VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY,HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE-STUDIES **************************************** ĐẶNG THỊ KIM DUNG GIVING FEEDBACK STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH LITERATURE PRESENTATIONS OF STUDENTS OF PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY (Chiến lược sử dụng hành động ngôn từ trong việc đưa ra thông tin phản hồi cho các bài thuyết trình môn Văn Học Anh của sinh viên trường Đại Học Phương Đông) M. Minor Programme Thesis Linguistics Code: 602215 Hanoi-2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY,HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE-STUDIES **************************************** ĐẶNG THỊ KIM DUNG GIVING FEEDBACK STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH LITERATURE PRESENTATIONS OF STUDENTS OF PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY (Chiến lược sử dụng hành động ngôn từ trong việc đưa ra thông tin phản hồi cho các bài thuyết trình môn Văn Học Anh của sinh viên trường Đại Học Phương Đông) M. Thesis – Program I Linguistics Code: 602215 SUPERVISOR: Assoc. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm, PhD Hanoi-2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENT Declaration Acknowledgements Abstract PART I: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale for the study. Objectives of the study. Scope of the study. Design of the study.3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT.5 Chapter 1: Literature review .1 Teaching English Literature .1 Definition of English literature.2 Why teaching English Literature? .3 Motivating students in English literature lessons…………………….1 Definition of feedback.2 Types of feedback.3 The importance of feedback to students’ improvement .3 Speech act theory .2 Speech Act classifications by Austin and Searle .3 Some prominent speech acts used in giving feedback.1 The speech act of suggesting.2 The speech act of complaining.3 The speech act of criticizing………………………….17 Chapter 2: The study.
The English literature course in Phuong Dong University .20 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Objectives of the course.3 Oral presentations by students.4 Requirements and assessments.1 Data analysis of the questionnaire done by teachers.2 Data analysis of the questionnaire done by students. Teachers should balance their use of different types of feedback.2 Teachers should be more specific in giving feedback.3 Teachers should provide extra suggestions or guidance.41 PART III: CONCLUSION …………………………………………………….42 References Appendices LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world. To learners of English as a foreign language, English literature, though difficult, brings information about the cultural life of the country.
This subject can also facilitate oral discussions and exchanges of opinion among students, which can do a great deal to help students improve their language competence. To teachers of English, Literature is a very versatile subject and it has long been considered one of the most difficult subjects to teach. There is no right or wrong way to teach Literature. And the job of the teacher is, generally believed, not to teach the students but to lead them.
The author of this study has involved in the English teaching career for over 6 years since 2004, among which the last 4 years are spent mostly for studying and teaching English literature for English majors of Phuong Dong University. There is one thing that most teachers agree when teaching this subject: students will learn best when they freely and creatively read and prepare for an oral presentation on English literature themselves before the lessons are actually taught and explained by teachers. However, the skill of students in designing and performing presentations is limited. They are restrained by the lack of social and cultural knowledge, poor analyzing and organizing skill….Thus, teacher feedback is vital to help students avoid mistakes and enhance achievements.
Despite the importance and necessity of teacher feedback, there has been rare research on this issue, even if it is the subject of any study; most of them deal with the matter of corrective feedback and written feedback in writing lessons. Work on oral feedback and especially on immediate oral feedback is quite small in number. In addition, the studies which have been done lack consensus and focus on how and what kind of feedback should teachers use, needless to mention the use of speech acts in feedback giving for literature oral presentation. It appears that what teachers response to students’ oral presentation are based on his or her personal judgments and experience, not on any specific theoretical foundations.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 These reasons above have urged the author, who has been involving in teaching English literature for English majors of Phuong Dong University for 4 years, to investigate this important but somewhat neglected area. In the mean time, the author also hope to offer teachers, who are involving in teaching English literature for English majors of Phuong Dong University , ways to response to students’ oral presentation, especially ways in which speech acts can be used in feedback giving. It is also hoped that this study will show the impacts of teacher feedback on students’ achievement. Objectives of the study The study aims at investigating the use of speech acts by teachers in giving feedback for English Literature presentations of Phuong Dong University fourth year language students.
It is directed to achieve these four purposes: (i) To study the techniques used by teachers when giving feedback for literature oral presentations of fourth year English students in Phuong Dong University: their responding practices, feedback focus, language uses and especially the application of speech acts in feedback giving. (ii) To investigate students’ attitude and opinion on the way they are responded after having finished their presentations (iii) To judge students’ enhancement after receiving feedback from teachers (iv) To offer some recommendations and suggestions for teachers to improve their practice so that their feedback will be effective and useful to students 3. Research questions In order to achieve the goals above, there are four research questions and sub questions raised in the study: (i) What are the strategies used by teachers when giving feedback for English Literature presentations? (ii) What types of speech acts do teachers use when giving feedback? (iii) What are the students’ opinions on the feedback they receive from their teachers? (iv) How do students assess their enhancement? 4. Methods There are three sources of collecting the data: (i) A survey questionnaire done on 120 fourth year students of 4 groups in English Division, Department of Foreign Languages, , Phuong Dong University to get their opinion LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 on the feedback they received and their judgment on their enhancement.
The questionnaire also aims at getting students’ recommendations and suggestions to make teacher feedback more effective and useful. (ii) A survey questionnaire done on 12 teachers who are currently involving in teaching English literature and Country studies of Phuong Dong University to explore the ways they give feedback for students’ oral presentations. This questionnaire also aims at finding teachers’ difficulties in giving feedback, their use of speech acts in giving feedback, as well as their recommendations to overcome their difficulties. (iii) An interview with 10 students selected randomly from the survey population to get further information on the matter being studied.
Scope of the study The study is conducted within the following scope: (i) Feedback is a broad issue and cannot be thoroughly discussed within the framework of this study. Therefore, only one aspect of feedback is focused on: teacher oral feedback for oral presentations. (ii) Mentioning strategies used by teachers when giving feedback, there are lots of things to be discussed. However, this study is restricted to the use of speech acts, especially the acts of complaining, suggesting, praising, questioning…in giving feedback by teachers only.
(iii) The subjects of this study are constrained to final year English majors of Phuong Dong University. Even though feedback is vital for every student, this study does not aim at students of English in general but at final year English majors of Phuong Dong University, who are studying English as their second language. (iv) In Phuong Dong University, there are only two subjects that often require oral presentations from students: English Literature and country studies. This study focuses on teachers’ techniques to give feedback for English Literature oral presentations as typical examples for oral presentations in general.
Design of the study This study consisted of three parts, namely: introduction, development and conclusion. The introduction focuses on the rationale, objectives, research questions as well as the scope and design of the study The development includes three chapters: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background of the study. This includes reviews on the works done by linguistics, researchers…on feedback, speech acts and English literature teaching. Chapter 2 introduces more details about the setting, methods, data analysis and most importantly, the findings of the study Chapter 3 attempts to give some recommendations to teachers, students and further study.
The conclusion aims at summarizing the main points of the study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter attempts to provide the theoretical background within which the study is conducted. It includes three parts. Part 1 reviews the key notions and aspects of speech act theory.
Part 2 and 3 will survey teacher feedback and teaching English Literature respectively.1 Teaching English Literature 1.1 Definition of English literature As it was stated by Ronald Carter, a Professor of Modern English Language in The University of Nottingham, the teaching of literature in foreign language classes is an activity whose justification was ―assumed to be obvious‖. Before the eighties, there was surprisingly little about the teaching of English literature. This was partly due to the fact that in some places where literature continued to be taught for the old reasons, there was no need for justification, and in other places, it did not come to any significant degree at all. However, during the eighties, the situation changed rapidly.
Literature in general and English Literature in particular underwent thorough consideration, which provoked numerous articles and studies. The question is what is English Literature? Even though English Literature has been defined in a number of ways, there is a relative consensus among the definitions. The web page Wikipedia defines English Literature as ― the literature written in the English language‖. This obviously means the writers of English Literature are not necessarily from England.
Joseph Conrad, for example, was polish-born and could not speak English very fluently until his twenties but was still considered to be one of the greatest novelists in English. Ronald Carter and Michael N. Long in their book Teaching Literature(1991), on the other hand, introduced a different way of using the term. According to them, many teachers of LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 literature preferred the term literature in English to the term English literature because the term English literature carried very specific associations of literature written by authors of English nationalities within the geographical confines of Great Britain.
They suggested that the term English Literature was narrow and exclusive. They provided a definition of literature in English as: ―the considerable diversity of literature produced in the English language not only in the more obvious context of American literature, but also literature in the following contexts: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa…”( p. In this sense, Literature in English also includes a growing and important body of work produced in countries where English is an institutionalized second language or where it is a foreign language but carries important social and cultural functions within the society. Such countries as Nigeria, Kenya, and India…can be cited as examples.2 Why teaching English Literature? Rodrigo Fernandez Carmona in his article How to Teach English Literature (2004) listed many interesting reasons for teaching literature in general and teaching English literature in particular.