VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* VŨ MAI DUYÊN THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF UTHENTIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN GENERAL ENGLISH COURSE AT THÁI BÌNH UNIVERSITY PHÁT TRIỂN VÀ ĐÁNH GIÁ TÀI LIỆU CHÂN THỰC BỔ TRỢ CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRONG KHÓA HỌC TIẾNG ANH CƠ BẢN TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THÁI BÌNH M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi, 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* VŨ MAI DUYÊN THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF UTHENTIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN GENERAL ENGLISH COURSE AT THÁI BÌNH UNIVERSITY PHÁT TRIỂN VÀ ĐÁNH GIÁ TÀI LIỆU CHÂN THỰC BỔ TRỢ CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRONG KHÓA HỌC TIẾNG ANH CƠ BẢN TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THÁI BÌNH M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dương Thu Mai, PhD Hanoi, 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I certify that I am the sole author of this thesis. All the material in this study which is not my own work has been identified and acknowledged. This thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other university or institution wholly or partially. I also accept all the requirements of ULIS relating to the retention and use of M.A graduation thesis deposited in the library.
Vũ Mai Duyên i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe my deepest gratitude to my supportive supervisor, Duong Thu Mai, Ph.D, for her whole-hearted assistance, encouragement as well as the profound guidance she gave me while I was doing my research. I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all my teachers and lecturers in Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their valuable instruction and assistance throughout the realization of this thesis. I am heartily thankful to the administrators, my colleagues, and first-year students at Thái Bình University for their willingness to participate in the research. Without their help, this project could not be fulfilled.
Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends who have unfailingly inspired me to complete this study. Hanoi, September 2014 ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study attempts to develop and evaluate a set of authentic supplementary materials for students in a General English course at Thái Bình University.Approaches, principled frameworksand selection criteria are identified to serve as basic guideline for the process of developing materials. The material evaluation proceeds using survey questionnaire and interview. Quantitatively and qualitatively analytical results revealed that the developed materials appeared to bring about positive enhancement in students’ learning English.Bothstudents and teachers demonstrated highly supportive judgments toward the materials’ effectiveness in nearly all aspects but not much in writing skill.
Man-Whitney U test result indicatedsignificant relations between students’ evaluations and their English proficiency. Based on the findings, the thesis provides pedagogic implications and suggestions for further research which would be of considerable interest to English language teachers, learners as well as material developers and evaluators. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LISTOF ABBREVIATIONS ASM set of Authentic Supplementary Materials C/F Credit / Fair (students) CLT Communicative Language Teaching ELT English Language Teaching ESP English for Specific Purposes G/vG Good, very Good (students) HOTS High-Order Thinking Skill LLT Language Teaching and Learning MoET (Vietnamese) Ministry of Education and Training SD Standard of Deviation SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences TBU Thái Bình University ULIS University of Language and International Studies VNU Vietnam National University, Hanoi iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LISTOF ABBREVIATIONS.
iv LIST OF FIGURES. viii LIST OF TABLES. viii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Aims of study and research questions.
Scope of the study. Method of the study. Design of the study. 4 CHAPER I: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Material Development in English Language Teaching .1 Materials in English language teaching. Process of Material Development in English language teaching. Process of Authentic Supplementary Material Development in ELT. Material Evaluation in English Language Teaching.
Approaches to Material Evaluation. Principles for Material Evaluation. Criteria for Material Evaluation. Factors relating to Material Evaluations.
Authentic Material Evaluation Framework in English language teaching 19 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Review of related studies. 22 CHAPER II: METHODOLOGY. Context of the study.
Thái Bình University context. General English Course. The Development of the Authentic Supplementary Materials. The Evaluations of the ASM.
34 CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Strengths and weaknesses of the ASM (Research question 1). Theoretical worth of materials. Practical Utilizing of the ASM.
The impacts of the ASM (Research question 2). Impactson linguistic and extra-linguistic skills. Impactson communicative competence. Differences between the evaluationsof thetwo groups(Research question 3).
Future use of the ASM. Summary of the findings and discussion. The development of the ASM. The evaluation of the ASM.
50 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Suggestions for further research. 51 REFERENCES and BIBLIOGRAPHY. 52 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS.
I APPENDIX 2: RELIABILITY STATISTICS. VII APPENDIX 3: Mean scores of evaluations on the ASM. VIII APPENDIX 4: Results of Mann Whitney test on two groups’ evaluations. IX APPENDIX 5: LEARNING STYLES.
XI vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Typical Forward design lesson plan. 5 Figure 1-2: Stages in the Backward design process. 6 Figure 1-3: A teacher’s path through the production of new or adapted materials .2-1: Steps of developing materials .1-1: General appropriateness of the ASM .1-2: The appropriateness of the ASM’s content .1-3: Difficult level of the ASM’s content .1-4: The appropriateness of the ASM’s topics/themes.1-5: Practical Utilizing of the ASM .3-1: Impacts of the ASM on macro linguistic skills.3-2: Impacts of the ASM on extra-linguistic skills .3-3: Impacts of the ASM on linguistic competence .3-4: Impacts of the ASM on other components of communicative competence .4-1: Significant differences in the evaluations between two student groups. 46 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.2-1: Forms of authentic materials in the ASM .1-1: Students’ learning styles .1-2:Means on Practical Utilizing .3-1:Means on linguistic skills .4-1: Future use of the ASM.
47 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale In this“post-method” era when an increasingly dominant awareness is there exist no such things as best teaching method, or perfectcommercial language teaching materials to fit every unique context (Prabhu, 1990; Kumaravadivelu, 1994; Woodward,2001), language teachers need to be enabled to write their own materials in order to reduce the dependency on published materials and as a means of professional development (Jolly & Bolitho 1998, pp.Using their own language learning and teaching experience as a personal knowledge base and gaining theoretical insights on material development and evaluation, teachers can devise the most suitable materials to their particular teaching context. These language teachers, in good time, could create and nurture an environment supporting the development of language knowledge and social skills that their learners need to function in larger society. With the desire tooffera motivating, beneficial and serviceable General English course for first-year students at Thái Bình University (TBU), the integrating of authentic materials into the curriculum is of utmost importance.
The authenticity is felt significant since it gives learners a taste of the natural language use, cultural issues and real world experiences (Richard, 2001; Kelly et al, 2002; McGrath, 2002). This taste on one hand enhances motivation, generates deeper interests, and facilitates comprehension; on the other hand it providesopportunitiesfor learners to rehearse the language studied in a sheltered environment for the successful language use in the future. At TBU - a typical contextofa newly-upgraded institutionin an agricultural province where hardly could people see someone from an English speaking country on the streets or at special places, the developing of pertinent sets of ELT materials for students has also been a matter of concern.Being aware of the above mentioned importance of authenticity, the school management board has made this an important criterion for material development. A purposeful and carefulcollection ofauthentic materials will“remind” TBU studentsthat acquiringan international language like Englishis not anything “luxurious” but advantageous in their daily communicating, entertaining, studying, and their future employment.
Such materials should be prioritized to develop and evaluated, given the current course-book with limitations in terms of authenticity. Since there has not yet 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com research targeting at the authentic material development in the context of TBU, this gap has opened a path for the current study on “The Development and Evaluation of Authentic Supplementary Materials for First-Year Students in General English Course at Thái Bình University”. Hopefully, advances in language teaching and learningin given context may stem from the merits of the developed set of authentic supplementary materials (ASM). Aims of study and research questions The ultimateaim of this study is to develop a set of authentic supplementary materials for first-year students at TBU in order to compensate for certain unsuitability of the set course- book.Secondly, the studyinvolves itself in the process ofinvestigating the evaluations of TBUstudentsandteachers towardsthe strengths and weaknesses of the ASM and identifying their perceptions tothe ASM’s effectiveness.Another aim is to explorewhether there is a relation betweenthe students’ evaluationsand their English proficiency.
The research is conducted to answer the following questions: Question 1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Authentic Supplementary Materials from the perspectives of first-year students and teachers of English at Thái Bình University? Question 2.To what extent arethe Authentic Supplementary Materials effectivefrom the perspectives of first-year studentsand teachers of English at Thái Bình University? Question 3. To what extent do the two English proficient student groups differ in their evaluation on the Authentic Supplementary Materials? 3. Scope of the study The minor thesis limits its scope to onlyauthentic materials as a source of supplementation since investigating all kinds of supplementary materials are such broad topics that they cannot be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper.
The process of applying such materials in real teaching and examining their effectiveness is within the scope of this small study.Investigating the attitudes of TBU teachers and targetedstudents towards the materials, the paper also attempts to figure out whether or not there is difference in the evaluations of student groups based on their English proficiencylevels. Subjects of the material evaluation include104 first-year students at two faculties at TBU who are not English majored, the results of this study hence may be generalized to only non-English major students at Vietnamese colleges and universities. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Method of the study The study is carried out on the basis of relevant theoretical document analysis andauthentic English material collection for the material development process.
Asurvey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews are used for material evaluation. First of all, intensive and extensive reading of related-theory documents on material development and evaluation would provide principledframeworks andcriteriafor the authentic material selection for the supplementation process. Secondly, after being implemented, the ASMevaluation is carried out in order to obtain detailed and comprehensive informationfor the decision on the future use of the ASM.In the second stage, both quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed in the procedureof analyzing data collected from the survey questionnaire and interviews.Qualitative method plays itsdominating role in the constructing, paneling and validating of the surveyquestionnairebefore it is revised for surveying purposes. Design of the study The study is composed of three parts: Part A –Introduction–presents the background, aims, research questions, the scope, and the design of the study.
Part B– Development– is organized in three chapters.