VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND REPORTED USE OF STORYTELLING FOR VOCABULARY TEACHING AT VUS ENGLISH CENTER A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) By TRAN VAN DOAN TESOL 2019A Supervisor Bui Thi Thuc Quyen, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, JULY 2022 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND REPORTED USE OF STORYTELLING FOR VOCABULARY TEACHING AT VUS ENGLISH CENTER A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) By TRAN VAN DOAN TESOL 2019A Supervisor Bui Thi Thuc Quyen, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, JULY 2022 i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the major thesis entitled “TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND REPORTED USE OF STORYTELLING FOR VOCABULARY TEACHING AT VUS ENGLISH CENTER.” is the result of my own work. This major thesis has not previously been accepted for any degree and submitted in any other institutions.
Ho Chi Minh City, July 2022 TRẦN VĂN ĐOÀN ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, TRAN VAN DOAN, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s theses deposited in the University Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, July 2022 TRẦN VĂN ĐOÀN iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my warm and deeply sincere to all of those people who have supported me to shape this thesis. First and foremost, I am grateful to my thesis supervisor, Dr.
Bui Thi Thuc Quyen, for her thorough guidance, valuable comments, positive encouragement and suggestions in the completion of this thesis. Without her help, this M.A thesis would be far from accomplishment. I am greatly indebted to my VUS campus manager, Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, for her support in reaching the qualified participants of this study.
I would like to thank all of my colleagues for their great participation throughout the process of data collection in this research. My sincere thanks also go to my classmates who have supported me in the process of data analysis Last but not least, my deepest gratitude and sincere thanks are sent to my family for spiritual support and encouragement during the time of the study completion. iv ABSTRACT Storytelling practice is believed to be a highly effective application in second language teaching, especially in vocabulary teaching and learning. With regards to very young children, they are assumed to possess unique characteristics when it comes to learning a foreign language.
Thus, teachers of very young learners, in the lesson with storytelling, may encounter a huge number of different difficulties in teaching them vocabulary which may result in distinctive opinions of this teaching practice. This thesis dealt with the teachers’ perceptions of storytelling application in vocabulary teaching in the class of very young learners, namely “Smartkids”, at VUS English Centers. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were included in the process of data collection which involved 60 experienced teachers teaching this level of learners at this center. While the survey was designed to gather the teachers’ reported practice of storytelling and their perceptions on this research issue, the interviews were also conducted in order to deeply comprehend the teaching activities and techniques applied in the lesson as well as their thinking on the effectiveness and difficulties of this teaching method.
The comparison of local and foreign teachers was also involved to better understand the research problems. The findings of the study showed that teachers applied various activities in the lesson of storytelling so as to capture the students’ attention at most. While most teachers appreciated the benefits of this practice to vocabulary teaching and learning, students were believed to be the main reason causing the most challenges in this lesson. In addition, no significant differences were found between two groups of teachers regarding both reported practice and perceptions.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of originality. ii Retention and use of the thesis .v Table of contents. vi List of abbriviations. ix List of tables .x List of figures.
xi Chapter 1: Introduction .1 Background to the study .4 Significance of the study .5 Scope of the study .6 Organization of the study .6 Chapter 2: Literature Review .8 Language teachers’ cognition .2 Teaching English vocabulary .2 English vocabulary teaching.3 Teaching English vocabulary to Very Young Learners .1 Very young learners .12 Very young learners’ characteristics in learning English .2 Teaching vocabulary to very young learners .4 Applying storytelling in teaching .1 Stories and storytelling .2 Storytelling and factors involved .3 Practice of storytelling in the class .5 Benefits of stories and storytelling in language learning .1 Boosting motivation and attitudes .2 Increasing creativity and imagination .3 Improving language knowledge and skills development .4 Storytelling and vocabulary development .5 Storytelling as a methodological teaching approach .6 Challenges in using storytelling to teach vocabulary to very young learners .1 Derived from teachers .2 Derived from students .3 Derived from materials and other factors .6 Data collection procedures .7 Data analysis procedures .1 Questionnaire data analysis .2 Interview data analysis .56 Chapter 4: Results and discussions.1 Teachers’ practice of storytelling to vocabulary teaching to very young learners.2 Teachers’ perceptions of storytelling application for vocabulary teaching .2 Discussions of the results .1 Research question 1: How do teachers apply storytelling to teach vocabulary in a VYLs class? .2 Research question 2: What are the differences between Vietnamese teachers’ and foreign teachers’ reported practice? .3 Research question 3: What are the teachers’ perceptions towards the application of storytelling to vocabulary teaching in the VYLs class? .4 Research question 4: What are the differences between Vietnamese teachers’ and foreign teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness and difficulties of storytelling application? .98 Chapter 5: Conclusion, suggestions and recommendations .3 Limitations of the study .4 Recommendations for future research .117 viii LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS VUS – VIETNAME USA SOCIETY ENGLISH CENTER VYLs – Very young learners VN – Vietnamese teacher E- English teacher ICT – Information and Communications Technology SPSS - Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ix LIST OF TABLES Table 2. 1: Conceptual framework of the study. 1 Table of participants of the questionnaires. 2 Summary of questionnaire to teachers.
3: Table of reliability of the pilot questionnaires. 4: Data collection procedures table. 5: Table of reliability of the questionnaires before items removed. 6: Table of reliability of the questionnaires after items removed.
8:Correspondence of Research questions, Analysis procedures,Data source 57 Table 4. 1: Teachers‟ practice of teaching vocabulary to very young learners. 2 Teachers‟ overview opinions on the practice of storytelling in very-young- student classrooms. 3: Teachers‟ opinions on the definitions of storytelling.
4: Teachers‟ practice of storytelling in a VYL classroom. 5: Frequencies of pre-teaching activities in storytelling application. 6: Frequencies of while-teaching activities in storytelling application. 7: The techniques of getting students‟ attentions.
8: The use of Vietnamese in storytelling teaching. 9: Frequencies of post-teaching activities in storytelling application. 10: Teachers‟ perceptions of the effectiveness of storytelling application. 11: Teachers‟ perceptions of the difficulties of storytelling application derived from teachers.
12: Teachers‟ perceptions of the difficulties derived from students. 13: Teachers‟ perceptions of the difficulties derived from others. 14: Teachers‟ perceptions of the general effectiveness of storytelling application. 15: Teachers‟ perceptions of the effectiveness of storytelling application to vocabulary learning and teaching.
16: Teachers‟ perceptions of the difficulties of storytelling application. 17: Teachers‟ perceptions of the difficulties of storytelling application. 18: Teachers‟ suggestions for better storytelling application .89 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3. 1: Mean scores of Vietnamese and Expat teachers about storytelling practice.
2: Mean scores of Vietnamese and Expat teachers about storytelling effectiveness. 3: Mean scores of Vietnamese and Expat teachers about storytelling difficulties derived from teachers. 4: Mean scores of Vietnamese and Expat teachers about storytelling difficulties derived from students. 5: Mean scores of Vietnamese and Expat teachers about storytelling difficulties derived from other factors.
6: Thematic network analysis. 7: The use of Vietnamese in storytelling teachingError! Bookmark not defined. xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION “Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller, waiting to be released.” Robin Moore This chapter presents the background to the researcher’s study in which the role of storytelling is shaped to the students’ vocabulary success. Research aims and research questions are also indicated in order to clarify the purposes of the research.
Along with that, the researcher also mentions the significance, the scope and the outline of the paper at the end of this introduction.1 Background to the study It is obvious that learning vocabulary is a critical part in the language learning process which affects the learners’ language proficiency. Wilkins (1972) affirms the central role of vocabulary, with regards to communication that “while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (p. This statement emphasizes how vocabulary acquisition makes a significant contribution to the success of language learning. Learning vocabulary, however, comprises a wide range of difficulties which might be derived from distinctive factors.
The way that the words are acquired in second language learning, for instance, is unquestionably different from the process of first language acquisition in which children learn the word knowledge by experiencing the three processes of labelling, categorizing and network building (Thornbury, 2002). As a result, second language learners, as stated by Thornbury (2002) that, “need a critical mass of vocabulary to get them over the threshold of the second language” and this achievement might require “intentional and incidental learning” (p. Sharing the same perspective with the above idea, according to Schmitt (2000), with regards to vocabulary acquisition, it is impossible for second language learners to memorize all of the native-speaker words, but this is still a considerable achievement to learn them as much as possible. Accordingly, teaching vocabulary to non-native students is demanding and challenging as there is a great deal of obstacles to deal with.
1 For different types of learners, teachers are required to have appropriate teaching methods in order to give effective vocabulary lessons because those students all have their own characteristics considering second language learning. Very young learners (VYLs), for instance, are believed to acquire languages better than adults. In other words, children are superior compared to adults in terms of learning second languages due to the flexibility of their brain (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). This feature enables them to immerse themselves in language learning resulting in better achievement in several aspects mentioned in later chapters.
However, they also possess a great number of distinctive characteristics when it comes to learning foreign languages (Reilly & Ward, 1997) that might cause a wide range of difficulties for teachers. For example, it seems to be an arduous task for teachers to draw attention from their very young children for long in an educational environment. People should not expect a classroom with this type of learner to be silent, with children sitting still in rows and paying their full attention to the teachers only (Halliwell, 1992) as they possess very unique characteristics in language learning. Thus, teachers are required to provide them with a series of different teaching activities so as to keep them focused on the lesson without getting bored.
A variety of useful instruments for teaching English vocabulary has been applied effectively in teaching this type of learners such as games, dramas, songs and chants, especially storytelling.