MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING BA RIA-VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AND CHALLENGES TOWARDS TASK-BASED ACTIVITIES IN AN EFL CLASS: A CASE STUDY AT BA RIA-VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY Candidate: HOANG THI MY HUONG Supervisor: LE LAN PHUONG, PhD. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching) October, 2021 CONTENTS CONTENTS. 5 LIST OF FIGURES. 6 LIST OF TABLES.
10 Scope and Significance Of The Study. 13 Task-based Language Teaching. 13 Tasks In TBLT. 16 Task-based Activities .1 Characteristics of Task-based Activities .2 Types of Task-based Activities .3 Sequencing Task-based Activities.
25 Benefits and Challenges of Task-based Language Teaching .1 Advantages of Task-based Activities .2 Challenges of Task-based Activities. 33 Perceptions of Task-based Activities. 36 Theoretical Framework of the Study. 43 Methodology and Research Design.
45 Participants and Sampling .2 Teacher Peer Observation. 51 Procedure Of The Study. 58 Ethics and Limitations. 59 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
61 Findings And Discusion. 81 LIMITATION AND FUTURE STUDY. 92 3 ABSTRACT Language teachers have always been concerned with increasing students' motivation and performance because language can be acquired only by interactions among people. Bearing that in mind, EFL teachers must always plan what language teaching/learning processes should be for each lesson to gain the most of students’ interest and practice.
These encompass deciding which activities their students might engage in, which are for cognitive processing, and for communicative purposes in real life. My choice of Task-based Language Teaching approach is for that reason, helping students with chances to learn, communicate, and interact with other friends in English. TBLT has been proved to solve certain problems such as poor learner motivation, or low attention in learning. However, in a language class, getting students to respond is not only a goal, but also a problem that teachers face.
Therefore, this study is to explore EFL students’ perceptions of task-based activities they encounter in their classes and how they manage activities. By adopting a Case Study framework, forty-three Vietnamese fresh students from two English classes at BVU were handed over with a questionnaire, and their behaviour in class was video-recorded. The findings of the study indicate that most students liked participating in the pre-task, while over half of students were rather disappointed at their own task performances. Additionally, this study also suggests some focus in each phase of a task and some concerns to deal with While- and Post-tasks to increase students’ contributions to class assignments (whole class, small group and individual) for more effective learning in classroom and for practical use.
Keywords: Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), Communicative Activities, Task-based activities, Learner’s Perceptions. 4 ABBREVIATION • Task-based Language Teaching: TBLT • Communicative Language Teaching: CLT • English as a Foreign Language: EFL • English as a Second Language: ESL • First Language (Mother Tongue): L1 • Second Language: L2 • Ba Ria-Vung Tau University: BVU 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Framework of Learners' Perception of Task-based activities. Percentages of enjoyment by task-activities.
Percentages of learning English by task-activities. Percentages of Difficulties in Task-activities. 75 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Perceptions of Task-activities (Week 12).
Descriptive Statistics of Perceptions of Task-activities (Week 3). Ranks of Task-based Activities (Week 12). Enjoyment, Learning, After School Correlation: Role-plays based on conversation samples (the top preferred). Descriptive Statistics of Receptive activities (Week 12).
Percentages of enjoyment: the least preferred productive activities (Week 12). Pearson Correlations of Speech Act. 72 6 INTRODUCTION CONTEXT In Vietnam, globalization has put pressure on the education system to develop a more professional labor force who are more competitive and international citizens (MOET, 2010; MOLISA, 2010). The government’s Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) adopted in 2005 pursues to evolve a modern system of higher education in the requirement of the country's industrialization and modernization, the incorporation into the transnational economy and the people's learning requirements (MOET, 2010).
Accordingly, some goals to improve the country's education in a foreign language should be the output Level 1 (A1) for elementary school, Level 2 (A2) for lower secondary school; upper Level 3 (B1) for higher secondary school, non-English college and university, which are formally assessed upon the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFRL) for foreign languages (Nguyen, 2010). However, in fact, in secondary and high schools, the main teaching principles have been still the teacher-centered (Nguyen, 2008; Thanh et al., 2008), and in English-for-Specific-Purpose classes (ESP) is the focus on introducing terminology and translation (Le, 2017). Those issues reflect an ineffective picture of learning English in Vietnam, which is long-lasting, passive and very costly. As a solution, Task-based Language Teaching is projected to boost competence in language use for EFL students by inserting authentic communication into the classroom.
The majority of TBLT research has been conducted in an ESL setting, but recently, it has gained increasing concerns from non-native English countries, especially after CLT deployment have been faced to resistance and unpredictable levels of success (Bax, 2003; Ellis, 1996; Li, 1998; Littlewood, 2007). One of the reasons is that many teachers ignore to mix the four language skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking) into their activities for teaching languages, possibly they have found it difficult (Caicedo, 2015). Some of many findings of effective TBLT can be referenced such as Speaking skills (Kasap, 2005; Albino, 2017; Murad & Smadi, 2009; Sae-Ong, 2010); and Writing skills (Ahmed & Bidin, 2016; Milarisa, 2019; Salimi & Fatollahnejad, 2012). However, in Vietnam, TBLT methodology, according to Barnard et al.
(2010), is still an ambiguous notion for teachers 7 to act in the class. Studies by Minh (2007) and Le (2011) state that teachers think some units based on themes are hard for learners because these are not pertinent to the contexts of the local. That is, what EFL students want to be taught, and what EFL instructors want to teach are not close to their living environment and their authentic language use. It is one gap between learners’ needs and learning.
Throughout the 1980s, in the subject of second language acquisition, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was influential, because as Heath (1982) explains, that approach is to reflect “the practical dimensions of daily language use in the school setting” (p. Actually, CLT has usually intermingled a Present-Practice-Produce model (PPP) technique which largely aimed at the target language's linguistic forms (Ellis, 2003). The reason of the switch is that production in PPP is not reached very often outside the classroom, i., learners often not communicate with native speakers effectively (Skehan et al. Moreover, Skehan explains that it is not always that students can learn all what is being taught in the exact order, but the production in PPP model of instruction is just to acquire a specific grammatical feature (Ellis, 2003), which is insufficient to develop L2 communication.
In the same decade, TBLT appeared as a revolution in EFL teaching and learning field, and currently, it is a dominant pedagogical approach a large number of educational institutes all across the world (Nunan, 2004). A study conducted with participants from seven nations (Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Mainland China and Hong Kong) on the influence of English as a global language on Asia-Pacific policies and behaviours suggests that TBLT is underlying the language teaching curriculum design (Nunan, 2003). TBLT is believed to be a successful strategy that nurtures an educational environment in which students are allowed to employ target language forms to attain communicative goals (Ellis, 2003; Skehan et al. The distinction of TBLT compared to traditional language teaching methods is that it favours functional communicative language use.
It perceives the process of learning as a series of communicative activities that are associated with the curricular objectives (Brown, 2001). TBLT is built with communicative and interactive tasks that require learners to communicate and interact in real time (Bygate et al. In performing 8 such tasks, grammar is taught to students implicitly, so the role of explicit grammar teaching is lowered, which is opposite the view of PPP method. Therefore, many second language acquisition researchers have added their studies to the tasks to develop pedagogical applications, such as Carless (2004), Wang (2008), Jeon & Hahn (2006), Tayjasanant & Barnard (2010).
However, in Littlewood (2007)’s research of Task-based learning conducted in Asia, he finds a considerable misalignment between the CLT/TBLT concepts and local learning traditions. Since TBLT was first developed in Western settings, many concerns have appeared to question whether or not the communicative technique is applicable in different nations with different styles of learning. Specifically, these cultures are the form-oriented examination which emphasizes grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension (Shim et al., 2004), and “summative, norm-referenced, and knowledge- based orientation” of the important, formal exams (Chow et al. This also implies that teachers and students tend not to concentrate on communicative facets of English (Butler et al., 2005); Gorsuch (2000); (Samimy et al., 2004), but just to face requirements of paper tests.
In the efforts of bridging the gaps of learning Communicative English in Vietnam, there has been an increasing number of research of applying this communicative method in teaching, including Hoang (2014), Nguyen & Nguyen (2018), Bui (2019), Tran (2015), Le (2014), Nguyen (2010), or Cao (2018). Also, my study is aiming at the efficiency of TBLT in Vietnam by initially, discovering the learners’ perspectives of the practice of TBLT in the classroom. Whatever the teaching method is, a good teacher must first understand their learners in terms of how they feel and learn from lessons. Kumaravadivelu (1991) declares that both teachers and students perceive by themselves of what forms teaching and learning a language.
That is, learners translate tasks and other classroom events from their personal viewpoints, which may be sharply different from reality. This is the gap between learning and teaching, which its consequences can be idle hours with boredom that students experience in class. Being teachers, they are expected to be not only able to decide and make effective classroom practice (Freeman, 1991; Fuller et al., 1994; Richards et al., 1990), but also to embark on reliable research to enable such decisions (Ellis, 1993; Nunan, 1989; Ramani, 1987).177) claims that “no curriculum can 9 claim to be truly learner-centred unless the learner’s subjective needs and perceptions relating to the processes of learning are taken into account”. That is why my study prioritizes to look at both learners’ feelings and how they learn to communicate in class.
PURPOSES It is argued that only ESL contexts, where learners can speak the target language in their living community, are suitable for TBLT, so is not for other foreign teaching areas, but Ellis (2009) affirms that TBLT can be a means for achieving communicative opportunities inside the classroom in different environments. For more knowledge of TBLT, this study is aimed to investigate if 1st-year students feel enjoyable about the lessons, specifically, task-based activities in classroom boundary at BVU (affective learning). Then, this study attempts to identify if task activities can help students with learning (cognitive learning). Finally, it addresses some possible difficulties students face in joining these activities, from which teachers can offer necessary support to facilitate a productive classroom.
There are two research questions: 1. What is the students’ perception of Task-based activities? 2. What are the students’ challenges in performing Task-based activities? SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This thesis investigated how students thought and learnt with Task-based activities in communicative courses, especially for the 1st- year students who are not majored in English at BVU. It did not take into account the evaluation to whether the tasks were effective enough in developing language skills, as well as how progressive the learners are at the course completion.
Basically, the outcomes of the study were to help me understand the levels of my students’ satisfaction and concentration on learning when participating in task- activities.