A survey on techniques of teaching conversations in textbooks for secondary school students in phu yen province m a 60 14 10

i VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE A SURVEY ON TECHNIQUES OF TEACHING CONVERSATION

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

A SURVEY ON TECHNIQUES OF TEACHING

CONVERSATIONS IN TEXTBOOKS FOR SECONDARY

SCHOOL STUDENTS IN PHU YEN PROVINCE

Submitted to the Department of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

LE VAN THINH

Supervised by

Dr LE THI ANH PHUONG

HO CHI MINH CITY, MARCH 2012

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RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, LE VAN THINH, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL, accept the requirements of the university related to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the University Library

I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the University Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established at the Library for the care, loan and reproduction for theses

Ho Chi Minh, December 2011

Signature ………

LE VAN THINH

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and above all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Le Thi Anh Phuong, for her insightful comments, patience, great care and constant encouragement throughout the research process Without her guidance and comments, I would not have completed my thesis

My gratitude also goes to all the English teachers at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their valuable instructions during the course, as well

as other staffs at this university for their helpful support during my studies

I would like to express my special thanks to all the secondary school teachers who kindly allowed me to observe their classes and shared their opinions

in the interviews, as well as those who enthusiastically responded to the questionnaires They contributed an essential core that makes up the major content

Finally, I thank my family and friends for their great support and assistance

in completing this work

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

A SURVEY ON TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING CONVERSATIONS IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN PHU YEN PROVINCE in terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s

Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee

This thesis has not previously been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions

Ho Chi Minh, December 2011

LE VAN THINH

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS ix

LIST OF TABLES ix

ABSTRACT x

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Secondary school context 2

1.2.1 Students 2

1.2.2 Tests and exams 3

1.3 Aims of the study 3

1.4 Significance of the study 4

1.5 Definition of key terms 4

1.5.1 Techniques 4

1.5.2 Conversations 4

1.6 Constraints of the study 5

1.7 Organization of the thesis 5

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Communicative competence 7

2.2 Competence and performance 8

2.3 Language skills 8

2.4 Speaking skills 8

2.4.1 Accuracy and fluency 10

2.4.2 Spoken and written language 11

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2.5 Features of conversations 12

2.5.1 Conversation units 12

2.5.2 Vocabulary and grammatical features 12

2.5.3 Discourse features 13

2.5.4 Non-verbal expressions 14

2.5.5 Acquiring L2 conversational competence 14

2.6 Role of textbooks and textbook conversations 15

2.7 Teaching speaking skills and techniques in teaching conversations 16

2.7.1 Objectives of teaching conversations 17

2.7.2 Approaches in teaching conversations 18

2.7.3 Teaching language components 21

2.7.3.1 Teaching vocabulary 21

2.7.3.2 Teaching structures 22

2.7.3.3 Teaching pronunciation 24

2.7.3.4 Previous studies on teaching speaking in Vietnam 26

2.8 Summary 27

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Research questions 28

3.2 Research methodology 28

3.2.1 Research instruments 30

3.2.1.1 Classroom observation 30

3.2.1.2 The interview 31

3.2.1.3 The questionnaire 31

3.2.2 Subjects 33

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3.2.2.1 Subjects for classroom observation and interviews 33

3.2.2.2 Questionnaire subjects 33

3.2.3 Description of the English textbook involved 34

3.2.4 Description of the conversations 36

3.2.5 Guidelines for teaching conversations 37

3.3 Data collection procedures 38

3.3.1 Classroom observation 38

3.3.2 Interviews 38

3.3.3 Questionnaire 39

3.3.3.1 Pilot questionnaire 39

3.3.3.2 Main questionnaire 39

3.4 Data treatment 40

3.4.1 Classroom observation 40

3.4.2 Interview data 40

3.4.3 Questionnaire data 40

CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 41

4.1 Results 41

4.1.1 Teaching objectives 41

4.1.2 Teaching conversations 44

4.1.2.1 Teaching activities 44

4.1.2.2 Time distribution 49

4.1.2.3 Teaching vocabulary 52

4.1.2.4 Teaching structures 54

4.1.2.5 Teaching pronunciation 56

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4.1.3 Difficulties in teaching conversations 62

4.2 Main findings 64

5.1 Conclusions 67

5.2 Recommendations 69

5.2.1 To the course book writer 69

5.2.2 To the principals 70

5.2.3 To teachers 70

5.2.4 To students 72

5.3 Contributions 72

5.4 Recommendation for further researches 73

REFERENCES 74

APPENDICES 82

APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE 82

APPENDIX 2: OBSERVATION SHEET 90

APPENDIX 3 QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEW 102

APPENDIX 4 THE CONTENT OF THE TEXTBOOK 103

APPENDIX 5 SAMPLE CONTENT OF ONE LESSON 106

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as a Foreign Language

MOET Ministry of Education and Training

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Research design 30

Table 2: Questionnaire contents 32

Table 3: Basic information about respondents 34

Table 4: Typical time frame of a unit 36

Table 5: Comparison of data on teaching objectives 43

Table 6: Comparison of data on core teaching activities 47

Table 7: Comparison of data on additional activities 49

Table 8: Time distribution in observation data 49

Table 9: Time distribution in questionnaire data 50

Table 10: Comparison of data on techniques in teaching vocabulary 53

Table 11: Comparison of data on teaching strutures 55

Table 12: Pronunciation received most attention 58

Table 13: Pronunciation practice 61

Table 14: Comparison of data on number of students reading aloud in class 61

Table 15: Difficulties in teaching conversations 63

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ABSTRACT

Teaching English in context is generally very important and in high school textbooks, conversations are often used to introduce grammar and vocabulary for a new lesson However, few investigations can be found on how these conversations

in EFL school textbooks are taught in Vietnam This study was an attempt to explore this practice in Year 8 in 14 junior high schools in Phu Yen, a small province in Central Vietnam, with the hope of reflecting one aspect in EFL teaching situation in this province The data for this research came from 20 classroom observations and the subsequent interviews with 10 teachers, in addition

to questionnaire responses from 50 teachers of Year 8 in 14 secondary schools The results showed that EFL teachers in these junior secondary schools followed major steps as recommended in their teachers' book for teaching these conversations These included introducing the context of the conversation, letting students listen to the conversation, helping students practise pronunciation through role-plays before asking them to answer questions about the conversation However, some aspects in their teaching should be revised to help students develop listening and speaking skills more effectively For example, teachers did not spend enough time for students' practice of English pronunciation, or they still used a lot of translation in teaching vocabulary, rather than adopting a wide variety

of other useful techniques Recommendations were given to school administrators, teachers and students in improving the teaching and learning of English, in particular the development of listening and speaking skills for students in junior secondary schools

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background, secondary school context, the aims, key term definitions, as well as the significance of the study It also specifies the structure of the thesis and the constraints of the study

1.1 Background to the study

In a globalised world, English plays a crucial role and this explains why many people try to become better communicators in English Their main aim is to successfully participate in daily conversations (Thornburry and Slade, 2006) which are considered a "fundamental, universal and default form of language" (Meddings and Thornburry, 2010: 8) Thus, conversations are the main way to "conduct human affairs’ (Crystal, 1987:116) and maintain their relationship (Liddicoat, 2007:1)

There is no doubt that conversations also form the ‘foundation of language learning’ (Wong and Waring, 2010: 1) because they provide learners with samples

of spoken language and show them how people interact (Byrne: 1986a:28) Therefore, conversations form a big part in English textbooks for lower levels Also, teaching conversations is ‘of critical importance for language teachers’ (Wong and Waring, 2010: 1)

As English is used in various fields, such as science, technology, tourism and business, it has become a compulsory requirement for university graduates and

a compulsory subject for high school students in Vietnam Observations show that secondary school teachers, especially in small cities and in the countryside, often focus on knowledge of grammar and vocabulary so that their students can do well

in the school exams while listening and speaking skills, especially conversational skills, tend to be largely ignored As a result, students in high schools in Phu Yen often meet a lot of difficulties in speaking English, especially in pronunciation

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Therefore, it is important to know how conversations are taught in secondary schools so that adjustment can be made in order that students can improve their listening and speaking skills

1.2 Secondary school context

1.2.1 Students

Students in Grade 8 in Phu Yen province have generally studied English for five years; however, like other students in Phu Hoa and Tuy Hoa are less motivated to study English because there aren’t many foreigners for them to practice English, and they may not see the important roles that English can play in their lives and work in the future A low motivation in learning English might affect the way of teaching and learning English a lot; especially, this investigation was carried in a poor district and a small city Year 8 students have been chosen to

be research subjects for this investigation as they have got used to learning English in junior high schools for some years and they do not experience the pressure of the final exams that students in year 9 often have to suffer from The choice for students from both a district and the city was made to reflect more comprehensively the teaching situations of both the city and the country which may have differences due to differences in economic conditions which may influenced the teaching and learning of English In a district, students may have had more difficulties because some of them may have to study and work to help their parents at the same time, so they did not have much time to study, especially English In the city, the facilities at school are better than those in the district and parents often pay more attention to their children’s study, which might improve students’ motivation of English

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1.2.2 Tests and exams

As other students in secondary school, students in Grade 8 are at the elementary level and they study English for three periods a week For every term, besides regular revisions of a former lesson done at the beginning of a lesson, there are at least, two fifteen minute tests, two one-period tests and one end-of-term test The structure of one-period tests and end-of-term tests consists of three parts: listening (20%) grammar and vocabulary (25%), reading (25%), and writing (30%) Thus, speaking skills are not assessed, and tests mainly focus on grammar and written language and this affects the way of teaching and learning English Therefore, teachers focus much on grammar and reading comprehension and pay less attention to oral skills

1.2.3 Textbook

‘Tiếng Anh 8’ is the third book in the textbook series for secondary school which consists of 4 books These textbooks follow the same format and each unit

in a textbook has seven parts such as getting started, listen and read

(conversation), speaking, listening, reading, writing and language focus

Therefore, an investigation of teaching conversations in ‘Tiếng Anh 8’ would give the researcher a clear idea of the way of teaching conversations in a secondary school textbook in Phu Yen

1.3 Aims of the study

This study was aimed to 1) find out how conversations in textbooks are taught in secondary schools, 2) identify effective practices in English teaching as well as improvements to be made and, 3) provide recommendations for necessary adjustment in English teaching in high schools in Phu Yen province

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To carry out the above aims, the following research questions were raised:

1 What were the objectives of teaching the conversations in Year 8 textbook?

2 How were these conversations in this textbook taught?

3 What were teachers’ difficulties in teaching these conversations?

1.4 Significance of the study

Hardly can non-native speakers of English be regarded as fluent if they can not converse naturally enough for other people to understand without any difficulties In other words, conversational skills are vital in learning a language Therefore, an investigation into teaching conversations for students at secondary school students would be a great urgency It was hoped that the findings could serve as a reference document for secondary school teachers to improve their teaching practice, especially in teaching conversations

1.5 Definition of key terms

1.5.1 Techniques

According to Brown (1994:37) techniques refer to ‘various activities in the classroom In other words, techniques include all tasks and activities’ In this thesis, the researcher would like to investigate the activities and tasks carried out

by teachers when teaching conversations

1.5.2 Conversations

Many definitions about conversations can be found in different dictionaries According to Collins’ Cobuild Advanced dictionary (1995), conversations involve talking to someone "in an informal talk situation” Conversation is also defined as

“informal talk in which people exchange news, feelings, and thoughts” (Longman Exams Dictionary, 2006) Another definition is that “conversation is spoken and it

is planned and produced spontaneously" (Thornburry and Slade, 2006) These

1.6 Constraints of the study

This investigation aimed at exploring how the conversations introduced at the beginning of each unit was taught This was closely related to how new language was introduced by the teachers, rather than a focus on teaching the speaking skills which was emphasized more in a later part of a lesson in Year 8 textbook Therefore, though this investigation was somehow connected to speaking skills as it involved the conversations, it explored the initial stage of teaching these speaking skills Also, the study was conducted at 6/8 schools in Phu Hoa district and 8/15 schools in Tuy Hoa city (Phu Yen province) with 50 English teachers of Grade 8 in these schools Therefore, though the findings and the recommendations could be useful to secondary schools in Phu Yen and relevant to other similar school settings in Vietnam, they might not be generalised to other

teaching contexts

1.7 Organization of the thesis

The study consists of five chapters Chapter I provides (1.1) the background (1.2) the aims, (1.3) the significance, (1.4) secondary school context, (1.5) definition of key terms, (1.6) the constraints, and (1.7) the organization of the study Chapter II gives an overview of related literature about communicative competence (2.1), competence and performance (2.2), language skills (2.3),

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speaking skills (2.4), features of conversations (2.5), roles of textbooks and textbook conversations (2.6), teaching speaking skills and techniques in teaching conversations (2.7), and summary (2.8) Chapter 3 states the research questions (3.1) and research methodology (3.2) It also describes the data collection procedures (3.3) and data treatment (3.4) Chapter 4 shows the results of the data (4.1) related to research questions raised, together with subsequent discussion Chapter 5 presents conclusions to the study (5.1), recommendations for teaching English in general and teaching conversations in secondary schools in particular (5.2), some contribution of the study (5.3) and its recommendation for further researches (5.4)

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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

The chapter presents literature review about communicative competence (2.1) competence and performance (2.2), language skills (2.3), speaking skills (2.4), features of conversations (2.5), roles of textbooks and textbook conversations (2.6), teaching speaking skills and techniques in teaching conversations (2.7) and summary (2.8) All these issues are relevant to the topic under research in this study and they can provide useful insights to the understanding of the thesis

2.1 Communicative competence

In order to be successful language users, it is considered essential to have a communicative competence According to Richards, Platt and Weber (1985:49), communicative competence includes knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, rules

of speaking, speech events and appropriate language use Canale and Swain (1980:29) provide a more concise definition for communicative competence with four specific components of linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence According to these scholars, linguistic competence is defined as "a knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence, grammar, semantics, and phonology" while discourse competence is the ability to

"connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of

a series of utterances"(Canale and Swain, 1980: 29) Sociolinguistic competence,

as they specify, is the knowledge about sociocultural rules of language and of discourse while strategic competence is "the verbal and nonverbal communication strategies" that can be used in case of communication breakdowns (Canale and Swain, 1980: 30)

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2.2 Competence and performance

According to Brown (2007), while competence refers to individuals'

‘underlying knowledge of a system, events, or facts", performance is ‘the overtly observable or concrete manifestation or realization of competence’ In other words, language competence is the knowledge of grammar rules, vocabulary, and pronunciation while performance is actually production of language via the four skills of speaking, listening, writing or reading

2.3 Language skills

There are four language skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing While reading and listening are considered receptive skills, speaking and writing are productive skills Of these skills listening and speaking are the most often used skills in human communication (Brown, 1994) because some people may not know how to read and write but they do know how to speak and listen to communicate in the community Language skills are often used together (Harmer, 1991: 52) for daily communication; therefore, language teachers integrate different skills in their teaching (Brown, 1994; Harmer, 1991)

2.4 Speaking skills

Speaking is a productive skill considered very important for English learners to acquire Speaking is more than creating grammatically correct sentences and needs to be developed and practiced independently of the grammar curriculum (Thornburry, 2005) According to Brown and Yule (1983), speaking skills involve three separate areas of knowledge about mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary), functions (transaction and interaction) and social and cultural norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, pauses, and participants’ roles)

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Speaking skills are influenced by a lot of factors which, Hymes (1972b) believes, can help learners to use the language correctly, and to make their messages clear and their communication effective These factors involve not only setting, participants and aims, but also other elements

E ends purposes and goals and outcomes

A act sequence message form and content

I instrumentalities channel (verbal and non-verbal; physical forms drawn from

the community repertoires)

N norms

of interaction

specific properties attached to speaking and interpretation interpretations of norms within cultural belief system

G genre textual categories

Speaking gives language learners the chance to rehearse and get feedback from the teacher so that they have enough confidence and satisfaction (Harmer, 1998) Speaking takes place in real time, and speakers are under the pressure of time and often make some ‘mistakes’ (Thornburry, 2005) while still making their messages understood Therefore, speaking emphasizes fluency more than accuracy In teaching speaking, teachers have to raise awareness of these differences and let students practice features of spoken English (McCarthy, 1998)

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2.4.1 Accuracy and fluency

Accuracy is ‘the ability to produce grammatically corrects sentences but may not include the ability to speak or write fluently’ (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, 2010: 223) Fluency refers to communicative proficiency which includes ability to produce language with ‘good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar’ without causing comprehension difficulties (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, 2010: 223) According to Thornburry (2005:7), the appropriate pauses and lengths of run are two factors that evaluate the fluency of English Fluency is measured by speed

of production and by the number of hesitation whereas accuracy is judged by the number of errors (Nation and Newton, 2009)

As Thornburry (2006: 214) states, being good at grammar does not guarantee good speaking skills because ‘the ability to carry on conversations is not just a reflection of grammatical competence’ In other words, speaking skills are not the exact realization of grammatical competence Accuracy focuses on phonology, grammar, and discourse while fluency emphasize on speech flow or message content (Brown, 1994) The question is whether accuracy or fluency should be prioritized by language teachers According to Byrne (1986), the teacher should focus on accuracy more with students at elementary level, but more fluency with intermediate or advanced level students because students at elementary level need to build the knowledge of vocabulary, and grammar as quickly as possible, whereas fluency activities create more opportunity for intermediate and advanced students to express themselves Therefore, language activities should be selected or designed to suit different learning purposes and students' levels

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2.4.2 Spoken and written language

Spoken language is different from written language (Brown and Yule, 1991; McCarthy, 1998; McCarthy, Matthiessen, and Slade in Schmit, 2002; Thornburry, 2005) These authors specify a number of differences between these registers First, spoken language contains less lexical items and packs less information than written language Second, the syntax of spoken language is less structured than that of written language because written language uses ‘heavily pre-modified nouns, an extensive set of meta-lingual makers’ and passive structures while spoken language use more direct referent and a great deal of general expression such as a lot of, got, do, thing, nice, stuff, place, etc Thornburry (2005:21) provides a detailed list of differences between spoken and written grammar as can

be seen in the following table

Sentence is the basic unit of construction Clause is the basic unit of construction Clauses are often embedded Clauses are usually added (co-ordination) Subject + Verb + Object construction Head + body + tail construction

Reported speech favored Directed speech favored

No performance effect Performance effects, including:

Hesitations Repeats False starts Incompletion Syntactic blends

Corson (1997) states the lexicons used in the spoken discourse are less varied and new in nature than those in the written discourse The spoken discourse

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is also characterized with less lexical density than written discourse (Ur, 1971) and

to Halliday (1992), this lexical density is only half of the written discourse Besides, spoken language is often ungrammatical or grammatically incompletes Sometimes the speakers deliberately omit the language items such as subject or verb, which is called ellipsis, and ‘ellipsis is pervasive in spoken discourse’ (Carter and McCarthy, 1997:14) Therefore, in teaching speaking, teachers have to raise some awareness of spoken features and give students enough opportunities to practice these features (Dornyei, 1995; McCarthy, 1998; Kasper and Rose, 2002)

2.5 Features of conversations

2.5.1 Conversation units

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) divide the conversations into units called exchange Each exchange consists of three parts: a question, an answer and a comment Each of the part is called move In other words, there are three moves in

an exchange: an opening move, an answering move and a follow-up move Here is

an example of exchange

A: What is the time? (an opening move)

B: Six thirty (an answering move)

A: Thanks (a follow-up move)

2.5.2 Vocabulary and grammatical features

It is common to find relexicalisation and repetition in conversations Repetition is that the speaker repeats the same words more than once in the conversations Relexicalisation is the speaker's employment of appropriate synonyms rather that repeating a word (Schmitt, 2002) Besides, the high occurrence of fixed expressions is also another lexical feature of the informal

spoken discourse (McCarthy, 1998) Moreover, vague language such as ‘stuff like

that, and things, and this, that and the other, etc’ (Thornburry, 2006: 55) is a type

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of spoken language which serves ‘interpersonal function of conversations’

(Thornburry: 2006:55)

Discourse markers and fillers such as right, now, anyway, well, oh, y’know,

I mean, etc used to ‘fill a momentary hesitation" (Thornburry: 2006:56) are also

other features of the language in conversations Because of its informal nature and the constraints of real-time production, the language of conversations is

characterized by shorter and simple clauses (Biber et al., 1999:964) and short responses called non-clausal unit (Biber et al 1999) Since conversations take

place in a ‘shared temporal and spatial context’ (Thornburry, 2006:85), speakers

usually use the deictic expression such as here, there, this, that, these, those, etc

(Thornburry, 2006:85) Moreover, present tense is most commonly used in casual

conversations (Biber et al., 1999:457)

Conversations have interpersonal meaning and "modality is strongly associated with the expression of interpersonal meaning"(Thornburry, 2006:95)

The modal verbs such as can, will, and would are very common in conversations whereas modals such as may, shall, and must are less common in conversations (Biber et al., 1999)

2.5.3 Discourse features

There are two types of spoken discourse: informal and formal The informal spoken discourse with the personal purpose is more interactional then formal spoken discourse to transfer information or factual propositions Therefore, the previous is spontaneous and begins with false start, hesitations, interaction or overlap while the later one is turn-taking orderly in more controlled topic (Schmitt, 2002:58) Formal conversations such as job interviews or interactions in the bank ‘are aimed at closure and completion’ whereas casual ones are used to sustain and maintain ‘social relationships’ (Thornburry, 2006)

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2.5.4 Non-verbal expressions

Non-linguistic means such as body posture, facial expressions, gestures, etc and paralinguistic features such as pitch, intensity, and duration are also used in the conversation to convey emotive and attitudinal stance meanings (Biber at al 1999) They play very important functions in inferring meaning of the utterance Sometimes the facial expressions show the opposite the meaning with the sense of words in the utterances However, it is different from culture to culture and very complicated However, it is worth to observe your students and give them feedback on how they appear to others (Nolasco and Arthur,1987 )

Because of these features, conversations can be used to focus students on specific vocabulary, stress and intonation, organization, socio-cultural rules, topic shift, as well as performance effects and communication strategies (Thorburry, 2005:49)

2.5.5 Acquiring L2 conversational competence

Conversational competence is more than just grammatical competence as remarked by Schmidt and Frota (1986, cited in Thornburry, 2006:214) ‘The ability

to carry on conversations is not just a reflection of grammatical competence’ In a real world, being exposed to the language can help the learner to acquire conversational competence (Schmidt, 1983) However, students have limited exposure to authentic input so they seem to ‘underuse formulaic language, relying instead on their grammatical knowledge generate well-formed but essential unidiomatic language’ (Thornburry: 2007:219) Therefore, explicit instruction of conversations were useful in providing students with a more richly varied, more interpersonally active repertoire of gambits and strategy types (House, 1996) Kasper and Rose (2002) also suggested that explicit instruction should be

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combined with a lot of practice Thus, teachers' instruction and textbooks play an important role in improving students' conversational competence

2.6 Role of textbooks and textbook conversations

Materials play a crucial role in language teaching because they supply the basis content of the lesson Teaching materials are considered as ‘a key component

in most language program’ (Richards, 2001:251) and ‘as an aid to teaching and learning a foreign language’ (Littlejohn, 1998:192) Both scholars emphasized the roles of materials as the language teachers, and text book can be used as a resource for presentation materials, a source of activities for learners and teachers to present and practice, a syllabus to realize the intended objectives, a support for less experienced teachers, and a reference resource for learners for self-study (Cunningsworth, 1995)

As stated by the above authors, the textbook provides language lessons, together with activities for students to practise the language and it guides the teachers in teaching activities Therefore, textbooks could benefit both teachers and students; however, no textbooks can satisfy the needs of all the students in the class and any textbooks would be more suitable for some than others Also, each textbook focus on aspects of language or language skills at the expense of others For example, as remarked by Tran Thi My (2002), although English 6 textbook covers four skills of reading, speaking, listening and writing, it does not have separate lessons to practice individual sounds, word stress, sentence stress, some aspects of intonation, weak forms and connected speech The same is true with English 8 textbook which does not have adequate pronunciation activities Do Thi Song Tuyen (2005) found out that though conversations were important in developing students' skills, English textbooks used in Vietnamese schools mainly focused on the reading skills and grammatical practice

be taught

2.7 Teaching speaking skills and techniques in teaching conversations

In teaching speaking skills to language learners, Krashen (1982) emphasizes the role of language input, and he believes that speaking skills emerge when learners have enough exposure to the language Nation and Newton (2009) further specify a balance among meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluent development Regarding the learning process, Krashen (1982) suggests that students follow three phases of repeating, imitating, and memorizing the input However, Martinez-Flor, Usó-Juan and Soler (2006) think that speaking means ‘actively thinking how to produce language’, so

it is assumed that speaking contains four processes of conceptualization,

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formulation, articulation, and monitoring For teaching, Florez (1999) suggests speaking lessons to follow a classic pattern of preparation, presentation, and practice First, the teacher helps learners brainstorm what they might be saying Then, the teacher can use video clips of people doing small talk to get students' attention on the topics and the situation (such as relationships of participants and physical setting) After that, the teacher can ask students to perform selected tasks Brown (1994) lists a variety of tasks such as imitative, intensive, responsive, transactional, interpersonal and extensive speaking In imitative speaking, the teacher asks students to repeat a phrase or structure and in intensive speaking, students can be self-initiated to practice some phonological or grammatical points

In responsive tasks, students reply to the teacher or initiated questions or comments and then transactional or interpersonal conversations are extended from short responses If students are at intermediate or advanced level, extensive monologue (such as reports, summaries, or short speech) is carried out Because the content of a speaking task is based on model conversations in the textbook or video tape, the role of textbook is thus very important

2.7.1 Objectives of teaching conversations

Richard (1990:79-80) suggests a wide range of objectives when teaching a conversation, and this includes providing knowledge about conversational features (conversational fillers, syntax and conversational register) and strategies to open and close a conversation, to take turn, to initiate, respond and maintain talk in conversations Freez (1998:23) adds further objectives such as realizing appropriate conversation topics and appropriate language, or building pronunciation and paralinguistic skills and strategies, especially in the areas of intonation and gestures Conversations in Vietnamese English textbook 8 written

by Nguyen et al (2010) are mainly aimed to help students be familiar with the topic of the whole unit (p 133 and 143 in the teacher’s book) which is similar to

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the Freez (1998) Another objective is to help students practise listening or speaking and pronunciation which is the general objectives suggested by Richards (1990) In short, conversations are to practice new language and practice speaking

In order to realize these objectives, the following approaches have been used

2.7.2 Approaches in teaching conversations

Different approaches have been used to develop speaking skills for the learners via the teaching of conversations In direct approach , oral communication skills are built up through question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students (Richard and Rodgers, 1986:10) In audio-lingual approach, the teaching

of a dialogue starts with the learners' listening to the dialogue before repeating each line after the recording The next step involves further practice with the replacement of certain key vocabulary until learners can form the key structures (Bilbrough, 2007:6) In these two approaches, the learners' imitation of key structures in the dialogue seems to be priotized By contrast, Dornyei and Thurrell (1994) support an approach which emphasizes fluency tasks and consciousness-

raising activities Via a 10-step procedure, Byrne (1986) focuses on involving

students in the context of the conversation and helping them understand the

conversation This procedure emphasizes the instruction to help students

understand the conversation which is similar to Dornyei and Thurrell’s model Paul Sze (1995) includes learners' purposeful use of the language in the teaching process, with speech training, followed by drills and pattern practice,

before learners' purposeful use of language He suggests that the first step is to

expose learners to recordings of unscripted conversations before using video recordings to raise students’ awareness and deploying fluency activities These fluency activities start with getting messages across before focusing students' attention on appropriacy of language This procedure is similar to that suggested

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by Nolasco and Arthur in emphasizing awareness activities and fluency activities Thornburry and Slade (2006) suggest a flexible model which involves exposure, instruction and practice in any order Similar to Thornburry and Slade's model is Bilbrough’s model (2007) which is even more detailed in that it shows a ‘gradual progress’ in teaching conversations from understanding conversations to free production of similar conversations through nine steps: understanding, analyzing, reproducing and reconstructing, memorizing, rehearsing and performing, co-constructing, creating and personalizing, communicating and dialogue as learning

In Bilbrough’s model, teachers set a listening task by asking students to write down what they remember and then discuss in pairs twice before showing students written copy of the original dialogues Memorizing and parroting conversations in

a new and unusual ways are followed and engaging students’ feeling at this phase Conversation creation in pairs or groups to take advantage of ‘explicit peer teaching’ with stimuli would be the next step Conversations would be created by changing audience, style, or context before increasing the challenge with modified and expanded contents

2.7.4 Techniques in teaching conversations

The suggested ways of teaching conversations by Bilbrough are similar to those found in the teaching guide of modern English textbooks, such as Top Notch 2 (Saslow and Ascher, 2006) or Step – by – Steps 2 (Adelson and Goldstein, 2007) The procedure suggested by Saslow and Ascher (2006) is as follows:

- set the scene to establish the context

- have students listen and read along silently

- teach vocabulary

- ask students to listen again

- get students to repeat chorally by stressing on intonation and rhythm

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- teach structures

- ask students to create similar conversations

Similarly, the procedure recommended by Adelson and Goldstein (2007: 11) consists of three main stages: presentation, guided practice, and communicative practice and application Adelson and Goldstein (2007) also add a listening task in presenting the conversation and asking some students to model the conversation in front of the class

In teaching conversations, Goldstein-Adelson (2007:10 and 11) seems to emphasize the teaching of pronunciation practice in various stages First, the teacher allows the students to listen and repeat to have general pronunciation practice Then, they suggest extracting some utterances in the conversations for students to practice the target intonation pattern The last task is to ask students to read the conversation with the appropriate intonation pattern

Besides, Ascher and Saslow (2006:16) recommend the use of pictures to help the students to visualize the content to the conversations These scholars tend

to divide the time for various aspects in the conversations of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary Nolasco and Arthur (1992) categorise the activities

conducted to teach conversations into controlled activities, awareness activities,

fluency activities and feedback tasks in order of the teaching procedure While

controlled activities are aimed to develop the students' confidence, awareness activities are to develop their sensitivity to what they are learning, fluency activities are for the students to practice for communication and feedback tasks are for students to reflect on their own performance Thus, Nolasco and Arthur‘s model is similar to the previous suggestions but it also adds feedback tasks to help students reflect on their performance

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By comparison, those proposed by Nguyen at al (2008) for teaching conversations in ‘Tieng Anh 8’ that secondary school teachers often use as a guiding in designing activities for their classes tend to be simpler as there are only three activities of listening to the conversation, pronunciation practice and comprehension questions These activities only carry out some steps in Bilbrough’s model (2007) The instruction does not cover the steps to help students create similar conversations such as co-constructing, creating and personalizing, communicating and dialogue as learning In teaching conversations, some language components such as vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar are presented to help students understand the conversations before creating similar ones

2.7.3 Teaching language components

Language components of conversations consist of vocabulary, structure and pronunciation

2.7.3.1 Teaching vocabulary

Vocabulary is a very important component of language which is compared to

‘the vital organ and the flesh’ in a body (Harmer, 1991:153) In teaching vocabulary, the number of words presented should depend on the learner’s language level, their familiarity with the words, as well as the level of difficulty of items, or the purpose of learning (for production or recognition) (Thornburry, 2002: 76)

Selecting which vocabulary to be taught is also an important issue and this is often based on vocabulary frequency Frequency means how frequently the words are used by the language user (Harmer, 1991, and Nation, 2000) There are two types of words: high frequency words and low frequency words The teacher should present high-frequency words because they ‘cover a very large proportion

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of the running words in spoken and written texts’ (Nation, 2000:13) With the low frequency words, teachers should train learners to use strategies, such as guessing the context, using word parts, using vocabulary cards and dictionaries to deal with these words (Nation, 2000)

In presenting vocabulary, teachers have to present both the spoken form and the written form Spoken form could be presented through modeling, visual representation and phonetic symbols (Harmer, 1991) To explain the meaning, techniques such as definition, description, example, illustration, demonstration, synonym, opposite, context, translation and collocation are often used (Gairns and Redman, 1986; Harmer, 1991; Thornburry, 2002; Ur, 1999)

In Vietnamese contexts, games were found effective in teaching vocabulary

as they motivated students in their learning (Huynh Huu Hanh Nguyen, 2007) Combining various techniques in teaching vocabulary and presenting it in context were shown to help students in acquiring lexical items (Truong Nguyen Ngoc Thao, 2011)

inductive approach (discovery approach) starts with some examples from which a

rule is inferred In this approach, the language rule is deduced / inferred by means

of a controlled discovery (Thornburry, 1999) The inductive approach tends to be more often used by some teachers who teach the communicative way because they believe that rules are subconsciously learned and this approach gives chances for students to communicate (Brown, 1994: 351) According to Celce-Muria and

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Hilles (1988), there are four main stages in teaching grammar: presentation, focused practice, communicative practice, and teacher feedback and correction Ur (1999) also suggests the same procedures but divides the activities into two stages: presentation and practice To present grammar, there are a lot of techniques such

as rules and explanations, diagram usage, translation, grammar worksheets, flashcards, actions, relia, and generative situation, minimal sentence pairs, concordance data (Thornburry, 1999) Activities to practice grammar can include oral drills, written exercises, information gap activity, personalizing task, interpretation activity, and conversation (Thornburry, 1999) In another way, Ur (1999) divides the activities into awareness, controlled practice, meaningful practice, free sentence composition, and discourse composition which are similar

to Thornburry (1999)

Oral drills can be imitation drills, simple substitution drills and variable substitution drills (Richards et al 1985) To increase the difficulty, teachers could supply prompts for students to make sentences, and then used the pictures which is

a little more difficult than word prompts Written exercises could begin by asking students to order the sentence grammatically and a mini-context to help students to create their own sentences Finally, students have to make their own sentences Personalizing task begins with the introduction of structures, and then students work in groups and report the class An example of practicing structures by interpretation is that teachers raise the pictures, ask students to match with the target sentence, rub part of the sentences to ask students to reconstruct the sentences Conversation in which teachers provide a verbal scaffold so that students can feel safe is also a way of practicing structures By this way, teachers reformulate, extends and corrects students’ utterance (Thornburry, 1999)

Despite the recommendations to teach grammar in communicative ways, in Vietnam, grammar was still taught, using Grammar–Translation method, as

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pointed out by Dinh Thi Phuong Thoa (2010) in her research with participants in four selected high schools in Bien Hoa Teachers used a lot of explanation in Vietnamese and asked students to do written exercises to practice the grammatical points and communicative language teaching was used by a few teachers

2.7.3.3 Teaching pronunciation

Pronunciation plays a key role in oral communication If speakers have inaccurate pronunciation, they can be misunderstood (Kelly, 2000) According to Avery and Ehrlich (1995), to help students improve their pronunciation, teachers need to make them aware of important aspects of their pronunciation and give them opportunities to practice the pronunciation in context

Teaching pronunciation should cover both reception and production skills which involve knowing differences between phonemes and producing them According to Paulston and Bruder (1976), these skills can be introduced in the following phases:

- Selection and presentation of the sound feature to be taught,

- Recognition of the new sound and discrimination between similar sounds and

- Production of the sound features, first in words and phrases and finally in

a communicative situations

To carry out these phases, there are five steps: selection and presentation, aural recognition and discrimination, production, contextualizing the practice, sound symbol correspondence According to Celce-Murcia et al (1996), teaching pronunciation can follow these steps: listen and repeat, phonetics training, minimal pairs, contextualized minimal pairs, visual aids, tongue twister, developmental approximation drills, practice of vowel shift and stress shift, reading aloud or

According to Lyster and Ranta (1997), there are six ways of correcting students’ mistakes such as explicit correction, recast, clarification request, meta-

linguistic clue, elicitation and repetition Explicit correction is to give students the correct form directly or clearly show what students said was incorrect Recast is

that teachers implicitly provide the correct pronunciation without directly pointing

out students’ incorrect utterance Clarification request is that teachers showed that

they did not understanding the message because students’ utterances included

some mistakes Meta-linguistic clue is that teachers provide ‘some grammatical meta-language that refers to the nature of the error’ Elicitation is that teachers

elicit the correct form by asking the questions, by pausing to allow students to complete the sentences or by asking students to reformate the utterance

Repetition is that teachers repeat students’ mistakes and change the intonation to

attract student’s attention

Ha Thi Bich Loan (2005) in her research at information technology college

in Ho Chi Minh City concluded that Vietnamese students often had problems with listening and speaking skills because they lacked basic knowledge about

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pronunciation They did not understand phonetic transcriptions in dictionaries and they had incorrect pronunciation According to Nguyen Thi Kim Ba (2009) in her research at Mekong University, students made a lot of pronunciation mistakes because of the differences between English and Vietnamese language Besides, Tran Kim Hang (2004) showed that good English pronunciation could contribute

to the development of speaking skills and she suggested that the students should improve their pronunciation by equipping themselves with basic knowledge of sounds, stress and intonation in English

2.7.3.4 Previous studies on teaching speaking in Vietnam

There are only a few studies recently done on the teaching of speaking in Vietnam (Nguyen Thi Thanh Tham, 2006; Phan Khanh Van 2006) Phan (2006) found that both teachers and students in high schools considered grammar to be crucial in language teaching and learning, not speaking The lack of emphasis on speaking skills may have explained the lack of research on learners' speaking skills

or the teaching of conversations in high schools in Vietnam and she recommended that both teachers and students should pay more attention to oral communication and oral ability Besides, teachers could engage students in small talk about simple and familiar topics, integrate speaking into different skills and explain in English

to help students have more chance to be exposed to language

Nguyen (2006) recommended that information gap should be created to improve speaking skills and teachers could encourage students and create a pleasant atmosphere for students to feel free to say by creating more group work activities Besides, educational administrators should supply with adequate budget and sufficient facilities for English teaching and learning

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2.8 Summary

This chapter presents an overview of communicative competence and its performance through language skills, specifically speaking skills, and teaching speaking skills Different features of conversations, such as conversational unit, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse features, are presented Besides, techniques to teach conversations are discussed and language component teaching such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are reviewed Prior researches on the teaching and learning of English speaking are also mentioned in this chapter

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CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

This chapter introduces the research questions (3.1), states the research methodology (3.2) which includes information about research instruments (3.2.1), research subjects (3.2.2) and the textbook involved (3.2.3) It also describes the data collection procedure (3.3.3) and data analysis method

3.1 Research questions

The investigation was conducted to reflect the real situation in teaching conversations at various schools in Phu Yen province to identify useful lessons for the improvement of English teaching practice in high schools Specific research questions included:

1 What were the objectives of teaching the conversations in Year 8 textbook?

2 How were these conversations in this textbook taught?

3.What were teachers’ difficulties in teaching these conversations?

3.2 Research methodology

Since the study was aimed to reflect the teaching of conversations in the textbooks in junior high schools in Phu Yen province, classroom observations, interviews and questionnaires were chosen for data collection As pointed out by Burn (1999), McMillan and Schumacher (1993), as well as Patton (1990, cited in Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, 2000), observation helps the researcher to understand, document and reflect the situation that is being described Other studies also used observation as one of the research tool to reflect the overall situation (Dinh Thi Phuong Thoa, 2010; Do Thi Song Tuyen, 2005; Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, 2005) In this study, classroom observation was aimed to provide the researcher with some first-hand insights into classroom practices in teaching

be summarized in the following table

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Table 1: Research design

Research tools Research subjects Purposes Research questions Classroom

observation

10 teachers in 20 teaching periods

To gain first-hand knowledge about the practice of teaching the conversations

1 What were the objectives of teaching the conversations in the textbook?

2 How were these conversations in this textbook taught?

3 What were teachers’ difficulties

in teaching these conversations?

Interview 10 teachers To find out further

about information observed

Questionnaire 50 teachers in 14

schools in district and city areas in Phu Yen province

To trial out the suitability of the questionnaire

To find out teaching practices among a wider population

To triangle with class observation and interview data

3.2.1 Research instruments

3.2.1.1 Classroom observation

Class observation was done within 20 periods (45 minutes each) in 10 classes taught by 10 teachers in three different junior schools (one in a city and another two in a district) to gather information on the actual practices of teaching conversations in the textbook Permission was sought from the school principals as well as the classroom teachers prior to the observation The purposes and the significance of the study were clarified with these principals and teachers to obtain