Rationale Nowadays, English is considered as one of the most important languages in the world because it bridges people in the world together. Today, teaching and learning English is paid much attention all over the world, especially in the developing countries like Vietnam. According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), on September 30th 2008, the Prime Minister issued Resolution 1400 about foreign language teaching and learning during period 2008 – 2020. This is the main point in the national foreign language project for higher education in 2020.
One of the concrete objectives of this project is to deploy the program of intensifying training foreign language for vocational education, namely about 10% students in vocational schools in 2010 – 2011, 60% in 2015 – 2016 and 100% in 2019 – 2020. In order to achieve these objectives, the foreign language teachers have to apply various teaching methods to help students study foreign language better. Recently, teaching English has been improved in methods in light of communicative approach, learner – center approach which is adaptable to require objectives and helps students have more opportunities to communicate in English. However, at many vocational training schools, teaching English still has not developed students‟ ability, activeness and motivation, especially teaching grammar.
Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages because it makes up the skeleton of a language. Without grammar, words hang together with no meaning or sense. Students, with good grammar mastery, not only produce sentences grammatically but also acquire the ability to apply grammatical knowledge in certain context to express their thoughts and their feeling as well as to receive feedback. By teaching grammar, teachers not only give students the means to express themselves, but also fulfill students‟ expectations of what learning a foreign language involves.
However, how to teach grammar effectively [1] is not easy and it is one of constant concerns of teachers of English. So far, a great number of studies have been conducted to assist teachers and students in teaching and learning English grammar. In fact, teaching and learning English grammar at Tien Giang vocational training schools have not achieved high results as expected. Almost students do not have motivation in learning English, especially English grammar.
They feel it so bored to the subject. Therefore, they cannot follow the teacher‟s lessons and even apply the knowledge they have learnt in real situations. Moreover, the teachers of English at Tien Giang vocational training schools seem to prefer traditional teaching methods in which grammar structures are taught deductively when teaching English grammar. The most common activity the teachers use to help students practice is just giving the explanation of new words and grammar structures, asking students to repeat and in general making students passive.
Even younger teachers of English rarely organize communicative activities in their lessons because they are afraid of making noise which may influence the neighboring classes and also they find it difficult to control the class. That is the reason why teachers of English seem to prefer giving students a lot of written exercises to do in class. This makes students have no interests in learning grammar at all. Students often practice their grammar exercises reluctantly and passively.
The fact is that the second-year students at Tien Giang vocational training schools have a lot of difficulties in learning grammar. They are taught grammar though repetition and written exercises. Students are required to repeat the models and memorize the rules. These activities are boring and not effective.
Furthermore, many teachers approach grammar far too seriously, with unsmiling faces, particularly during the first phases of a new lesson when students are trying to grasp an initial understanding of the form and meaning of the grammar structure. In class, students do not have many opportunities to practice grammar structures in communicative activities. They are just asked to do grammar exercises in the textbooks after the teacher‟s presentation and explanation of a new grammar point [2] and at home they have to do grammar exercises in the workbooks without correction from the teachers because the teachers have no time for it. It is difficult for teachers to finish their teaching successfully because of the time constraint, the large class size, and the students‟ mixed level.
As the result, the students can produce correct forms when doing exercises and taking tests, but consistently make errors while trying to produce their own free writing or speech. It is obvious that students do not master grammar structures thoroughly and this way of teaching and learning may result in the students‟ negative attitudes towards English grammar acquisition which surely hinders their language learning conduct. This situation also provides another good reason for the study to be conducted with the hope to investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of using oral practice activities in the grammar lessons in order to help the students of Tien Giang vocational training schools practise English grammar structures effectively. Aims and Objectives The study aims at exploring the teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of using oral practice activities in teaching and learning English grammar at vocational training schools in Tien Giang province.
To achieve this aim, three specific objectives are targeted: To investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of using oral practice activities in teaching and learning English grammar, especially in the production stage of grammar lessons. To explore the difficulties faced by teachers and students when using oral practice activities in teaching and learning English grammar at Tien Giang vocational training schools. To suggest some possible oral practice activities which are thought to be effective for practising English grammar structures for the second- year students at Tien Giang vocational training schools. Research questions The study seeks the answers to the following research questions: 1.
What are teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of using oral practice activities in teaching and learning grammar? 2. How have oral practice activities been used in teaching and learning English grammar at Tien Giang vocational training schools? 3. What difficulties do the teachers and second-year students of Tien Giang vocational training schools face when practising English grammar through oral practice activities? 1. Scope of the study Due to the limited time, the researcher is unable to carry out the investigation on a large scale.
Therefore, the study focuses on production stage of grammar lessons in the real teaching and learning English grammar at Tien Giang vocational training schools. The study is concerned only with learning of second-year students and teaching of teachers of English at four vocational training schools in Tien Giang province. Significance of the study The study is conducted with the expectation that its results will be useful for teachers of English at Tien Giang vocational training schools. Based on the findings, conclusions can be made on the teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions of using oral practice activities in teaching and learning grammar, whether these activities should be applied or not, the difficulties the teachers and students face when using these activities to practice English grammar structures and how to deal with these difficulties.
Therefore, it could be a considerable contribution to teaching and learning English grammar effectively and enjoyably at Tien Giang vocational training schools. Outline of the study The study is organized around five chapters: Chapter I – Introduction – provides an overview of the study background. This gives a brief description of the thesis topic and information related to English grammar teaching and learning at Tien Giang vocational training schools. Moreover, the aims, the research questions, the scope of study, the significance, the methods of study, and the outline of study are also included in this chapter.
Chapter II – Literature review – reviews the relevant literature related to the communicative language teaching method, especially oral practice activities in English grammar teaching and learning. Chapter III – Methodology – presents the actual procedures of the study such as, study design, subjects of the study, the data collection method, instruments as well as process of data collection and data analysis. Chapter IV – Data analysis and discussion – focuses on presenting, analyzing and discussing the results obtained from the study. Chapter V – Conclusion – provides the summary of the findings, some recommendations on how to teach English grammar through oral practice at Tien Giang vocational training schools.
[5] CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Overview This chapter focuses on some theoretical grounds of teaching and learning grammar as well as oral practice activities in teaching and learning grammar. It consists of two parts. The first part is concerned with major issues regarding teaching and learning grammar.
The second one discusses about oral practice activities in teaching grammar. The chapter also reviews previous studies related to the current one and points out the gaps in the literature. An overview of teaching and learning grammar 2. Definitions of grammar Depending on one‟s theoretical orientation, different people define grammar differently.
Scott Thornbury (1999: 13) define grammar as “a description of the rules for forming sentences, including an account of the meanings that these forms convey and grammar adds meanings that were not easily inferable from the immediate context”. Grammar enables us to use language to describe the world in terms of how, when and where a thing happen as well as facilitates the way we interact with other people when we need to get things done using language. Ur (1991:4) says, “Grammar is the way language manipulates and combines words (or bits of words) in order to form longer units of meaning.” This definition is quite close to the common understanding of what grammar is. The main difference is that it tells us how the rules of language actually work – they arrange and shape words.
Nevertheless, knowing that these rules do is not a very motivating factor alone. In a word, it can be understood that grammar is not only the rules and the structure of a language, it is a means of communication and it helps people succeed in communicating with others. [6] As it can be seen from the above definitions, grammar is not an unimportant set of rules that can be ignored without consequences. It is a very complex phenomenon and even though learners may find it a difficult thing to master, the time devoted to that is certainly not wasted.
Making students realize it, however, is only the first step in teaching grammar, and the following activities can take many different forms, based on a selected approach and method. The role of grammar in teaching and learning English Nobody can doubt that a good knowledge of the grammatical system is essential to master a foreign language and it is also one of the most important parts of communicative competence. Thus, grammar is a framework without it a language cannot be structured and a message cannot be conveyed smoothly and fluently. According to Jim Scrivener (2003), people use grammar to communicate more effectively, more precisely with others.
That communication may be in a conversation or an essay or a notice or a hundred other things. People use grammar to „fine-tune‟ a meaning, to make it more precise. Moreover, it is quite reasonable to see the importance of grammar according to Harmer‟s viewpoint (1987: 12): Without some understanding of Grammar, students would not be able to do anything more than utter separate items of language for separate functions. The expression of functional language is only possible through the use of the Grammar of the language.
Firstly, teaching grammar helps students understand how the language works. Apart from vocabulary, students need to know grammar to understand how it is written or how words are combined together to understand the proper meaning. Without grammar or with a poor knowledge of grammar, they may get confused with complicated expression. In other words, the teaching of grammar means providing students with opportunities to use English in a variety of realistic situations to learn to communicate effectively.