MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY ------------ NGUYEN THI MINH THU AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF YOUTUBE FOR ENGLISH SELF-STUDY BY NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUE UNIVERSITY MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Hue University of Foreign Languages HUE, 2019 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY ------------ NGUYEN THI MINH THU AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF YOUTUBE FOR ENGLISH SELF-STUDY BY NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUE UNIVERSITY MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: PHAM HONG ANH, Ph. HUE, 2019 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ NGUYỄN THỊ MINH THU ĐIỀU TRA VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG YOUTUBE CHO VIỆC TỰ HỌC TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TẠI ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 8140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. PHẠM HỒNG ANH HUẾ, 2019 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.
Hue, December 5, 2019 Signature Nguyen Thi Minh Thu i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to whom I should acknowledge for their support and assistance during the completion of this thesis. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Pham Hong Anh, for her continuous support and great knowledge. She has guided me during the time of my thesis with enthusiasm.
I am really motivated and encouraged by her help. I could not imagine of having a better supervisor. Besides my supervisor, I would like to thank my all teachers who helped me much by their teaching, giving me valuable knowledge to start this thesis. I also should thank all of students who agreed to give their responses to my questionnaire and participate in the interviews.
They gave me important information to help me complete the study. Most of all, I am heartily thankful to my family and my friends who supported me spiritually during the time of my thesis. ii ABSTRACT The growth of technology and internet has come out with immense possibilities and resources for students to develop their learning process. One prominent tool that has been widely used by learners is YouTube.
In that event, this study focused on the use of YouTube for English self-study by non- English major students at Hue University. This research aims to investigate the use of YouTube for English self-study by non-English major students in three aspects: students’ perceptions, practice, and students’ perceived benefits of YouTube. Questionnaires were sent to one hundred and ten students and ten of them participated in the semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed through Microsoft Excel and qualitative data through thematic analysis.
The student respondents revealed that using YouTube for English self-study was very enjoyable, interesting and effective. The results also showed that YouTube really helped students self-improve their Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing skills. In addition, among various benefits of using YouTube for English self-study that was found from the data, there were three most distinctive features that were perceived by the students to be beneficial. They are (i) technologically distinctive aspects of YouTube, (ii) the promotion of argumentative skill with the function of “Comment”, and (iii) the promotion of speaking skill when the user/learner is in the role of the third person.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of authorship. iii Table of contents. iv List of charts. vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .1 Background and Rationale for the study .2 Aims of the study .3 Scope of the study .4 Significance of the study.
4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 English language self-study .2 English language self-study .2 The use of YouTube in language education .1 Definition of YouTube .2 The use of YouTube in language learning .3 The use of YouTube for English language self-study in four practical language skills.1 YouTube for Listening skills .2 YouTube for Speaking skills .3 YouTube for Reading skills .4 YouTube for Writing skills. 14 iv CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .3 Instruments of data collection .2 Implementation of questionnaire .1 Design of Interviews .2 Implementation of Interviews. 20 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .1 Perceptions of non-English major students on the use of YouTube for English self-study .2 What students learned from YouTube for English self-study and how they learned .1 What students learned from YouTube for Listening skills.2 How students learned from YouTube for Listening skills .3 What students learned from YouTube for Speaking skills .4 How students learned from YouTube for Speaking skills .5 What students learned from YouTube for Reading skills .6 How students learned from YouTube for Reading skills .7 What students learned from YouTube for Writing skills .8 How students learned from YouTube for Writing skills .9 What students learned from YouTube for major self-study .10 How students learned from YouTube for major self-study .3 Recorded benefits of YouTube for its use to improve those English skills by non-English major students .1 Listening skills improvement .2 Speaking skills improvement .3 Reading skills improvement .4 Writing skills improvement .1 Technologically distinctive features of YouTube .2 The promotion of argumentative skill with the function of “Comment” 39 4.3 The promotion of speaking skill when the user/learner is in the role of the third person. 43 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS .1 Summary of the findings .1 Implications for learners .2 Implications for teachers .3 Implications for future research .3 Limitations of the study.
48 APPENDICES vi LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.1 General feelings of students on the use of YouTube for English .2 General perceptions to the use of YouTube for English self-study .3 What students learned from YouTube for Listening skills .4 How students learned from YouTube for Listening skills.5 What students learned from YouTube for Speaking skills .6 How students learned from YouTube for Speaking skills .7 What students learned from YouTube for Reading skills .8 How students learned from YouTube for Reading skills .9 What students learned from YouTube for Writing skills .10 How students learned from YouTube for Writing skills .11 What students learned from YouTube for major self-study .12 How students learned from YouTube for major self-study .13 Listening skills improvement.14 Speaking skills improvement .15 Reading skills improvement .16 Writing skills improvement. 36 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background and Rationale for the study Today, technology plays an important role in all fields of people’s life. Especially, technology can be usefully applied for language learning. Students now find it hard for them to be separated from those technological devices such as cell phones, the internet, TV or computers.
Young people like students are doubtlessly surrounded by technologies and they cannot imagine how they live without those. They use technological tools for entertaining, socializing and importantly for studying. Thanks to the modern technology, the Internet, students nowadays have plenty of chances to improve their English language. It has opened up new tools and innovative approaches for the language learning process.
Students now can learn language by themselves, at home or somewhere else outside the classroom, with or without the guidance of teachers. It is the technology that brings creative solutions for English language learning and offers students opportunities to learn language on their own, with much independence (Reinders & Balcicanli, 2011). As most of the use of technology is worked closely to the Internet (Alwehaibi, 2015), YouTube emerges as one of the most popular and useful channels for students’ language learning. YouTube videos have been used as a supporting medium to help teachers enrich their regular lessons (Zahn et al., 2005) and learners improve their English learning independently, outside the classroom or through self-study.
The use of YouTube can be integrated into traditional English lesson, helping learners advance their understanding of English lessons and improve their language performance (Almurashi, 2016). It provides learners with a huge range of videos with images and sound and an enormous source of authentic learning materials. With such mountainous information, students are enabled to read e-materials, listen to music and watch films and video clips on their own (Alwehaibi, 2015). It can be claimed that YouTube has become a distinguished tool for students to improve their English language skills.
In all fields of current society, English has received more attention than ever. Students recognize the important role of English and they are required to equip themselves with English proficiency not only for their academic endeavor but for their future job (Tran, 2013). Students learn English language 1 mostly from inside classroom environment with the guidance and instructions of teachers. However, classroom is not the only space where students experience their learning but the learning process happens outside the classroom with the exposure of the learners’ independency (Reinders & Balcicanli, 2011) also.
Audios, videos or online materials have been put to use together with books and other printed materials. Students now can learn English everywhere at any time by all means. In the context that English has become a language of international communication, not all university students, especially non-English major students, make out the importance of English and take full advantages of all of the available supporting sources to improve their English (Hoang, 2018). In reality, most of non-English major students concentrate on English for the requirement of higher education or future career or from the pressure of getting high marks at university examinations (Nguyen, 2015).
Even though English is learned by the majority of students, many wonder whether English is really used for communication outside the classroom or it is taught like other academic subjects basing on regular syllabus (Ton and Pham, 2010). In fact, the global trend has proved that technology has recently made a great contribution in transforming the way of teaching and learning English language. One of such tools is YouTube, which has allowed learners with flexibility in learning and enabled their English self-study thanks to a huge source available on YouTube. What students should do is to take advantages of technology and Internet to improve their language learning besides what they are taught inside the classroom.
To the best of the author’s knowledge, there is little research that discusses the use of YouTube for English self-study outside the classroom. Particularly, none of the studies in the context of Hue University with non- English major students have been done. For that reason, this study has been conducted to explore the employment of YouTube to enhance the effectiveness of language learning process, particularly through self-study by non-English major students at Hue University.2 Aims of the study This research aims to investigate the use of YouTube for English self- study by non-English major students in three aspects: students’ perceptions, practice, and students’ perceived benefits of YouTube. In particular, the investigation is guided with three research questions: 2 1.
What are non-English major students’ perceptions of the use of YouTube for English self-study? 2. What areas of English study do the students use YouTube for? And how? 3. How does YouTube help the students to develop those areas? 1.3 Scope of the study The study investigated the use of YouTube for English self-study by non-English major students. The respondents are 110 non-English major students from different member universities of Hue University.
These students are from the first to the third year of their study who have been studying English as a foreign language for 10 years or more since they were at primary school. Their majors are such various disciplines as medicine and pharmacy, agriculture and forestry, economics, tourism and hospitality, science and education except for English language.