VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* THÁI THỊ MAI LIÊN DESIGNING AN ENGLISH SYLLABUS FOR THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT FLD, NGHE AN TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Thiết kế chương trình môn Văn học Anh cho sinh viên năm thứ ba Khoa Ngoại ngữ trường CĐSP Nghệ An.A Minor Program Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* THÁI THỊ MAI LIÊN DESIGNING AN ENGLISH SYLLABUS FOR THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT FLD, NGHE AN TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Thiết kế chương trình môn Văn học Anh cho sinh viên năm thứ ba Khoa Ngoại ngữ trường CĐSP Nghệ An.A Minor Program Thesis Field: Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Nguyễn Xuân Thơm Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. iii List of figures and tables. iv Table of content.
Rationale for the topic. Aims and objectives. Scope of research. Significance of the study .5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
Definition of Literature. Literature and language teaching. Poetry and language learning. Prose and language learning.
Drama and language learning. Curriculum and syllabus. Types of Syllabus. A notional/functional syllabus.
A skill-based syllabus. A task-based syllabus .15 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. A content-based-syllabus .16 CHAPTER 2: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS. Objectives of the course.
Contents of the course. Situations of teaching English Literature at the FLD. Teaching methodology and assessment. Situations of teaching English Literature at the FLD.
Objectives of the course. Contents of the course. Teaching methodology and assessment. Situations of teaching English Literature at the FLD .30 CHAPTER 3: THE PROPOSED ENGLISH LITERATURE SYLLABUS.
Aims and Objectives of the course. Contents of the course. Teaching methodology and assessment of the course. V LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLE Table 2.1: The uses of English Literature Table 2.2: Important items that English Literature subject support to students’ study Table 2.3: People who decided the contents of the syllabus Table 2.4: People who should decide the contents of the syllabus Table 2.5: The order of syllabus contents Table 2.6: Old or Modern English Literature Table 2.7: The most favorite of students’ studying Table 2.8: The order of the contents to be taught Table 2.9: The activities carried in the past Table 2.10: The activities should be carried during the course Table 2.11: The ways students should be assessed LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale for the topic Together with the recent political and economic development, English has become a means to help strengthen the understanding and promote communication between countries. English has been taught and emphasized greatly in grammatical rules, phonetics and vocabulary in Vietnam. Consequently, Vietnamese learners of English, despite their perfect grammar often fail to understand English speakers who come from a culture different from their own. This leads to a consideration into the social and cultural in English Language acquisition.
English Literature as well as many other subjects for the last year students at Nghe An Teacher Training College helps them develop English language skills at advanced level. Most of the English-majored-students at Nghe An Teacher Training College spend their first two years to further their knowledge on English language skills and language competence. In their last year at the college, they have a chance to study English Literature and Country Study considered as the two cultural subjects when they are in their last year. English Literature subject focuses on the history development and outstanding works composed in English Language.
Literature is art, a special form of art. Literature is the art of exploiting words. Culture is expressed through language. Thus, the subject does not only help improve general language skills but also provides our learners with cultural knowledge of native country of the English language.
The name of the subject “A glimpse of English Literature” as well as the allocation of time (30 periods in 15 weeks, in the 1st or 2nd term of three year degree) introduced at the curriculum causes the teaching and learning confused. There is no further instruction, either on the aims, the objectives of the course, contents, and methodology or evaluation techniques. Presently, books on English Literature subject are rare in Viet Nam, the best one “A history of English and American Literature” written by Nguyen Xuan Thom has shown its advantages, positive aspects in both contents and construction. That it has been used as the textbook for students at many universities in all over Viet Nam is understandable.
However, to some extent, it is not suitable to choose this course book for the college students because of the specific conditions such as students’ language proficiency; the aims and objectives as well as the time allocation and many other factors. (The students at the universities spend three terms dealing with this LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 subject where as the college students have just one term for the subject). Hence, the teachers of this subject at all the colleges in Vietnam have to decide themselves what and how to teach their students. That the teaching is completely left to individual teachers leads to the fact that the teachers teach what ever they consider necessary or capable in terms of convenience and the availability of materials.
Being one of the teachers of the subject, seeing the burning situation, the thought of doing something to improve this situation has risen in the mind of the author of this study. In present time to do some changes to the fixed curriculum seems to be impossible. The only one thing that a teacher could do is to develop syllabus based on students’ needs in order to give students a chance to understand the history development of English Literature and approach to a special kind of text: novels, poems, and plays which they are really interested in. There is also a hope that the learners can be more confident in using English to express their understandings of their own country literature.
From all the reasons given above, the author of this paper is strongly believed that if the minor thesis “Designing an English Literature Syllabus for the 3rd year students at Nghe An Teacher Training College” is completed, the situation will be improved, the teaching and learning English Literature subject at Nghe An Teacher Training College will be more effective to both teachers and learners. The author of the research expects that the study would be a necessity and of great significance to the teachers of the subject who have been at sea for a long time working out how to make the teaching and studying of English Literature subject clearer, more interesting and more effective. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Aims and objectives The study aims to have a deep understand into the student’s needs and teacher’s ability concerning English Literature.
It draws the experiences of ex-students and the situation of teaching and learning English Literature at NA TTC. It also carries a hope to build an English Literature syllabus for the last year students in FLD at NA TTC from the detailed aspects of aims and objectives of the course, contents of the lectures as well as teaching methodology and assessment. The syllabus is designed for a three-month teaching time (15 weeks) with a schedule of two hours per week per class. The syllabus mainly focuses on the contents of the syllabus.
This should be the most important for the subject. It is not only a “day-to-day guide to the teacher” but also the specification of “what is to be taught and in what order” (Prabhu, 1984). Scope of research According to many curriculum developers’ theory, from seeing syllabus as “a course of study or the content of a particular course or program” (Stern. 1983) to a more detailed definition “a day-to-day guide to the teacher, partly a statement of what is to be taught and how, sometimes partly a statement of an approach.
1977) or “to specify what is to be taught and in what order” (Prabhu, 1984). Hence, within the scope and due to the quandary of time and resources, this study is limited to the search out of the need of English majored students and the teachers’ opinions about the objectives, contents, teaching methodology and evaluation of English Literature in FLD at Nghe An Teacher Training College. Significance of the study The study carries a hope of providing clear objectives, detailed contents in an order as well as the teaching methodology and evaluation to the English Literature subject for the last year students in FLD at NTTC. It would give the teachers of the subject a good chance to clarify the difference between a detailed syllabus and the training curriculum.
The study would also help students with an obvious sight at what they are going to achieve after finishing the subject. Methodology LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Since the study attempts to analyze the students’ need and teachers’ opinions in finding out what should be presented in English Literature syllabus for the last year students at the college, a survey has been conducted. Descriptive and analytical methodology is applied to analyze the collected data from the questionnaires and the interviews. Because the number of second year students in the department is not big, thus a decision of taking all of them as sample for the study is a probability within the researcher’s time.
Questionnaires have been employed to the second year students and the students who have completed the course at FLD. The survey elicits the second year students’ expectation from the subject in their last year and it also seeks for the situation and the experiences of ex- students of the teaching and learning English Literature at Nghe An Teacher Training College. In addition, interviews have been carried out to teachers in the FLD to get help and opinions from them in the field. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.
Definition of Literature There are many definitions on Literature from unscientific to scientific view points. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 7th edition defines Literature as “pieces of writing that are valued as works of art, especially novels, plays and poems.” Lazar (1993) introduces Literature as “feelings and thoughts in black and white”, “the use of language to evoke a personal response in the reader or listener”, and “means to meet a lot of people, to know other different points of view, ideas, thoughts, minds. to know ourselves better”. Selden (1989) sees Literature as “a special use of language which achieves its distinctness by deviating and distorting practical language”.
Literature as defined above is the term used to describe written or spoken material. Broadly speaking, “Literature” is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, the term is more commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction. Literature and language teaching Literature on the one hand provides texts of different genres like novels, short stories, poems and plays, which mainly discuss the human life from all aspects. On the other hand, it offers culture and life styles all around the world, and more than that, it transcends the time and culture to speak directly to a reader of a different culture at different periods of time.
In other words, Literature can be said to have a communication task from people to people regarding time, space and culture.