VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE USE OF CONCEPT CHECKING QUESTIONS IN GRAMMAR TEACHING: A CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL By NGUYEN THI PHUONG DUNG Supervised by PHO PHUONG DUNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the assistance of so many wonderful people who supported me along the way. First of all, I am sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Pho Phuong Dung, for her brilliant and timely feedback and open communication throughout the thesis process.
Without her whole-hearted guidance and support, it would not have been possible for me to complete this work. I am also thankful to my family who raised me up, encouraged and supported me during my learning journey and contributed so much to this accomplishment. Special thanks to my husband, Nguyen Hai Chau, who made countless loving sacrifices and was my support and motivation throughout my MA course. Finally, I would like to thank the research site and participants for their willingness to allow me the opportunity to conduct research for this study at their center.
ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis entitled “THE USE OF CONCEPT CHECKING QUESTIONS IN GRAMMAR TEACHING: A CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES” is my own work. The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution. Ho Chi Minh City, August 2021 Nguyễn Thị Phương Dung iii RETENTION OF USE I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Thị Phương Dung, being the candidate for the degree of Master in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of the theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, August 2021 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY .iii RETENTION OF USE. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. ix LIST OF TABLES.
x LIST OF FIGURES. xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. Background to the study. Aims of the study.
Statement of the problem. Rationale of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
Organization of thesis chapters. 6 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. The changing view of grammar teaching. Grammar-based approaches.
Communication-based approaches. Re-consideration of grammar teaching. Teachers’ perspectives on the teaching of grammar. Checking for understanding.
Questions to check for understanding. Concept checking questions (CCQs). The definition of CCQs. The benefits of CCQs.
The drawbacks of CCQs. The design of CCQs. The delivery of CCQs. Research on the use of concept checking questions.
Conceptual framework of the study. Context of the study. Data collection procedure. Data analysis scheme.
50 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The benefits of CCQs on students’ learning. The necessity and importance of CCQs in grammar teaching. Characteristics of good CCQs.
Impacts of bad CCQs on students’ learning. Teachers’ use of CCQs. Setting the context for grammar teaching. Students’ reactions to teachers’ CCQs.
Teachers’ follow-ups. Summary of findings. For teacher trainers. Limitations of the study.
Recommendations for further study. 122 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CCQ: Concept checking question / concept question CELTA: Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults CFU: Checking for understanding CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as a foreign language ELT: English language teaching FonF: Focus on form L1: first language L2: target/second language SLA: Second language acquisition ix LIST OF TABLES Table 3. Summary of case selection criteria. Summary of the participants’ information.
Distribution of items in the questionnaire. Summary of observation scheme. Summary of interview questions. The timeline for data collection procedure in the main study.
Teachers’ views on checking for understanding when teaching grammar. Contexts used by the participants to introduce the target grammar in the observations. Examples of teachers’ CCQs in the observations. Number of CCQs used in the observations.
Average number of CCQs for each target structure in the observations. Number of CCQs about form, meaning and use in the observations. Teaching stages during which CCQs were asked in the observations. How CCQs were directed to students in the observations.
70 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. Three-dimensional Grammar Framework (Celce-Murcia & Larsen- Freeman, 2003, pp. A continuum of assessments. Conceptual framework of the study.
Summary of the preliminary study and the present study. Thematic network of the study. 49 xi ABSTRACT Checking students’ understanding has been proved essential in order to ensure students’ achievements. However, not all types of assessment are effective.
In fact, the methods used to gauge students’ comprehension must provide sufficiently strong evidence to prove that learning has occurred. Although the use of concept checking questions (CCQs) has been theoretically recognized among the language teaching community as an effective means of checking students’ comprehension, there needs to be more empirical evidence from research to examine how this pedagogical technique has been perceived and applied by practitioners. With an aim to explore the use of CCQs in grammar teaching, this study was conducted to investigate the topic from teachers’ beliefs and experience. More specifically, employing a case study design, this research utilized questionnaire, observation and interview to gain insights into teachers’ beliefs towards the use of CCQs, their practices of using CCQs, their students’ reactions and their follow-ups.
Findings of this study revealed that although the teachers generally shared their opinions towards CCQs, their actual use of these questions differed from each other to some extent. Also, there were both consistencies and discrepancies between the teachers’ beliefs and practices. More importantly, there were some problematic issues in their applications which resulted in undesirable learning experiences. Pedagogical implications were proposed to address these problems and recommendations for future research were also included.
Keywords: Concept checking questions, checking students’ understanding, grammar teaching. xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the background to the study, the statement of problem from which a research gap was indicated and led to the rationale of carrying out this study. In addition, the research questions, the significance and the scope of the study are also presented. Background to the study In the history of grammar teaching, debate has revolved around whether it should or should not be explicitly taught.
Opposing views on how to teach grammar have led to various teaching approaches and methods. Nonetheless, while teachers’ instructions and their delivery can be the determining factors for the success of a lesson (Scrivener, 2012; Ur, 1996), the checking for understanding step also plays an important role in ensuring students’ achievements (Fisher & Frey, 2014). In other words, no matter what methods or approaches teachers use to teach grammar, it is highly necessary for them to assess students’ understanding during their lessons. When it comes to checking students’ understanding, Scrivener (2011) noted some ways that teachers unintentionally hinder or prevent learning, one of which is asking “Do you understand?”.
Questions like this are often useless when used to check learners’ understanding since a “Yes” reply could mean different things such as “I’m nervous about seeming stupid” or “I don’t want to waste the class time anymore” or “I think I understand, but…” (p. Teachers, therefore, need to get clear information about what students have taken in. One of the best ways to get students to demonstrate their understanding is by asking concept checking questions. This technique provides “real evidence, rather than vague, possibly untrue information” (Scrivener, 2011, p.
Concept checking questions (CCQs) or concept questions are questions asked by teachers during their lessons to help them check the learners’ understanding of lexis and grammar. They “break down the complex meaning of 1 the language item into simpler component concepts that can be checked one by one, using closed questions in simple language” (Scrivener, 2012, p. For example, to check whether students understand the meaning of the sentence “He used to play football”, the teacher could ask the following CCQs: - Does he play football now? (No) - Did he play football in the past? (Yes) - Did he play once or many times? (Many times) Workman (2006, p. 7) There is a general consensus that CCQs are more effective than questions like “Do you understand?” or “Any questions?” since responses to such prompts are not reliable indicators of comprehension (Hunter, 1982; Hunter, 1994; Roberts, 2017; Scrivener, 2011).
The effectiveness of CCQs is also proved by recent research on this issue (Florkowska, 2017; Kargar & Divsar, 2019). As concluded by Florkowska (2017), CCQs “are believed to be an important technique which trainee teachers must master as soon as possible” (p. Similarly, Kargar and Divsar (2019) proved the effectiveness of using CCQs on students’ grammar proficiency in their experimental study. Yet, there remains much within this topic to be explored.
For instance, how teachers perceive the role of CCQs and their experience with it when teaching grammar are open to speculation. In the context of Vietnam, there is a lack of research on CCQs within the field of English language teaching. Consequently, with specific regard to grammar teaching, this study was conducted to explore the topic within Vietnamese context. It is evident that what a teacher believes or knows may not always correlate highly with his or her professional practice (Borg, 2001).
Thus, investigations into teachers’ beliefs should be balanced by consideration of their actual behavior. Therefore, this study not only investigates teachers’ beliefs towards using CCQs but also explores their current practices with this technique in grammar teaching. Aims of the study 1. Statement of the problem One of the hardest parts of teaching English as a foreign language is grasping how much the students fully understand what is being taught (Roberts, 2017).
More often than not, teachers simply ask the question, “Do you understand?”, but it may not really tell them true information about students’ understanding; hence, it is important to develop ways of checking understanding to make sure that they fully understand a concept. There is a more useful technique to check students’ understanding: asking concept checking questions. They are a specific kind of check questions used to find out if students understand the meaning and use of a piece of grammar or vocabulary. In the case of grammar, concepts can be completely different from the students’ first language (L1), or they can have some overlap with English but may not be exactly the same (Roberts, 2017).
Explaining these kinds of experiences to students can be long winded and confusing; so, it is often more effective to use CCQs. Rationale of the study Simply asking if students understand is not the way to gauge their grasp of a concept. It is advisable that teachers not assume that everyone will automatically understand what they have said. Rather, they need to get concrete evidence from the students that truly demonstrate their understanding (Scrivener, 2011).
Therefore, it is advisable for teachers to ask specific questions about what they have just taught to measure students’ understanding and avoid asking opinion questions such as “Does everyone understand?” (Hollingsworth & Ybarra, 2009). Although the benefits of CCQs are widely acknowledged, controversies on its use persist. Teachers may not know how to use them properly and just end up causing more confusion to students.