Techniques in doing the question type rearrange the words or phrases to make a complete sentence in ioe for grade 5 students a case study in yen hoa primary school hanoi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER TECHNIQUES IN DOING THE QUESTION TYP

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

TECHNIQUES IN DOING THE QUESTION TYPE

“REARRANGE THE WORDS OR PHRASES TO MAKE A COMPLETE SENTENCE” IN IOE FOR GRADE 5 STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY IN YEN

HOA PRIMARY SCHOOL, HANOI

Supervisor: Cấn Thị Chang Duyên (M.A) Student: Phạm Ngọc Tuyết

Course: QH2012.F1.E2

Hanoi – 2016

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

KĨ THUẬT LÀM DẠNG BÀI “SẮP XẾP CÁC TỪ HOẶC CỤM TỪ THÀNH CÂU HOÀN CHỈNH” TRONG BÀI THI IOE DÀNH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 5: NGHIÊN CỨU TÌNH HUỐNG Ở TRƯỜNG TIỂU

HỌC YÊN HÒA, HÀ NỘI

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: ThS Cấn Thị Chang Duyên

Sinh viên: Phạm Ngọc Tuyết Khóa: QH2012.F1.E2

HÀ NỘI – 2016

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Phạm Ngọc Tuyết (QH2012.F.1.E2), being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor‘s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these 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

Date

April 25, 2016

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I must say the deepest thank to Ms Cấn Thị Chang Duyên for all of her careful supervision since the beginning until the end of my paper But for her devotion, the paper would not be completed

Also, I would like to send my sincerity to the grade 5 student and his mother for support me to do the research

In addition, I would like to say thank to the native teacher who taught the grade 5 student for letting me observe her class

Moreover, thanks to the family that the grade 5 student was studying at, I could observe the English extra class

Last but not least, I could not say any other bigger thanks to any one than my family, for their support so that I could finish the research

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ABSTRACT

English has been one of the dominant languages all over the world The need of studying English at the very young age has been put an emphasis on Therefore, the Ministry of Education and Training has made a decision to organized English competition on the Internet – IOE, which intends to raise the awareness and interest of teaching and learning English In this study about techniques of doing the ―what‘s the order?‖ question type, the researcher would like to conduct a case study relating to a grade 5 student who earned the forth prize

of this year district round By the means of observation and interview mainly, findings about the techniques that the grade 5 student employed, the difficulties he may have and the surrounding environment affects when he did IOE‘s ―what‘s the order?‖ question type Capital letters and punctuation marks are the most often used as they make a spine of a sentence Also the repetition of the same questions makes the student react faster to them Mostly, the student did not face any big problem when doing the type of question Family orientation, self discipline and classroom competitiveness made up a motivation for the child to do as best as he can with the ―what‘s the order?‖ part and in IOE in general It is inevitable that the research seems biased since it is just a single case, not the majority Therefore, it would be better if any other researchers can extend the scale of the study so that it has the validity

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TABLE OF CONTENT

LIST OF TABLES, ILLUSTRATIONS, and ABBREVIATIONS………

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………

1 Statement of the problem and rationale of the study……… 1

2 Aims and research questions……… 2

3 Significance of the study……… 2

4 Scope of the study……… 3

5 Design of the study……… 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……… 4

1 Young learners……… 4

1.1 Definition of young learners ……… 4

1.2 Characteristics of young learners……… 5

2 IOE……… 7

2.1 Definition of IOE……… 7

2.2 Characteristics of IOE for grade 5 students ……… 7

3 ―Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖ question type…… 8

3.1 Definition of a complete sentence 8

3.2 Definition of ―Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖ question type ……… 9

3.3 Different forms of ―Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖ question type……… 9

3.4 Grade 5 IOE‘s ―Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖ question form 10

4 Related studies……… 13

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY……… 14

1 Qualitative approach……… 14

2 Case study……….15

3 Description of the case 16

4 Data collection method……… 16

4.1 Data collection instruments……… 16

4.1.1 Observation……… 16

4.1.2 Interview……… 17

4.2 Data collection procedure……… 18

5 Data analysis method……… 18

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATION………19

CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, LIMITATION AND SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER STUDY……… 29

REFERENCES……… 32

APPENDICES……… 35

APPENDIX 1: STATE IOE MOCK TEST 35

APPENDIX 2: TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW……… 49

APPENDIX 3: NOTES TAKEN IN OBSERVATION 54

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LIST OF TABLES, ILLUSTRATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Subcategories of young learners………

Table 2: Definition of a complete sentence………

Table 3: Features of different forms of RWMCS………

Table 4: Features of different forms of RWMCS………

Table 5: comparison between qualitative and quantitative approach………

Table 6: strengths and limitation of case study method………

Table 7: Scores and ranks at school of two students in three rounds of IOE

Table 8: The student‘s mistakes when doing RWMCS questions………

Table 9: the rule of RWMCS repetition in the State round mock test………

Table 10: The number of IOE mock tests corrected by the researcher in a tutor lesson………

Table 11: Notes taken from grade 5 students including the one in the case study ………

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration 1: ―Teacher‘s coming‖ or ―What‘s the order?‖ question type in a self-practice round of IOE ………

Illustration 2: ―Teacher‘s coming‖ or ―What‘s the order?‖ question type in a state mock test package of IOE ………

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

RWMCS Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter would initially clarify the rationale of the study, the research questions, significance and scope of the research as well as the design of the study

1 Statement of the problem and rationale of the study

English has become one of the most prevalent languages on the global scale It is widely used in many places all over the world and in many fields of life Understanding the role of English in globalization, Vietnam also follows the trend The Prime Minister of Vietnam signed the approval of the 2020 scheme for teaching and learning English nationwide Therefore, the Ministry of Education has decided that teaching and learning English has been emphasized since young ages

As a result, IOE examination has been launched out for students from grade

3 to grade 12 Although this examination is a great source of practice for young students to boost up their English from the early age, this IOE examination has only appeared for a few recent years, appropriate techniques needed for fulfill the examination tasks are still rarely recognized, especially by primary students

In the examination, one of the most frequently-met question types is

―rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖, which usually prevents primary students from finishing the examination fast and effectively

With the experience of tutoring, the researcher has seen some grade 5 students in Hanoi whose will is to get a prize of IOE district round but when they face this type of question in IOE, it usually gets them slow and confused Most of the time, the kids only use their arbitrariness to do the arrangement When the researcher is asking why they arrange words in a certain way, they cannot give any answers specifically

Also, the researcher is curious about if any other researchers have done any research on techniques used by grade 5 students to fulfill the IOE task but the researcher hardly finds any Most of them were about the definition of conventional type of the task whereas the type of IOE task that the researcher aims

at is mostly of discrepancy Basing on the researcher‘s personal effort of seeking but no precious study has found, accordingly, the researcher is inspired to conduct this study

2 Aims and research questions

The study is aimed at finding out what techniques a grade 5 student in Hanoi use without awareness when he faces the question type arranging the words

in the right order to complete a sentence in IOE examination, therefore, coming up with some recommendations to make use of the techniques to get better scores in taking IOE The study will answer these following research questions:

- How does he show his gradually progress in IOE generally and in the type of task specifically?

- What techniques has the grade 5 student employed when facing

―rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖?

- What difficulties does he face when he applies these techniques in IOE?

- What are the external factors may lead to his dramatic progress and success?

3 Significance of the study

As mentioned above, practicing English from the very early age is crucial, especially to young learners in Vietnam IOE examination or fair competition is one of the great sources which provide lots of fun and interesting environment for them to get exposed to English If techniques to do this certain English question type are successfully researched, it will assist many students who have interest in learning English to practice English more efficiently Furthermore, focused on a grade 5 student who need IOE high test score to get extra point to enter a good secondary school, the study is hoped to make them aware of using techniques purposefully to get closure to success

4 Scope of the study

The researcher focus on this type of questions as it is structured to test the integrated knowledge and skills To do the type of this test, the students has a specific amount of knowledge about grammar rules such as how to make a sentence, the identification of subject and verb in a sentence, the capital letter, the punctuation, the use of verbs and use of tenses, fixed phrases and expressions, etc Also, students need to have a wide range of vocabulary, how to identify part of speech of a word or phrase given and the meaning of it Furthermore, because the test is quite long, up to 200 or more in only 30 minutes, doing the test quickly, managing time well and using keyboard and mouse and reading fast are the skills needed

The researcher conducts this research with the belief that it would work as a contribution to the wider and the more thorough studies in the long run since there have been few studies related found This study is carried out during several months with the focus on one case of the grade 5 student has made terrific progress in English in general and in IOE test score in particular The researcher would like to investigate whether there are any differences between the theoretical background about young learners and the specific case in the context of IOE practicing and English learning Hence, the researcher seeks for no generalization

to any other cases but would like it to be a source of reference for both parents and teachers across Vietnam if their children and their students would gain success

5 Design of the study

The study is composed of five main chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction - introduces briefly about the study including Chapter 2: Literature review - reviews the literature about some key concepts

Chapter 3: Methodology - includes participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis method

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter would deliver the background of the research consisting of the key concepts of young learners, their characteristics, and their learning a second language The IOE and the forms of the RWMCS would be covered as well

1 Young learners

1.1 Definition of young learners

When mentioning young learners, different scholars have different viewpoints about how to define them Phillips (1993) describes young learners as

―children from the first year of formal schooling (five of six years old) to eleven or twelve years of age‖ (p.5) To add up, Thorbury (2006) asserts that young learners are not only ―children of pre-primary and primary school age‖ but sometimes also

―include adolescents as well‖ (p.250) Whereas other scholars only gives one brief definition, Rixon (2012, p 3) provides two definitions of young learners in his

book named How young learners learn languages and how to test them, which are

children from ―[a]ges 6 to 12 [app] (covers primary school in many contexts)‖ or children from ―[a]ges 6 to 16 [app] (covers compulsory schooling in many contexts)‖ Overall, every definition is making sense to specific cases it refers to; however, the researcher prefers definition of Ersoz (2007) when he divides it into

three smaller subcategories, such as (see Table 1):

Very young

learners

Young learners Older/ late

young learners Age: 3-6 years old Age: 7-9 years old Age: 10-12 years

Grade: 4th - 6thgrade

Table 1: Subcategories of young learners

As this research is a case study of a fifth grade student in Hanoi, Vietnam, young learners will be better referred as children 10 to 12 years old in the subcategory ―older young learners‖ above of Ersoz (2007) To this specific group, accordingly, there are several typical characteristics of them as second language learners

1.2 Characteristics of young learners

Since this study is researched on a case which is a child at fifth grade, therefore the researcher finds Ersoz‘s ideas about characteristics of young learners most suitable and worth mentioning to the study According to Ersoz (2007), one age different makes the characteristics of three groups of young learners distinct from those of each other, as stated in the previous part There are several characteristics of young learners; specifically ―older young learners‖ will be reviewed with the aim of the study as followed

Firstly, this group has longer attention span than the other two groups but they are still children Seemingly as opposed to, Thornbury (2006) convinced that children have short attention spans In other words, Thorbury makes sense when asserted that children get distracted easily after a short time and it will take them too much time to direct their focus on other things surrounding However, ―young learners‖ term, in general is a big group, which should be seen as a whole and smaller subgroups at the same time This point is supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2015): children in this age group have an increased attention span Hence, in the researcher‘s opinion, Ersoz‘s idea is preferable to that

of Thornbury

The second point that Ersoz (2007) made about the characteristics of the group of learners is that they start taking learning seriously The children at this stage are about to take important jump to be adolescents Extensively, most of these children should experience the change from primary schooling system to secondary one, so they tend to be more conscious of or to be kept aware of learning to get better scores, to get in better schools

Thirdly, Ersoz (2007) indicates that children at this age group get exposed more to world knowledge Cameron (2001) also has the same opinion when pointing out that world knowledge should be introduced to children as a strategy

of learning It is significant to make a link between what the children will learn and what really happen in the world outside Exposure to the world knowledge may boost up the children‘s curiosity to explore more

Furthermore, at this stage, the children will develop social, motor and intellectual skills (Ersoz, 2007) To put it simply, children around 9 to 11 years old develop their muscles, as well as their nerves of controlling muscles for body movement At the same time, the children‘s nerves for thinking logically critically will also develop intensively at this stage, which subjects related to physical and science such as sports and information and technology or computer skills may assist

Lastly, learning strategies are used and developed by this group of young learners (Ersoz, 2007) This either results in or from the aforementioned characteristics Because the children increase start taking learning more seriously and getting more exposure to the world knowledge, along with that they develop wholly they obviously get to know how to learn well by applying rules and habits

of learning which they think may be appropriate for their study

In general, all of these characteristics mentioned show that the development

of children at around the age of 9 to 11 is all-sided And it benefits the children if they want to make hard effort to achieve more in language contests

The aims of this Internet competition are to provide a user-friendly interesting English practice environment for students in the national public educational system There are three main round levels: self-practice round (vòng

tự luyện), school round (vòng thi cấp trường) and district round (vòng thi cấp quận) for all grades from 3 to 12 The rounds which are free for every student who wants to practice English are called self-practice rounds All of the three rounds mentioned have the total of 200 questions; each correct anwer will get 10 points The latter two kinds of rounds, which may have 50 more questions compared to the formers, are for students who:

 have passed the 15th self-practice round

 are into English or among the best at English in class: they will have the chance to take part in the school round

 are among the ones having the highest scores in school round: they will be accepted to try their best in the district round

(Nhung thay doi trong the le cuoc thi IOE tieng Anh tren mang, n.d.) Every student only need an account to start practice English on IOE official website http://ioe.go.vn and they definitely can use their accounts to take part in IOE competition round if they are the chosen ones from school round (IOE cuoc thi Olympic Tieng Anh online, n.d.) Students can have more than one account for each grade However, each account is for each specific grade and cannot be used for different grades

2.2 Characteristics of IOE for grade 5

Basically, IOE‘s round level for every grade is the same, however, when it comes to IOE for grade 5 students, there is a slight difference Apart from all

rounds mentioned, there are two more rounds for the grade 5 students who excellently get through the district round with third prizes, second prizes and first prizes These are civic round (vòng thi cấp tỉnh/ thành phố) and state round (vòng thi cấp quận) (IOE cuoc thi Olympic Tieng Anh, n.d.) Therefore, IOE for grade 5 students is more challenging since it is organized in a bigger scale than that for other student‘s levels

3 “Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence” question type 3.1 Definition of a complete sentence

There are many different ways to define what a complete sentence is

A complete sentence is not merely a group of words with a capital letter at the beginning and a period or question mark at the end A complete sentence has three components:

1 A subject (the actor in the sentence)

2 A predicate (the verb or action), and

3 A complete thought (it can stand alone and make sense—it‘s independent)

(Fragments and runs on, n.d.)

In A Definition of a Complete Sentence (n.d.), it is also agreed that a complete sentence must have a subject, a verb, but the verb needs to be ―finite‖, which means the verb has to show a particular tense

Sometimes, it is easily recognized that a sentence does not have a subject, for example, an exclamation sentence: Hurry up!

Therefore, the most personal preferable definition is that a complete sentence begins with a capital letter, a full stop (or a exclamation or a question mark), always contains a finite verb and express a complete thought or make sense

when standing alone (What is a complete sentence, n.d.) (See Table 2)

A complete sentence – a complete thought

Table 2: Definition of a complete sentence

To be able to do this kind of question, students have to be good at both vocabulary and grammar Without knowing the meaning of a word in the messy sequence, no matter how good they are at grammar, the sentence they make is unlikely to be sensible, and vice versa, if the students do not know grammar rules

so it would be hard for them to put the right order of a modal verb and a infinitive verb, for example (Rearranging jumbled words, n.d)

3.3 Different forms of “Rearrange the words to make a complete sentence” question type

It is certainly sure that there are a number of different forms of this arrangement question type According to ―Rearranging jumbled words to make sentences‖ (n.d.), this question type has words not in order (this form is numbered

No.1 in Table 3) is but there will be one extra word or phrase playing as a

distracter Students have to be aware of that extra and opt it out along with sequencing others correctly Mostly this form is designed for the upper-intermediate to advanced students This is a clear example:

―writing system am to I about banking your and complain

_

Extra word ‖

(Rearranging jumbled words to make sentences, n.d.)

As can be seen, this form does not provide the students any clue or hint to arrange the words Henceforward, students have to use their own logical thinking

to fulfill the task

Another much more simple form of this question type compared to the above are separated words messed up and the students, no extra words need to be

found (this form is numbered No.2 in the Table 3) However, no hint or clue is

provided as well Get a closer look at an example:

―borrow / I / may / that book / you / from

‖

(Unscramble these sentences, n.d) Obviously, this form is much easier for the lower level students to practice their flow of thinking Since it is a bunch of separated words with slashes, the students do not have to think about what function of the words in the sentence are, whether a word is a separated or it makes a phrase to the others standing next to it

Overall, there are a variety of others forms of this type of question unable

to be listed here which second language learners may encounter throughout their

Illustration 1 and Illustration 2):

Illustration 1: “Teacher’s coming” or “What’s the order?” question type in a

self-practice round of IOE (source: ioe.go.vn)

Illustration 2: “Teacher’s coming” or “What’s the order?” question type in a

state mock test package of IOE (source: ioe.go.vn)

The first clue is the capitalized letter of a part in a sentence The IOE designers and editors do capitalize the first letter of the word which is supposed to begin the sentence Base on this clue, the students would know which part among the mess is the first word to start arranging with

The second clue is the punctuation of the sentence There may be a full stop, an exclamation or a question mark at the end of the word of which function

is to end the sentence In this IOE form of question, a punctuation mark usually accompanied by a word, would signal the students for putting the word at the end

of the complete sentence Therefore, leaning on the two signals capitalized letter and the punctuation, the students would grasp the backbone of the sentence

Furthermore, this question type of IOE for grade 5 has a limited numbers of scrambled parts In particular, there will be 4 to 5 scramble parts of a need-completing sentence and each scrambled part is on a piece of look-alike note on

the IOE screen (Illustration 1 and Illustration 2) Purposely, this design does not

distract the students with an extra word or phrase as the former form and it is not small units of sentence separated as the latter form both mentioned above but rather, scrambled in a connective way Study two questions of this form in IOE state round mock test taken from official website of IOE (ioe.go.vn):

―to the next bus stop / can I get / How / railway station? / to Hanoi

Answer: _‖

(See the Appendix 1: IOE state round mock test, question No.85)

―want to go / with me? / shopping / Do you

Answer: _‖

(See the Appendix 1: IOE state round mock test, question No.86)

The question number 85 in the state round mock test is composed of 5 parts, which is the maximum number, whereas the question number 86 consists of

4 scramble parts One has the capitalized letter ―H‖ in the word ―How‖ and one has ―D‖ capitalized in ―Do you‖ The two questions have the same punctuations, which are question marks

To sum up, the researcher differentiates the three forms of the question type

RWMCS in the following (See Table 3):

Features Form No.1 Form No 2 Form in IOE

Separation signal No Slashes Pieces of notes

Scrambled part

number

Table 3: Features of different forms of RWMCS

According to Dinh, to do the question type ―What‘s the order?‖ effectively, there are two signals to remember is capitalized letter and punctuation She also states that English knowledge needed in this part is about several basic tenses in English and about the structure of positive, negative and questioning sentences Whereas, the researcher believes that there is more to discuss speaking of the RWMCS question type including more grammar rules, the learning of vocabulary and so on

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter justifies the rationality in the researcher‘s using qualitative approach, case study as the research method and the description of the case Furthermore, how the data are collected and analyzed would be stated in this chapter

1 Qualitative approach

Conceptual Concerned with understanding

human behavior from the informant‘s perspective

Concerned discovering facts about social phenomena

Assumes a dynamic and negotiated reality

Assumes a fixed and measurable reality

Methodological Data are collected through

participant observation and interviews

Data are collected through measuring things

Data analyzed by themes from descriptions by informants

Data analyzed through numerical comparisons and statistical inferences

Data are reported in the language of the informant

Data are reported through statistical analyses

Table 5: comparison between qualitative and quantitative approach

(Source: Minichiello, 1990)

Mcleod (2008) agrees with Minichiello (1990) that qualitative research will help gather data in a descriptive way despite it being harder to analyze than quantitative one Mcleod also claims that if a study is about a typical individual or

a group of distinct, it would be superficial to follow quantitative approach Qualitative research is used to ―gain an understanding of underlying reasons,

opinions, and motivations‖ and to ―uncover trends in thought and opinion, and dive deeper into the problem‖ (Difference between Qualitative Research vs Quantitative Research, n.d.).With the aim of having thorough understanding of the techniques usage of a grade 5 student in IOE examination, the researcher intends

to analyze data basing on a student from grade 5 in Yen Hoa primary school Henceforth, using qualitative methods is believed to be appropriate to the research

2 Case study

The name ―case study‖ makes itself hard to be defined According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2009), a case study is ―[a]n intensive analysis of an individual unit (as a person or community) stressing developmental factors in relation to environment.‖ As be understood in other words, a case can be a person

of a group of people and the analysis will be thorough in depth and breadth the information amount of the specific case Case study research method has both

strengths and limitations (See Table 6)

techniques used and how they are used by a specific fifth grade student The needs

of detail information and thoughtful description about the research problem lead to the employment of case study

3 Description of the case

The study is conducted to have an insight of techniques to apply in IOE‘s

―rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖ question type employed by a grade 5 student In order to achieve the aim of the study, a student from class 5A - fast-track program in Yen Hoa primary school was purposively chosen to be the dealt-with subject

The reasons to choose the case are listed below:

First, he is a student in the talented class, who is quite good at English so he has an amount of English needed to take IOE

Second, this student is in grade 5, hence being in need of at least IOE district prize for extra grades to enter the fast-track English class in a good public secondary school - Cau Giay He is without doubt, of great determination and is clear of what he wants to achieve this year, which leads to his needs of being provided and of using techniques for specific types of questions in IOE

Last but not least, he was one of the students who did take IOE and made it

in the district round when he was in grade 4 but he did not receive any prizes His score last year in the school round is only 1000/2000 This year, with the score in the school round is 1620/2000; he is one of the Yen Hoa primary school‘s students who will be sent to participate in the district round for grade 5 It seems that over the last year, the child has marked a quantum leap forward Therefore, this interests the researcher to find out what contributes to his remarkable progress

4 Data collection methods

Therefore, two of the qualitative methods-observation and interview are the suitable instruments to collect data

4.1 Data collection instruments

4.1.1 Observation

When it comes to qualitative case study method, it is advisable to use qualitative data collection such as diary, unstructured observation and unstructured interviews (Mcleod, 2008) To have a real insight of the case, observation will be conducted Observing the students‘ IOE practice round, school round, district round, civic round and state round‘s mock tests that the student takes is of importance Observation of his doing practice at home was conducted to help the researcher find out the answer to research questions relating to techniques used All outstanding features and notes when the researcher observed was taken down

to support the data analysis

The researcher also observed the student‘s English class taught by his English-speaking native teacher at his extra class By doing so, the researcher will get an overview of how he learns and how he is taught English

Additionally, according to McLeod (2008), video recording and note taking would help if be used as a means When the observations take place, the researcher may miss some crucial information and description To decrease the chance of missing, which is likely to result in subjectivity in interpreting the data and analyze the data, if necessary, video and notes during the observation will assist

4.1.2 Interview

In addition, interview will be used as a useful tool to increase the reliability

of the study Interview is usually seen as effectively deep dig into the superficial response (Section 5: Data collection methods, n.d.) As he made it to the school team taking part in the district round, his mother, also as a teacher at school was ready to direct him Therefore, the researcher interviewed the student‘s mother, who also a teacher at Yen Hoa primary school, who understands about IOE and the English teaching scheme and at the same time who allegedly directly encouraged him to practice IOE Several questions related to techniques to do word rearrangement were asked so that data could be collected and analyzed in detail

The mother may know about strategies or techniques needed to do the questions relating to the research Also, the researcher will record the interview as the recording of the interviews will work in the researcher‘s transcribing and analyzing the data gathered

4.2 Data collection procedure

Under a scheduled timeline, data collection procedure consists of these two following phases:

Phases 1: checking the proper time when the observations and interview should be conducted, preparing for observation and interview questions Basing on the characteristics and aims of the study, interview questions will mainly focus on several types such as experience, behavior and sensory questions

Phase 2: conducting the observation and the interview It will last about 30 minutes (the maximum amount of time for one IOE mock test) for each observation and there may be more than one observation if needed The interview lasted approximately 15 minutes for the interviewee Both observation and interview were recorded to serve the purpose of the study

5 Data analysis method

The researcher will apply content analysis method to analyze the data All notes and videos from the observation, interview recordings transcript will be collected for data analysis As followed, they are phases of analysis:

Phase 1: data will be categorized into items relating to research questions and research aims

- How does the surrounding environment affect his progress in the IOE and the question type?

- What techniques do the grade 5 student employed when facing

―rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖?

- What difficulties does he face when they apply these techniques in IOE?

Phase 2: categorized data Basing on these data, thick description will also

be used to describing and interpreting deeply the items

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS, DISCUSSIONS AND FINDINGS

This chapter provides the results, discussions and findings of the research base on the videotapes, the recording of the interview and other notes of the researcher during the time the grade 5 student practiced for the district round All serves to answer the research questions in order:

- How does he show his gradually progress in IOE generally and in the

type of task specifically? (RQ 1)

- What techniques has the grade 5 student employed when facing

―rearrange the words to make a complete sentence‖? (RQ 2)

- What difficulties does he face when he applies these techniques in

IOE? (RQ 3)

- What are the external factors may lead to his dramatic progress and

success? (RQ 4)

RQ 1: Using notes taken from the student‘s sharing, the researcher makes

the analogy between the IOE scores in three rounds: school round in grade 4, school round in grade 5 and district round in grade 5 Of two students, one is the student in the case study and the other is one of his classmates, who is already

known as the second best at English in his class The following illustrates the score and the rank at school of the two in the three rounds (see Table 4)

Rounds

The student in the case

study

The student’s classmate

Table 7: Scores and ranks at school of two students in three rounds of IOE

As can be seen in the table, the two kids are both in top 10 of IOE high score at school in two years and both earned the fourth district prizes However, the student in the case study seems to make dramatic progress From grade 4 to grade 5, in one year, he has added up 580 points, means 58/200 correct sentences while the other only get 190 points plus, means 19/200 correct sentences The competitive environment boosts the capacity of a child

The researcher videotapes three mock tests in the package that he did for practice In the process of doing this study, the researcher has found that the RWMCS questions in IOE mock test and even the real test always do a duet with one another, which means the RWMCS questions go in pairs For example, look at

the Table 9 to see the rule of RWMCS repetition in the State round mock test (See Appendix 1) The researcher picks out 40 questions in the test

Question No RWMCS or not

Table 9: the rule of RWMCS repetition in the State round mock test

As can be seen in the table, question number 1 and question number 2 are both RWMCS questions Question number 7 and question number 8 are both RWMCS questions and so on

The second rule has been found is that each pair of the RWMCS questions has

a 6-question gap with the later pair For instance, the first pair of RWMCS questions is question number 1&2 and the next pair of RWMCS questions is question 7&8 (7 – 1 = 6; 8 – 2 = 6)

The researcher calculated the data showing how many percentages of the

RWMCS questions are in a mock test (see Formula 1) This is how to get the

percentages:

 Phase 1: Identify the number of the first RWMCS question in the test (P1)

 Phase 2: identify the number of the last RWMCS question in the test and minus 1 (P2)

 Phase 3: Have the result in phase 2 minus the result in phase 1

 Phase 4: Divide the result in phase 3 by 6

 Phase 5: Double the result in phase 4

 Phase 6: Divide the result in phase 5 by the number of all questions in test

 Phase 7: Multiply the result in phase 5 by 100%

P2-P1

2’the number of all questions 100

Formula 1: Percentages of the RWMCS questions Take the state round mock test (Appendix 1) as an example

The percentage of the correct RWMCS questions in a mock test are also

calculated (see Formula 2)

 Phase 1: identify the number of the correct RWMCS questions (P1‘)

 Phase 2: divide the result in phase 1 by the result in phase 5 of Formula 1

P1‘ P2-P1 2 100%

Formula 2: The percentage of the correct RWMCS questions in a mock test

Basing on the videotaped from the last three mock tests of the students before the district round and the formulas, the researcher collected the following results:

District mock test Civic mock test State mock test

that the grade 5

student get the

right answer (%)

Average time for a

question in the test

9 seconds / question

9 seconds / question

7.2 seconds / question

Time not used 14 minutes 37

seconds

5 minutes 50 seconds

10 minutes 26 seconds

Table 9: Three mock tests’ observation analysis

As can be seen in Table 9, the student did the mock test faster and faster

and with high accuracy

The researcher had the chance to be a tutor of the grade 5 student in 6 week before he had the district round Every tutoring lesson had one hour According to

the Table 10, we can see that the student did the mock test faster and faster by the

time In the first lesson in week 1, the student could do 1 mock test and was corrected all in an hour However, in the last lesson in week 6, the student could

do 3 tests in an hour With the observation, the researcher discovered that he gets used to managing the time and there are a lot of questions in mock tests repeated

He takes control the time well Too many questions in a really short time and he still can have much time left after finishing all the questions There is no lack of time in all three rounds being filmed

Week (date of lessons) The number of IOE mock tests

corrected by the researcher

Week 1 (07/12/2015 & 11/12/2015) 1 & 1