1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------------------- BÙI THỊ THU HÀ AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DIFFICULTIES THAT TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FACE IN USING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK 8 AT LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NGHE AN Những khó khăn mà giáo viên và học sinh gặp phải trong việc sử dụng sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 8 ở trung học cơ sở Nghệ An. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------------------- BÙI THỊ THU HÀ AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DIFFICULTIES THAT TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FACE IN USING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK 8 AT LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NGHE AN Những khó khăn mà giáo viên và học sinh gặp phải trong việc sử dụng sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 8 ở trung học cơ sở Nghệ An. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Assoc.Ngô Đình Phương HANOI – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATION MOET: Ministry of Education and Training CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 7 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURES Figure 1: The students‟ self-evaluation on their English level Figure 2: Students‟ self-reported frequency of preparing their new lesson Figure 3: Students‟ perception of the difficult level of the new English textbook 8 Figure 4: The most difficult language skill TABLES Table 1: Difficulties in listening skill Table 2: Difficulties in speaking skill Table 3: Difficult in reading skill Table 4: Difficulties in writing skill Table 5: Difficult level of language focus part Table 6: Students‟ opinion about working in pairs or groups LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .iii LIST OF ABBREVIATION……………………………………………………….iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .v TABLE OF CONTENTS.vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Aims and significance of the study.
Scope of the study. Method of the study. Design of the study .3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Textbook and the role of the textbook in the classroom.
What is a textbook?. The role of the textbook in a language program. CLT and its implementation in the classroom in Vietnam. What is CLT?.
Implementation of CLT in the Vietnamese classroom .9 CHAPTER TWO: AN OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN VIETNAM AND INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK 8 2. An overview of English language teaching in Vietnam. Description of the new English textbook 8.12 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Aims of the new English textbook 8.
Specific objectives of the new English textbook 8. Approach to textbook development. Underlying teaching approach of the new English textbook 8. Overall layout of the new English textbook 8.
Overall layout of each unit.17 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 3. Subjects of the study. Data collection instruments .20 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4. Reports of the result collected by means of questionnaire.
The students‟ self-evaluation on their English level. The students‟ self-reported frequency of preparing their new lesson. The Students‟ perception of the difficult level of the new English textbook 8……………………………………………………………. The students‟ difficulties in learning the language skills and language knowledge in the new textbook English 8.
The most difficult language skill. The difficulties in listening skill. The difficulties in speaking skill……………………………………25 4. The difficulties in reading skill…………………………………….
The difficulties in writing skill………………………………………27 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The difficulties in language focus……………………………………27 4.7: Students‟ opinion about working in pairs/groups to learn in class…. Reports of the result collected by means of the interview and classroom observation………………………………………………………. The interview: The teachers‟ difficulties in using the new English textbook 8………….
The classroom observation: How the textbook is actually taught and learnt in class…………………. Discussion and some implications to improve the problems that teachers and students face in using the new English textbook 8. Some implications to improve the problems that teachers and students face in using the new English textbook 8. Implications for teachers……………………………………………….
Implications for students………………………………………………. Implications for policy makers or designers……………………………36 4.37 PART III: CONCLUSION 1. Limitations of the study and Suggestions for further study .40 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Questionnaire for students Appendix 2: Questions for teachers Appendix 3: Reading in Unit 6 Appendix 4: Writing in Unit 6, Speaking and Listening in Unit 13 Appendix 5: Language focus in Unit 13 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English is a basic compulsory subject in the curriculum of secondary education.
It is expected to help students access knowledge, advanced technology, and a variety of world cultures. Moreover, English at secondary school plays an important part in students‟ intellectual development, especially language mentality. Therefore, along with other subjects, English helps to contribute to students‟ personal foundation and development. In Vietnam, a new series of textbooks for lower secondary schools ( English 6,7,8,9) was introduced in 2002 by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) with aim to teach students communicative skills in English.
The four skills ( Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) are promoted in the new textbook ( new method). While teachers and students in Vietnam are still familiar with old method ( only reading and writing) and students come to class with an expectation that teachers say and students listen and write. The new textbook presents many difficulties that need to be overcome by teachers and students. In reality, Vietnamese teachers show great interest in new methodologies but they still continue teaching in their own way and using traditional method in their classes because they fell constrained to implement communicative teaching in their classrooms for many reasons ( Le, 2007).
Teachers‟ English proficiency is low, classes are large, the furnishing and other facilities are basic and only low levels of support can be provided in terms of materials, libraries and advisory services. They often require teachers to spend more time doing additional preparatory work (Le, 2007). Beside that, the majority of students learn English just to pass the examinations and currently the two most important English examinations in Vietnam are the school final examination and the university entrance examination and neither of them has a listening and speaking component. Hence, students do not have obvious communicative need.
All they only need a sufficient and good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of the target language to pass exams. On the other hand, in this series of textbook, the content of each unit is too long so both teachers and students have not enough time to finish them ( An investigation of policy makers in Ministry of Training and Education, 2006). And some topics such as Festivals, Wonders of LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 the world are not familiar to students, some listening texts are too long and difficult. From that both teachers and students also have some difficulties in using this new textbook.
As a teacher of English at lower secondary school, I would like to find out some difficulties that both teachers and students have faced with when using the new textbook English 8. Once the difficulties are found out, solutions to overcome will be suggested. Aims and significance of the study The major aims of the study are: - to investigate the difficulties that teachers and students are facing with in using the new English textbook 8. - to offer some solutions to overcome the difficulties.
The study carried out with the hope to be of some help to improve the effectiveness of English teaching and learning at lower secondary school. Scope of the study This study focused on the difficulties that students and teachers have in using English textbook 8 at three lower secondary schools in Nghe An: Hung Chinh, Le Mao and Hung Binh. Thus, it is necessarily limited in scope and its results should not be generalized to other parts of Vietnam. Research questions In order to achieve the aims of the study, my research questions are: (1) What kinds of difficulties do students have when they learn the new English textbook 8? (2) What kinds of difficulties do lower secondary school teachers have when they use the new English textbook 8 to teach their students? (3) What are the solutions to overcome those difficulties? 5.
Method of the study In order to collect sufficient and relevant data for the study, three research techniques were employed: - Conducting a survey questionnaire to investigate students‟ ideas about their difficulties they have in English learning as well as their attitudes towards the new English textbook 8. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 13 - Interviewing teachers to clarify issues raised in their teaching with the new English textbook 8 to their students. - Observing classes to find out how the new English textbook 8 is employed, and to get information of both teacher‟s methods of teaching and students‟ ways of learning in classroom. Design of the study The study consists of three parts: introduction, development and conclusion.
Part one provides the overview of the study including the rationale, objectives of the study, scope of the study, research questions, methodology and the structure of the study. Part two is the major part of the thesis. It is divided into four chapters. Chapter one reviews theoretical background, some concepts on the textbook and its roles in the classroom, CLT and its implementation in the classroom in Vietnam.
Chapter two introduces the overview of English language teaching in Vietnam and the new English textbook 8. Chapter three presents the methodology of the study. Chapter four discuses the findings of the study and some implications are also offered in this chapter. Part three is the conclusion.
It presents the conclusion and limitations of the study and suggestions for further study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 14 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter aims to provide a theoretical base to develop an operational framework for the study. It first explains the notion of the textbook and the role of the textbook in the classroom. It then moves on to discuss the Communicative language teaching (CLT) which is a teaching approach intended in the textbook in the school classroom in Vietnam.
Textbook and the role of the textbook in the classroom. What is a textbook? Textbook is the material that both teachers and students need to use in their teaching and learning, it is a backbone for classroom activity and serves the needs of a large group of teachers. According to Penny Ur (1996), a textbook is a book which each teacher and each student has a copy, and which is followed systematically as the basic for a language course. Furthermore, some people define that textbook is “ a book used in schools or colleges for the formal study of a subject”.net/cumculum/glossary.aspx) While others define “ it is a manual of instruction or standard book in any branch of study.
They are produced according to the demand of the educational institutions”.org/wiki/textbook). The role of the textbook in a language program. Until now, the role of the textbook in language teaching program has been studied by many educators and researchers and each of them has developed their own concepts and ideas as following: According to Prabhu (1987), textbooks are fully specified materials available as textbook packages which typically consist of a student‟s book, a teacher‟s book, a workbook and some or all of the following components: a test booklet, audio tapes or compact discs for listening comprehension and pronunciation work, video tapes and guides, grammar book. Textbook materials play a very important part in language teaching and learning.