Chapter One: Introduction CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION 1. Problems Class time is brief and precious, and the information teachers want to communicate to students is important. However, many language teachers have experienced the frustration of investing endless amounts of energy in their students and getting very little or no response. This often happens in a passive class, where students are unresponsive, reluctant to use English in pair or group work, avoid interacting with the teacher and raising questions in front of the class, or tend to listen and take notes.
Such behavior reflects students’ passive role and their unwillingness to participate in the classroom activities. Obviously, students do not learn a language just by sitting in class, listening to teachers or memorizing prepackaged assignments. In the classroom, they are expected to talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to their past experiences and try to use the target language in real life situations. Students’ participation in class activities is very essential to successful language learning.
Therefore, learning can only happen if students are willing to interact and use the language. In fact, students’ contributions to classroom work depend on many factors, which can have a positive or negative impact on them. This study attempts to explore some factors that hinder students’ participation in classroom activities. 1 Chapter One: Introduction During my five teaching years, I realize that a lot of students are quite willing to attend classes regularly, happy to listen to the teacher’s explanation, but reluctant to speak up.
They do not volunteer to answer my questions, even the simpliest questions, nor do they express their views, or raise questions. To them, learning a language is merely a passive reception. From my personal experience, I realize that some of my students seem unable to join class activities because of their lack of language competence. They have difficulty interacting with the teacher and other classmates in the class because they cannot express themselves in the target language.
Some students understand my questions, know the answers and are able to produce the answers, but they avoid speaking and would rather remain silent. I feel that there is something that keeps them from participating in class activities. I talked about my problem to my colleagues at the University of Economics and realized that they also had to cope with the same problem in their classes. I am happy to know that all of them are interested in this issue and want to know why students are passive in the classroom.
With their encouragement and help, I try to find out some of the factors that prevent economics students from participating in the classroom activities with the view of finding ways to enhance students’ interaction in the class. Some research has demonstrated that students’ success of language learning is affected by various factors such as students’ language 2 Chapter One: Introduction competence (Burns and Joyce cited in Nunan [31]), students’ learning styles (Tyacke [41] ), affective factors such as emotion, feeling, mood or attitude (Arnold [2]) or teaching method (Yu Cheng & Banya [46]). This thesis is an attempt to investigate negative factors influencing students’ learning process. Introduction of the English Language Program at HoChiMinh City University of Economics At the University of Economics, English is students’ compulsory subject.
The English language program is available at two levels called Stage One (first two years of study, and often referred to as the General Studies Stage) and Stage Two (the final two or three years of study, often called the Specific Studies Stage). English courses in English aim to help students to learn English as a tool for communication in their study. That is, students can read books in their own fields, popular business newspapers and magazines to widen and upgrade their knowledge. In Stage One, students study Basic Business English to familiarize themselves with the kind of English widely used in the business world.
Students learn to communicate in a business environment, for example to make a telephone call, write a memo, a letter of enquiries and so on. 3 Chapter One: Introduction In Stage Two, students are expected to choose an English for Specific Purpose course suitable for their majors, eg. English for Foreign Trade, English for Business Administration, English for Accounting. These courses are designed to enhance students’ academic reading skills to prepare for their future jobs or further education.
This study focuses on students who study English in Stage One as in this stage, students are supposed to acquire all the four language skills, have a lot of chance to use the target language in varieties of classroom activities, and it is easy to observe their behaviors during class-hours and estimate the rate of participation of students in class activities. Aims of the study The purpose of this study is to investigate some causes of students’ passiveness in English classrooms at the University of Economics. Investigation of causes of students’ passiveness will give insight in students’ motivation to learn, their learning styles and other factors that affect the success of language learning. Most importantly, the analysis of the data acquired will serve as basis for suggestions for improving the situations in the class and the effect of learning of individual students.
Rationale Scharle and Szaboù [37] state that the efficiency of teaching depends a lot on learners. The students’ contributions to class activities are crucial for 4 Chapter One: Introduction a successful class. Teachers who were trained at colleges or universities are equipped with more theories than practice. After graduation, they have to cope with many kinds of students with various learning styles.
To their disappointment, they often realize while they devote their energy to teaching, their students seem to be uncooperative with them. They are passive in the sense that they are dependent on the teacher, waiting to be told what to do. Therefore, teachers must be aware of their students’ problems and other factors influencing the teaching and learning process. This is the main reason why this research attempts to investigate the causes of students’ passiveness and find some effective ways to make students more active in the class.
Their increasing participation in class activities will significantly improve learning quality. Structure of the thesis Following this chapter, Chapter Two reviews some relevant literature to the thesis. Chapter Three describes the methodology of the thesis with the specific research questions, the participants, the instruments and the research procedures. Chapter Four presents the findings of the investigation and discusses them.
Chapter Five concludes the study with some suggestions to teachers when dealing with students’ passiveness. The limitation of the thesis and the future research are also mentioned in the last chapter. 5 Chapter Two: Literature Review CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW In order to understand the major concerns and results of the present study, first of all, it is necessary to define what is meant by “passive students”, then to review some relevant literature on the factors influencing students’ learning process in the class: (a) communicative competence, (b) learning styles, (c) teaching styles and (d) affective factors. Teaching methods used widely by Vietnamese teachers are also mentioned in this chapter in order to see if these factors bring about students’ reticence in class.
Definition of passive learners David Nunan [31:75] defines passive learners as learners who “spend most learning time copying and reproducing language written down by others. They learn how to communicate in model and predictable situations, but they don’t learn how to respond appropriately in novel and authentic communicative situations”. According to Nunan, passive learners do not learn how to use language creatively themselves, they only practice patterns provided by teachers, textbooks and tapes, they learn facts about language rather than how to use it communicatively to express ideas, to talk and write to other people, to read and listen to real language, and to learn how to cooperate with others. Creativity is a basic characteristic of competence (Chomsky, 1965 cited 6 Chapter Two: Literature Review in Richards, Platt & Platt [34]).
Clearly, passive learners fail to show this characteristic. Factors influencing the learning process 2. Communicative competence The ultimate aim of language learning process is to achieve communicative competence. Communicative competence is defined by Richards, Platt & Platt [34:65] as “the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom”.
Communicative competence includes: a knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language. b knowledge of rules of speaking. c knowing how to use and respond to different types of SPEECH ACT. d knowing how to use language appropriately.
Richards, Platt & Platt [34:65] When students wishes to communicate with others, they not only have knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, but also recognize the social setting, their relationship to the other person, and the types of language that can be used for a particular occasion. Similarly, according to Bachman [3:84], communicative language ability is described as “consisting of both knowledge, or competence, and the capacity for implementing, or executing that competence in appropriate, 7 Chapter Two: Literature Review contextualized communicative language use”. The framework of communicative language ability he proposes includes three components: 1. Language competence comprises a set of specific knowledge components that are utilized in communication via language.
It can be classified into two types: a. organizational competence includes grammatical knowledge such as the knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and phonology/graphology, and textual knowledge such as rules of cohesion and coherence, and knowledge of rhetorical organization. pragmatic competence consists of “illocutionary competence”, and “sociolinguistic competence”. Strategic competence is the mental capacity for implementing the components of language competence in contextualized communicative language use.
Psychophysiological mechanism refers to the neurological and psychological processes involved in the actual execution of language as a physical phenomenon (sound, light) Canale and Swain (1980, cited in Richards & Rodgers [33:71]) distinguish four dimensions of communicative competence: 1. Grammatical competence concerns with grammatical and lexical capacity. Sociolinguistic competence refers to an understanding of the social context in which communication takes place. Discourse competence refers to the interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and of how 8 Chapter Two: Literature Review meaning is represented in relationship to the entire discourse or text.
Strategic competence refers to the copying strategies that communicator’s employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication These four dimensions are used widely recently, with which the term communicative approach is often associated. It seems reasonable to say that the goal of communicative language teaching (CLT) is to make learners acquire communicative competence. If it is so, then learners have to cover all components that the model proposed here suggests. This is too demanding and challenging for any learner.
CLT emphasized on the ability to execute one’s communicative needs rather than on the complete knowledge of language use for communication. If CLT’s goal should be the acquisition of communicative competence in the target language, this is highly demanding for any learner to achieve and does not seem achievable. Therefore, if we need to set up an accessible goal of language teaching, we must first assess what kind and level of communicative competence will be sufficient for specific learners in specific situations. In summary, the ultimate goal of language learning is communication.
Apparently, the lack of communicative competence discourages students in their learning process. This can lead to noninvolvement in class activities. 9 Chapter Two: Literature Review 2. Learning styles In this part, learning styles, which account for individual differences in learning, are described.
Learning styles can be defined, identified and classified in a number of different ways. Definition In recent years, there has been an interest in research on learning styles. Different experts in the field of language teaching and learning define learning styles in many ways.