STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Signature i ABSTRACT The study investigates teachers‟ use of Vietnamese in teaching English to non- language students at Ha Tinh University. The study then aims to find out teachers‟ perceptions on the necessity and benefit of L1 in EFL classroom as well as their attitude to the areas where L1 can not be avoided and to identify some situations for using L1 and the possible frequency of using it in these situations.
The participants of this study were 26 language teachers at the Department of Foreign Languages at Ha Tinh University. The instruments used in the study were questionnaires, observation sheets and a semi-interview checklist. The data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings from the research showed that most of the teachers thought that the use of L1 in teaching is necessary and can not be avoided in some situations but they did not overuse it.
They showed their approval of the role of L1 in some situations such as “explaining difficult and complex concepts or words”, “explaining grammatical rules”, “talking about American or British culture”, “giving feedback to individual” and “encouraging students to find extra materials” and they expressed their frequency of using L1 in these situations from “sometimes” to “often”. Besides, they also showed their disapproval of using L1 in other situations such as “drilling the pronunciation” or “brainstorming or leading-in the lesson”. Basing on the findings, the study offered some suggestions with the purposes of improving the quality of teaching and learning English at Ha Tinh University. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has been completed with the help and support of a lot of people.
Therefore, I would like to express my grateful gratitude to all of them. First and foremost, I would like to express my great thanks to my supervisor, A/prof. Truong Vien, at the Department of English, College of Foreign Languages, Hue University, for his devotion, encouragement, enthusiastic instruction, and invaluable advice. I would like to show all my heartfelt gratitude to his detailed comments, correction and giving feedback to my paper many times before the final draft.
Second, I would like to extend my special thanks to A/prof. Le Pham HoaiHuong who suggested the topic for this thesis during all of her lectures. Third, I am also thankful to A/prof. Tran Van Phuoc and Dr.
Truong Bach Le for giving me many comments and suggestions on the first stage of the thesis (proposal). Then, I would like to be grateful to most of the language teachers at Ha Tinh University who took part in this study by sharing their ideas and experiences through questionnaires, interviews and let me observe their class to get information needed for the thesis. Last but not least, I would like to show my deep thanks to my classmates, my family for their love and supporting during the time I did my thesis. iii TABLES OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY.
vi TABLES OF CONTENT. iv LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF CHARTS. viii CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION.
Organization of the thesis.2 CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW .Non-major English students .Recommendation for language use in the classroom .The use of L1 in English teaching in different methods of teaching .Grammar translation method (GTM) .Audio-lingual method .The Communicative approach .Debate surrounding the role of L1 in L2 classroom .Support for the monolingual approach. Support for the bilingual approach. Danger of overuse .14 CHAPTER III - THE METHODOLOGY .4 Procedures of data collection .1 Administering the piloting of the questionnaire .2 Administering the questionnaire .5 Procedures of data analysis .21 CHAPTER IV - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .1 Teachers‟ perceptions on the use of L1 in teaching English to non-language students at Ha Tinh University.1 Teachers‟ perception on the necessity and the benefit of L1 .2 Teacher‟s perception on the areas that L1 can be used .2 Frequency of using L1 by language teacher in teaching English to non- language students .3 Comparing the mean score of Clusters .43 CHAPTER V - CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .1 Summary of the key findings .2 Implications and suggestions .3 Limitations of the study .4 Suggestions for further research.59 v ABBREVIATIONS L1: The first language L2: The second language EFL: English as a Foreign Language vi LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Profile of the participants .3 The reliability of the pilot questionnaire .1: Thereliability of questionnaire .2: The mean score of Cluster 1 .4: The extent of agreement to each item of Cluster 1 .5: The mean score of Cluster 2 .7: The extent of agreement to each item of Cluster 2 .8: The mean score of Cluster 3 .10: The extent of agreement to each item of Cluster 3 .11: The mean score of Cluster 4 .12: The extent of agreement to each item of Cluster 4 .15: the extent of agreement to each item of Cluster 5 .16: The means score of Cluster 6 .18: The frequency of using L1 in each item of Cluster 6 .19: The mean score of Cluster 7 .20: The frequency of using L1 in each item of Cluster 7 .22: The frequency of using L1 in each item of Cluster 8 .23: The mean score of Cluster 9 .25: The frequency of using L1 in each item of Cluster 9 .39 vii LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.3: The mean score of each item of Cluster 1 .6: The mean score of each item of Cluster 2 .9: The mean score of each item in Cluster 3 .14: The mean score of each item of Cluster 5 .17: The mean score of each item of Cluster 6 .21: The mean score of each item of Cluster 8 .24: The mean score of each item of Cluster 9 .26: The summaries of 9 clusters‟ mean score .27: Doing social functions in class and talking about American or British culture .28: Giving feedback to individual students .46 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale For a long time, English has become “the most global of languages” (Pham, 2006).
According to Crystal(1997), there are about 670 million people in the world using English with a native or near native comment. It is the official language in a lot of countries such as Singapore, India, Philippines, Pakistan and so on. Also, “English is a dominant language in arts, theater, music and cinema” (Pham, 2006, p. The international language for internet and in a lot of published books is English.
Then it is inevitable that English has become a vehicle for people to get information or even jobs. In other words, English is more and more important; people all over the world have more and more motivations and demands to learn it. Vietnam has adopted a socialist –oriented market economy since 1986 and recently has become the 150th member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Consequently, there are more and more investors who have poured capital into this country.
Most of these investors require English as a means of communication. As a result, it raises the demand of learning English in Vietnam. So far, English has become a compulsory subject in education program. It is one of the main subjects from class 6 to class 12 for a long time.
It is also a compulsory subject for non-language students at university. Besides their major subjects, they have to learn English for three or even five semesters (students of economics often learn English for five semesters at some universities). The problem is that after graduating from university, theirEnglish proficiency is not good enough to meet the demand of the society. Several researches were carried out with the aim of improving the quality of teaching English in Vietnam indicated that “traditional pedagogy, emphasizing the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary rather than communicative competence” (Pham, 2005,p.1) is one of the causes.However, Communicative Language Teaching has become popular and familiar in Vietnam since the beginning of 1990s.
Then, how can language teachers 1 adapt it to suit the Vietnamese students to improve the quality of teaching? Among these answers, one question is raised “should we use only English or both English and Vietnamese in English class?”In the past, “it seems that the only use of English in ELT is widely supported” (Kieu, 2010, p. But nowadays, the role of Vietnamese in the process of teaching English is considered (Nguyen, 2006, p. However, there are still few researches about the use of Vietnamese in teaching English especially at Ha Tinh University. Moreover, teaching English to non- language students is a situation which should be considered much more.Due to these reasons, I conduct the study: “An investigation into the use of Vietnameseby language teachers in teaching English to non-major English students at Ha Tinh University” 1.
Research aims The study aims to investigate the use ofthe first language(L1) by language teachers in teaching English to non-language students at Ha TinhUniversity and the perception of language teachers on the roles of L1 in teaching English to non- language students. With such aims, the study seeks to make some suggestions with the purposes of improving the quality of teaching and learning English at Ha Tinh University. Research questions The study thus addresses the following research questions: 1. What are language teachers’ perceptionson the use of L1 in teaching English to non-major English students at Ha Tinh University? 2.
What is the reality of using Vietnameseby language teachers to teach English to non-major English students at Ha Tinh University? 1. Organization of the thesis This thesis includes five chapters: Introduction, Literature review, the methodology, Finding and Discussion, and Implications and Conclusions 2 Chapter one presents the introduction to the thesis as a whole. It consists of the rationale of the thesis, the research aim, the research questions as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter two offers a critical review of the relevant literature related to mother tongue or first language use in EFL classroom, which is relevant to the study.
Chapter three describes the research methodology of the study, including participants, instruments, procedures of data collection and procedures of data analysis Chapter four presents the findings from the questionnaires, the observation and the interview. This chapter also discusses some issues from the findings. Chapter five summarizes the key findings of the thesis. It continues with the implications of the findings and some suggestion to encourage the use of English in EFL classroom, and then ends with limitation of the study,suggestions for further research and conclusions.
3 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Native Language “This refers to the first language a child learns. It is also known as the primary language, the mother tongue or the first language” (Gass, 1994, p. Non-major English students This is the working definition.
Non-language students are students whose major is not English but a different subject such as Biology, Business orComputing. At Ha Tinh University, non-language students have to learn English as a compulsory subject for three first semesters.The course books used to teach them here are Elementary Solution and Pre-intermediate Solution by Tim Falla and Paul A Davies, published by Oxford University Press. They included a lot of activities which integrate four language skills -listening, speaking, reading and writing. Additionally, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary are supplemented.
Besides, the workbooks are the materials for practicing TOEIC tests. Although non-language students at Ha Tinh Universitylearned English for at least three years before entering University, their levels of English are rather low. It was a fact that theycan not get used to learning English only by the English language. In fact, they often ask teachers to explain in Vietnamese.
So, teachers often speak in English first and try to explain in Vietnamese later.