MINISTRY OF EDUC ATION AND TRAINING NGUYEN TAT THANH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TAT THANH Tran Xuan Uyen Uyen TEACHER PREPARATION IN IMPLEMENTING EMI IN TEACHING SCIENCE DISCIPLINES FOR YOUNG LEARNERS MASTER PROJECT IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Ho Chi Minh City - 2024 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING NGUYEN TAT THANH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TAT THANH Tran Xuan Uyen Uyen TEACHER PREPARATION IN IMPLEMENTING EMI IN TEACHING SCIENCE DISCIPLINES FOR YOUNG LEARNERS Major: English Linguistics Major Code: 8220201 MASTER PROJECT IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS INSTRUCTOR: ASSOC. TRUONG VIEN, PHD. Ho Chi Minh City - 2024 i TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. V LIST OF TABLES.
vi LIST OF FIGURES. vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY.8 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY.4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.2 DEFINITION OF EMI.1 The reason why educators and policy makers decide to boost EMI in education.3 EMI IN GLOBAL CONTEXT.4 EMI IN VIETNAM CONTEXT.5 TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON UTILIZING EMI IN SCIENCE TEACHING AND LEARNING.6 CHALLENGES OF EMI IMPLEMENTATION IN SCIENCE TEACHING AND LEARNING.7 PROFESSIONAL TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT FOR EMI TEACHERS IN SCIENTIFIC FIELDS.8 TEACHERS’ PREPARATION FOR EMI CLASSES.9 EFL YOUNG LEARNERS.1 Defining young learners.2 Characteristics of EFL young learners.3 EFL young learners of this project research.11 GAPS OF RESEARCH.12 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER. 23 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.5 DATA COLLECTION AND PROCEDURE.7 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER.
29 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.2 DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY INSTRUCTORS IN SCIENCE TEACHING THROUGH EMI.3 INSTRUCTORS’ PREPAREDNESS FOR ENGLISH PROFICIENCY.4 TEACHERS’ PREPAREDNESS FOR CONTENT IN ENGLISH.5 INSTRUCTORS’ PREPARATION FOR TEACHING METHODOLOGY.6 COMPARISION OF 3 SUBCLUSTERS.7 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER. 44 CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS.2 SUMMARY OF THE MAIN FINDINGS.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH.5 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES. 71 iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I, Tran Xuan Uyen Uyen, hereby certify that this project entitled TEACHER PREPARATION IN IMPLEMENTING EMI IN TEACHING SCIENCE DISCIPLINES FOR YOUNG LEARNERS Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of English Linguistics issued by Nguyen Tat Thanh University is my own work under the supervision of Associate Professor Truong Vien. This project has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution.
Date: Signature of the student Tran Xuan Uyen Uyen iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With affection and appreciation, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to those whose contributions served as great assistance during my Master journey at Nguyen Tat Thanli University (NTTU). First and foremost, I am grateful to my supervisors, Associate Professor Truong Vien and Dr. Ho Van Han, for theừ thoughtful guidance, useful advice, and insightful feedback. I especially owe in-depth gratitude to my primary supervisor, Associate Professor Truong Vien, for his enthusiasm, critical evaluative comments in inspiring and guiding me, proofreading and careful corrections on my writings.
Without his guidance and assistance, this project would not have been accomplished. In addition, I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thanh Lan (MA), my English teacher for her academic support from the very beginning of my Master journey at NTTU with insightful feedback, proofreading effort and meticulous line-by-line corrections on my writings. I am especially indebted to many friends who are teachers/participants for their effort and time in enthusiastically and patiently answering the research questionnaire so that I am able to complete this project.
Last but not least, wholehearted thanks go out to my husband and my four-year-old son for encouraging, supporting me and being my source of inspiration and motivation to pursue this Master study. I also dedicate this work to my parents and sister for then good care and endless love during this time and always. V ABSTRACT Recent years have witnessed an increasing study interest in the implementation of English as Medium of Instruction in teaching science subjects for young learners. This empirical study aims to figure out how content instructors in Vietnam overcome academic-related challenges to prepare for their lessons for young students since this lower level of education has received meticulous attention from researchers and experts for the topic.
With the participation of 30 content teachers in scientific fields, the study adopts a quantitative research design to collect and analyze data with the support of the latest version Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings indicate that instructors believe preparation for content taught in English is the most essential to EMI success, following by preparation for English competency and pedagogical strategies, respectively. Concerning the most challenging obstacles in teaching science knowledge for young students using English, a qualified EMI teacher has to put meticulous time and effort not only to prepare for content knowledge but also look for proper instructional strategies to ensure the success of EMI classes. Finally, the research findings based on participants’ insights may shed light through implications on various aspects of EMI that could trigger interests from content teachers, practitioners, researchers and policy makers for further studies, developments and adaptations in terms of content knowledge and education pedagogy.
vi LIST OF TABLES Table Name Page 3.1 Items categorized in the questionnaire 25 3.2 The reliability of the pilot and post questionnane 28 3.3 Mean score interpretation in terms of scale level 29 4.1 Descriptive statistics of Teachers’ Challenges when applying 30 EMI in teaching scientific disciplines for young learners 4.2 Mean score of Teachers’ Preparation for English Proficiency 34 4.3 Descriptive statistics of Teachers’ Preparation for English 35 Proficiency 4.4 Mean score of Teachers’Preparation for Content in English 37 4.5 Descriptive Statistics of Teachers’ Preparation for Content in 37 English 4.6 Mean score of Teachers’ Preparation for EMI Teaching 40 Methodology 4.7 Descriptive statistics of Teachers’ Preparation for EMI 40 Teaching Methodology 4.8 Mean scores of 3 subclusters 43 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Name Page 4.1 Mean score of Teachers’Preparation for English Proficiency 36 Mean score of Teachers’ Preparation for Content in English 39 4.2 Mean score of Teachers’ Preparation for EMI Teaching 42 Methodology viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS • EMI English as a Medium of Instruction • CLIL Content and Language Integrated Learning • EFL/ESL English as a Foreign or Second Language • ELT English Language Teaching • PTD Professional Training and Development • LI First Language • PD Professional Development • TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages • SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides a brief over-view about the background of the study as well as problem statements. Following that, the objectives, the scope and significance of the research are thoroughly presented. Last, the chapter finishes with the structure of the project.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY It is widely accepted that English has been considered as the most common international language and has been utilized as a lingua franca in various fields such as business, science, entertaimnent and so forth over the past 2 decades. Many people could realize that we have entered a period when the ability to use this language fluently has become an advantage, especially for those who have a desire to advance in some certain professions including business and education.
Thus, the issue of teaching and learning English has gained more attention and popularity than ever before. The last decades have witnessed the swift development and improvement of state-of- the-art teclmologies in conununication. Thanks to this speedy and effortless way to get in touch with each other, numerous international collaborations and partnerships have been established in various areas. Obviously, there must be a prerequisite for global conununication to be smoothly functioning: a common language understood by everybody.
Thus, English has become this lingua franca, a bridging language in science, economics and technology. This is the reason for English Medium of Instruction to become a heating phenomenon in the Outer and Expanding Circles of English - Kacluu’s Tluee Concentric Circles Model of English in the mid-1980s. In EMI contexts, rather than a method of teaching and learning the language itself, English is considered a tool for teaching subject knowledge to non-native speakers of the language (Macaro, 2018). In fact, in then study, Oh and Lee (2010) determined that EMI classes at university level did help students exposed to natural and authentic language resulting in 2 the higher level of English proficiency so that they could be able to compete on the international market.
In addition, EMI in higher education becoming more common all over the world also helped boost university rankings and internationalization.3 PROBLEM STATEMENTS As everything is taken into consideration, there is no escapmg the fact that English tends to be an outstanding and favorable option for teaching academic subjects in many corners of the world and in Vietnam as well. Although EMI has been universally studied, it seems that many Vietnamese researchers have mostly focused on the effectiveness of EMI programs in general as well as teachers and students’ awareness of the potential effects of such programs on science teaching and learning, not on instructors’ preparation. Moreover, research about EMI often take place in the tertiary context rather than in lower level of education, namely high schools, middle schools, elementary schools and kindergartens, resulting in the deficiency of overall knowledge on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) for researchers and people concerning about this domain. Hence, in order to contribute to the body of the EMI literature, this study would like to investigate some aspects of using EMI to teach science subjects for young learners in Ho Chi Minh city.
Hopefully, with the results and suggestions from the project, linguists and educators can enliance EMI success in Vietnam educational reform and are able to catch up with the continuous development of society and dynamic process of globalization.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The ultimate goals of this project are to: i. Examine how content instructors prepare for teaching science knowledge to young students through EMI. Explore what the challenges EMI instructors often encounter when teaching subject matters through English are.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS With respect to the mentioned points, this exploratory study aims to answer the two following research questions: RQ1: Wliat challenges do the EFL teachers encounter in preparing for EMI science classes? RQ2: What should EFL teachers do to prepare EMI lessons for teaching sciences to young learners? 1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY Even though EMI has been widely studied by many researchers, it seems that most of the studies on EMI have paid much of their attention to whether teachers and students are aware of the potential effects of applying EMI m science teaching, not to how instructors prepare to teach their science classes. In a similar fashion, most researches in Vietnam have extensively focused on the use of EMI in teaching higher education such as undergraduate and graduate levels; yet, just few studies have been carried out on other levels of education.
Due to the lack of sufficient researches on the EMI preparation from instructors’ side to conduct lessons for scientific fields in lower levels of education including kindergartens and elementary schools, there is a need to further explore and systematically investigate how teachers, both non-native and native, prepare to efficiently teach scientific knowledge to young non-native students. Thus, this research may shed light on the multifaceted reality in which content teachers have to deal with while preparing themselves and their classes in science teaching. Hopefully, this research will play a key role in raising awareness for conducting further research so that educators can make informed decisions about the implicit and explicit teaching approaches to successfully contribute to the significance of teacher collaboration in supporting content teachers’ language teaching strategies and instructional language use in EMI.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The study was conducted at Sunrise Bilingual Kindergarten, Stemhouse Education centers and Kids&Us educational centers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with the participation of 30 content teachers who are currently teaching scientific subjects in, namely Math, Physics, Biology, Technology and the like.