VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY ~ HO cm MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ~~~050505 NGUYEN LIEN HUONG HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR COMMUNICATIVELY A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) SUPERVISOR ¥. - ,• • • - ~ - - - " " ' --- NGuYEN VrtT THU, MA. - HO CHI MINH CITY, 2005 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR COMMUNICATIVELY In terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master's Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, August, 2005 NGUYEN LIEN HVdNG RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Nguyen Lien Huong, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the Uni versity 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 the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan , or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City , August, 2005 NGUYEN LIEN HVdNG ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Viet Thu, my thesis supervisor, for her guidance and support given to me over the lengthy period of the researching and writing of this thesis. My special thanks to all the colleagues at Nong Lam University who helped me with the data collection for the study; all the students participating in the study for their cooperation ; and all my friends for their support, friendship and enjoyable company.
Finally, I am happy to acknowledge the contribution of my parents , my brother, and my husband, who were an indispensable source of support and encouragement throughout the study. ABSTRACT Grammar is not emphasized in Communicative Approach and applying Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to teaching grammar is surely a big challenge to Vietnamese teachers of English. However, grammar is obligatory in Nong Lam University, so I felt that there is a great need to find a compromise between the Communicative Approach and the real situation of learning and teaching at Nong Lam University. Data collected through two survey questionnaires from both students and teachers were then presented in tables.
Results revealed that (1) teachers faces a lot of difficulties applying Communicative Approach to teaching such as big classes, different backgrounds or passive students and that (2) students are not familiar with communicative activities, which is also an obstacle to CLT applying procedure. However, the results from the real situation showed that communicative activities did have a good effect on students and their test scores. Therefore, some CLT activities are also recommended in this thesis in the hope that they can help teachers make students' studying more enjoyable and interesting. ABBREVIA nONS NLU: Nong Lam University CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EGI: explicit grammar instruction CA: Communicative Approach TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.
The aims of the study 3 3. Overview of the thesis 3 4. Method of the study 4 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1 Definiti on of grammar 5 1.2 Wh y gramm ar ? 6 1.3 Ba sic principle s for grammar teaching 7 1.4 Language and communication 10 1.5 The relationship between grammar and communica tion 13 2. Grammar and communication in different teaching methods 14 2.2 Grammar-translation method 15 2.4 The audio -lingual method 16 2.7 Affective-humanistic Approach 19 2.8 Comprehension-based Approach 19 2.
Commun icative Lan guage Teaching 20 3.1 Definition and nature of CLT 21 3.2 Principles of CLT 23 3.3 The roles of the teach er and students in comm unicati ve classroom. 1 The role of the teacher 25 3.2 The role of the students 26 3.4 Communicative classroom orga nization 27 3.5 Some communicati ve activity types in cla ssroom 30 4. Prior rese ar ch on the study 33 Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGy 37 1. Rese arch design : 37 2.3 Collection of data 39 Chapter 4: RESULTS 41 1.
Re sults of the questionn aires 41 1.1 Que stionna ire for students 41 1.2 Questionnaire for te achers 46 2. Results from the re al situa tion 52 Chapter 5: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIO NS 58 1. 1 How to sol ve the problems 61 2.2 How to teach grammar communicative ly 63 2.1 What is a go od present ati on? 63 2.1 Using deductive approach 63 2.2 Using inductive approach 66 2.2 Practice techniqu es 74 2.2 Written producti on 83 2.4 The way to de velop a communicative task 84 Chapter 6: CONCLUSION 88 LIST OF TABLES Table I: Studen ts' aim in studying English 41 Table 2: Students' perception on grammar 42 Table 3: Students' motivation 42 Table 4: Ways to present new grammatical rules 42 Table 5: Students' most wanted contexts 43 Table 6: Ways to practi ce the new structure 43 Table 7: Ways to cor rect stude nts' errors 44 Table 8: Seating arrangements 44 Table 9: A satisfy ing grammar class 45 Table 10: Teachers' expe rience of teaching 46 Table 11: Teachers' knowl edge of English teaching methods 46 Table 12: Teachers' p erception on gramma r 47 Table 13: Teachers' ways to present new grammatical rules 47 Table 14: Teachers ' most wanted contexts 47 Table 15: Teachers' ways to practice the new structure 48 Table 16: Teachers' ways to correct students' errors 48 Table 17: Seatin g arran gements 49 Table 18: Teaching aids 49 Table 19: Percentage of teachers' English use in class 49 Table 20: Teachers ' diffi culties 50 Table 21: Teachers ' opinions about the realizability 50 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. The problem It has been accepted without doubt for many years that communicative competence is the proper aim for language teaching.
However, can we achieve this aim without the aid of grammar? The answer is 'no' since the first component of communicative competence is "knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language' (Richards & Rodgers, 1992:9-10). Nevertheless, there has been some discussion in recent years of the question: Do we have to have 'grammar exercises'? Isn't it better for learners to absorb the rules intuitively through communicative activities than to be taught through special exercises explicitly aimed at teaching grammar? In fact, a learning process aiming for a 'certain target behavior' does not necessarily mean that the proce ss itself should be composed totally of imitations of that behavior. In other words, ability to communicate effectively is probably not attained most quickly or efficiently through 'pure communication practice' in the classroom- not, at least, within the framework of a formal course of study. In 'natural learning' - such as the learning of a first language by a child- the amount of time and moti vation devoted to learning is so great that there is no necessity for conscious planning of the learning process because sooner or later the 'material is absorbed'.
However, in a formal course of study, there is very much less time available and often less motivation, which means that learning time has to be organized for 'optimum efficiency'. This means it is necessary to prepare an 'organized, balanced plan' of classroom teaching through which the learners will be enabled to spend some of their time concentrating on mastering one or more of the components of the target language on their way of acquiring it as a whole. P, 1988: 4-5) At Nong Lam University (University of Agriculture and Forestry), grammar is obligatory for students who do not major in English. However, as far as I'm concerned, most of them do not like studying grammar as well as English in general.
In my opinion, there are 3 main reasons. Firstly, their background in English is not very good. Most of them are from remote areas or provinces outside Ho Chi Minh City and had studied English for only 3 years at high school before entering the university. Therefore, they find English difficult and hard to master.
Secondly, their motivation is rather low. They consider English as a secondary subject and so their only goal is to pass the exam. Most of them will stay home unless the teacher calls the roll everyday. In short, they have not been aware of the importance of English in their study and jobs in the future.
Last but not least, the way of teaching here, frankly speaking, is not very interesting, not interesting enough to attract students to the class. This is due to the fact that the amount of knowledge supposed to convey in a period is rather big. Therefore, students do not have time to do extra exercises, to play games or work in pairs or groups. A typical lesson will start with long grammar explanation and end in exhausting practice exercises, which bores not only the students but also the teachers.
Moreover, teachers also find it difficult to apply the Communicative Approach to students in Nong Lam University. First , it is not easy at all to control large classes which may consist of from forty to fifty or even sixty each. Second, some teachers and most of students regard communicative activities as forms of entertainment which are not suitable for the serious business of language learning. They feel that these activities do not concern with students' errors and therefore are a waste of time.
I myself was once 2 asked by my students to continue teaching when I was having them practice the Present Continuous tense by miming some actions. Finally, applying communicative approach surely requires lots of time and effort from teachers, which not every teacher has nowadays. Because of this way of teaching, which focuses primarily on grammar and grammar exercises, students' listening , as well as speaking skills, is very disappointing, they cannot even speak or understand a very simple English sentence spoken at normal speed. Moreover, due to their limited vocabulary and poor listening skill, students always require teachers to present and explain new grammatical rules in Vietnamese and they themselves rarely use English in class, which causes the situation to come from bad to worse.
The aim of the study Therefore, this thesis aims to: a. identify the situation of English learning and teaching as one main subject and difficulties teachers have to face at Nong Lam university b. find the most suitable way to apply Communicative Approach to teaching grammar in Nong Lam c. collect and design some classroom activities that can be used to help students learn and enjoy learning at the same time 3.
Overview of the thesis The thesis consists of 6 chapters : Chapter 1 identifies the problems In teaching grammar at Nong Lam University (NLU) and provides the aims of the thesis. Chapter 2 presents a review of literature relevant to this study in two sections: (l) theoretical background and (2) related studies. 3 Chapter 3 describes the methodology employed in the study. It includes a presentation of the research questions , research design and a description of the subjects, instruments and collection procedures.
Chapter 4 discusses and analyzes the findings. Chapter 5 gives some suggestions about how to make grammar lessons more communicative and how to reduce the existing problems NLU. Chapter 6 draws conclusions about the implications of the findings and suggests an approach to teaching grammar to non-major students at NLU. Method of the study This is a qualitative research which is carried out based on the following steps: a.
Designing and distributing 2 questionnaires for students and teachers consisting of 10 and 12 questions respectively about ways to present and practice grammar b. Designing a pilot test to evaluate students' improvement after two classes with grammar-translation and communicative methods.