose

In order to avoid the subjective judgments of the researcher like other previous researchers, the researcher conducted inter-rater reliability check among the observers

2.4.1.4.2 Instrument

The correlation index (calculated with the help of the website:

rater reliability The results from the researcher, the supervising teachers and the student teachers would be calculated by this instrument The reliability of the data is acceptable if the collected results are more than 0.5 Next, the researcher would use her results for the current study

2.4.2 Interview

To measure the effectiveness of checking instructions, the researcher planned to apply semi- structured interviews for the pupils at the end of the lessons

Firstly, interviews were piloted in the first week of the practicum after the pilot

of the observations The researcher invited one student to participate the semi- structured interview However, it seemed that she was not willing to be interviewed and be recorded Therefore, the researcher decided to employ students’ self - reflection after observation to investigate the effectiveness of checking instructions (Appendix 6)

2.5 Data analysis

After collecting data from observations and checking their inter- rater reliability, the researcher analyzed the data The researchers measured the effectiveness of single case’s giving instructions mainly based on the results from the observations of the researcher, which can be supported by the results from other observers

The data collected from observations and students’ self- reflections were also analyzed to investigate the effectiveness of checking instructions

2.6 Limitations of the methods

With regard to observations, although the observers do not interfere with teaching and learning activities in the class, the behaviors of participants are affected

to some extent, which Shaughnessy ( et al 2003, as cited in Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2007, p.410) called “reactivity”

The study used self- reflection to check students’ understanding of instructions, which helps measure the effectiveness of checking instruction skills However, this checking was only conducted at the end of the lessons when students seemed to understand more about student teachers’ instructions through in- class activities, the whole lessons and other students’ performance Additionally, the students’ understanding of instructions was described in which the students themselves rewrote, not in which they performed live Those weaknesses could have some impact on the validity and reliability of the data and results Finally, as the qualitative study, the finding results cannot be generalized for a large number of student teachers

Chapter 3- Findings and Discussion

3.1 Checking inter-rater reliability

Because of the loss of collected data and unreliable data from two supervising teachers and one student teacher, the inter- rater reliability was checked by the results calculated by three left observers: the researcher, one supervising teacher and one student teacher

Following is the collected result from all observers (Observer 1: the researcher; Observer 2: the supervising teacher; Observer 3: the student teacher)

Table 4 The results from the observations judged by three observers

Cases Observer 1 Observer 2 Observer 3

3.2 Quantitative findings Effectiveness of giving instructions

Following shows how effective each case gives instructions based on the results of four components: the content of the instructions, the organization, the use of language and facilitating techniques The result of each part in instructions is the mean among smaller segments of each part

1: totally ineffective 3: effective

2: slightly ineffective 4: extremely effective

Table 5 The effectiveness of giving instructions

With regard to the two variables: ELT 2 results and experience, ST1, leading in the knowledge of ELT and the experience of teaching English (as shown in table 2) still made the best performance in giving instruction during the practicum Similarly, ST3 with good knowledge and experience gave effective instructions As a result, it may be concluded that knowledge along with experience have a positive influence on giving instructions The latter was as well agreed by Hoang (2012) who believed

experience play an essential in giving and checking instructions However, this relation (knowledge, experience and teaching practice) does not work in cases of ST2, ST4 and ST5 In contrast to ST1 and ST3, ST4 who had been at an advantage of teaching experience, did not perform effectively in the practicum The reason could be that she gained worse results in ELT 2’ final results and her teaching experience was restricted to working as a private tutor for one or two students ST2 and ST5, in spite

of their lack of experience in teaching previously succeeded in delivering instructions This could be explained that they were competent at the knowledge of ELT2 especially giving- checking skills As a consequence, those who are good at the background knowledge and teaching experience can produce instructions effectively Nevertheless, it is not true that those of the poor experience cannot make an effective performance in giving instructions; teaching experience like working as a private tutor

at home for one or two students cannot facilitate the instructions- giving process effectively, which is of the same opinion as Hoang (2012) In addition, the role of the background knowledge was noticeable in giving instructions

In terms of pupils’ language proficiency, ST1, ST2 and ST3 giving instructions

to the students of advanced level gained better results than ST4, ST5 whose students are at lower level Consequently, the level of students can have an effect to the process

of giving instruction by student teachers to some extent Their good language proficiency can facilitate the process of giving instructions and vice versa

In summary, among target cases, four cases gave instructions effectively Especially, one- fifth of cases performed extremely effectively As regards two variables, the cases with good ELT2 results and rich teaching experience gave instructions more effectively than the rest In addition, those with poor experience but better ELT2 results still made successful performances

3.3 Qualitative findings

3.3.1 The content of instruction

Successful performers Less successful performers

ST1, ST2, ST3 and ST5 ST4

With regard to the differences between the group of successful performers and that of less successful ones, the formers especially ST1 and ST2 did more effective instructions than the latter did As observed, among six components of instructions, three ones “What to do”, “how to do” and “with whom to do” were widely used by the group of successful performers while the group of less successful one only performed “What to do” As reflected in two students’ self- reflection in C3, they could report exactly what they had to do, how to do and with whom to do in the first game introduced by ST3 However, the group of less successful performer (ST4) confused her students because she utilized only “What to do” in her instruction For

example, she showed one table about 3 people’s opinions and then said “ Now chúng ta

làm task 2 Các bạn sẽ trả lời xem ai đồng ý với ý kiến của bạn Kiên trong bài nhé Oke Do you understand?” Therefore, it must be the inadequate information needed in

the instructions that posed the difficulties for the students to comprehend and carry out the task As observed, two students ST4 called to raise their answers could not what they had to do with the table and then she had to repeat the instruction against In reality, one student reflected on the task 2 that he said “không hiểu j hết, khi 2 đứa lên bảng làm thì mới hiểu ” In the group of successful performers, ST1 an ST2 performed most effectively Four ones “What to do”, “how to do”, “with whom to do” and “how long to do” were applied effectively by ST1 and ST2 For instance, ST1 gave the instruction which contained those factors as follows

Now I would like you to do activity 2 on page 156 You will have to write a paragraph of Trinh Cong Son individually You have 10 minutes to write this paragraph Are you clear?

It can be implied that the adequate information about the main task, procedure, grouping students, and time enabled the student teachers give instructions most successfully