NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE NGÔ HOÀNG MINH THẢO THE APPLICATION OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF READING AT TRAN PHU HIGH SCHOOL- TAN BINH DISTRICT-HO CHI MINH CITY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN TESOL SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN TIẾN HÙNG, PH. FEBRUARY 2007 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: THE APPLICATION OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF READING AT TRAN PHU HIGH SCHOOL- TAN BINH DISTRICT-HO CHI MINH CITY in terms of the statements of requirements for These in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, February 2007 Ngoâ Hoaøng Minh Thaûo ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Ngoâ Hoaøng Minh Thaûo, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s theses deposited in the University Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the University Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, February 2007 Ngoâ Hoaøng Minh Thaûo iii AKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyeãn Tieán Huøng , who has given me a lot of helpful advice and enthusiastic instructions on my thesis. I am really grateful to all the lecturers of the 2003-2006 TESOL course at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities who have given me many useful, interesting lectures and professional, enthusiastic guidance. Finally, I would like to thank the teachers and my students at Tran Phu high school for their assistance in completing the questionnaires and contributing valuable comments on teaching and learning in this school.
iv ABSTRACT In recent years, although the communicative approach has been applied in teaching English in Viet Nam, there are still some problems in applying this approach to the teaching of English in high school, especially to the teaching of reading. The purposes of this study are to find out how the reading skill is being learned and taught at Tran Phu high school, to identify the difficulties in the application of the communicative approach to the teaching of reading at this school, to suggest some solutions to solve the problems. The method employed in this study includes a survey with questionnaires delivered to both the students and the teachers at Tran Phu high school. The results from the study reveal that reading is not being taught and learnt in a proper way.
Besides, there are a lot of difficulties in applying the communicative approach to the teaching of reading. They fall into three main categories: those caused by the students, by the educational system, and by the teacher. To sum up, in order to improve this way of learning and teaching, we have to apply the communicative approach to the teaching of reading. First, The interactive reading model should be used.
Second, translation into Vietnamese should be considered where and when in teaching. And last but not least, communicative reading activities should be organized during the reading class. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………………….1 SCOPE OF THE STUDY…………………………………………………….2 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY………………………………….1 THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND…………….2 THE CURRENT TEACHING BACKGROUND……….1 THE COURSE AND THE SYLLABUS………………………………….3 AIM OF THE STUDY…………………………………………………………….5 OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS…………………………………….6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……….1 DEFINITION OF READING………………………………….1 THE BOTTOM-UP MODEL…………………………………….2 THE TOP-DOWN MODEL………………………………………9 2.3 THE INTERACTIVE MODELS……………………………….3 COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF READING……….1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY…………………………………….2 QUESTIONNAIRE B (FOR THE TEACHERS)………………………26 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION……………………………………….1 RESULTS FROM THE QUESTIONAIRE……………………….1 RESULT FROM QUESTIONAIRE A (FOR STUDENTS)…………….1 STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWARD LEARNING ENGLISH….2 STUDENTS’ WAY OF STUDYING READING SKILL………………32 4.1 THE STUDENTS’ READING STRATEGIES………………….2 THE STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS WHEN READING………….3 TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE………….3 STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN PAIR WORK, GROUP WORK………….2 RESULT FROM QUESTIONAIRE B (FOR TEACHERS)…………….2 TEACHERS’ WAY OF TEACHING READING SKILL……….A TO THE TEACHING OF READING…………… ……….1 TEACHING AND LEARNING READING…………………………….A TO THE TEACHING OF READING………….1 SOLUTIONS TO THE TEACHING AND LEARNING READING.2 SOLUTIONS TO THE APPLICATION OF THE C.A TO THE TEACHING OF READING………………………………………….1 SUMMARY OF MAIN FINDINGS………………………………….1 TEACHING AND LEARNING READING………………….2 THE APPLICATION OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF READING………………….1 SOLUTIONS TO THE TEACHING AND LEARNING READING….2 SOLUTIONS TO THE APPLICATION TO THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF READING……………………67 5.……………………………68 viii APPENDICES APPENDIX A……………………………………….75 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CA = Communicative Approach CLT = Communicative Language Teaching EFL = English as a Foreign Language ESP = English as a Second Language LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1………………………………………………………………………….44 Figure 10…………………………………………………………………………45 Figure 11…………………………………………………………………………47 Figure 12…………………………………………………………………………49 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.48 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the scope of the study, the aim of the study and the general background to the study. The research questions and the overview of the thesis are also included in the chapter.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY English has been required as a compulsory subject in high school for a long time.
However, teaching English in high school is considered as boring and ineffective. Teachers cannot make their students interested in the subject due to a lot of reasons such as the course book design and content, the course objectives, students’ level, the teaching methods. In recent years, although the communicative approach has been applied in teaching English in Viet Nam, there are still some problems in applying this approach to the teaching of English in high school, especially to the teaching of reading. In my study, I would like to present how reading comprehension has been taught and learnt in high school.
I also try to clearly show difficulties in the course of applying CLT to the teaching of reading in my Tran Phu high school. Then I come to analyze what have been found in my study in order to suggest some solutions to deal with the problem(s).2 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1.1 THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1 Communicative ability has been the goal of foreign language learning in recent years. A new wave of interest has been focused on CLT with the ultimate goal of communication. The focus is on speaking and listening skills, on writing for specific communicative purposes, and on authentic reading texts.
There are principles of communicative competence underlying CLT. The goal of the CA is to have students become communicatively competent. Communicative competence involves being able to use the target language appropriate to a given social context. To do this, students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings and functions.
As there is a great difference between knowledge about language forms and knowledge that enables a person to communicate functionally and interactively, they need to know that many different forms can be used to perform a function and also that a single form can often serve a variety of functions. They must be able to choose from among these the most appropriate form for communication, and manage the process of negotiating meaning with whom they are interacting, either in spoken or in written form. In the process of English learning, students have to work with all the four skills from the beginning. Just as oral communication is seen to take place through negotiation between the speaker and listener, so is meaning thought to be derived from the written words through an interaction between the reader and the writer.
The writer is not present to receive immediate feedback from the reader, of course, but the reader tries to understand the writer’s intentions and the writer writes with the reader’s perspective in mind. Meaning does not, therefore, reside exclusively in the text, but rather arises through negotiation between the reader and the writer. 2 In written communication, a considerable part of the skill comes from both the reader’s and the writer’s ability to imagine the other’s point of view. A writer has to anticipate the reader’s understanding and predict potential problems.
As the reader has to signal anything to the writer, he has either to skip or else work very carefully to make their understanding successful. Therefore, both the reader and writer need patience and imagination at communicative level. The interaction skills, negotiation skills and thinking skills are required in written communication. During an exchange, to become successful readers, students in a reading class also need to negotiate the meaning of the reading text with each other and with the teacher.
Based on these characteristics of communicative of written form, I would like to investigate the way of learning and teaching reading skill at TPH and how they apply the CA to the teaching of reading. In Vietnam’s EFL context, many teachers have made studies investigating their own teaching situations. For examples, Mr Nguyen Tuan Khanh from Hue Institute of Fine Arts, Mr Nguyen Dinh Cung Duy from Maritime Secondary school, Ms Nguyen Thi Song Thuong from HCMC Architecture University and Ms. Phan Xuan Thao from HCMC University of Economics point out the problems of teaching and learning reading in their teaching situations.
Ms Nguyen Duy Mong Ha suggests how to apply the communicative approach to the teaching of reading to Vietnamese English majors. In general, those studies have clarified some aspects and contribute to the improvement of teaching reading, especially for ESP reading. However, there have been, so far, no studies conducted in teaching reading at high school. This research, therefore, is aimed to investigate the way of teaching and learning 3 reading at Tran Phu high school and the difficulties of applying the CA to the teaching reading here.2 THE CURRENT TEACHING BACKGROUND 1.1 THE COURSE AND THE SYLLABUS A course in a school year is made up of 33 weeks divided into two semesters.
English is taught in five periods per week and they are fulfilled in three different days. Three periods are planned by the Ministry of Education and Training, the other 2 are for extra exercises and activities. Each unit in the course book has to be taught in two weeks. Three or four of these ten periods are for reading comprehension, depending on the length of the text.
The other six or seven periods are for the practice of grammar, structures, further practice or revision. The units in the book are designed according to the PPP frame – Presentation– Practice–Production. The reading texts present topics to discuss and grammar points to focus on in later stages. The grammar parts give students chances to practise these grammar points and structures.
The production sections come last and are conducted through such tasks as dialogues, translation, sentence making or free writing. However, all the texts introduced in the course book are difficult. The topics they cover are practical but the information is out of date, the structures are quite complex which require a lot of teacher’s explanation. The tasks designed by the book writers are not motivating and not interesting at all.2 THE TEACHERS Most teachers of English at Tran Phu high school graduated from the Teacher Training College.
Many of them have been teaching for years and have 4 extensive experience, the others are young, energetic and have great enthusiasm for teaching.3 THE STUDENTS All students attending class 11th at Tran Phu high school in the school year 2005 –2006 have been learning English since their sixth grade. When they deal with English 11, they have got enough experience and have mastered tenses, structures and voices. They are of the same age, so the teachers do not have much difficulty moderating the speed of teaching or giving explanation.6 AIMS OF THE STUDY This study is carried out at Tran Phu high school in order to improve the way of learning and teaching reading skill. The purposes of this study are: 1.