ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my profound gratitude for all the blessings that I have received as a doctoral student at Hue University of Foreign Languages. I wish to send my deep thank to Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Van Phuoc, Associate Professor, Dr. Truong Vien, Associate Professor, Dr.
Le Pham Hoai Huong, Dr. Truong Bach Le, Dr. Pham Hoa Hiep, Dr. Phan Quynh Như, Dr.
Nguyen Ho Hoang Thuy from University of Foreign Languages, Hue University, Associate Professor, Dr. Ton Nu My Nhat from Quynhon University, Associate Professor, Dr. Le Van Canh from Hanoi National University, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Vu from Hoa Sen University and Associate Professor, Dr.
Le Van Long from Danang University for all the valuable feedback and advice during my doctoral study. My heartfelt appreciation goes to my two supervisors, Associate Professor, Dr. Pham Thi Hong Nhung and Dr. Ton Nu Nhu Huong for their professionalism, patience, reference materials, continuous support and guidance throughout the years of academic work.
Their thorough and immediate feedback, profound insights, professional support, dedication and devotion have given me admiration, respect and affection. Without their invaluable support, this thesis is far from completion. My special thanks go to my late parents for their advice, love and care that have guided me to further my learning and fulfil my dual responsibility throughout my walks of life. My thanks go to my sister, Doan Thuy Hong for the updated books I need for my exploration and to primary teachers and many others who have helped me in different ways.
I am thankful to my husband, Doan Van Hung, and my two children for their support, love and care during the journey. i luan an ABSTRACT Nowadays, early English education has become one of the increasing demands in ASEAN nations. In Vietnam, English has been decided to be become a compulsory subject to third graders upwards and optional downwards at schools since 2020 while formal primary English language teacher education has remained scarce at universities and colleges. As teaching vocabulary to language learners, especially to young language learners, has been proved to be critical to their language acquisition, the overall aim of this research is; therefore, to investigate Vietnamese EFL teachers‘ perceptions and their practice of teaching vocabulary in elementary school settings in four provinces in Central Vietnam.
To answer the research questions, the investigation employed a quantitative and qualitative approach through a questionnaire among 206 primary teachers in Central Vietnam, 20 videotaped observations of 20 full class visits and in-depth interviews with the teachers to explore their perceptions and assess their teaching practice. After comparison and contrast of the observation and the questionnaire data were made, a few existing peculiarities were further examined to verify teacher interview data. The triangulated data results are surprisingly revealing in many essential aspects of vocabulary instruction, ranging from selecting vocabulary, teaching vocabulary directly and indirectly, explaining vocabulary meanings, teaching vocabulary through skills in various teaching phases in class. Hopefully, the findings of the study have provided an insightful understanding of vocabulary teaching practices in the primary school settings in Vietnam.
From these empirical findings, relevant implications are suggested for better vocabulary instruction to young learners in Vietnam. ii luan an TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .II TABLE OF CONTENTS. III LIST OF FIGURES. VI LIST OF TABLES.
VI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. BACKGROUND OF PRIMARY ENGLISH EDUCATION IN ASIA AND IN VIETNAM. STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS. DEFINITIONS OF THE KEY TERMS.
Perceptions of teaching vocabulary to YLLs. Practice of teaching vocabulary to YLLs. YOUNG LANGUAGE LEARNERS‘ CHARACTERISTICS. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING.
Vygotsky’s guidelines in child language development. Child first language acquisition and learning. Child foreign language learning. FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING APPROACHES, METHODS AND TECHNIQUES FOR YLLS.
CHILD FOREIGN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY LEARNING AND TEACHING. The importance of vocabulary in early foreign language learning. Factors influencing young learners’ vocabulary learning. Selecting vocabulary for instruction .23 iii luan an 2.
Direct and indirect teaching. Explaining vocabulary meanings. Developing vocabulary through skills for communication. Conducting vocabulary teaching procedures.
PREVIOUS STUDIES ON TEACHING VOCABULARY TO YOUNG LANGUAGE LEARNERS. THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER. RESEARCH PROCEDURE AND ADMINISTRATION. RESEARCH RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY.70 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
TEACHERS‘ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHING VOCABULARY TO YLLS. Teachers’ perceptions of choices of vocabulary to be taught. Teachers’ perceptions of direct and indirect teaching. Teachers’ perceptions of explaining word meanings.
Teachers’ perceptions of developing vocabulary through skills for communication. Teachers’ perceptions of vocabulary teaching procedures. TEACHERS‘ PRACTICE OF TEACHING VOCABULARY TO YLLS. Teachers’ practices of selecting vocabulary to teach.
Teachers’ use of vocabulary teaching techniques .89 iv luan an 4. Teachers’ practices of explaining vocabulary meanings. Teachers’ practices of developing vocabulary through skills for communication100 4. Teachers’ practices of vocabulary teaching procedures.
SUMMARY OF THE KEY FINDINGS. Teachers’ perceptions of teaching vocabulary to YLLs. Teachers’ practice of teaching vocabulary to YLLs. To primary teachers.
To teacher trainers at universities and colleges. To the designers of the currently used textbooks in Vietnam. To school authorities and educational administrators. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY .143 SEMI- INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: .146 APPENDIX 2: RAW DATA .147 v luan an LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Child foreign language learning p.2 Gradual release of responsibility for vocabulary p. 35 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Practices of multidimensional vocabulary instruction p.2 A brief description of the survey participants p.3 Timeline for collecting data p.4 Timeline for processing data p.5 A summary of data collection methods p.6 The coding scheme of the questionnaire p.7 The coding scheme of the observation transcripts p.8 Cronbach‘s alpha coefficients of the components in the p.1 Teachers‘ perceptions of choices of vocabulary to be p.2 Teachers‘ perceptions of techniques used to teach p.3 Teachers‘ perceptions of explaining word meanings p.4 Teachers‘ perceptions of teaching YLLs vocabulary to p. 80 develop skills for communication Table 4.5 Teachers‘ perceptions of vocabulary teaching procedures p. 83 vi luan an LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations CEFR The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages CLT Communicative Language Teaching EFL English as a Foreign Language L1 Native Language or Mother Tongue L2 Second Language FL Foreign Language MOET Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam PELT Primary English Learning and Teaching PPP Presentation – Practice – Production SD Standard Deviation TEYL Teaching English to Young Learners TPR Total Physical Response YLLs Young Language Learners vii luan an CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter introduces the current situation of teaching and learning English at primary school level in Asia and Vietnam.
Research rationale, questions and research objetives of the current study are presented. The organization of the thesis is described. Background of primary English education in Asia and in Vietnam A brief review of the background of English learning and teaching in Asia and in Vietnam highlights an urgent need to investigate into primary English learning and teaching (PELT). In Asia, the fact that the scope of English learners has been expanded to elementary pupils has brought both opportunities and challenges for not only learners, teachers but teacher trainers, researchers, educational administrators and policy makers as well.
The short-and-long-term benefits of early English learning are that pupils learning English can not only get to know about the target language, learn more about their counterparts‘ daily life from modern English speaking countries for intercultural enrichment but also may developmentally improve their personal growth or get access to further educational opportunities for a bright future with parental expectations and teacher support. This direction in PELT receives warm welcome from young learners, parents, teachers, researchers and foreign language planners and policy makers in many countries such as in China, Japan and Singapore (Silver, et al., 2001) or in other Asian countries like Hong Kong, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Japan, India, Vietnam, Iran, and other English speaking countries namely Finland, Israel, Russia, Norway, France, Switzerland (Spolsky & Moon, 2012). Besides, the local and global concerns that attracted much attention from many researchers in the early 2000s were ―At what age should young language learners (YLLs) start learning a foreign language for optimal results?‖, 1 luan an ―What are the influential factors in early foreign language learning?‖ or ―Why are foreign languages important to young learners?‖ (Nikolov, 2002; Moon, 2005). These interests have gradually shifted into many theoretical and practical areas such as ―How should YLLs be instructed?‖ or ―How should YLLs be assessed?‖ (Halliwell, 1992; Nikolov, 2009; McKay, 2008; Wray & Medwell, 2008; Garton, et al.
Simultaneously, in those studies, many significant gaps in formal training in teaching methodology as well as teaching practice at young ages have been illuminated because primary teacher preparation or provision, textbook designing, testing, assessment, evaluation, language policy development and planning are not in pace with the public learning demands. As part of the above Asian mosaic, Vietnam is not an exception. From the historical perspectives, PELT has undergone through some historic milestones (Do Huy Thinh, 1996; Le Van Canh, 2008). First, when Vietnam‘s membership in ASEAN in 1995, the young age range for piloting English programs started with third graders upwards at experimental primary schools in big cities the mid-1900s and flourished nationwide considerably, initially from public institutes to private sectors, urban localities and even to rural areas.
Along with the significant increase in the population, the next revolutionary turning point was the modification of the language policy at primary levels articulated in the official declaration of National Foreign Language Project 2020, at Decision 1400/QD-TTg, 2008. The ultimate goal of primary foreign language education is to equip every Vietnamese primary pupil with basic English communicative competence at A1 level in the Common European Reference Framework so that they can become global citizens in world integration (MOET, 2014). Throughout such above historic milestones, a lot of Vietnamese and foreign teachers and applied linguists have drawn attention to young English education through their empirical studies in Vietnamese primary school settings. For example, at a macro planning level, Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa and Nguyen Quoc Tuan (2008) featured the overview picture of Vietnamese early English learning in the model of 2 luan an Language-in-Education policy and planning for merits and demerits.
From another exploratory case study of the policy implementation two types of primary schools, private and public, Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa (2011) highlighted a number of the language planning issues of teacher supply, methods, materials, training, and professional development in order to boost the effectiveness of the English language policy implementation while from top-down and bottom-up angles, Pham Thi Hong Nhung (2013, 2015), in her reports about a large-scale investigation into primary teachers in Hue province, penetrated into both positive impacts of the government primary language policy on teacher training and professional improvement and the obstacles or factors that hinder primary English teachers from their effective practice for quality enhancement. With the similar aspects but in different research sites, Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang (2012) interpreted early English education in rural areas on the framework of Language in Education policy. Beside the insiders‘ perspectives, several international researchers were also interested in PELT in Vietnam. For example, Hayes (2008) carried out an empirical study on early English education in the context of Vietnam regarding learning time per week, the capacity of MOET and curriculum and textbook developers to produce a curriculum, books and assessment framework which will make a meaningful difference to children‘s educational experiences, the current textbook quality, the capacity of teachers and schools as a whole to implement the proposed changes, the training capacity to introduce the changes, the impact of changes to the primary English curriculum on the secondary English curriculum, the impact of changes in the primary English curriculum.
Similarly, Baldauf, et al.