MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ PHAM THI PHUONG THAO AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF HEDGES TO DEVELOP STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES AT HAI LANG HIGH SCHOOL, QUANG TRI PROVINCE, VIETNAM MA THESIS IN EDUCATION HUE, 2012 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ PHAM THI PHUONG THAO AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF HEDGES TO DEVELOP STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES AT HAI LANG HIGH SCHOOL, QUANG TRI PROVINCE, VIETNAM FIELD OF STUDY: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.10 MA THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: PHAM THI HONG NHUNG, PhD. HUE, 2012 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ PHẠM THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO KHẢO SÁT TÁC DỤNG CỦA NGÔN NGỮ RÀO ĐÓN TRONG VIỆC PHÁT TRIỂN NĂNG LỰC NGỮ DỤNG CỦA HỌC SINH TRONG GIỜ HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG HẢI LĂNG, TỈNH QUẢNG TRỊ. CHUYÊN NGÀNH: LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.10 LUẬN VĂN THẠC SỸ GIÁO DỤC HỌC GIÁO VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN: TS. PHẠM THỊ HỒNG NHUNG HUẾ, 2012 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine.
The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere. Author Pham Thi Phuong Thao ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the thesis – writing time, I fortunately received the help of many people, and I am extremely grateful to them. First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Pham Thi Hong Nhung for her whole-hearted assistance and wise instructions.
During researching period, she helped me properly arrange the time and gave me encouraging advices and useful knowledge to make complex things easier. I am also thankful to my instructor of pragmatics subject Dr. Truong Bach Le, who inspired me to the term pragmatics and to the idea of investigating the use of hedges. I would like to thank Dr.
Tran Van Phuoc, the head maste, and the staffs of Hue University College of foreign languages who facilitate our training process and help us with the procedure of writing and handing the thesis. I also wish to thank all the teachers of MA class 2010- 2012. They helped me broaden my knowledge of English and gave me chances to improve my teaching skill. Many thanks to all my colleagues and my students at Hai Lang high school who enthusiastically cooperated with me during the experimental period.
Without their support, my experiment would not have been completed. Last but not least, I want to thank my family, especially my parents who encourage me to persuade my studies. TABLE OF CONTENTS SUBCOVER PAGES STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 LIST OF TABLES .4 LIST OF FIGURES .4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. AIMS OF THE THESIS.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE THESIS. SCOPE OF THE STUDY. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS .11 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEWAND THEORATICAL BACKGROUND. DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS.
PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE & COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. THE ROLE OF HEDGING IN PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT. HEDGING AND PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE. HEDGING AND INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS.
MAJOR CATEGORIES OF HEDGES. THE USE OF HEDGES IN ENGLISH SPEAKING. HEDGES INSTRUCTION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING. DATA COLLECTION METHODS.
DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE. THE PRETEST AND POSTTEST .43 CHAPTER 4 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. RESULTS FROM QUESTIONNAIRES. TEACHERS‘ AND STUDENTS‘ PERCEPTIONS OF THE ROLE OF HEDGES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE SPEAKING (CLUSTER 1).
STUDENTS‘ ABILITY TO SPEAK ENGLISH AND USE HEDGES. HOW HEDGES SHOULD BE TAUGHT AND STUDIED. LEARNING STAGE WHERE HEDGES ARE INTRODUCED. RESULTS FROM INTERVIEWING .1 TEACHERS‘ AND STUDENTS‘ PERCEPTIONS OF THE ROLE OF PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING.2 TEACHERS‘ AND STUDENTS‘ PERCEPTIONS OF THE USE OF HEDGES TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILL.
TEACHERS‘ INSTRUCTIONS ON HEDGES AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS. THE PROBLEMS WHEN INSTRUCTING AND USING HEDGES AND SOLUTIONS. THE NECESSITY OF HEDGES TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN PARTICULAR. RESULTS FROM PRE-TEST AND POST- TEST.
RESULT FROM RECORDED ORAL PERFORMANCE BY STUDENTS64 4.68 CHAPTER V – CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. FOR ESL STUDENTS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES. CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY.
xii 3 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.3: The reliability of pilot questionnaires .1: Students' perception of the role of hedges .2: Students' best skill .3: How well students can speak – teacher responses .4: How well students can use hedges _ Students „response .5: Hedges in use .6: How hedges should be taught and studied .7: When students should start to learn hedges .8: Result of pre-test .9: Result of Post-test .62 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: The development of grade 10 students .2: The development of grade 11 students .64 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language e.: such as N: Number Std.: Standard 5 ABSTRACT Hedging is an important part of a successful communication. Without hedges and hedging, a conversation between English language learners or between a native speaker and a nonnative speaker may end with pragmatic failure. Hence, English language learners should practice to use hedges properly as soon as they learn English. A study on the use of hedge to develop students‘ speaking skill was done at Hai Lang high school and four classes of 180 students at grade 10 and grade 11 participated in the experiment.
The evidence for the use of hedges was collected via questionnaires, interviews, pretest, records, and post test. Following experimental method, a nine-period treatment was carried out. Before the treatment, through the results from questionnaires and interviews the writer could claim that students at Hai Lang high school were really weak at speaking. So, what the teacher should integrate into the treatment were some appropriate devices to help them improve their speaking skill.
Besides, most teachers agreed that hedges play an important role to a successful communication while many students were doubtful about the use of hedges. Eventually, simple hedge instructions were chosen to be used during the treatment. After comparing the results from pretest and posttest, credible evidence was provided to claim that instructions on hedges can help students develop their speaking skill. However, according to the research, students at lower level of proficiency seem to perceive hedges better.
Besides, the records of students‘ conversation proved their improvement after having been treated. On the whole, with teachers‘ proper support, students at Hai Lang high school can speak English better using hedges. Moreover, the integration of four skills and knowledge of grammar will bring more positive effect on students‘ ability to use hedges in their conversation. Rationale A book will be meaningless if it is not read by anyone.
A language will be dead soon if we do not use it to communicate. Likewise, learning a foreign language means we should communicate in that language or we will soon forget it. Therefore, it is not the matter how well we learn vocabulary and grammatical structures but how we use the language. Ho (2002) claims that learning a language means not only knowing linguistic notions but also knowing how to use it in its social and communicative contexts.
That is to say, a second language learner really needs pragmatic competence. As pragmatic competence is very important in second language learning, nowadays developing students‘ pragmatic competence is one problem that English teachers who play a very important role in directing students learning methods should pay appropriate attention. In some countries, there are a number of articles and research done on this important issue by some authors such as Fraser (2010), Onose (2011), and Krisnawati (2011). However, in Vietnam, this topic is not really widely studied.
Only some articles and research about it were found such as Ho‘s (2002) articles, Dang‘s (2006) research, and Tran‘s (2012) recent article. Most of those Vietnamese researches and articles belong to the field of cross-culture or choose college students majoring in English as the subjects of their investigation. This encourages the writer to choose pragmatic competence as a potential area for the thesis. Nonetheless, because pragmatic competence includes a wide range of theory and application and within a limited time, the current study can focus on only one area in it: hedges.
The notion of hedges is really attractive for certain reasons. After two years working as a teacher of English, the writer realized that teaching speaking skill is a challenging work. As the students have few opportunities to speak English to native speakers, even the best students use English mechanically. As Tran (2012) states 8 that her college students have the similar problems: they have much knowledge of English grammar, but they have troubles using hedges flexibly.
This problem must have been accrued from a long time of focusing their learning on English grammar and overestimating the accuracy of the sentences that they utter. Thus, students gradually form a habit of omitting the supplementary elements such as hedges and hesitation that may create the expressive aspects of their talk. Would it be better if teachers help their students practice using hedges in their communication to change these bad habits? Experimental research should be done to answer this question. What is more, some studies (Yu, 2009; Tran, 2012) were conducted to prove the use of hedges to develop students‘ English competence but none of them choose high school students as their subjects.
Meanwhile, high school students who have learned English for quite a long time and need English to their various future jobs have great potential to use hedges. The lack of hedging competence would no longer be a serious problem when they attended in the university if they got acquainted with hedges at high school. Whether teachers‘ instructions on hedges are needed or not and how much it is needed to help students improve their English competences? These are also questions that need to be answered. For all of the reasons above, the writer chose the topic: An investigation into the use of hedges to develop students‟ pragmatic competence in English speaking classes at Hai Lang high school, Quang Tri province, Vietnam.
Aims of the thesis The current thesis has the following main aims To investigate teachers‘ and students‘ perceptions of the use of hedges at Hai Lang High School. To find out the development of students‘ pragmatic competence, especially the competence of hedging after applying instructions on hedges in English class. To suggest appropriate ways to encourage students speak naturally using hedges. Research questions The thesis will answer the following research questions: 1.
What are EFL teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of the role of hedging in English speaking and in pragmatic competence? 2. To what extent can hedging-focused instruction improve students‟ pragmatic competence in English speaking? 1. Significance of the thesis There were a number of researches and studies on hedges in Vietnam and in other countries. For example, Yu‘s (2009) doctoral study is a typical work on the pragmatic development of hedging.
It discovers a wide range of hedges used through the corpus of academic writing, interview, and debate. The participants are Chinese students who have learnt English from two to nine years at three levels: beginner, intermediate, and advance. The results focus on the frequency of some hedges used. The writer figures out the pragmatic development of hedging by comparing the result across three levels.
Other studies on hedges in Vietnam (Tran, 2011; Vo, 2012) was carried out with the participation of college students. Tran (2011) chooses the similar way to Yule to find out the frequency of hedges used while Vo (2011) uses corpus of academic writing only. From previous studies, we can claim that this thesis is the first thesis to use experimental method to point out the improvement of students at Hai Lang high school after the period of experiment.