4.2.3. Analysis of answers to each question
4.2.3.5. Question 12: About teachers’ knowledge and proficiency
The following chart presents the frequencies of participants’ answers to Question 12 in Questionnaire 2.
7.2
50.4
19.4
3.7 2.9
49.3 50.4
28.6
20.9 30.4
61.9
48.2
55.4
46.4 26.1
16.3
30.9
1.4
25.2 25
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Q 12.1 Q 12.2 Q 12.3 Q 12.4 Q 12.5 Q 12.6
Strongly disagree Disagree
Accept Agree Totally agree
Figure 4.6: Frequencies of answers to Question 12.1 to 12.6
Below are the statistics of mean, mode, standard deviation, minimum and maximum of answers to Question 12.
N Mean
Valid Missing Value Rank Mode S.D. Minimum Maximum Q12.1 134 6 3.694 4 3.0 .9030 2.0 5.0 Q12.2 135 5 3.600 5 3.0 .7936 2.0 5.0 Q12.3 139 1 4.237 1 4.0 .5721 3.0 5.0 Q12.4 139 1 3.511 6 3.0 .5298 3.0 5.0 Q12.5 139 1 4.058 2 4.0 .6678 3.0 5.0 Q12.6 140 0 3.964 3 4.0 .7337 3.0 5.0
Notes: Score scale: (1) Totally agree, (2) Agree, (3) Accept, (4) Disagree, (5) Strongly disagree. (See the questions in Appendix 2)
Table 4.12. Summary of statistics from Question 12
According to the mean value of answers, students oppose quite strongly when “the teacher’s explanations of lessons are rather difficult to understand”
(Question 12.3). It is about the teacher’s ability, but it is also related to the teaching method, and it influences the students’ learning quite seriously. “I think students should make small suggestions to make the teacher pay more attention in teaching the lesson” (Student 4). While student 49 thinks that “Student can ask the teacher to explain the lesson again,” student 85 admits “I’m too afraid to ask questions, so I just sit still and accept the situation.”
On the contrary, the fact that “The teacher’s imparting of knowledge is clear and exact but not lively” (Question 12.4) is tolerated more easily (the mean value of answers is 3.511). Talking about the liveliness in the teacher’s presentation, student 9 comments, “The imparting abilities are different amongst teachers.” However, the harm of being uninteresting is that “Students cannot understand the lessons easily because of sleepiness” (Student 38). The problem seems to be that all teachers want to be interesting and motivating, but not all of them can recognize when they are imparting boringly, and how to improve their performance. As a result, as student 76 reflects, “This happens almost in all subjects.”
The supposition that “The teacher sometimes gives an inexact piece of information or lexical item in the lesson” (Question 12.1) and “The teacher sometimes mispronounces a word” (12.2) are generally viewed by students with sympathetic eyes, but they still require correction and improvement on the part of teachers. The mean values of answers to these two questions are 3.694 and 3.60 respectively.
Response to question 12.1, student 128 commented, “Teachers are human, too. They can make mistakes, but they should not let it happen frequently” (Student 128). Although student 91 thinks that “Students should not try to pick holes in teachers’ coats”, student 10 emphasize the role of teachers’ self-correction: “I accept teachers’ mistakes if he or she recognizes it and correct later.” This sounds simple, but in fact difficult to do that, because the mistake cannot always be recognized. An important experience I heard from some older teachers is that
teachers should check whatever they plan to talk about before hand, and if something has been improvised in the class, it should be checked afterward by the teacher himself.
One of the big problems with Vietnamese students is pronunciation, because in high school, the speaking skill was not emphasized. Maybe that is why student 121 says that “Teachers can have spelling mistakes but not mistakes in Pronunciation.” Although students can be sympathetic, as explained by student 81,
“I can sympathize because the teachers are Vietnamese, too, not native speakers”, the pronunciation mistakes can be accepted very limitedly, as student 93 proposes,
“Mispronouncing once or twice can be accepted, but not repeatedly.”
The voice and hand-writing are important features that affect teachers’
presentation in the class. As we can anticipate, students do not like it if “the teacher has a monotonous voice” (as described in Question 12.5) because “this is English, and it must have proper intonation.” (Student 81), and “the monotonous voice will bore students” (Student 123). The mean value of answers to this question is 4.058, and 80.6% of the participants say that they “disagree” or “strongly disagree” with that phenomenon.
Also, students do not like a poorly organized blackboard with sinuous handwriting (as mentioned in Question 12.6). 71.4 % of the participants chose the answers of “Disagree” and “Strongly disagree”, while the rest “Accept” it. It is natural, if we consider the psychological effects of such a layout. A student is very practical in his suggestion, “Uncouth handwriting is acceptable, but it must be clear, readable, and large enough because nowadays, there are a lot of near-sighted students” (Student 3). A sympathetic student said, “If the students pay a lot of attention, it won’t be a problem” (Student 121), while a difficult one evaluated a bad blackboard’s layout as “totally rejected” (Student 38). The neutral comment is,
“I sympathize but do not accept!” (Student 85)” Meanwhile, student 31 suggests that students should “Inform the teacher so that he or she can change right away.”
However, not all the classes have some students who dare to remind the teacher about his or her handwriting and blackboard organization, even when these things interfere with the teaching’s effectiveness.