CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: EVALUATION OF THE NEW TEXTBOOK “TIẾNG ANH 6” AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO PUT IT IN EFFECTIVE USE in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City September 16, 2002 TRẦN THỊ MỸ i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, TRẦN THỊ MỸ, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City September 16, 2002 TRẦN THỊ MỸ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Mr.
Đỗ Huy Thịnh, Ph. who has read, discussed and contributed valuable comments and suggestions to my thesis at various points in its development in an attempt to ensure that I make sense most of the time. I would also like to thank the English-language teachers in Kiến Thiết, Lê Lợi & Lê Quí Đôn middle schools in the third district of Ho Chi Minh City and the teachers in Nguyễn Gia Thiều school in Tân Bình District for their opinions on the new English textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6”. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all the members in my family for their help and moral support while I was doing this thesis.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. MOET The Ministry of Education and Training 2. BAVE The Business Alliance for Vietnamese Education iv ABSTRACT The educational innovation has become great interest to Vietnamese people for a few recent years, especially since the beginning of this school year 2002-2003, when the new curriculae and the new textbooks for grade 1 and grade 6 are widely applied in the whole country. A lot of people, particularly the ones who have children going to grade 1 and grade 6, worry if the new approaches are suitable for their children or not, if the new textbooks are worth using, etc.
Moreover, all the teachers in primary and middle schools pay a lot of attention to the new curriculae and the new textbooks because they are the ones who directly take charge of the demands of the new teaching approaches. Teachers invest a lot of time to explore the books used in their class so as to master them and find out the best way to the teaching and learning. In addition, a lot of articles written by educationists, a lot of interviews for the authorities and the textbooks’ authors carried out by reporters appeared in newspapers and magazines in order to discuss the new textbooks. Along with the interest of the community, the purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the new textbook “TIENG ANH 6” to find out whether it can be adopted in the current learning and teaching situation, to explore the potential obstacles students and teachers encounter when using the new textbook and, finally, to present some suggestions on how to put the new book in effective use.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. I RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS. III LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .V TABLE OF CONTENTS. VI CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.2 STATEMENT OF PURPOSE.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .5 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS .10 ORGANIZATION OF THE REMAINDER OF THE STUDY .9 CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.1 EVALUATION OF A TEXTBOOK .1 Why do we evaluate a material?.2 How do we evaluate a textbook? .2 POTENTIAL OBSTACLES IN ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING .1 Heavy dependence on textbooks .2 The non-motivation and psychology of the students .3 The physical conditions of teaching and learning .4 The teaching method.5 The teachers’ personality.3 COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING.1 The development of Communicative Language Teaching .3 Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching .4 The role of textbooks.5 The roles of teachers and students.6 Why should students learn a language through the communicative approach?.7 Input and intake .27 CHAPTER 3 OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH TEACHING IN VIETNAM .29 vi CHAPTER 4 DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.1 Analysis and evaluation of the new textbook .39 CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS .1 THE ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF THE NEW TEXTBOOK .1 The impressionistic overview of the new textbook .2 The in-depth analysis of Units 6, 7 and 8 .2 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE OLD TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH 6” AND THE NEW ONE “TIẾNG ANH 6”.3 ADVANTAGES AND POTENTIAL OBSTACLES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING THE NEW TEXTBOOK .1 The teachers’ opinions.2 The students’ difficulties .3 The students’ parents’ complaint.4 The opinions of Ms Nguyeãn Haïnh Dung, one of the authors of the book .5 The opinions of Mr.
Ñaëng Höõu Lieâm – an English web-teacher in the third district – on the structure of the book, the distribution of time allotted and the lesson format .6 The interviews with Mr. Huỳnh Công Minh, the Vice-Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City (carried out by the weekly magazine Giáo Dục & Sáng Tạo numbers 120/2001 & 147/2002) about the application of the new textbooks.74 CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 Recommendations to the publisher and the editor.2 Implications for teaching .3 Suggestions to students and students’ parents.111 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VIETNAMESE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN MIDDLE SCHOOLS.113 APPENDIX B: BANG CÂU HOI DANH CHO HOC SINH LOP 6 .118 APPENDIX C: LESSON PLANNING SHEET FOR “TIENG ANH 6”- UNIT ONE, PERIOD 1 .120 APPENDIX D: LESSON PLANNING SHEET FOR “TIENG ANH 6”- UNIT ONE, PERIOD 2 .122 APPENDIX E: LESSON PLANNING SHEET FOR “TIENG ANH 6”- UNIT ONE, PERIOD 3 .125 APPENDIX F: LESSON PLANNING SHEET FOR “TIENG ANH 6”- UNIT ONE, PERIOD 4 .131 vii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background From the 1940s up till 1975, in South Vietnam, French and English were taught as the main foreign languages. Apart from English, during the decades of 1940s and 1950s, under the French influence, the English textbook “L’Anglais Vivant” was employed to teach middle school students. Then in the 1960s, beneath the American influence, “Let’s Learn English”, and afterwards, “English for Today” were officially used in the South of Vietnam.
After the national reunification in 1975, English textbooks – “English - Grades 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12”, written by Vietnamese authors – have been employed in the whole country up to the present time. Nowadays, facing students’ new demands of learning English more communicatively, the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET) has cooperated with the Business Alliance for Vietnamese Education (BAVE) to write new English textbooks for middle school students since 1995. Thus, in 1997, a new textbook, “English for Vietnam – Grade 6” began to be taught as a trial in thirty-four schools in seventeen cities and provinces in the whole country of Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City, this book was piloted in two schools, one in Thủ Đức, HOA LƯ school, and the other in Tân Bình District, NGUYỄN GIA THIỀU school.
Thanks to the BAVE – MOET project, the new textbook “English for Vietnam – Grade 6” has 1 been piloted since 1997; therefore, the book “English for Vietnam – Grade 9” was taught for the first time during the school year 2000 – 2001. In the year 2000, “English for Vietnam – Grade 6” was revised according to the opinions of language researchers as well as to the opinions contributed by teachers who had piloted the book. Finally, the book “English for Vietnam – Grade 6” was divided into two: a textbook and a workbook, and renamed “TIẾNG ANH 6” and “TIẾNG ANH 6 – SÁCH BÀI TẬP”. In the school years 2000 – 2001 and 2001 – 2002, the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” and the workbook “TIẾNG ANH 6 – SÁCH BÀI TẬP” (the first version-2000) were applied in 149 middle schools in eleven districts belonging to eleven cities and provinces (Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, Bắc Ninh, Vĩnh Phúc, Tuyên Quang, Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Ngãi, Kontum, Ho Chi Minh City, Bến Tre, and Bạc Liêu) in the whole country, according to the MOET Decision 2434 dated the eighth of July, 2001.
In Ho Chi Minh City, the book was piloted in all middle schools in the third district. After having the book piloted in two school years, the MOET and the authors revised the book once again, and then the second version of the book “TIẾNG ANH 6” and “TIẾNG ANH 6 – SÁCH BÀI TẬP” has been applied in the whole country since the school year 2002 – 2003. These new textbooks are completely welcome at our school – NGUYỄN GIA THIỀU school. Teachers, students and students’ parents show their great interest in them because of their beautiful forms, new teaching approaches, and carefully-designed listening and speaking activities.
Along with the appreciation for the new textbook, we also see some issues emerging after five years of teaching these new textbooks: the curriculum, the 2 attitudes of students and their parents toward the new approaches of teaching and learning English, and, above all, the teacher’s ability to apply new methodology in teaching a foreign language.2 Statement of Purpose The purpose of this study is to evaluate the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” (including the textbook, the workbook, the teacher’s book, the cassette, the CD-ROM, and ready-made pictures) in order to find out if it can be adopted in the current learning and teaching situation, to explore the potential obstacles that students and teachers encounter when using the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” and finally, to present some suggestions to help them employ the book effectively. The objectives of this study are to investigate: 1. The evaluation of the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” (the whole package). The potential obstacles that students and teachers encounter when using the new textbook.
The implications for teaching and learning the new textbook effectively.3 Research Questions One question guides this study: Is “TIẾNG ANH 6” suitable for use at middle schools? 3 Two subquestions are also addressed: A. What are the potential obstacles in teaching and learning the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” ? B. How can teachers and students use the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” effectively? The study will include a discussion of whether the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” might be suitable to our students, or, in other words, it could meet the students’ demands, and, above all, might be worth using. Further, the discussion will explore if there is anything which should be changed or modified to make the textbook more suitable for the students.4 Significance of the Study The application of the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” in all Vietnamese middle schools from the school year 2002 – 2003 (according to the Resolution numbered 40/2000/QH10 dated the ninth of December, 2000, of the National Assembly on the innovation of middle school education) will certainly affect everyone in the whole community.
Almost each family has at least one child attending the middle school; therefore, a study on the new curriculum in order to find out some suggestions on how to put the new textbook “TIẾNG ANH 6” in effective use is really necessary. In addition, the study might also help English- language teachers in middle schools have a useful insight into the new textbook so that they could understand the nature of the material, master and employ the book effectively.5 Definitions of Terms Ministry of Education and Training (MOET): the government body in charge of education and training of all levels and forms in Vietnam, including foreign language education curriculum and implementation.