Tefl student teachers’ awareness and application of achievement standards in english language teaching

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER TEFL STUDENT TEACHERS’ AWARENESS AN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

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

GRADUATION PAPER

TEFL STUDENT TEACHERS’ AWARENESS AND APPLICATION OF ACHIEVEMENT STANDARDS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Supervisor: Dương Thu Mai (Ph.D) Student: Trần Thị Vân Anh Course: QH2016.F1.E4

HÀ NỘI – 2020

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

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Dương Thu Mai (Ph.D)

Sinh viên: Trần Thị Vân Anh Khóa: QH2016.F1.E4

HÀ NỘI – 2020

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Tran Thi Van Anh, 16E4 being a candidate for the degree

of Bachelor of Arts (Faculty of English Language Teacher Education) 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

2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the help of a lot of people, I would not have been able to accomplish completing this dissertation Hence, I would like to express my appreciation to all those who have motivated and helped me along the way

First and foremost, I would like sincerely to thank my supervisor, PhD Duong Thu Mai, for her wholehearted instructions, considerate assistance and valuable critical feedback

Second, I wish to express my gratitude to all staff members and lecturers at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam University – Hanoi for their precious lessons that laid the foundation for my paper and for their support during the time I study at this university

Third, this dissertation would not have been possible without the contribution of

100 third-year students whose major is English Education at University of Languages and International Studies where the research was implemented

Last but not least, I am deeply indebted to my family and my friends who have been continually supporting and encouraging me to fulfill this challenging work

Hanoi, 2019

ABSTRACT

The research was carried out in Vietnam where the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and achievement requirements stated in Dispatch 5333 have been set as two of the official standards in the language education sector Despite the significance of two mentioned sets of standards, there has been a serious lack of studies about these sets, especially about the awareness and alignments of pre-service teachers, who will play an important role in the standards adoption in the future With a view to bridging this gap, the current paper aims to shed light on TEFL students teachers’ awareness and application of achievement standards in English Language Teaching, based on stages of teaching practice created by combining the features of standard-based teaching created by Biggs (2003), teaching domains devised Danielson (1996) and examples proposed by UCLES (2011)

Via the questionnaire and interviews, the study has found that pre-service teachers

at this language university in Hanoi were at the moderate awareness with CEFR-V and were somewhat aware of achievement standards stated in Dispatch 5333, yet aligned them

at significantly different levels in their teaching practice Furthermore, they expressed varied challenges in standards aligning, such as lack of experiences and feedback In light

of these findings, the study recommends that pre-service teachers should proactively learn more about CEFR-V and Dispatch 5333 and that two sets of standards should be mentioned and emphasized more in the textbooks and lecturers’ feedback Additionally, attempts should be made by standards developers to make the framework more accessible

to its end-users, namely teachers and learners

Keywords: Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), CEFR-V, Dispatch

5333, mixed methods research, teacher awareness, standards alignment

LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES

Table 1: The 6 levels of the CEFR-V

Table 2: Domains and contents of questions in the questionnaire

Table 3: Cronbach's Alpha (Reliability Statistics) of the questions

Table 4: Examples for open coding

Table 5: Examples of categories and colouring

Table 6: Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their

familiarity with CEFR and CEFR-V Table 7: Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their

familiarity with CEFR and CEFR-V Table 8: Alignment of CEFR-V in planning and preparation for lessons

Table 9: Alignment of CEFR-V in instruction

Table 10: Alignment of CEFR-V in professional development

Table 11: Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their

familiarity with achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 Table 12: Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their

familiarity with achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 Table 13: Alignment of achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 in planning and

preparation for lesson Table 14: Alignment of achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 in instruction Table 15: Alignment of achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 in professional

development Table 16: Challenges in adopting standards in teaching practice

Figure 1: The alignment of three education components

Figure 2: A model of teaching practices

Figure 3: Pre-service teachers’ familiarity with CEFR and CEFR-V

Figure 4: Pre-service teachers’ familiarity with achievement standards in

Dispatch 5333

CoE Council of European

SB Standard-based

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Significance of the study 3

1.7 Organization of the study 4

Chapter 2: Literature review 5

I Standard-based Language Teaching 5

1 Defining Standards 5

2 Standard-based Teaching 5

3 Common standards in Language Teaching in the world and in Vietnam 6

4 Aligning standards to teaching 11

This section seeks to answer the question of what teaching practices should be aligned to standards Different authors clarify the term standard-based alignment differently 11

II Related studies on standard-based English teaching 15

Gaps in the Literature 16

Summary 16

Chapter 3: Methodology 18

3.1 Design and participants of the study 18

3.2 Instruments 18

3.3 Data collection 22

3.4 Data analysis 23

Summary: 25

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion 26

4.1.Findings from the Questionnaire Responses 26

4.2 Findings from the Semi-Structured Interviews 36

4.3 Answers for research questions 38

Chapter 5: Conclusion 40

1 The study limitations 40

2 Implications 40

3 Agenda for Further Research 41

Reference 42

Appendix 1: CEFR 48

Appendix 2 Achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 51

Appendix 3: Questionnaire 64

Appendix 4: The reliability of the questionnaire 69

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Rationale of the study

Over the last few decades, there has been a major concern to create standards for the language education within nations around the world to boost the quality of education For example, standards-based curriculum reforms (SBR) have become widespread across the United States, particularly in the wake of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) movement (Hamilton et al., 2007) In Europe, the creation of a common European standard in education was demonstrated in “Council of European Resolution on the European Dimension of Education: Teaching and Curriculum Content” (1991) (Yarovaya, 2015) Standard-based education has been realized in many aspects of curricula, such as content, instruction and assessment (Lorena, 2011)

In Vietnam, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has been implementing the National Project entitled Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National Education System, Period 2008-2020 (2020 Project), Period 2017-2025 (2025 Project), which considers the setting of standards in the teaching and assessment of foreign languages (primarily English) for each educational level as a major content of the working agenda As a particular instance of standard-based education in foreign language teaching, the MOET in 2008 officially began to adopt the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to define English language exit standards for Vietnamese students (CEFR-V, a Vietnamese version) from secondary

to tertiary levels of education Besides, in Dispatch 5333/MOET issued in 2014, the MOET mentioned the English outcomes of each grade from secondary schools, which can be considered the standards for teaching and learning English in those grades across the country (see appendix 2) Generally, as these documents are official and still effective, Vietnamese teaching practitioners of English are required to learn thoroughly these standards and apply them to their English teaching for students, and the MOET is now concentrating on training the teachers to meet this objective (Viet, 2015)

At the language university where this study was conducted, CEFR and CEFR-V are introduced to pre-service teachers in their third year through the course “Introduction into English Language Teaching Methodology”, and how to apply the framework into English teaching in Vietnam is listed as one of the goal in this course material Also in

the textbook, the significance of identifying national English curriculum requirements and setting learning aims and objectives accordingly are highlighted in one of teachers’ competencies namely lesson planning Students afterwards are required to design lesson plans and conduct micro teachings to apply the aforementioned learnt knowledge in other courses, such as Lesson Planning and Materials Development, ESL/EFL Classroom Techniques and Practices and Syllabus Design Nevertheless, little is known about the actual dissemination of CEFR-V and the standards set in Dispatch 5333 among pre-service teachers beyond the policy and textbook levels due to a serious lack of published studies on this issue Specifically, while there are a significant number of studies in the world and in Vietnam about the awareness and practices of in-service teachers, such as Latif and Mahmoud (2012), Ngo (2017), Uri and Aziz (2018), to what extent pre-service teachers know and embed the required standards in language teaching remains little known Even when scholars conduct research about prospective teachers and the standards, they solely concentrated on the awareness and have not analyzed student-teachers’ implementation, which is seen in Hismanoglu (2013) or Nurdan (2017) This significant gap is the main reason to conduct the current study This research, entitled

“Third year students’ awareness and application of achievement standards in language teaching”, conducted at a language university in Hanoi, hopefully would bridge the gap

to some extent

1.2 Aims of the study

The aim of the study was to investigate the awareness and the application of service English teachers at a language university of achievement standards in language teaching in Vietnam To achieve the aim, the following objectives were established:

pre To identify the extent of TEFLpre majored prepre service teachers’ knowledge about the achievement standards required for their English teaching at schools in Vietnam

- To investigate the extent of pre-service teachers’ application of the required achievement standards in their practice teaching

1.3 Research questions

To achieve the aforementioned aims and objectives, the following research questions were set out to be answered:

1 To what extent do the TEFL-majored pre-service teachers at the language university in Hanoi know about the achievement standards required for Vietnamese students?

2 To what extent are the TEFL-majored pre-service teachers at at the language university in Hanoi’s teaching practices aligned to the standards?

1.4 Scope of the study

The study concentrated on investigating the awareness of 100 third-year service teachers at a language university in Hanoi towards standards in language teaching and their alignment of teaching practices to standards Specifically, this study solely focused on the targeted students’ awareness and application of the standards in two documents, the CEFR-V and Dispatch 5333 issued by the MOET for Vietnam language teaching conditions As all the respondents were based in one university, their opinions were not necessarily representative of pre-service teachers from other universities

pre-1.5 Significance of the study

The findings of this study are of paramount importance to both pre-service teachers and lecturers at a language university in Hanoi since it investigated pre-service teachers’ awareness and their alignment of teaching practices to standards Therefore, pre-service teachers’ awareness about CEFR-oriented and standard-oriented practices and difficulties in these practices may be raised On the lecturers’ side, this study can greatly contribute to finding the underlying reasons for standard-related problems Hence, this study can be a contributing factor to the achievement of teacher education objectives set

by the language university

1.6 Method of the study

This study adopted two types of data collection instruments that were questionnaires and semi-structured interview protocols Specifically, data collected from the questionnaires helped answer the two research questions by providing pre-service teachers with opportunities for self-reflection towards their knowledge about CEFR-V,

Dispatch 5333 and their alignment of teaching practices to those standards Second, interviews were conducted with the participation of pre-service teachers They allowed the research to gain deeper insights into the participants’ experiences and awareness

This study employed both quantitative and qualitative design Whereas quantitative procedure was used to analyze data from the questionnaire, qualitative one was adopted for data analysis from the interview

1.7 Organization of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter would offer a brief overview about key terms related to the study and discuss related studies on standard-based teaching (SBT) to find out the gap of the literature

I Standard-based Language Teaching

1 Defining Standards

According to Laura, Brian and Kun (2008), standards are academic expectations for students or “what students should know and be able to do” (p.2) In a clearer definition, the academic expectations/standards may also be defined as accurate, written descriptions

of requirements in terms of knowledge and ability for students at a specific stage of their education (Alhija, 2019) In some nations, such as UK, Canada and Norway, standards are regarded as outcomes, learning results or learning goals (Wearing, 2019) Overall, these definitions of standards are technically similar to one another However, since this study focuses on the standards set by the Vietnamese MOET in government’s dispatches for different levels ranging from secondary to high school students, the definition of standards in Alhija’s research appears to be the most appropriate

2 Standard-based Teaching

2.1 Advantages of Standard-based Teaching

In 2009, Thompson illustrated the benefits of standard-based teaching (SBT) by providing empirical evidence from examining standards-based science education He emphasized SBT’s contribution as assisting educators and related communities to take clear cognizance of what students should know and be able to do Similarly, the procedure

of identifying and establishing standards clarified the objectives and expectations for educational programs, and orientated teachers to consider what has been learned rather than what has been taught (Reynolds, 1995) This outcome-based view was agreed by Buttram and Waters, (1997), who said, after standards were determined, teachers could concentrate and organize their curriculum and instruction to help students achieve those standards

2.2 Drawbacks of Standard-based Teaching

In contrast, critics of standards-based education raised concerns about the restriction of the curriculum to “teach to the test” (Phelps, 2011, p.38) This means that teachers often focus only on standards instead of the broad ranges of contents in the curriculum Specifically, they criticized the reduction or elimination of non-tested subjects such as the arts and humanities since “teaching to the test” means teaching only what educators consider essential to students (Phelps, 2011) Additionally, Berryhill, Linney and Formwick (2009) offered evidence of the negative side effects of the standard-based reform that accelerate teachers’ burnout and restrict teachers’ creativity in teaching

To paraphrase, requiring teaching to align with standards may lead teachers to exhaustion and rigidity in teaching Mathis (2010) showed another challenge that the influence on course books of standards principles is not always obvious, or standards are not often well represented in course books, making it harder for teachers to align to them Besides, the language used in core standards is sometimes too abstract and opaque for teachers to use

in their teaching practices

It is inevitable that standard-based education includes both potentialities and risks Nonetheless, the aspect which matters is whether teachers are aware of them since it may promote teachers’ ability to mitigate unintended negativities and ponder the best for students’ achievement

3 Common standards in Language Teaching in the world and in Vietnam

In SBT, several standards have been more commonly selected as requirements for teachers to know and apply to their teaching practice This section clarifies a few of these standards in the world and those that are currently effective in the context of Vietnam

3.1 The CEFR

3.1.1 The European CEFR

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or CEFR was formulated in 2001 to provide a common basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses, curriculum guidelines, examinations, textbooks, etc across Europe (Council of Europe, 2001) Furthermore, it is intended to act as a common meta-language for language professionals to reflect on and to discuss their practice (North, 2007) Additionally, it

offers a benchmark for mutual recognition of language qualifications and entails chapters

on curriculum design, methodological options for language learning and teaching, and principles of language testing and assessment The framework approach is “action-oriented” (Council of European (CoE), 2001, p.9), which describes the requirement for language learners is to communicate using a language in the real world instead of how many words and structures they can master

CEFR has six levels of descriptors which are used to categorize learners’ competence

to use a language Each level includes a list of the expected ability and skills that language learners should be able to perform There are three main groups: Proficient users (levels C1 & C2), Independent users (levels B1 & B2) and Basic users (levels A1 & A2) Detailed descriptions of what learners are able to do are known as the “can do” statements for listening, writing, readings and speaking skills (Uri, 2018) (see appendix 1) However,

as Figueras (2012) has noted, it is the set of six Common Reference Levels (A1-C2) that has exerted a remarkable influence on foreign language learning and teaching within and beyond Europe A notable feature of these common reference levels is that they are designed to be language independent, hence can be adopted in the teaching and learning

of all foreign languages

3.1.2 The Vietnamese CEFR

On the 24th of January in 2014, the MOET signed Circular N0 01/2014/TT-BGDĐT

to promulgate the V, based primarily on CEFR There are six levels in the

CEFR-V Specifically, this new framework also includes three primary proficiency levels Elementary Level, Intermediate Level and Advanced Level which are equals respectively

to CEFR Basic User, CEFR Independent User and CEFR Proficient User Each level is divided into two sublevels, making it a 6-level proficiency framework as below:

Table 1: The 6 levels of the CEFR-V (Tiep, 2017)

A – Basic user 1 (A1) Breakthrough or beginner

2 (A2) Waystage or elementary

B – Independent user 3 (B1) Threshold or intermediate

4 (B2) Vantage or upper intermediate

C – Proficient user 5 (C1) Effective operational proficiency or advanced

6 (C2) Mastery or highly proficient

Besides, after the National Foreign Language 2020 Project, the official Dispatch 7972/BGDĐT-GDTrH, the MOET was released in 2013 to set target levels of different grades ranging from 6 to 12 as below

- Students finishing grade 6: A2.1;

- Students finishing grade 7: A2.2;

- Students finishing grade 8: A2.3;

- Students finishing grade 9 (secondary schools): A2;

- Students finishing grade 10: B1.1;

- Students finishing grade 11: B1.2;

- Students finishing grade 12 (high schools): B1

Clarifications of the level breakdowns (such as A2.1, A2.2) are not publicly released

3.2 Other common standards in Language Teaching in the world

“One of the most popular and most used tests of the standard of English is the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)” (Feast, 2002, p.71) IELTS scores are required for learners from certain countries to gain their visas to enroll in

oversea universities such as Australia and the United Kingdom The minimum IELTS score for university entrance is typically an average score of 6.0 (or equivalent) although some universities require higher scores for particular programs and postgraduate studies

“In general, an Overall Band Score between 6.0 and 7.0 in the Academic modules is accepted as evidence of English language proficiency for higher education institutions around the world” (Ciccarelli, 2001, p.1) Likewise, nearly all Canadian and American universities employ, as a standard for university admission, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) (Simmer, 1998) TOEFL, produced by Educational Testing Service (ETS), is an examination designed to measure English language proficiency among non-native English speakers in the academic setting It is administered globally in over 180 nations and is accepted as an English competency test among academic educational establishments (ETS, 2009) These tests have a significant impact on learning and teaching Specifically, they orientate learning and teaching process not only in English-speaking countries but also in other nations where English is spoken as a second language

3.3 Standards of English Language Teaching in Vietnam: achievement standards for English education stated in Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET, 2014

Even though the general concept of standard-based education is universal throughout nations, the specific standards are quite different because the context of each country is dissimilar Hence, it is compulsory that Vietnamese teachers know and understand every requirement determined by the MOET to apply those standards in their teaching careers Besides the CEFR-V, it is noteworthy that Vietnamese teachers of English should know Dispatch 5333/ BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET (2014)

There are two sets of English textbooks concurrently used in Vietnamese schools: the 7-year set (for students who started learning English from Grade 6 – grade 12) and the 10-year set (for students who started learning English from Grade 3 – Grade 12) The first set is mainly grammar-based with the view that grammar can be instructed systematically

as a set of rules to be mastered and transferred by students into proficient language use The second one focuses more on four skills in learning English (Hong, 2018) Due to the differences between two sets of English textbooks, Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, the

MOET (2014) clarifies two sets of achievement standards for students learning in 7-year and 10-year systems

In Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET (2014), it is required by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) that English teaching and assessment be comprehensively conducted in terms of four skills, namely reading, writing, speaking and listening (Dispatch No 5333/ BGDĐT-GDTrH) so that students, upon their completion

of secondary school and high school education from both the existing and the new programmes, will have achieved level A2 and B1 respectively in CEFR-V However, the Dispatch clarifies the standards to the outcomes for each grade of students For instance, students of grade 9 in the 7-year program need to be able to understand the main content and details of monologues/dialogues with the length of 100-120 words related to learnt topics at relatively slow speed For the cohort in 10-year program, students will be able

to identify the phonological features in compound and complex sentences, understand simple instructions, monologues/dialogues with the length of 120 words related to learnt topics and understand the main content of simple oral documents, such as stories, descriptions and explanations As for students from grade 12, in 7-year program, they are required to understand monologues/dialogues with the length of 180-200 words about learnt topics at a nearly natural speed students in 12th grade in 10-year system need to

be able to understand oral documents (about 240-260 words) about familiar topics at a normal speed, news, TV postcards at slow speed, and predict the next occurrences Teachers are required to follow these prescribed outcomes in their career to help learners attain the appropriate levels of language competence for each form in two curricula (7-year and 10-year program) (Appendix 2)

As these requirements are crucial and influential to all English teachers in Vietnam , and IELTS and TOEFL standards have not been applied to Vietnamese public schools’ teaching systems yet despite their popularity this research investigate pre-service teachers’ level of the awareness and application of the prescribed competence-based standards in Dispatch No 5333 in their teaching practice

4 Aligning standards to teaching

This section seeks to answer the question of what teaching practices should be aligned

to standards Different authors clarify the term standard-based alignment differently

4.1 The elaboration of Standard-aligned Teaching

Standard-based teaching or aligning teaching to standards is defined as the process of matching two education components, standards and teaching,that then can strengthen the purpose and objectives of both ones For example, instruction can be aligned with state standards (Roach, Elliott and Webb, 2005) They also highlighted that alignment occurs when there is a match between general curriculum- representing state standards, instruction – representing skills taught, and assessment – representing the state tests The alignment of these education components can be illustrated in Figure 1 as follow:

Figure 1 The alignment of three education components (Roach et al., 2005)

In a more specific analysis of SBT, Graue (1993) proposes that the alignment requires matching standards to not only instruction but to the teaching activities For example, the middle school teachers in his study centered their lesson planning around selecting "neat" activities for students and then aligning state standards to these activities The activities supported the daily topics and provided students with class exercises during

a specified time period Outcome- or product-driven assessments usually selected from book publishers or from existing materials were used to evaluate students and to assign a grade

Also focusing on activities, Biggs (2003) claims that standard-based alignment emphasizes teachers’ performance which is to create a learning environment that

underpins the learning-appropriate activities to obtain the aspired learning outcomes In other words, aligning teaching to standards means the teaching practices are aligned to the learning activities assumed in the intended outcomes Biggs offer the most specific elaboration of standard-based alignment, in which, teachers are required to

- Formulate the lesson objectives against the standards

- Mention explicitly or implicitly standards in their teaching activities

- Score and provide feedback using the specifications of the standards

In this study, the above features of standard-based teaching proposed by Biggs in his research were adopted along other backgrounds to examine the alignment of prospective teachers at this language univerisity’s teaching practices to the required learning standards since his suggested activities are more specific and concentrate more

on teachers’ practices which are the focus of this study Three tasks of formulating standard-based lesson objectives/targets, mentioning standards in teaching activities, and providing standard-based feedback form parts of the research instruments which will be presented in the Methodology chapter The following section will further discuss the English teachers’ activities which can be aligned with standards

4.2 English language teaching activities to align to standards

This section seeks to find out further about ELT teaching activities which can be aligned with standards Danielson (1996) presents a teaching effectiveness framework of four domains which can be used to organize teaching practices, including Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction and Professional Development The three first domains concern teachers’ direct actions in class, while the fourth and last domain enhances the quality of direct actions The planning and preparation section requires teacher knowledge of content, methodology, students, resources and assessment This domain happens before the class and entails objective setting and material development The second domain pertains to teachers’ ability to creating and managing a class which fosters learning The third domain refers to teachers’ oral ability to engage students in learning and teachers’ assessment conduction The professional aspect demonstrates teachers’ activities to better students’ learning by reflecting their classwork, communicating with parents, joining the professional community and showing evidence

of professional development Figure 2 below illustrates this framework for teachers’ practices clearly

Figure 2 A model of teaching practices (adapted from Danielson, 1996)

This framework is more specific than Biggs (2003)’s model in the previous section Bigg’s 3 suggested teaching activities to align to standards appear in two out of four domains of the teachers’ activities in Danielson’s framework, domains 1 (Planning and Preparation) and 3 (Instruction) As teachers are required to know about standards and reflect on their SBT, it is also desirable to study if domain 4 (Professional Development) can be aligned with standards However, this study will omit the second domain: classroom organisation and class atmosphere monitoring because both CEFR-V and Dispatch 5333 do not include any standards relating to these teaching activities

4.3 Examples of aligning standards in the English classroom

There are many ways in which language professionals such as teachers, curriculum planners and materials or test writers can align CEFR to their teaching They can use resources from CEFR Level Descriptions to enable them to make decisions about which language points are suitable for teaching, learning and assessing at each CEFR level Some teaching activities which can benefit from Reference Level Descriptions are

listed below, with specific exemplifications (UCLES/Cambridge University Press, 2011

as cited in University of Cambridge, 2011)

Activity 1: Deciding whether particular language points are relevant for a specific purpose, learner group and CEFR level In this activity of determining the relevant targets are for teaching and assessing

+ Example: A teacher can find out the level of the class and check whether some key vocabulary for a lesson is suitable for the level

Activity 2: After the determination of target relevance, teachers also have to identify the appropriateness of the targets, such as in the following activities

+ Example: A teacher is looking for a range of examples of ‘refusing a request’ suitable for B2 learners

Activity 3: Once the targets have been set, the teachers and assessors need to find the authentic performance which can illustrate for the targets They may do the following activities

+ Example 1: A teacher is looking for examples of ‘asking for permission’ in a formal work context suitable for a B2 class

+ Example 2: A teacher is putting together an exercise on a particular language point, using examples produced by learners at the same level as their class

Activity 4: Gaining a deeper understanding of language points within and across CEFR levels

+ Example: A teacher wants to see how the different meanings of a polysemous word (e.g keep) are normally acquired across the CEFR levels to decide which meanings students should learn first

The suggested activities above are very specific and helpful for teachers to apply SBT Nonetheless, these examples of teachers’ activities does not cover all the stages of a lesson Particularly, it does not mention feedback given by teachers that is one of three features proposed by Biggs (2003) in applying standards into teaching practice Hence, this study will combine Biggs (2003) suggested activities, Danielson (1996)’ domains with UCLES’ examples of teachers’ CEFR-aligned activities to assess pre-service teachers’ knowledge and practices of standards alignment Specifically, activities 1 and 2 belong to the first domain in Danielson (1996)’s framework: setting objectives, and

activities 3 and 4 are for the first domain: developing materials In short, this research will assess pre-service teachers’ standards alignment in their teaching practice as below:

1 Planning and Preparation

- Setting objectives (including example 1 and 2 created by UCLES )

- Developing materials (including example 3 and 4 created by UCLES)

3 Instruction

- Giving instruction

- Giving practice task

- Create contexts for production

- Doing classroom assessment

- Giving home assignment

4 Professional Development

- Doing self-reflection

- Collaborating with colleagues

II Related studies on standard-based English teaching

A body of research have involved teachers or language professionals, and their findings can be divided into two major themes, namely awareness/perceptions and implementation of the standards in language teaching In terms of the first theme, nearly all studies manifest a generally positive attitude towards standard-based teaching with Australian participants considering the CEFR useful for both learning and teaching (Normand-Marconnet & Lo Bianco, 2013) Likewise, Malaysian teachers in Uri and Aziz (2018) agreed that it promoted transparency and comparability in foreign language education while Vietnamese student teachers in Ngo (2017) have favorable opinions of the CEFR’s role in developing curricula and assessment They also gave fair ratings of its impact on pedagogy and communication Additionally, according to Buttram and Waters (1997), thanks to predetermined national standards, teachers can concentrate and organize their curriculum and instruction to help students achieve those standards

Regarding the implementation, the studies reveal that standard-based teaching has been generally adopted in European countries, especially in policy documents, curricula, examinations and textbooks (Broek &Ende, 2013 and Martyniuk & Noijons, 2007 and Moonen et al., 2013) Nevertheless, Moonen et al (2013) disclose a relatively small

proportion of Dutch teachers employ standard-based teaching, specifically in this case is the CEFR extensively beyond selection of textbook and highlight the striking discrepancy

in the level of adoption among the Dutch institutions Also in Latif and Mahmoud’s research (2012), the results clearly indicate that the standards-based curricular reform in general secondary school English in Egypt has not been successfully implemented with regard to teachers’ classroom practices due to a few factors, namely washback, culture of teaching, inadequate time, students’ low English levels, and lack of equipment and materials In Vietnam, according to Ngo’s study (2017), the CEFR did not feature directly

in the teaching practice of the participants However, teachers still affirmed the framework’s influence on their classroom activities because in their understanding, the CEFR had been incorporated into the specific lesson objectives

Gaps in the Literature

Despite their considerable contributions, the aforementioned studies still leave some unresolved gaps in the standards in language teaching literature Specifically, while there are several studies about the awareness and implementation of in-service teachers,

to what extent pre-service teachers know and conduct these standards in language teaching remains little known Even when scholars conduct research about prospective teachers and the standards, they solely concentrate on the awareness and have not analyzed student-teachers’ implementation, which is seen in (Hismanoglu, 2013) or (Nurdan et al., 2017) This study hopefully will close the gap to some extent

Summary

In summary, this chapter has provided a brief overview of key terms related to the standards, standard-based language teaching, common standards in language teaching, standards of English Language Teaching in Vietnam (CEFR-V and achievement standards in Dispatch 5333), aligning standards to teaching and related studies on standard-based English Teaching to figure out the gap of the literature To support for the next chapter - methodology and findings – the literature review definition of standards, its advantages and disadvantages to explain the level of knowing and aligning standards into teaching practice in the findings In addition, in order to assess the standards alignment, stages of teaching practice were proposed by combining the

features of standard-based teaching created by Biggs (2003), teaching domains devised Danielson (1996) and examples proposed by UCLES (2011)

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.1 Design and participants of the study

The study was conducted at a language university in Hanoi The target participants were pre-service teachers who are third-year students The two research questions are “to what extent do the TEFL-majored pre-service teachers at the language university in Hanoi know about the achievement standards required for Vietnamese students?” and “to what extent are the TEFL-majored pre-service teachers at at the language university in Hanoi’s teaching practices aligned to the standards?” These questions aim to find out third-year pre-service teachers’ level of awareness and alignment to two set of achievement standards, shortly named the CEFR-V and the Dispatch 5333

Regarding the first research question, the research was divided into two phases

In the first phase, 100 pre-service teachers filled in a questionnaire to answer questions about their awareness of CEFR-V and achievement standards stated in Dispatch 5333 in teaching The participants include 15% from fast track programme and 85% from mainstream one to represent the real population of students in fast track programme and those from mainstream one In the second phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted, 10 participants answered questions about factors affecting their awareness These pre-service teachers were chosen from the previous phase Specifically, the author chose pre-service teachers who have low level of awareness in phase 1 to participate in phase 2

In terms of the second research question, there are also two phases In the first one, participants were asked to answer questions in questionnaires about the alignment of their practices to standards In the second phrase, another 10 pre-service teachers were chosen from the results of the questionnaire (among them, about 5 students have moderate awareness about standards and others have high awareness about standards), and then were interviewed with semi-structured structures to find out more detail how they align standards in their teaching practice and challenges in adopting standards

3.2 Instruments

3.2.1 Questionnaire:

3.2.1 Description and content of the questionnaire

A questionnaire was utilized because of its time, effort and finance saving nature (Dörnyei, 2003) and its ability to gather data on a large scale (Brown, 2000) Besides, the

open-ended items are expected to offer more in-depth information from the “participants’ own emic perspectives” (Brown, 2009, p 205)

After designing the questionnaire, I proceeded a pilot test for 10 students in the third year of the English Education Department From the feedback and results of the pilot, I have made corrections for the final questionnaire For instance, after the pilot, 5 out of 10 are not familiar with the name “CEFR”, they only know the framework with the name “A1-C2” or “6 levels of English” Thus, a brief information about the detail of framework was added to the final questionnaire The final questionnaire contains three main parts The first part is to obtain personal information of participants to contact some

of them for the later interviews The second part devotes to investigate the self-reflection

of pre-service teachers on their awareness and application of CEFR and CEFR-V in teaching The third part is to collect data about the self-reflection of pre-service teachers

on the awareness and application of achievement standards stated in Dispatch

5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET, 2014 The questionnaire was built in the form of

self-assessment questionnaire There are 8 multiple choice questions Specifically, 2 questions (1 and 5) are about the familiarity of pre-service teachers with CEFR-V and achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 and 6 questions (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8) assess the application of these standards in 3 domains, namely Planning/Preparation, Instruction and Professional Development stated in the literature Each question from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 are further classified into sub questions based on the selected literature into teachers’ activities which can be aligned to the two surveyed standards Table 2 of variables can illustrate the questionnaire:

Table 2 Domains and contents of questions in the questionnaire

Question 2 Domain 1: Planning/Preparation CEFR-V alignment in lessons’

planning and preparation

Question 3 Domain 2: Instruction CEFR-V alignment in giving

Question 6 Domain 1: Planning/Preparation Achievement standards in Dispatch

5333 alignment in lessons’ planning and preparation

Question 7 Domain 2: Instruction Achievement standards in Dispatch

5333 alignment in giving instruction

Question 8 Domain 3: Professional

Development

Achievement standards in Dispatch

5333 alignment in professional development

The questions in the survey use the Likert scale regarding familiarity, frequency and agreement These questions are graded from low to high respectively, from 1 to 5 points for questions about familiarity (Question 1 and 5) and from 1 to 6 points for questions about frequency (questions 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8)

3.2.2 The reliability of the questionnaire

In an attempt to check the quality of the questionnaire after designing it, besides piloting it with students, Cronbach's Alpha, “a measure of the internal consistency of a test or scale” (Tavakol and Dennick, 2011, p.53), was also used to analyze the reliability

of the questionnaire after data collection The results show that all questions were reliable,

with Cronbach’s Alpha above 0.8, which met the standard indice of 0.6 upwards for high questionnaire reliability (Nunally, 1967) The relatively high Cronbach's Alpha indicates the accuracy of the data collected in all the questions (Table 3) (for more detail about reliability of each item in a question, see appendix 4)

Table 3 Cronbach's Alpha (Reliability Statistics) of the questions

The questionnaire only asked about the level of awareness and standards alignment, yet did not mention any questions about reasons of low levels of awareness and challenges in aligning Therefore, questions in semi-structured interviews would support the findings of the questionnaire by asking for more information about mentioned aspects

The questions in the interviews were designed based on Danielson (1996)’s domains of teaching practices, which can be used for SBT

1) Why are you not familiar at all/slightly familiar/somewhat familiar with V/achievement standards in Dispatch 5333?

CEFR-2) What difficulties do you have when you use the CEFR-V and standards for English education stated in Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET, 2014 in planning and preparation for a lesson?

3) What difficulties do you have when you use CEFR-V and standards for English education stated in Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET, 2014 in giving instruction?

4) What difficulties do you have when you use CEFR-V and standards for English education stated in Dispatch 5333/BGDĐT-GDTrH, MOET, 2014 in professional development?

3.3 Data collection

The questionnaire was administered in the online form (the traditional paper form cannot be conducted due to the Coronavirus lockdowns), allowing the participants to be more flexible in the time and place to respond First, the questionnaire was created by using Google Form After that, it was posted on the university page on Facebook By consenting to participate, participants received give-away gifts that are studying materials and slide templates though emails This collecting stage lasted for about 2 weeks and 100 responses were collected

Each interview was conducted in Vietnamese for the optimization of obtaining information and captured by two digital recorders and the researcher’s notes to avoid technological problems The interviews were conducted via Messenger and Zalo calls due

to Coronavirus lockdowns This information collection was conducted after analyzing the data from questionnaires All the interviews were transcribed in their entirety to avoid

“premature judgments” (Seidman, 2006, p 115) associated with selective transcription

To ensure the transcripts’ accuracy, first they were proofreaded against the two recorders and the field notes After that, these Vietnamese responses were translated into English and then the English versions were emailed to interviewees for validation prior to being used in this research

3.4 Data analysis

All closed-ended responses from the survey were typed into the SPSS software Then, descriptive statistics including mean, mode, median and standard deviation were calculated for each item on the questionnaire since these combined values provide a fairly comprehensive description (Field, 2009) The next stage was visualizing the data into meaningful charts and tables, finding out the meaning of the data, making inferences based on the information collected

As regards the interviews, this study used thematic content analysis which has been adapted from Glaser and Strauss’ ‘grounded theory’ approach and from various works on content analysis (Babbie 1979; Berg 1989; Fox 1982; Glaser & Strauss 1967 as cited in Burnard, 1991) Transcripts were read and as many headings as necessary were written down to describe all areas of the content The ‘headings’ or ‘category system’ should account for almost all of the interview data This stage is known as ‘open coding’ (Berg, 1989 as cited in Burnard, 1991) An example of this kind of coding is found in table 4 below:

Table 4: Examples for open coding

Interview transcript

(Vietnamese)

Interview transcript (English)

Open coding

Em cho rằng việc em không

biết nhiều về CEFR-V là vì

em gần như không được nói

về CEFR-V trong trường

CEFR thì có Em chỉ biết

chút về CEFR-V vì em nghĩ

nó bắt nguồn từ CEFR

I suppose the reason why I

do not know quite a little about CEFR-V is that CEFR-

V does not appear in coursebooks or lectures I know a little bit about CEFR-V because I think it derives from CEFR which is mentioned in coursebooks

Know quite a little about CEFR-V because CEFR-V does not appear in coursebooks or lectures CEFR is mentioned in coursebooks

Em nghĩ chúng em cần nhận

được nhiều góp ý của giáo

I think we need more lecturers’ feedback about

Need more lecturers’ feedback about standards

viên về cách dùng các tiêu

chuẩn này trong lúc

micro-teaching hơn, nếu không em

alignment during teaching

micro-Afterwards, categories were devised Coloured highlighting pens were used here

to distinguish between each piece of the transcript allocated to a category It can be illustrated as in table 5 below

Table 5: Examples of categories and colouring

Know quite a little about CEFR-V

because CEFR-V does not appear in

coursebooks or lectures CEFR is

mentioned in coursebooks

Reasons for low levels of awareness about CEFR-V

Red

Need more lecturers’ feedback about

standards alignment during

micro-teaching

Challenges in standards alignment into teaching practice

Green

All of the categories were filed together for direct reference when writing up the findings The writing up process began There are 2 main parts: Reasons for low levels of awareness about two standards and challenges in standards alignment Main trends of the information were found and supported by examples/open coding from the previous steps, alongside references to the literature “In this way, the ‘findings’ section of the research becomes both a presentation of the findings and a comparison of those findings with previous work” (Burnard,1991, p 464)

Summary:

This chapter has justified the research methodology of the study by starting with presenting the research settings and participants After that, information about two instruments (questionnaire and semi-structured interviews), data collection and data analysis has also been discussed

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion 4.1.Findings from the Questionnaire Responses

4.1.1 Awareness and alignment of CEFR-V in teaching

Figure 3 Pre-service teachers’ familiarity with CEFR and CEFR-V

The above table gives information about the extent to which pre-service teachers know about CEFR and CEFR-V in English teaching Overall, the majority of the sample (92%) is familiar with the CEFR and CEFR-V Students who are moderately familiar and somewhat familiar with the frameworks have the highest figures, at 39% and 34% respectively A mere 8% of pedagogical third year students at this language university

do not know or only slightly know about the frameworks

Table 6 Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their familiarity

with CEFR and CEFR-V

Familiarity with the CEFR and CEFR-V in language teaching

Table 7 Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their familiarity

with CEFR and CEFR-V

Familiarity with the CEFR and CEFR-V in language teaching

< 1, which means that there is just a small difference between answers in each group It seems that students in the fast track program and students with higher GPA are more familiar with the frameworks, yet the differences are not obvious

4.1.1.2 Alignment of CEFR-V in teaching

a Alignment of CEFR-V in planning and preparation for lessons

Table 8 Alignment of CEFR-V in planning and preparation for lessons

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std

Deviation

I know the level of my class before

I describe the expected level of students

in objectives/targets based on CEFR-V 100 1.00 6.00 4.29 1.28

I understand a language feature (e.g

tense) progresses from A1 to B1 CEFR

levels to work out what is suitable to

teach my students

I check whether key contents of lessons

are suitable for my students’ targeted

level in CEFR-V or not

I use the targeted CEFR-V level

descriptions to design extra materials

(videos, reading texts ) for lessons

I use language sample examples at the

same CEFR-V level as my class to make

practice exercises

The median (=4.19) shows that pre-service teachers often use CEFR-V to plan a

lesson Among those mentioned examples for the first domain, planning and preparation,

quite a lot of students know the level of their class before designing objectives/targets

(M=4.29, SD=1,35), often describe the expected level of students in objectives/targets

based on CEFR-V (M=4.29, SD= 1.28), and then check whether key contents of lessons

are suitable for my students’ targeted level in CEFR-V or not (M=4.28, SD=1.34) Others

related to understanding across levels, using CEFR-V in materials designing and using

authentic materials are implemented less often Overall, the participants have quite often

experience in using the CEFR for lesson planning and preparation, but the high standard

deviations indicated that there was a striking discrepancy among them

b Alignment of CEFR-V in instruction

Table 9 Alignment of CEFR-V in instruction

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std Deviation

I use CEFR-V to explain new

grammar rules or vocabulary for

I use CEFR-V can-do

statements/descriptions about topics,

vocabulary, grammar to create

appropriate contexts for students’

level to produce (write or speak)

English

I design home assignments for

I give feedback based on

students/course’ targeted CEFR-V

and the close levels

I design marking criteria based on

the student/course’s targeted

V can-do statements/descriptions to instruct students to do practice has the lowest mean

(M=3.65, SD=1.17)

c Alignment of CEFR-V in professional development

Table 10 Alignment of CEFR-V in professional development

Deviation

I reflect on how effective I used

I read more books about how to apply

I talk with my fellow student teachers

Pre-service teachers do not draw too much attention on applying CEFR-V in their

professional development because the median is just 3.36 Overall, only sometimes, they

would care to improve the quality of their CEFR-V alignment They prefer self-reflect on

how effective I used CEFR-V level descriptions in lessons (M=3.49, SD=1,14) than

reading books (M=3.22, SD= 1.27) or talking with fellow student teachers (M=3.38,

SD=1.14) Among three domains of teaching practice, professional development has the

lowest means In order to explain for it, participants were asked in interviews and the

findings were written in the section “Findings from the Semi-structured interviews”

4.1.2 Awareness and alignment of achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 in teaching

4.1.2.1 Awareness of achievement standards in Dispatch 5333

Note: 1: Not at all familiar

Table 11 Comparison between pre-service teachers’ mode of study and their familiarity

with achievement standards in Dispatch 5333

Familiarity with achievement standards in Dispatch 5333 in language teaching