VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TRẦN THỊ HẢI YẾN CHALLENGES IN TEACHING NEW TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH 6” AT A SECONDARY SCHOOL IN RURAL AREA IN HANOI: A SURVEY STUDY (Những thách thức trong việc dạy sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 6 mới tại một trường THCS ngoại ô Hà Nội- một nghiên cứu khảo sát) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231,01 HANOI – 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TRẦN THỊ HẢI YẾN CHALLENGES IN TEACHING NEW TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH 6” AT A SECONDARY SCHOOL IN RURAL AREA IN HANOI: A SURVEY STUDY (Những thách thức trong việc dạy sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 6 mới tại một trường THCS ngoại ô Hà Nội- một nghiên cứu khảo sát) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231,01 Supervisor: Dr. Tran Thi Thu Hien HANOI – 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “ Challenges faced by English teachers in teaching new textbook “English 6” at a secondary school in rural area in Hanoi: a survey study” is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Linguistics. This is the result of my own work. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.
Approved by Signature Tran Thi Hai Yen i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Tran Thi Thu Hien for her appreciated advice, her gradual assistance and her useful correction, without which I would find it difficult to fulfill my thesis. I am grateful to my colleges at secondary school, who are enthusiastic to help me in my data collection process as well as a lot of students who are willing to become participants in my research and support me with valuable responses. Finally, I wish to appreciate my close friend, my classmates, my family who were supportive and helpful to give me necessary advices and stimulation during my thesis completion.
ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This research emphasizes on examining the challenges encountered by English teachers in teaching the new English textbook for 6th grade learners at a secondary school in rural area of Hanoi, and comes up with essential recommendations for the issues. For serving as the data sources of this study, three English teachers and 146 grade-6 students at the school have been surveyed and interviewed. By triangulating data collected from 3 instruments namely interviews, questionnaires and classroom observations, the challenges faced up with by English teachers were found out, including the learners‟ poor studying habits, learners‟ low level of English proficiency, time constraint, inadequacy of school facilities, shortcoming of supplementary teaching materials, immovable classroom setting and large class size. To get better teaching practice with the new textbook “English 6”, the recommendations were proposed as an inevitable part of the study.
In other words, variety of suggestions for better teaching and using of the new textbook “English 6” were proposed with regard to the authoritative, the teachers, the learners, and the textbook designers. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATION.
vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. vii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Definitions of textbooks. Roles of textbooks.
Advantages and disadvantages of textbooks. Communicative language teaching (CLT). Definitions of CLT. Principles of CLT.
Peculiarities of communicative methodology. CLT in Vietnamese teaching context. Review of previous related studies. Previous oversea studies.
Previous studies in Vietnam. Setting of the study.17 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Data collection instruments and procedures .20 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Challenges faced by teachers in teaching new textbook “English 6” at a secondary school in rural area of Hanoi .Challenges related to students.
Challenges related to teaching skills and language components. Challenges in teaching the new textbook “English 6” compared with teaching the former textbook “English 6”. For school authorities .For textbook designers. XI v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATION CLT: Communicative Language Teaching MOET: Ministry of Education and Training CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference NFL: National Foreign Language vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.
The lessons‟ focus of the new textbook “English 6”. The teachers‟ background information. Students‟ studying habits in English. Lessons ranked according to their levels of difficulty in teaching.
Skills ranked according to their degree of difficulty in teaching .Students‟ challenges in studying listening skills. Students‟ challenges in studying speaking skill. Students‟ challenges in studying reading skill. Students‟ challenges in studying writing skill.
Language components ranked according to their level of difficulty in teaching .28 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale With the purpose of enhancing English communicative competence effectively among Vietnamese youth, the National Foreign Language (NFL) project has been issued since the year of 2008. To satisfy the objectives set in the NFL project, the need of reformulating English teaching and learning serves as a requirement. As a result, since 2012, the series of English textbooks from grade 3 to grade 12 has been published and piloted in a number of Vietnamese institutions.
The new textbook series has been designed after the communicative approach with the hope of developing communicative competence of the learners. This is considered a remarkable change from the former textbook series which also worked with 4 skills but let teachers tend to focus more on grammar. Since the series of the new textbooks has been piloted in several schools in Vietnam, most of teachers who teach the books in this series held positive attitude on the books‟ design, content and the book approach. In addition, English teachers are encouraged to take part in training courses in new teaching methodology to adapt themselves well with the expected teaching and learning approach of the new textbooks.
Beside the positive features of the new textbooks recognized by most of English teachers, the new textbook requires the English teachers a lot of effort to cover all its aspects with expected method within the time bound. Being a teacher who has used the new textbook “English 6” in teaching for 2 years, the researcher realized that English teachers faced a number of challenges in teaching the new textbook with the expected teaching method. For that reason, the study is carried out with the purpose of revealing the challenges that English teachers face up with in teaching the new English textbooks “English 6” at a secondary school in rural area of Hanoi, and come up with possible suggestions to solve the stated difficulties. Objectives of the study The interrelated objectives of the study are indentifying the challenges that teachers have faced up with in teaching new textbook “ English 6” issued by 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Education Publishing House co-operating with Pearson Education in the rural teaching context in Hanoi, and finding out the solutions to overcome the challenges stated in the research.
Research questions In order to identify the teaching challenges as well as work out the implications for the challenges found, it is necessary to solve the answers for the following questions. The first question is the main focus of the study. What are the challenges faced by English teachers in teaching the new textbook “ English 6”? 2. What are possible suggestions to overcome the challenges found? 4.
Methods of the study The main purpose of this study is to explore challenges teachers encountered in using the new “English 6” textbook, and propose the recommendations to overcome the challenges. To achieve this purpose, a mixed research method with greater emphasis on qualitative and quantitative approach was employed. Scope of the study Due to time constraint and the shortcoming of the minor thesis, the researcher only concentrates on the challenges that teachers coped up with in teaching the new textbook named “English 6”. Accordingly, the focus on the other subject matters including the other new textbooks in the new series with other types of teachers and learners is out of the scope of the study.
Significance of the study Theoretically, due to the fact that the new textbook is designed after the communicative approach, this study involves in discovering the challenges in conducting communicative teaching methodology in Vietnamese teaching context. In particular, the finding of this research is supposed to make a significant contribution to the development of the pedagogical practice of teaching and studying with the new textbooks in the new series in general, and with the new textbook “ English 6” in specific. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In addition, the study can also be a practical source of reference for teachers who are teaching English in the same context. Design of the thesis The study consists of 3 parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
Introduction, presents the general introduction of the study, consisting of rationale, objetives of the study, research questions, methods, scope, significance and design of the study. Development, consist of three chapters: Literature review, Methodology, Findings and Discussion. Literature review, presents the most important works related to the textbooks and communicative teaching methodology, including: textbook definitions, roles of textbook, merits and demerits of the textbooks, communicative language teaching definitions, communicative teaching principles, perculiarities of communicative languaguage teaching, communicative language teaching in Vietnamese pedagogical context. Methodology, provides information about research methods, setting, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, data analysis procedure.
Findings and Discussion, analyses and discusses the data collected from teacher interviews, survey questionnaires, classroom observations. At the same time, the implications are proposed as an inevitable part of the study. Conclusion , presents the major findings, limitations of the study and ends up with ideas for further studies. References and indexes serve as the last components of the thesis.
3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1. Definitions of textbooks Textbooks play an essential role in teaching and learning language. There have been a number of definitions of textbooks. Firstly, according to Sheldon (1987: 1-10), textbooks were mentioned as a published written version for improving both learners‟ linguistic and communicative abilities.
Besides, Harris and Hodges (1995: 124) stated that textbooks were paperbacks used in colleges for aiding students with their studying in a specific branch. After that, it was claimed by Byrd (2001: 415-427) that textbooks were considered as the main source for teaching and learning procedure, which served as the centralized desicion –making agents prescribed by Ministry of Education. Further, it was also defined clearly in Longman dictionary that textbooks were books containing series of lessons frequently used for the specific subject. Above all, it can be concluded from the definitions mentioned above that textbooks serve as the main document that assisted the studying of the learners in a particular academic domain.
In Vietnam, textbooks are regarded as the major coursebooks that teachers and students followed in their teaching and studying at school. They are promulgated by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and irreplacable without the permission of MOET. Roles of textbooks A number of researchers have claimed that there was a great amount of necessity that textbooks brought about. First, according to Hutchinson and Torres (1994: 315-328), text books could serve as supporting teaching tools for teachers and as the instruments of modification and alteration.