MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY  TẠ THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO A STUDY ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING GRAMMAR AT NEWSTAR INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE CENTER IN VINH CITY Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Code: 60140111 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: LÊ PHẠM HOÀI HƯƠNG, Assoc. Prof., Ph.D. NGHE AN, 2014 STATEMENT OF AUTHOR I here acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates, and have not been published elsewhere. Author Supervisor Ta Thi Phuong Thao Assoc.Prof.Dr. Le Pham Hoai Huong i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Pham Hoai Huong for all the friendly support and assistance at all stages of this thesis. Her constant guidance has inspired me all through the study. Without her help and careful guidance, this thesis would not have been possible. Second, I am greatly thankful to Dr. Tran Ba Tien and all teachers of English Department from whom I have received a lot of useful knowledge during the years I studied here. I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude to all teachers at Newstar International Language Center where the investigation was carried out for their endless enthusiasm, valuable advice and great cooperation. Also, I would like to send my special thanks to all students at Newstar international language center for their willingness to participate in my study and their valuable input. I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to all of the friends in my class for their support and encouragement during the time this paper was written. Last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family who have constantly supported me in various ways. ii ABSTRACT This paper investigated the perceptions of teachers and students of communicative activities in teaching and learning at Newstar International Language Center in Vinh City. The participants of this research consist of two groups: teachers and students. The first group includes 40 teachers, and the second group comprises of 100 students chosen from 6 classes at Newstar International Language Center. The methods for investigation in the study included student and teacher questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation. The results of the study show that most of the teachers and students had positive attitudes and motivation to the use of communicative activities in learning and teaching grammar. Many of the English teachers at Newstar international language center recognized the importance of communicative activities in communicative language teaching because they could help students have natural learning and communication, and become more self-reliant. Furthermore, it is found that if no communicative activities were made use of, grammar lesson for students in the center were less successful. In most of English classes observed, the communicative activities facilitated teaching and learning grammar. Besides, the results also indicate some of difficulties and objective causes that hindered the teachers and students from using of communicative activities in teaching English grammar. Based on the findings of the study, suggestions were made to enhance the use of communicative activities in teaching and learning grammar effectively. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 2.1. Introduction 4 2.2. Definitions of Key Terms 4 2.2.3. Goals and Techniques for Teaching Grammar iv LIST OF ABBREVIATION CAs: Communicative Activities v LIST OF TABLES Page Table 4.2.4: Teachers’ perceptions towards the aims of CAs Error: Reference source not found Table 4.3.1: Sources of CAs used in grammar lessons Error: Reference source not found Table 4.3.3: Roles of the teachers during the CAs Error: Reference source not found Table 4.5: Ways to promote CAs Error: Reference source not found vi LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 4.2.1: Teachers and students' perceptions of the importance of CAs in English teaching and learning Figure 4.2.2: Grammar lessons without CAs in comparison with those with the Figure 4.2.3: CAs help students to perceive the grammar point after the lesson Figure 4.2.5: Students' perceptions towards their more active participation in the grammar lesson with CAs Figure 4.3.2: Teachers' favourite communicative activities Figure 4.4: Teachers' difficulties in implementing CAs vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale Due to the fast development of the society, the increasing living standard and the unceasing demand for broader international cooperation, the communication among different nations is necessary day after day. Communicative competence has become the major goal of the curricula innovation which has been a burning issue in education in recent years. For a long time, the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam has rotated around teaching grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation with little concern about communicative competence. Such emphasis on linguistic materials has been the reason for many communication breakdowns between Vietnamese and foreigners, especially English-used communication. Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach as well (Sarwani, 2014). As teachers, we need to help learners see that effective communication involves achieving harmony between functional interpretation and formal appropriacy (Halliday, 1985) by giving them tasks that dramatize the relationship between grammatical items and the discoursal contexts in which they occur. In genuine communication beyond the classroom, grammar and context are often so closely related that appropriate grammatical choices can only be made with reference to the context and purpose of the communication. If learners are not given opportunities to explore grammar in context, it will be difficult for them to see how and why alternative forms exist to express different communicative meanings. For example, getting learners to read a set of sentences in the active voice, and then transform these into passives following a model, is a standard way of introducing the passive voice. However, it needs to be supplemented by tasks which give learners opportunities to explore when it is communicatively appropriate to use the passive rather than the active voice. 1 As a teacher at Newstar International Language Centre, I have a lot of opportunities to teach English grammar structures. I find that we need an approach through which learn how to form structures correctly, and also how to use them to communicate meaning. All of the above reasons have inspired me to choose “A Study on the Use of Communicative Activities in Teaching Grammar at Newstar International Language Center in Vinh City”. 1.2. Purposes of the study The main purposes of the study are: - To raise teachers' awareness of the importance of teaching grammar using communicative activities. - To find out the challenges that teachers and students face in using communicative activities. - To work out common communicative activities used by teachers in helping their students generate ideas in grammatical lessons. - To help teachers find out effective communicative activities to provide necessary ideas for their students in learning grammar. 1.3. Research questions In order to meet the aim of the study, the following research questions are generated: - What are teachers’ and students’ perceptions of using communicative activities in teaching and learning grammar? - How are communicative activities used in grammar lessons? - What difficulties do teacher and students face in using communicative activities in grammar lessons? 1.4. Scope of the study This study was carried out at Newstar International Language Centre. The study mainly focuses on teachers and students' perceptions of teaching and learning 2 [...]... Communicative activities have real 23 purposes such as finding and exchanging information, breaking down barriers, talking about oneself, and learning about culture (Kayi Hayriye, 2006) 2.3.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Communicative Activities 2.3.3.1 Advantages of CAs In her article, Teaching Speaking”, (Kayi Hayriye, 2006) includes several advantages that the use of communicative activities in. .. (1994), the mainstay of grammar teaching has been the technique of grammatical explanation That is to say language teacher explains the rules to the learners and give them examples of it in order that they first get a conscious understanding of it and then start to use it On this issue, Ur (1996), gave explanations for presenting and explaining grammar (cited in Ellis, 2006) It is certainly true that grammar. .. to learn their second language the same way They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active 5 understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know The communicative competence model balances these... well as a group activity 25 • Information Gap: Students work in pairs to create a communicative need Each has different information and has to exchange this information Anything from opinions on films to parts of a story make this work well • Exchanging Personal Information: This is an extension of the information gap activities They ask questions and record the partner‟s information on a table or a grid... Some teachers assume that grammar is really vital in teaching English However, others claim that teaching grammar is not necessary in a classroom setting In fact, there are a large number of teachers who are aware of the value of grammar and that it should not be over-emphasized Also, there is an argument over the success of communication Many people think that if there is no grammar, communication will... activities that give them both the desire to communicate and the purpose which involves them in various use of language Such activities are vital in language classrooms in which students can try their best to use and apply the target language at degree of language autonomy and keep the balance of focus between language forms and meanings Littlewood also gave an example of dialogues that learners had... that communicative activities can be considered to help students practice in a free way as practical as real communication with various uses of language 2.3.2 Communicative Activities and the Use of Real Context The communicative approach method was developed by teachers and linguists as a response to the shortcomings of the audio-lingual and grammar translation method that is an old method which was... of the language, such as those used in writing and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used in everyday conversation or used by speakers of non-prestige forms Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them This results in bored, disaffected... grammar teaching activities – those that treat grammar as an object to be studied and analyzed and those that treat it as a tool for engaging in effective communication The former type typically involves contrived examples and inauthentic operations, while the latter strives to achieve either situational or interactional authenticity (Bachman and Palmer 1996) Our position is that both types of activity are... The model recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks There raised a question of importance of teaching grammar in classroom . MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY  TẠ THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO A STUDY ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING GRAMMAR AT NEWSTAR INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE CENTER IN VINH. Study on the Use of Communicative Activities in Teaching Grammar at Newstar International Language Center in Vinh City . 1.2. Purposes of the study The main purposes of the study are: - To raise. What is Grammar Teaching? Traditionally, grammar teaching is considered as the presentation and practice of discrete grammar patterns. As illustrated by Cook (1994), the mainstay of grammar teaching