1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣THU A MINOR STUDY ON SOME MAJOR METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TO 10TH – FORM STUDENTS CURRENTLY APPLIED BY TEACHERS AT YEN VIEN HIGH SCHOOL (MỘT NGHIÊN CƢ́U NHỎ VỀ CÁC PHƢƠNG PHÁP GIẢNG DẠY NGƢ̃ PHÁP TIẾNG ANH CHÍNH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 ĐANG ĐƢỢC ÁP DỤNG TẠI TRƢỜNG THPT YÊN VIÊN) M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, September 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣THU A MINOR STUDY ON SOME MAJOR METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TO THE 10TH – FORM STUDENTS CURRENTLY APPLIED BY TEACHERS AT YEN VIEN HIGH SCHOOL (MỘT NGHIÊN CƢ́U NHỎ VỀ CÁC PHƢƠNG PHÁP GIẢNG DẠY NGƢ̃ PHÁP TIẾNG ANH CHÍNH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 ĐANG ĐƢỢC ÁP DỤNG TẠI TRƢỜNG THPT YÊN VIÊN) M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Phạm Thị Thanh Thủy, M. Hanoi, September 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Candidate‟s statement.
iii List of abbreviations. iv List of tables and figures. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study. The aims of the study.
Methods of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Design of the study.
5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW. What is grammar?. Different views on teaching grammar. Whether or not to teach grammar?.
How to teach grammar?. What to teach in a grammar lesson?. Methods of teaching grammar. Grammar Translation Method (GTM).
The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The Task-based Approach (TBA). There is no best method for all?. Issues about how to teach grammar.
Should we use grammatical explanations and technical terminology in a CLT classroom?. 15 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Should teachers correct grammatical errors?. Criteria to choose an appropriate method.
Criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching methods. 17 CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Research questions and method orientation. Selections of subjects.
Follow-up interviews. Procedures of data analysis. 23 CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS. Students‟ attitudes toward learning English.
Students‟ purposes of learning English. Students‟ awareness of the role of grammar in reaching their purposes. Students‟ expectations for a grammar lesson in class. Students‟ evaluation of grammar lessons in class.
Teachers‟ awareness of the purposes of teaching English at high school and the role of grammar in reaching those purposes. Teachers‟ focuses when teaching a new grammatical point. Teachers‟ reasons for choosing their current teaching methods. 39 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Teachers‟ evaluation of their teaching methods. Follow-up interviews. Follow-up interviews for students. Follow-up interviews for teachers.
Summary of the findings. Limitations of the research. Recommendations for further research. 53 APPENDIXES I Transcription of class observation 2 I Transcription of class observation 3 III Student questionnaire VI Teacher questionnaire.
X Follow-up interview for students. XIV Follow-up interview for teachers. XVII TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching DM: Direct Method ELT: English language teaching GTM: Grammar Translation Method MOET: Ministry of Education and Training NA: Natural Approach Q: Question S: student Ss: students T: teacher Ts: teachers TBA: Task-based Approach YV HS: Yen Vien High School TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 10 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables Page Table 1: Students‟ attitudes towards learning English at Yen Vien High School 29 Table 2: Students‟ purposes of learning English 31 Table 3: Reasons why respondents think of the role of English grammar 33 Table 4: Students‟ expectations for a grammar lesson in class 35 Table 5: Students‟ evaluation of the time for communicative activities 39 Table 6: Teachers‟ aims in teaching English to students 41 Table 7: Teachers‟ focuses when teaching grammar to students 42 Table 8: Teachers‟ reasons for choosing the current teaching method 43 Table 9: Factors teachers base on to choose a teaching method 44 Table 10: Teachers‟ evaluation of their teaching methods 45 Table 11: Teachers‟ evaluation of their teaching methods in detailed factors 45 Figures Figure 1: Students‟ evaluation of grammar lessons in class 36 Figure 2: Students‟ evaluation of the presentation of grammar points 37 Figure 3: Students‟ evaluation of pronunciation teaching 38 Figure 4: Students‟ evaluations of the effectiveness of communicative activities 39 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 11 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study English language has been the most popular international language for ages.
In the new era of high technology and communication, English is playing a more and more important role and having a strong impact on many fields of the society. Under this impact, the demand for communicative competence in English is increasing in every corner of the world. In terms of teching English as a foreign or secondary language, recent research turns to realize that the best method never existed and will never exist because teaching situations are different in all places. As a result, a tailored method rather than a mass-produced one is required to correspond with them.
To speak about learners, it is notable that the views of learners have changed a lot. Learners are now recognized as individuals with their own identities, i. they are different in expectations, interests, styles, personalities as well as learning experience. Instead of sitting passively in classrooms and trying to absorb whatever teachers give them, they have now become the center of the classroom activities under the widely accepted principle: learner- centeredness.
Accordingly, all these differences among learners have to be carefully considered before preparing and conducting the classroom activities. Also, research figures out teachers‟ roles should be changed as well. Instead of being the controller and informant in class, the teacher now has to play a wide range of roles depending on the specific situations. With students‟ activeness in class, the teacher now works as a facilitator, an encourager, an organizer and a guide.
In class, student-student interactions, then student-teacher ones should become the dominant activities in classrooms. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 12 To cover all these changes in language teaching within this thesis is an impossible mission. In this thesis, the author would like to narrow herself by focusing on grammar teaching only in a high school to find out how the above changes are impacting the teaching and learning process, what methods are being used to teach grammar and how effective these methods are. She chose grammar teaching as her focus in this thesis because of some reasons.
First, English grammar has always played the most important role in the Vietnamese context through the grammar-based university entrance examinations as well as other grammar tests at school of all levels. Therefore, learners‟ aim of learning English used to be to pass these important exams. Secondly, many high schools in Vietnam have been criticized for the teaching methods in which grammar is taught explicitly and then practiced in a huge number of written grammar exercises without any interaction among students and little between students and their teacher/s. Teachers have been unique controllers in class.
Learners‟ needs, interests, learning styles, etc. are often neglected. Thirdly, with this thesis, the author hopes to answer her question on how grammar teaching in Vietnam should be changed to adapt to the changes of ELT in the world and learners‟ demands. The last reason is related to her personal profession.
As a teacher of English, she has realized that it is really a challenging task to make grammar teaching satisfactory to students. She has constantly wondered how to deal with grammar more effectively in classrooms. The answers to this question and the above would be of great help to the writer as well as to other colleagues. The aims of the study With the presented rationale, the specific aims of the study, accordingly, are: To investigate how English grammar is currently being taught at Yen Vien High School and what methods are being used to teach it.
To evaluate the effectiveness of those methods as perceived by teachers and learners at the school. To suggest some changes to make grammar teaching much more effective. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 13 Among these aims, the second one is the author‟s priority in this research. To achieve this aim, two other specific objectives were established.
The first sub-objective is to find out the learners‟ English learning expectations and their learning style preferences. These factors are crucial to affect the effectiveness of grammar learning and teaching and learners‟ evaluation of the effectiveness. The second is to understand the students‟ and teachers‟ views on the current grammar teaching methods with the aim of narrowing the gap between grammar teaching and learning. Research questions To achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, the following research questions were proposed: (1) How is grammar being taught at YV High School? Specifically, what methods are being used to teach grammar? (2) How effective are these methods in the opinion of teachers and students at YV HS? (3) What can be done to make grammar teaching at YV HS more effective? 1.
Methods of the study To reach the above aims, the study has been carried out with data collected from three different sources: (1) class observation (2) questionnaires and (3) follow-up interviews. All these instruments will be described in detail in Chapter 3. Significance of the study It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to the teachers in Vietnamese high schools in general, at YV HS in particular, especially those who are engaged in grammar teaching. The study contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of the current grammar teaching methods based on teachers‟ and learners‟ evaluation and offers some suggestions of needed changes to minimize the gap between the learners‟ expectations, interests and the actual practice of teaching and learning.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Scope of the study As stated above, the study is conducted to find out the evaluations of learners and teachers towards the effectiveness of the grammar teaching methodologies currently applied in order to make some methodological recommendations of grammar teaching. The study is, therefore, explorative by nature. Besides, with the aims of the study, the researcher limited herself to concentrate on a group of grade 10 students at Yen Vien High School in Hanoi.
Design of the study This thesis contains five chapters. - Chapter One presents the state of the problem and rationale, the aims, the research questions, the significance as well as the scope of the study. - Chapter Two prepares the theoretical background for the thesis concerning grammar teaching methods and criteria to evaluate the efficiency of teaching methods. - Chapter Three describes in details the methodology underlying the research.
- Chapter Four provides specific description of data analysis, a thorough discussion of the findings of the study and some recommendations as well. - Chapter Five is the conclusions. - The Appendixes are the last part of the study, following the References. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 15 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will present the theoretical background needed for the research by discussing the definition of grammar, different views of teaching grammar, grammar teaching methods, main issues in grammar teaching, criteria to choose an appropriate teaching method as well as criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a teaching method.
What is grammar? It is the fact that there are quite a few different definitions of grammar given by varied academic schools. However, this study just quotes and discusses two definitions which are relevant to the research aims. The first definition is made by Leech G.