VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN KIỀU ANH AN INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURE-RELATED CONTENTS REPRESENTED IN LISTENING AND READING SECTIONS IN VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOL EFL TEXTBOOKS (Tìm hiểu về các nội dung liên quan đến văn hóa được thể hiện ở các bài nghe hiểu và đọc hiểu trong sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh thí điểm dành cho bậc Trung học phổ thông ở Việt Nam) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Language Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Hanoi, 2022 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN KIỀU ANH AN INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURE-RELATED CONTENTS REPRESENTED IN LISTENING AND READING SECTIONS IN VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOL EFL TEXTBOOKS (Tìm hiểu về các nội dung liên quan đến văn hóa được thể hiện ở các bài nghe hiểu và đọc hiểu trong sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh thí điểm dành cho bậc Trung học phổ thông ở Việt Nam) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Language Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, PhD Hanoi, 2022 DECLARATION I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled “An investigation into culture- related contents represented in listening and reading sections in Vietnamese high school EFL textbooks” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi is my own study, and that it has not been submitted for any degree to any other universities or institutions. Where other sources of information have been used, they have been identified and acknowledged. Signature Nguyễn Kiều Anh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This M.A thesis would not be accomplished without a lot of essential and sincere help from a number of people. First and foremost, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my respectable supervisor, Dr.
Huynh Anh Tuan for his everlasting and sympathetic encouragement and critical feedback. His guidance and suggestions have greatly inspired me and make my thesis be materialized. I would also like to acknowledge all the lecturers of Faculty of Post-graduate Studies at ULIS, VNU for their useful knowledge transferrence and enthusiatic support during the course and the process of completing the thesis. My sincere thanks should also be for my dear colleagues at Phu Chan Secondary school because of their help and encouragement when I encountered difficulties in handling the pressure caused by the job and the studying at the same time.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my beloved family especially my parents, my husband, and my children for their love, care and tolerance throughout my studying and completion of this thesis. ii ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the culture-related categories and themes represented in the listening and reading sections in Tiếng Anh 10, Tiếng Anh 11, and Tiếng Anh 12 of the ten-year curriculum for Vietnamese upper secondary schools and analyze how these categories and themes are distributed according to Cultural Iceberg Model (proposed by Edward T. Qualitative method accompanied by quantitative analysis are mainly exploited to examine the cultural contents in the textbooks. The results revealed that Universal culture, Vietnamese culture and International culture were highlighted over the other sources of culture while there was quite little Target culture.
Another noteworthy fact about this study is that Deep or Invisible culture gained much higher than Surface or Visible culture. In addition, under Deep culture, the themes “Beliefs and Values” and “Attitudes and Norms” are more emphasized than other invisible themes. The thesis is also hoped to be some help to English teachers to include cultural contents in their lessons to make them more engaging and to English textbook designers and authors who may find some hints to improve their works in the future. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ICC : Intercultural Communicative Competence SC : Source Culture VC : Vietnamese Culture TC : Target Culture IC : International Target Culture ICI : Intercultural Interaction UC : Universality across Culture EFL : English as a Foreign Language ELT : English Language Teaching MOET : Ministry of Education and Training iv LIST OF TABLES Table 3.
The structure of ONE unit of the target textbooks. Units and topics in the textbooks. Cultural and culture-free sections of one unit in the textbooks. Numbers of culture-related aspects to be analyzed.
Analytical framework of the study. Frequency and percentage of cultural sources in the textbooks. Cultural themes in each unit. Frequency and percentage of cultural themes in the textbooks.
The cultural themes found in the units in the textbooks .43 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. Kachru‟s categorization of countries in which English is used. Culture: An iceberg Metaphor. Cultural Iceberg - Adapted from Edward T.
Hall‟s Cultural Iceberg Model (1976). An example of Textbook selection with cultural information.30 vi TABLE CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iv LIST OF TABLES .v LIST OF FIGURES.
vi TABLE CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study. Aims and objectives of the study.
Aims of the study. Objectives of the study. The research questions. Scope of the study.
Method of the study. Significance of the study. Structure of the thesis .5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Culture and language.
Culture and language. The role of textbooks in language teaching and learning. Classification of cultural contents in EFL textbooks. Sources of culture.
Cultural themes: An Iceberg Model of Culture. Some related studies. Research instrument: Document analysis .31 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Sources of culture in the textbooks.
The distribution of cultural sources on the Iceberg Model of culture. Cultural sources in the textbooks. The distribution of cultural sources on the Iceberg Model of Culture. Summary of main findings.
Limitations of the study. Implications and recommendations. Suggestions for the further research. I viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale of carrying out this study, its aims and objectives as well as its scope, the significance, the method and the structure of the thesis.
Rationale of the study There is no doubt that English which is nowadays regarded as an international language plays a very crucial role for all people to intergrate with the globalized world. However, one of the foremost barriers which prevent a great number of English language learners from having intercultural communication competence is the cultural misunderstanding or in other words, many English language learners lack knowledge about their own culture as well as other cultures. Allwright and Bailey (1991) stated that learning a new language involves the learning of the new culture and “if we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which students attaches the wrong meaning” (Politzer, 1959, p. Culture in English language teaching materials has been one of issues of the most current interest among language education researchers and practitioners.
Language learners will engage interestingly and authentically with the language use of the native-speaking community if language teachers attach cultural contents in their language teaching lessons. Obviously, both teachers and students are interested in culture and wish to practise using foreign languages along with their cultural knowledge. Therefore, evaluating the cultural contents in EFL textbooks is becoming an issue of great concern. Just as with the English textbooks, some scholars have proposed criteria to evaluate the cultural contents, (Byram et al., 1994; Cunningsworth, 1995; Huhn, 1978; Kilickaya, 2004; Reimann, 2009; Risager, 1991; Cotazzi and Jin, 1999; Mckay, 2000; and others, cited in Yasemin & reyhan, 2011: 161).
1 In Vietnam, the great influence of culture on teaching and learning English has now attracted more attention from those concern. Many studies have been conducted on this subject, for instance, Phan & Nguyen, 2008; Nguyen et al, 2013; Tran, 2015; Nguyen, 2013; Trinh, 2016; Hanh, 2018, etc. Experienced as being an English learner in the past and an English teacher at present, I myself find that when communicating with English native speakers, although knowing what the speakers are saying, most of students cannot understand them completely due to the limitted knowledge of English speaking cultures and therefore, the students often fail to communicate for a long time with the foreigners. Obviously, the English learners can understand native speakers‟ sayings and writings in a wide range of contexts if they are supplied the knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and the culture-related contents at the same time.
It is the fact that in Vietnam, many studies have been conducted to investigate the cultural contents of ELT materials but among them, there are few studies on cultural contents in “Tiếng Anh 10”, “Tiếng Anh 11”, and “Tiếng Anh 12” which are the nationally official materials to teach English for high school students. To be more detailed, little attention has been paid to the listening and reading sections of the textbooks whereas it is expected that the listening tracks and the reading passages tend to convey more cultural contents than other ones. Realizing the importance of culture in English teaching and learning, especially through the materials containing the cultural contents, I decided to choose the topic, namely, “An investigation into culture-related contents represented in listening and reading sections in Vietnamese high school EFL textbooks” for my minor thesis. Aims and objectives of the study 1.
Aims of the study The study aims to investigate the culture-related contents represented in the listening and reading sections of Vietnamese high school EFL textbooks. It is expected that the outcome of the research will be some of help to English learners to find themselves more interested in learning English and promote their intercultural 2 communicative competence through the culture-included lessons deliberately prepared by their English teachers. In addition, to the English textbook designers and authors, it is hoped that they may find some hints for the improvement of their future works. Objectives of the study The above stated aim of the study is specified in the following two objectives 1) identify the cultural sources represented in listening and reading sections in the series of the textbook Tiếng Anh 10, Tiếng Anh 11 and Tiếng Anh 12 in Ten-year English Curriculum.
2) explore the distribution of these cultural sources on Cultural Iceberg Model proposed by Edward T. The research questions To obtain the above-mentioned aims, two reasearch questions are stated as the followings: 1/ What cultural sources are represented in listening and reading sections in the series of the textbook Tiếng Anh 10, Tiếng Anh 11 and Tiếng Anh 12 in Ten-year English Curriculum? 2/ How are these cultural sources distributed on Edward T. Hall‟s Cultural Iceberg Model (1976)? 1. Scope of the study It is better to study the culture-related contents in all sections of the textbooks to see the whole picture of cultural contents.
However, regarded as input materials, listening and reading sections are believed to contain more cultural contents than other ones. Therefore, the study only works with the cultural contents represented in listening tracks and reading passages to investigate cultural categories, cultural themes and how the distribution of these categories and themes is. To investigate the culture-related contents demonstrated in the textbooks, researchers have applied some frameworks such as cultural sources/categories 3 including, cultural themes, cultural dimensions, cultural iceberg model, etc. Among them, cultural sources, or cultural categories are often said to include Source Culture (SC), Target Culture (TC), International Target Culture (IC) (Cortazzi and Jin, 1999).
Cultural themes are defined as Big “C” and Little “c” culture. Cultural dimensions are identified as the interplay of products, practices, perpectives, communities and persons (Moran, 2001). And Cultural Iceberg Model (created by Hall, 1976 or Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2005) visualizes culture as an iceberg metaphor in which we can see the cultural themes and the location where these themes are situated: surface part or hidden part.
