MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES - - ĐỖ NGỌC QUỲNH AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMAR LEARNING AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Supervisor ĐOÀN HUỆ DUNG, Ph.D HO CHI MINH CITY - 2009 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certificate my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMAR LEARNING AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER In terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee Ho Chi Minh City, October 2009 ĐỖ NGỌC QUỲNH RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESES I hereby state that I, Đỗ Ngọc Quỳnh, 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 Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the 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, October 2009 Đỗ Ngọc Quỳnh ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Đoàn Huệ Dung, for all her patient guidance, continuing encouragement, valuable instructions and keen revision of this thesis Without her great help and special care, this thesis would have never been finished Special thanks are also expressed to all of my teachers of TESOL 2005 at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, for their interesting lectures and whole-hearted guidance Many thanks to the teachers and students at UEFLC who have responded to the questionnaires to provide me such a trustworthy source of data for the research Finally, I also want to thank my family for their love and support during the time of writing this thesis ABSTRACT Input-based approach is a new approach in which the teachers use interpretation tasks to provide their students with a lot of grammatical input For these kinds of tasks, the students are encouraged to focus on both form and meaning of a new structure to answer the questions This study aims to find out if interpretation tasks really work in the grammar teaching and learning at the University of Education Foreign Language Center (UEFLC) The data for the research were mainly collected by means of three questionnaires for 185 students and 15 teachers at UEFLC The first students’ questionnaire was conducted before the experimental teaching and the second one was carried out after the experimental teaching The third questionnaire was done for the teachers The results of the three questionnaires help to find out: (1) the real situation of students’ grammar learning, (2) problems faced by students in learning grammar, (3) if interpretation tasks really work in facilitating the students’ process of learning grammar The results of the study showed that many students thought that their grammar knowledge was limited although they have learned English for a long time They also had some problems in learning grammar After the experimental teaching, both teachers and students had good evaluation of interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning The tasks were also thought to be interesting and easy to Finally, some practical recommendations were introduced to make interpretation tasks to be more efficiently applied for the students at UEFLC Contents Chapter INTRODUCTION 1.1.Background to the study 1.2 Grammar learning and teaching at the UEFLC 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Definitions of terms 1.7 Overview of the study Chapter LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Grammar 2.1.1 What is grammar? 2.1.2 Place of grammar in learning and teaching 2.1.3 Why is English grammar difficult to learn? 2.1.4 Causes of errors in grammar learning 2.1.5 Factors affecting the learning ability of grammatical structures .10 2.2 Grammar in different teaching methods .14 2.2.1 Grammar Translation Methods (GTM) .14 2.2.2 Direct Method 15 2.2.3 Audio-lingual Method (ALM) 15 2.2.4 Comprehension-based approach .16 2.2.5 Communicative Approach (CA) .16 2.2.6 Input-oriented approach 17 2.2.7 Output-oriented approach 18 2.2.8 Presentation, practice, and production procedure 19 2.3 Interpretation tasks 20 2.3.1 What are interpretation tasks? .20 2.3.2 What we use interpretation tasks for? .20 2.3.3 General principles for the design of interpretation tasks 21 Chapter RESEARCH DESIGN AND ETHODOLOGY 23 3.1 Research goals and methods 23 3.2 Research Design 24 3.2.1 Subjects 24 3.2.2 Measurement Instruments .24 3.3 Data collection procedure 29 Chapter DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 31 4.1 Responses from the questionnaires .31 4.1.1 Students’ responses before the experimental teaching 31 4.1.2 Students’ responses after the experimental teaching .39 4.1.3 Teacher’s questionnaire .43 4.2 Results from the interviews with teachers 49 4.2.1 The first question: Can you tell me about activities in your grammar lessons? 50 4.2.2 The second question “What you think of grammar exercises in International Express coursebooks and workbooks ?” .50 4.2.3 The third question “What problems your students have in learning grammar?” 50 4.2.4 The fourth question “What think of the interpretation tasks recommended by the researcher in teaching grammar?” 51 4.3 Findings .51 4.3.1 Grammar learning at UEFLC 51 4.3.2 Grammar teaching at UEFLC 52 4.3.3 The application of interpretation tasks 53 Chapter CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 55 5.1 Conclusions 55 5.2 Recommendations .56 5.2.1 For the application of interpretation tasks in grammar teaching .56 5.2.2 For grammar teaching at UEFLC 59 5.2.3 For grammar learning at UEFLC 60 5.3 Further research .60 REFERENCES 62 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS For the purpose of simplification and convenience in reference, the following abbreviations are utilized in the thesis: ALM Audio-lingual Method CA Communicative approach GTM Grammar-translation method HCMC Ho Chi Minh city IT interpretation tasks PPP Presentation Practice Production TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages UEFLC: the University of Education Foreign Language Center LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 Students’ characteristics Table 4.2 Students’ time of learning English Table 4.3 Students' purposes in studying grammar Table 4.4 Student's evaluation of their grammar knowledge Table 4.5 Students' practising grammar at home Table 4.6 Students' problems in learning grammar Table 4.7 Students' characteristics of experimental classes Table 4.8 Students’ evaluation of the interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning Table 4.9 Students’ evaluation of interpretation tasks in arousing interest in learning grammar Table 4.10 Students’ evaluation of the applicability of g interpretation tasks Table 4.11 Teacher’s characteristics Table 4.12 Teachers’ teaching experience Table 4.13 Teacher’s qualifications Table 4.14 Students' difficulties in learning grammar Table 4.15 Teacher's comments on interpretation tasks in understanding form and meaning Table 4.16 Teacher's comments on interpretation tasks in arousing interest Table 4.17 Teacher's comments on the applicability of interpretation tasks LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.1 Students’ evaluations of learning grammar Chart 4.2 Students’ opinion: The examples are difficult to understand Chart 4.3 Students’ opinion: The grammar tasks are not interesting Chart 4.4 Students’ opinion: The grammar section is not clear enough Chart 4.5 Students' grammar learning methods Chart 4.6 Teachers’ opinion: The examples are difficult to understand Chart 4.7 Teachers’ opinion: The tasks are not interesting Chart 4.8 Teachers’ opinion: The grammar section is not clear enough ...CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certificate my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMAR LEARNING AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FOREIGN LANGUAGE. .. efficiency of the instruction But we are a long way from knowing how to achieve this balance 2.2 Grammar in different teaching methods 2.2.1 Grammar Translation Methods (GTM) Grammar- translation method... variational features is potentially an important one but, to date, there are no independent means for classifying grammatical features A variational feature seems to be any feature that has been