NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE GRADUATE SECTION IMPROVING THE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR ELEMENTARY ADULT LEARNERS AT THE CENTER FOR FOREIGN STUDIES, NONG LAM UNIVERSITY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Supervisor: DO HUY THINH, Ph. Student: DO CHAU CUC PHUONG HO CHI MINH CITY SEPTEMBER 2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Đỗ Huy Thịnh, whom I owe a great debt of gratitude. His sympathy and invaluable comments have given me confidence and motivation to overcome the family and personal difficulties that I faced in the two years 2004 & 2005.
I am greatly indebted to the organizers of the Master course, the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, the staff members, and all my instructors who have assisted me during the course. I would like to thank the teachers at the Center for Foreign Studies, Nông Lâm University who have offered favorable conditions for my thesis data collection and all the learners of classes of 100A, 100A1, 100A2 at the two annexes Chu Văn An and Tôn Đức Thắng for their helpful responses to the survey questionnaires. My sincere thanks go to my colleagues and my friends, especially Ms. Võ Thị Phương Oanh, Ms.
Phạm Thị Thắm, Ms. Lương Ngọc Phương Anh, Ms. Lê Nguyễn Hồng Vân, Ms. Võ Phước Như Hảo, Ms.
Nguyễn Thị Lan Hương, Mr. Đinh Trường Sinh, Ms Ngô Phan Lan Dung for their support and encouragement in my fulfillment of the thesis. Finally, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my dear father and mother, my sisters and brothers for their love, sacrifice and support. Also I wish to send my thanks to you, the one who is always by my side.
Your encouragement, understanding and great care have lifted me up when I am down. ii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION This thesis is to study the needs for English learning in Vietnam, explore the existing problems and current methodologies in teaching English nowadays, and suggest improvements in methodology. The research is conducted and aimed for teaching English speaking skills for adults at elementary level in the Center for Foreign Studies, Nong Lam University. Rationale English has been the international language for hundreds of years.
In Vietnam, although French and Russian are also popular, English has been the dominant foreign language taught in high schools for long. However, it was not much in use until the country opened up to do business in the world market, marked by the “Doi Moi” policy (Reform policy) in 1986. Since then, Vietnam saw big growths in economy and cultural exchange activities. Vietnam becomes one of the biggest exporters of rice, coffee, pepper, and aqua products.
Up to now, foreign investors have put about USD 34 billion investment in many industries. More and more tourists are visiting Vietnam. Moreover, the country has been exposing itself to the integration and globalization. Vietnam becomes ASEAN member since 1995, APEC member since 1998, and hopefully WTO member in 2006 or early 2007.
Vietnam is the host of many ASEAN events, and 2006 APEC Summit. The economic and cultural integration set a great demand of English communication. People with intermediate English who can understand and communicate basic issues used to be highly appreciated back to ten years ago. Many people landed good jobs because they could speak English.
Nowadays, however, English competence is almost mandatory for anyone who wishes to 1 go to school or work for a company. For students, while English courses are required in most semesters, those with good English skills can benefit from the huge knowledge available English textbooks (especially for high-tech programs), and out there on the internet. English competence is also number one concern for students who wish to go to international schools or study abroad. Working people use English in all kinds of communication, including emails, contracts, documents, meetings, training courses, business trips… Since communication is the most important to management and business, people with better English definitely get more chances to success.
Since the need for English communication just came up and the demanding level has been going up so fast in recent years, a lot of adults find themselves in trouble to keep up with this rapid pace. Compared to young learners, adults face a lot of difficulties in learning a foreign language. Most adults do not have continuous learning. When they go to an English class, they find themselves among many other people with different backgrounds and different pieces of English they pick from work, some books, or some teachers.
To put things together is just as hard as to fix a broken picture. Another problem faced by adult learners is that pronunciation is harder to learn when people get older. Back to their high school time, they did not have good opportunities to study pronunciation in a standard lab like young and teenage learners nowadays. During their school years, they could be provided with a fairly good knowledge of vocabulary, grammar structures and writing but their pronunciation skill seemed to be ignored due to the teaching criteria and system at that time.
When the age is up, it is more and more difficult for them to improve pronunciation because the articulation parts are becoming “hard” and not as “flexible”. 2 In addition, they have found no strategies to compensate for the limited linguistic knowledge in oral communication. Mother tongue dependency is another difficulty. People have used one language for so many years and there is no readiness for another language to come up in mind.
When a learner speaks or writes, usually the sentences come in their native language, and then the sentences are translated to English. With this method of reproduction, adult learners cannot really use the English language. Adult learners are also reported to have psychological problem. They do not have confidence and tend to pull them backwards.
These learners find themselves quite embarrassed in participating in English conversations. They cannot respond readily as they wish. When they are to speak, they cannot associate words with thought or they react very slowly. At the end of the day, most learners passively sit and keep quiet in a corner.
More or less, adult learners are bound by time and energy limit. Unlike young children, they have to work and more things to care for in life. This is blamed to be the reason for a larger number of learners who start so many times but never pass beginners’ level. Since the above mentioned difficulties are known and some of them, e.
“hard” articulation, are hard to improve, a lot of hope is put in finding the right programs at the right language schools. In recent years, learners have more and more options to choose, from low cost to high quality. While common courses offers as low cost as 700.000 VND, premium courses are facilitated with modern projector and lab, comfortable air-conditioned room, where they learn to speak with native speaking teachers and in small groups. For the language schools and centers that choose to offer common courses, course syllabus and teaching methodology are put on more weight to make up 3 for the facility shortcoming.
Most common language centers are set up by universities and high schools, which serve students and working people. Although the courses are open for all ages, most learners are from 20 to 40 years old. Among these centers, Nong Lam University’s Center for Foreign Studies has been known in the past few years for its innovative methodology and diversified syllabus, which is appealing to be chosen for this thesis. Aims of the study The thesis aims to identify problems arising in oral English class built for adult learners at the CFS, Nong Lam University.
In order to do this, a survey will be carried out to explore learners’ experience in learning English, their expectations as well as their personal characteristics. Given the findings, the study will end up with practical solutions to improve the teaching and learning of spoken English for Vietnamese learners, especially those in elementary level. While there are a lot of studies for English-majored issues carried out, it appears that not much consideration has been taken into the field of non- majored English. Also, all the time spending in CFS to teach speaking skills for adult learners, having an empathy with them, the researcher finds it urgent to do something for them.
By investigating the current teaching and learning situation at CFS, the thesis aims to suggest possibilities to improve oral skills for elementary adult learners at Nong Lam University’s Center for Foreign Studies. Overview of the study The thesis includes six main chapters Chapter 1 serves as the introduction of the study, which identifies the problems and provides an overview of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides the background of the study. It describes the learning environment and situation of the adult learners, the learners’ and teachers’ characteristics for an understanding of what to be addressed in later parts.
Chapter 3 reviews the relevant literature. Chapter 4 presents the methodology of the study involving data collection from learners and how the study conducted Chapter 5 processes, analyzes the data collected and discusses the findings Chapter 6 draws a conclusion and provides solutions with recommended techniques, strategies and suggests areas for further research. 5 CHAPTER TWO BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Chapter 2 presents the background information which is essential for an understanding of the problems mentioned in the thesis. The first part is to give an overview on the English course at the Center for Foreign Studies (CFS), Nong Lam University.
The second part is the reflection of the situation of teaching and teaching staff at CFS. The third one provides learners’ profiles, their background knowledge and learning experience. A description of the English course at CFS, Nong Lam university: This section aims at providing sufficient information about the learning condition as well as the state of being of the English course at CFS, so that the study can be tracked with ease. The English training program at CFS consists of many levels from elementary to advance.
Each course lasts 12 weeks, in which the four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing are taught. The objective of the course is to help learners get familiar with all the skills to do the Pre-Toefl and Toefl tests. Also, learners are trained to get the English certificates level A, B. In this thesis, the elementary level is focused because it is the first step to help learners with the right background to get to the advanced level.
Spoken English is one among other 3 compulsory skills which are designed in the teaching syllabus at the center to build the background knowledge of English and to develop the ability to use it in communication. At CFS, the classes at elementary levels are named 100A, 100B. During 12 weeks, learners at the first level have to take 5 consecutive periods of spoken English per week, which means 60 periods of the whole course. 6 By the end of the course, learners of these two classes are expected to be able to carry on daily conversations in simple English, such as how to introduce to each other, how to start or end a conversation, to make offers and request, to call and answer the phone, how to make an invitation.
They are hoped to build more confidence in pronunciation as well to have a background and move on to the next level. Also, learners are required to take the midterm test and final test to check their progress. Teaching Material The main course book to teach spoken English for the 100A and 100B classes is KnowHow by Therese Naber, and Angela Blackwell, Oxford University Press.