Thai Nguyen University Batangas State University Socialist Republic of Vietnam Republic of Philippines NGUYEN THI THANH HONG STRATEGIC, LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC COMPETENCIES IN ENGLISH OF FRESHMAN STUDENTS IN THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY: BASIS FOR A PROPOSED DRILL EXERCISE Speciality: English language and literature Ph.D DISSERTATION SUMMARY OF ENGLISH THAI NGUYEN, 2014 The Dissertation was completed in: THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Advisor: Dr. Amada G. Banaag Reviewer No.1: Reviewer No.2: Reviewer No.3: The Dissertation will be evaluated at the State Council held at: ……………………………………………………………………… At: hour date month year 2014 Dissertation can be found at the libraries: - National library of Vietnam; - Learning Resource Center - Thai Nguyen University; - Library of International Training and Development Center; - Library of Batangas State University, Philippines. 1 CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM 1.1. Introduction English language is considered a significant tool for communication in the 21 st century as the world becomes global business and communication such as news and information, business, finance, entertainment, maritime and air traffic communication. It is also the language that plays an important role in government diplomacy, science, medicine and other profession. Further, often referred to as the world‟s language, English is widely spoken. Knowledge also of the English language to enhance educational attainment through improved communication ability is also important. It enables people of different countries to converse and do business with each other. One of the biggest advantages of a country in a global job market is the proficiency of the skilled workers in the English language. In the field of education, proficiency in the English language also improves academic performance of students. Proficiency in the English language has been identified as a requisite in the globalized economy; with countries having a large number of its population capable of communicating in English being rewarded with economic advantages. In Asian countries, this trend has been realized by both governments and individuals and are thus pushing the wide interest in English language study in the last ten years. Vietnam is no exemption to this trend considering that it is one of the non-native speakers of the English language. In the 2011 study of the organization EF Education First Ltd., Vietnam was 2 shown to have an EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) of 44.32 or very low proficiency close to Thailand that is 39.41. This EF EPI is the first of its kind index comparing the English proficiency of non- native English speaking countries calculated from 2,368,730 test takers across 42 countries and two territories, accumulated from 2007 to 2009. In the following year that is in 2012, Vietnam showed and EF EPI of 52.14 or low proficiency, an improvement from the previous year in comparison with Thailand which got a value of 44.36 or very low proficiency. Vietnam issued the Government Decision 1400 in 2008 whose goal is to renovate thoroughly the tasks of teaching and learning foreign languages within the national educational system and through its Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) National Foreign Language 2020 Project, or Project 2020 which aims to embark on an ambitious education reforms where all school levels will be required to have a minimum level of English by 2020. Under this program, Vietnam does not only want majority of its students to be able to use a foreign language, especially English, confidently in their study, daily communication and work by 2020, but demands that its high school teachers are competent on the second highest skill level (C1), the elementary school teachers on the fourth highest level (B1) and middle school educators the third-highest (B2). According to Dr. Diana l. Dudzik, a senior fellow at an education ministry project on foreign language improvement, students who have studied English for seven years beginning in grade six are often not able to use English beyond simple greetings and questions such as “hello”, “good-bye” and “what‟s your name?”. This problem is 3 magnified when the students enter the tertiary level, as freshman students, when they definitely will be handicapped to tackle more advanced tasks in learning not only in the English language but in other subjects such as Science and Mathematics where English is the medium of instruction. As an applied component of language, communicative competence is the ability of the speakers to use different functioning rules of the system. It involves speaker‟s grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology and phonology. It also includes the social knowledge of the speaker in the appropriate use of language. Knowing English involves speaking, writing, listening and reading. Producing the language correctly as well as using the language for a particular purpose is part also of communication in English. When speakers are able to perform the needed communicative functions, they achieve communicative competence in the language. A person‟s knowledge of the language and his ability to use that language in order to interpret and produce meaningful texts appropriate to the situation in which they are used manifests that person‟s language competence. This can be developed through activities or tasks utilized in real situations or practical applications. In the case of students, they can develop their language competencies through meaningful classroom activities and language use in contexts based on their needs, interests, and experiences. As students are involved in various aspects of the task itself, not in isolation, it is necessary to teach, practice and assess the vocabulary, grammatical structures, text forms, and social conventions important to carry on this task. Thus, the objective of the Vietnamese L2 learners is to 4 achieve a certain level of communicative competence in the areas of grammatical, socio linguistic, strategic competence and discourse competence. Based on the researcher‟s observation and as an English teacher teaching the subject for several years, most of the students encounter difficulties along grammar and vocabulary as well as their inability to use varied communication strategies. Through this study, student problems along these areas would be identified and remedied through drill exercises designed to enhance their strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies. 1.2. Statement of the Problem 1.2.1. What are the strategic competencies of Freshman students? 1.2.2. What is the level of students‟ lexical competence relative to: - vocabulary; - idioms; - word formation; and - antonyms/synonyms? 1.2.3. What is the level of students‟ syntactic competence in terms of: - subject verb agreement - verb tenses - direct and indirect speech - phrases and clause - pronoun references 1.2.4. Are there significant relationships between each pair of students‟ lexical and syntactic competence? 1.2.5. Are there significant relationship between lexical and syntactic competencies? 5 1.2.6. How do teachers assess the students‟ lexical and syntactic competencies? 1.2.7. What drill exercises may be prepared toward improving the students‟ communicative competence? 1.3. Scope, Delimitation and Limitation of the Study This study covered the responses of 382 freshman students selected randomly from five different universities in Thai Nguyen as well as the responses of 57 English teachers who have experience in teaching freshman students. The responses of the students to the validated lexical and syntactic questionnaire were gathered and statistically analyzed. The study was conducted in an urbanized setting covering a period of six months from July to December 2013. The students and teachers demographic background were not included in this study nor the identity of the respondents be gathered. Stratification of the students and teacher respondents were not done nor their gender was considered. The respondents includes freshman students who are currently enrolled in an English course in the University. The teacher respondents also included those who are currently teaching freshmen English courses. This study covered the three competencies namely strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies. It does not include discourse competence. 1.4. Significance of the Study 1.4.1. The Students. Students will largely benefit from the findings of this work as it will establish their current level of lexical and syntactic competencies and thus identify their areas of handicap which will be used as basis for the design of remedial strategies. 6 1.4.2. Teachers Through this research, college leaders, teachers of English are aware of students‟ strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies in Englishand their responsibilities for designing a suitable curriculumn as well as learning materials to improve students‟ competencies in english. 1.4.3. Administrators and Policymakers The college leaders, college managemers of the universsities in Thai Nguyen in general and in the foreign languages departments in particular may refer to the results of dissertation to enhance the training quality and improving the students‟ competencies in english to meet the demand of National Foreign Language 2020 Project. This study is also important to them to institute teaching reforms and insure the implementation of innovative strategies towards the improvement of English language teaching CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1. Synthesis The a literatures review of the study provided rich background on the constructs regarding strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies of the study. The concepts of Chomsky, Kroy, O‟Grady, Philips, Fernandez, Evans and Kac were used in the discussion of the topic competence in the English language while the ideas of Jaimes, Canale and Bachman on communicative competence added more information to the mentioned subject matter. Dornyei et.al, Yule, Stern, Gallagher, 7 Maleki and Richard constructs enrich the explanation of the topic about strategic competence. Further, Parbakht, Bachman, Canale and Swain, Brown and Jenkins et.al insights on the importance of strategic competence in compensating problems in communication supported the discussion relative to stated concepts. The ideas on syntactic competence as explained by Brown, Loban, Hunt, Smith, Chomsky, Burgess, Baker, Miller and Radford contributed very much in the discussion on the importance of having syntactic competence in the English language. The elaboration of the concepts on lexical competence was provided by Laufer, Meara, Doller et al, Segler et.al, Gass, Richards, Robinson and Alejandro. Further, ideas along this topic were also provide by Far, Faerch et.al, laufer et al, Lafford et.al and Marconi. As regard to the discussion on the concepts regarding drill exercises in language teaching, the constructs of Rivers, Nelson, Bratt and Bruder, Carroll and Politzer provided ample background. For the research studies reviewed, the following find similarities and differences to the present study: The studies of Abdaqui, Miyakoshi and Nizonkiza , the studies of Gonzales and Butler In addition, the studies of Lorimor on conjunctions and grammatical aspect as well as that of Matsuzaki in verb meanings and their effects on syntactic behavior find similarity to the present study as the level of syntactic competence in terms of subject verb agreement, verb tenses, direct and indirect speech, phrase and clauses and pronoun references are covered in the present study. Zareva‟s study on the other hand is also similar to the present study as both 8 studies deals with lexicon but differs on the respondents as well as the output of the study. 2.2. Theoretical Framework The study is anchored in Stephen D. Krashen theory of second language acquisition (SLA), Lyle F. Bachman‟s theory of communicative competence and Simon Dik‟s functional grammar 2.3. Conceptual Framework The components of the study were classified as input, process and output as presented in Figure 1. INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT Figure 1: Research Paradigm Drill exercises to improve the student‟s communicative competence Assessment made through: Test Questionnaire for students Survey Questionnaire For Teachers A. strategic competencies of Freshman student B. level of students‟ lexical competence relative to:  vocabulary  idioms  word formation; and  antonyms/ synonyms C. level of students‟ syntactic competence in terms of:  subject verb agreement  verb tenses  direct and indirect speech  phrases and clause  pronoun references [...]... scores for lexical vs syntactic test 12 Teachers‟ assessment of the Students lexical and Syntactic competencies 13 Students frequency of lexical and syntactic skills 14 Mean scores of lexical and syntactic skill 15 Relationship between on the teachers‟ assessment and the level of students lexical and syntactic competencies 16 Student‟s t-test comparison of the mean scores for lexical and syntactic. .. terms of lexical competencies, freshman students have poor performance in the areas of vocabulary, idioms and word formation but have better performance in synonyms and antonyms 23 5.3.3 As regard to syntactic competencies, freshman students demonstrate poor performance in the areas of verb tenses, direct and indirect speech, but have better or remarkable performance in the areas of subject verb agreement,...9 CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD AND PROCEDURE 3.1 Research Design This study made use of descriptive method of research to determine the strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies in English of freshman students in Thai Nguyen University The purpose of using this method is to acquire accurate, factual, and systematic data that can provide an actual picture of that data set reviewed 3.2 Subjects of. .. The drill exercises formulated contains activities geared towards improving freshman students lexical and syntactic competencies 5.4 Recommendations From the findings and conclusions of the study, the following recommendations are offered: 5.4.1 English Teachers handling the subjects maybe given more trainings and workshops in teaching content areas of the course 5.4.2 The proposed drill exercises maybe... references and phrases and clauses 5.3.4 There is no significant relationship exists between students lexical and syntactic competencies 5.3.5 Teachers‟ assessed that freshman students did not frequently used or practice their lexical and syntactic skills as indicated by their mean score of 3.0 5.3.6 There exists a relationship between teachers‟ assessment and the level of students lexical and syntactic competencies. .. Syntactic Competencies Comparison of the mean % score of the students lexical and syntactic performance as well as of the frequency of use of lexical and syntactic skills as perceived by teacher respondents was performed using the Student‟s t-test to determine the relationship between the teacher respondents and the level of student‟s lexical and 22 syntactic performance Result indicates that a relationship... 17 Drill exercises that can be prepared to improve the students communicative competence 18 Areas under lexical- syntactic competencies to be used as topics for the design of drill exercisex and the basis of their choice 15 CHAPTER V SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 5.1 Summary of Findings This study aimed to assess the strategic, lexical and syntactic competencies in English of Freshman students. .. Basic English As regard to teacher respondents‟ assessment as to frequency of students in utilizing the skills in answering the lexical and syntactic questions in class, results indicate that out of eleven items seven have the mean score of 3.0 which means that the lexical and syntactic skills are not frequently used or practiced by students As for the degree of importance, result indicated that all... PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA This chapter presents the results of the data gathering process from the respondents of the study, the data analysis and its interpretation as follow: 1 Strategic competencies of freshman students 2 Student skills according to the frequency of use asa strategic competence 3 Degree of importance of strategic competency 14 4 Level of students lexical competence... count, mean, percentage, ranking, and T- test 5.2 Findings The following were the findings of the study: 5.2.1 Strategic Competencies of Freshman Students In the assessment of the strategic competency of freshman students of Thai Nguyen University, a survey questionnaire was utilized for the evaluation of the sixty teacher respondents Results revealed that majority or 11 out of 14 skills of the students . renovate thoroughly the tasks of teaching and learning foreign languages within the national educational system and through its Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) National Foreign Language. ENGLISH OF FRESHMAN STUDENTS IN THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY: BASIS FOR A PROPOSED DRILL EXERCISE Speciality: English language and literature Ph.D DISSERTATION SUMMARY OF ENGLISH THAI NGUYEN, . managemers of the universsities in Thai Nguyen in general and in the foreign languages departments in particular may refer to the results of dissertation to enhance the training quality and improving