CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter presents in detail the background that motivates the research. It then describes the aims, the questions, as well as the scope of the research. Finally, the structure of the study is also presented in the chapter. Research background Nowadays, English has been considered as the official international language and spoken in many parts throughout the world.
This is the reason why, for various purposes, more and more people are learning English. Along with this trend, English becomes one of the compulsory subjects in Vietnamese education curricula. This requires students to start learning English from grade 6 to grade 12. Additionally, in terms of graduation condition, students in non-English specialties of universities and colleges in Hue city have to get B1 certificate which belongs to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) applied in Vietnam.
Besides, in the era of Information and Technology (IT), English plays an indispensable role in communication and globalization. For IT students, in particular, English is a useful tool for approaching their specialised knowledge when attending lectures, reading IT materials in English, and doing further research in their study. In addition, for those who are working in IT field, most of the terms are quite complicated when translating into Vietnamese. Therefore, English is an essential tool for communication and for their job.
On the other hand, with the development of communicative approach which focuses on learner-centeredness, students are required to be active in gaining their own knowledge with the assistance of teachers. Furthermore, since learning English is not limited inside the classroom, out-of-class activities can be very important for students in enhancing English proficiency, especially for IT-majored students. However, despite the fact that the importance of out-of-class English learning activities is undeniable, these activities are not well-conducted by many students. 1 On the other hand, as an English teacher teaching English for IT students in Hue-Aptech center, I find that IT students have many difficulties in learning English in general and English for IT in particular.
Being different from English-majored students, IT students in Hue-Aptech center have to learn not only their speciality knowledge but also how to use English as a tool to support their IT study. Therefore, these students should spend more time on learning both their speciality subject and English. Besides, all of their textbooks are in English with full of technical terms. At the end of each theory course, the students have to take the tests in English and they are quite difficult for them to pass.
For IT classes, the teachers usually use English slides to teach and try to explain the steps by showing the instructions on the screen. Then, they cannot get the whole meaning of the technical terms they learn in such a short period time in class. In addition, in reality, with the limited periods of English lessons in the classroom, students majoring in IT can hardly develop their English proficiency effectively without taking part in out-of- class English learning activities. Therefore, the researcher would like to investigate some common out-of-class English learning activities conducted by IT-majored students and their impacts in order to help them more successful in their learning process.
Hence, the researcher would like to explore the common out-of-class English activities among IT students in Hue city to find out their common interests, benefits, and difficulties while conducting those out-of-class English learning activities. As a result, the study on “An Investigation into Out-of-class English Learning Activities among Information and Technology Students in Hue City” is conducted to help students implement their language learning effectively. The researcher hopes that, this research paper, to some extent, can provide an overview of out-of-class English learning activities conducted by IT students in Hue city and their influence on developing student‟s English proficiency. Besides, some suggestions are provided in order to make necessary improvements in their learning process.
Research aims The research aims to investigate the perceptions of IT students of out-of- class English learning activities as well as find out the common activities conducted by the students. While exploring the impacts of those activities, this research also aims to find out the benefits they get and the difficulties they are being encountered during IT students‟ learning process. Research questions With the aim to investigate the perceptions and the reality of IT students in Hue city in conducting out-of-class English learning activities, this research attempts to answer the three following questions: (1) What are IT students‟ perceptions of out-of-class English learning activities? (2) What out-of-class English learning activities are adopted by IT students? (3) What benefits and difficulties do students have in the learning process? 1. Research scope The research focuses on out-of-class English learning activities conducted by IT students in Hue city including students from Hue-Aptech Center, IT students of Hue University of Sciences and University of Education, and their impacts on developing students‟ English proficiency.
All of them have passed at least 7 years of learning English at Secondary school and High school and about 2-3 years learning ESP at the university; however, their proficiency and their experience in learning English were not the same. Especially for Aptech Center students who only attend a class of English for IT in about 3 months in semester 1. Thus, the background variables may provide different perceptions and activities. Research structure The research is structured as follows: Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION: The presentation of the background, the aims, the questions, the scope, as well as the structure of the research.
3 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW: The review of some previous related researches. Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: Description of the research methods, participants, data collection, and data analysis process. Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: This chapter concentrates mainly on the data collected from questionnaires and informal interviews. In this chapter, the data collected will be analyzed to answer the research questions.
Then, a discussion is conducted based on the collected data from the research. Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: This final chapter summarises the whole research and suggests the pedagogical implications related to the main issues of the thesis. Summary In short, this chapter has introduced in detail the background of the research. The aims, the questions, the scope, as well as the structure of the research were also presented clearly.
4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will focus on the theoretical background of the research. The chapter begins with the review of previous studies on the field of out-of-class learning activities. Next, different definitions of “autonomous” and “out-of-class” learning are identified. Besides, common out-of-class learning activities in enhancing English proficiency are presented.
The chapter closes by addressing some benefits of out-of-class English learning activities and students‟ difficulties in conducting those activities. Review of previous studies There were many previous researches focusing on the out-of-class English learning activities in many foreign countries and in Vietnam. Each research emphasised a specific field in terms of autonomous language learning. First of all, the study of Shen, Tseng, Kuo, Su & Chen (2005) on out-of-class English learning activities was conducted in Taiwan with the participants of 316 EFL college students from 18- 40 years old.
The results pointed out that most students prefer writing emails in English, reading English news online, studying English online, and watching English movies. They affirmed that the most difficult language skill was writing. And the problem of vocabulary shortage caused big problem in enhancing the four language skills. Therefore, an important issue was posed for EFL teachers of how to enhance the student‟s word power.
Different from Shen et al. (2005) whose study focused on EFL students, Violeta, Ivelina & Mariana (2010) emphasised on ESP students and the use of Portfolio. They stated that teaching ESP was quite difficult for students because of the requirements of achieving a “high level of communicative competence in a multicultural professional environment”. Hence, the researchers affirmed that autonomous learning was an essential skill which should be developed in ESP lectures.
The study emphasized on the Portfolio of Maritime English Teaching 5 materials for the speciality of Marine Engineering which was designed for student‟s self-study as a vital step of acquiring autonomous learning skills. The research cited the work of Thanasoulas (2000) that autonomous learning was “one of the major approaches in teaching ELT and ESP” and was considered to be useful to learning. It also cited the study of Aoki & Smith (1999) and Littlewood (2001) pointed out the common problems was that the limitation of teaching hours at the university was not enough for students to change their learning habits and styles and made them become “totally involved, active and autonomous learners”. In doing the Portfolio, the students, considered as autonomous learners, were free to choose the activities to do without depending on their succession and immediate learning situation.
The study ended with the conclusion that autonomy should be “an explicit aim and be integrated into the curriculum”. Since out-of-class English learning activities were not only conducted by college students, the research of Sundqvist (2011) was implemented with the participation of the ninth-grade students (aged 15-16) from three schools in Sweden. The study was conducted to explore the out-of-school activities which were engaged by English language learners in Sweden in their free time. The research emphasised on the term “extramural English” which refers to “any types of contact that young people (learners) have with English outside the walls of the classroom” (p.
It came to the conclusion with the “gender pattern” which pointed out that the boys got greater impact on oral proficiency and vocabulary than the girls due to the preference on productive extramural English activities (p. Different from the previous researches which were quite broad when focusing on English skills in general, Broemer & Virkkunen-Fullenwider (2011) emphasised on listening skills and the use of Listening Log. The researcher required students to choose their own activities and spend at least seven hours listening to English. Some activities were suggested such as: listening to English news on the radio or Internet, watching TV programs without subtitles, speaking with friends or native speakers, etc.
They were required to document their activities as a kind of self-report. The results showed the two popular listening activities were watching 6 BBC or other English news and listening to music in English on CDs or portable media players. The study affirmed the usefulness of these activities and the researcher suggested using the Listening Log exercise as something to help students listen effectively outside the classroom. However, the teacher had to give more accurate instructions as to what kinds of targets the students should be able to achieve when completing the listening tasks.
Inheriting the results from the studies of many previous foreign researchers, Hien (2012) and Huong (2013) conducted studies on out-of-class English learning activities in Vietnam: Combining the two directions of Violeta et al. (2010) and Broemer & Virkkunen-Fullenwider (2011) which focused on ESP participants and a specific English skill, Hien (2012) did the research on exploring some out-of-class English learning activities conducted by students of Advanced Physics at Hue University of Education. The study focused on speaking skills which were one of the necessary English skills students need in learning a language. The findings showed that most students wished to be able to express their ideas, opinions, and feelings in English at both inside and outside classroom.
The results demonstrated that the most common activity used in speaking practice was discussion. Besides, interview, information gap and oral presentation were the preferred activities for these students. Therefore, basing on the teachers‟ ability and students‟ level, the teachers themselves could choose the activities which were suitable for students‟ interests and help students express their opinions and ideas well. Unlike Hien (2012), Huong (2013) followed the orientation of Shen et al.
(2005) when emphasising on EFL students and English skills in general. She did the research on out-of-class English learning activities and explored some impacts of the activities on developing students‟ English proficiency for English-majored students at Hue University of Foreign Languages.