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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
I.1 Rationale of the study:
Increasing the students’ participation in language classroom activities is very crucial to the
success in language learning. However, the question of how to increase the young learners’
time-on-task is really complicated. As many researchers and studies on the second language
acquisition point out that the process of acquiring a second language grammar is not
substantially affected by age, but the process of acquiring pronunciation, proficiency and
especially, native accents is acquired better by children. That means young learners have more
advantages when they early start to learn a second language. Nevertheless, young learners
cannot concentrate for very long on monotonous language learning activities. In language
teaching, there is a number of ways to involve the young learners such as games, media…, and
the use of all those facilities is obviously helpful for motivating learners. There are various
types of facilities. Native speakers can be considered as a facility. However, in Vietnamese
schools settings it is not easy to have native speakers for students to engage in the real social
interaction and to be more exposed to native accents. Instead, students can watch native
speakers on Videos or VCDs or DVDs (in the latter parts of this study, the term VCDs will be
used to refer to all three means). Moreover, young learners usually are more visually oriented.
Hypothetically, the use of videos in classroom settings could help to prolong young learners’
span of concentration and to motivate them during classroom activities. Yet, the issue seems to
have been underexplored. The reality showed that the use of VCDs in schools was a rare and
luxurious thing in the past. Nowadays, the use of VCDs and other means is not yet increased
in language teaching. That is a reason why this study is designed to fill this gap in the
literature.
I.2 Aim of the study
This study aims at exploring the possibility of using VCDs to increase the young learners’
time-on-task.
Specifically, the aims of the study are to explore:
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• Teachers and learners’ perception of the advantages of VCDs over audiocassettes.
• The extent to which VCDs increase learners’ time-on-task.

- Chapter 4: This part deals with data collection, findings and discussions
- Chapter 5: Summary of the thesis, limitation and suggestions for further study.
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CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
II.1 A review of language teaching approaches
Teaching language has received much focus for the past few decades. So many approaches
and methods such as Audiolingual Method, Total Physical Response, Content-based language
teaching, Theme-based language teaching have been advanced, but it must be said that they all
follow three different theoretical views of language and the nature of language proficiency: the
structural view, the functional view, and the interactional view (Richards and Rogers 1996).
The structural view see language as systematically structured segments and language teaching
is aimed at helping learners learn these segments. According to this view, language is seen as
an object and learners as students. The functional view sees language as a medium for
expressing the functional meaning, and language teaching is aimed at helping learners learn
language functions such as requests, commands, greetings, thanking, apology, complaints,
compliments, invitations, and refusals. Like the structural view, however, it is an attempt for
implementation of the structural or synthetic syllabus, which requires learners to resynthesize
the discrete pieces of language to use in communicative situations, and so language is still
seen as an object and learners still as students. In contrast with the two above views, the
interactional view sees language as a tool for the creation and maintenance of interpersonal
and social relations between individuals, and learners are viewed as language users. It is an
attempt for implementation of the analytic syllabus, which aims to immerse learners in real-
life communication.
The following section will review three different teaching approaches: the oral-situational
approach, the notional-functional approach, and the communicative approach, which are based
on the three above language theories, respectively.
According to Ellis (2005), the oral-situational approach is based on a behaviorist learning
theory, that is, it assumes that language learning is habit formation and over learning.
Grammatical structures are carefully selected and sequenced from basic to more complex and
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notional-functional approach is still based on PPP model, that is, it is accuracy rather than
fluency oriented.
According to Kirkpatrick (1985), communicative language teaching is an idea or a set of
principles that owes much to a social view of language and to the concept of communicative
competence described by Hymes (1970). The goal of communicative language teaching is to
produce people who are communicatively, not merely, linguistically competent. That is to say,
the more the language learning in the classroom approaches the real-life communication, the
more successful it is. Communicative language teaching pays much attention to giving
students the opportunity to practice in genuine communication. Furthermore, the emphasis in
teaching language through communication is, therefore, on classroom activities which help
learners to acquire the rules (unconsciously) rather than to learn them (consciously). Such
activities must require the learners to focus on meaning, rather than on form. Linguistic
knowledge such as grammar is learnt in an unconscious ways; that is, students learn it through
task-based activities or communicative tasks.
The task-based teaching and learning, which is derived from the communicative approach,
aims at helping learners learn language through communication. It is built around
communicative tasks and so its primary focus is on meaning, that is, focuses on information
exchanges. The tasks are built on learners’ real communicative demands and this would help
learners with intrinsic motivation because the tasks they are doing in the classroom resemble
the real-life communication outside the classroom. And so learners’ language learning is
assessed through the outcome of the task performance. Linguistic structures are the secondary
focus in the task-based approach. They are embedded in the communicative tasks and taught
indirectly. Learners’ attention will focus on forms when their communication is broke down.
When so, they have to utilize different strategies such as negotiation of meaning, recasts,
clarification requests, and conformation requests to make their communication smooth. And
they may learn linguistic forms naturally. Hence, the task-based teaching is useful in that it
creates opportunities for learners to use language as a tool rather than as an object to satisfy
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communicative needs. It focuses on fluency rather than accuracy but, as described above,
linguistic forms can be also learnt as a result of learning to communicate. However, it is

expression or hand gestures, is available to accompany aural clues of intonation.
Similarly, the setting of the communication is clear: the language learner can see on the
screen where the action is taking place. This information may help to clarify whether the
situation is very formal, or perhaps informal. Of course, these audio-visual features of
video films are found in cinema films and television broadcasts too. But these other
media do not offer the same facilities for classroom exploitation of the material and
content that video recorders do. A further feature of video recordings – which is shared
with other related media – is the use of electronic tricks to create special effects and
images. These are usually quite beyond the resources of the language teacher to produce,
and provide another valuable source of material for use in language teaching and
learning. Video presentations will be intrinsically interesting to language learners. The
learner will want to watch, even if comprehension is limited. The material should be
motivating; the learner should want to see more, to ask question, to follow up ideas and
suggestions. By generating and motivation, the Video films can create a climate for
successful learning. In a language – learning context, there is a need for special action:
inter-action with the video (Jack Lonergan, 1984).
II.3 The use of VCD in language classroom
This section will discuss some advantages and disadvantages of the use of VCD in language
classrooms.
According to Gallacher there are totally five benefits that video can bring about when used in
classroom. First, children enjoy language learning with video because video creates an
attractive enjoyable learning environment. Second, video is an effective way of studying body
language as younger language learners are still learning about the world around them. Third,
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children can obtain confidence through repetition when they watch a video several times and
absorb and imitate what they see and hear. Fourth, video communicates meaning better than
other media. We can see that video presents language in context in ways that a cassette can’t;
that is, learners can see who’s speaking, where the speakers are, what they are doing, etc. Last,
video represents a positive exploitation of technology. This is because young learners always
have positive attitude towards television and video, which is considered modern compared to

* Teaching Foreign Languages to Children through Video
The teaching of foreign languages at the elementary school level has changed immensely over
the past two decades. Growing public awareness of the benefits of early foreign language
learning has led to an increase in both foreign language teaching and professional
development for language teachers at the elementary school level (Rhodes & Branaman,
1999). In 1996, the release of national standards for foreign language learning had an
extremely positive influence on K–12 foreign language teaching. State education agencies
developed standards based on the national model, and school districts began to implement
these standards at the local level.
This positive trend, however, has been jeopardized by a shortage of trained language teachers
(Duncan, 2000) and by budgetary constraints. In addition, parents and educators are
increasingly concerned about a lack of equity in elementary school language programs, which
are viewed by some as special classes for a select group of students. School districts are now
looking for ways to provide language classes for all students (Steele & Johnson, 2000).
Many administrators who are convinced of the importance of early foreign language education
but who don’t have the resources to offer foreign language classes taught by trained language
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teachers are looking for affordable alternatives. Video programs that do not require the use of
a certified foreign language teacher offer a unique possibility.
II.4 Time-on-task
All the students of the age group 6-14 have not only enrolled but provided education of
satisfactory quality. It implies that the curriculum objectives for primary and upper primary
classes are achieved during their schooling. However, what students learn in school depends
on several factors, many of which are school and teacher related factors. These factors affect
not only students’ learning in academic subjects but also personality development and
achievement in various co-curricular areas. Much depends on how teachers and students spend
their time on various teaching-learning activities in school.
Apart from the time spent on active teaching by teachers and how they teach, an important
dimension of the teaching-learning that takes place in school, is what student do and how
much time they spend on different types of learning and other related and unrelated activities

or her with some small reward he or she really likes or (b) each time the child tries hard to
meet the criteria or succeeds, give the child a quick break; (3) repeat stages 1 and 2 daily or
every-other-day sessions until the child attends for half an hour; (4) if the child increases time
on task and performance in training session, but not when you are not there observe the child
at school, there may be two cases: (a) if the teacher’s methods are the problem use them
during the training session so the child learns to pays attention even in uninspiring
circumstances, and (b) if the problem is only the child’s, encourage the child; (5) repeat the
procedure with other tasks.
Teaching for transfer and integrating language and content won't solve all the time problems
that teachers of ELLs encounter. For those teaching in all-English programs, the fact remains
that teaching content in English to ELLs takes more time than teaching the same content to
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native speakers. Bilingual programs ease the time problem by teaching content in the native
language, but political pressures and the English testing requirements of No Child Left Behind
often push ELLs into all-English instruction before they are ready.
We could do a lot to help ease the time crunch by ensuring that students are engaged in
productive activities during the entire school day. When I started teaching, my students spent a
good part of the day doing unproductive activities or doing nothing, and I found the same
thing happening years later when I did an observational study of a second-grade bilingual
classroom (Irujo, 1998, pp. 14-20). Almost all teachers can create extra time in their schedules
by cutting down on the time spent on clerical tasks such as attendance, announcements, or
collecting and passing out papers. Effective classroom management techniques can eliminate
excess time spent on disciplining students. Instructional time can be made more efficient
through flexible grouping arrangements that change according to tasks and student needs.
Student attention can be increased through relevant, motivational tasks that are challenging yet
achievable.
II. 5 Motivation in language learning
II. 5.1 The concept of motivation
Gardner (1960) claims that to fully understand a student’s motivation to learn a second
language, it is necessary to explain his long-term drive to acquire all aspects of the target

own sense of failure with reference to the students' lack of motivation. Being aware of the
importance of the students' motivation, many language researchers have devoted their time to
study the relationship between the students' motivation and their achievement in L2 learning.
Some of them such as Gardner and Lambert (1972) or Crookes and Smith (1989) (as cited in
Ellis 1994) try to investigate the consistent correlation between students' internal motivation
and their L2 achievement, that is, they hope to prove a positive relationship that the higher
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motivation students have, the more successful in L2 learning they are. However, some others
such as Oller, Baca and Vigil (1977, cited in Ellis 1994) have demonstrated a converse thing.
They report that Mexican women in California are successful in learning English though they
have negative attitudes towards the target language community. Many other studies focus on
students' external motivation and view it as determinant of students' motivational strength.
They claim that when students are provided with some kind of incentives to learn such as a
financial reward, they may be motivated and do better in learning. But the major disadvantage
of this kind motivation is that students may stop extra effort to learning when the reward is
eliminated. Gardner, Day, and MacIntyre (1991) carry out a study which aims to find out the
effects of both integrative motivation and anxiety on computerized vocabulary acquisition
using a laboratory analog procedure as a microcosm of second language learning. The result of
the study shows that integrative motivation facilitates learning of vocabulary items. This
means that integrative motivation is associated with higher levels of achievement and a
willingness to initiate a respond quickly. Integratively motivated subjects learn the items more
quickly and consequently are willing to risk attempting an answer sooner as trials progress.
The studies mentioned so far suggest that students with greater motivation could get better
learning, but not vice verse. However, some further studies by Strong (1983, 1984) or
Savignon (1972) (as cited in Ellis 1994) claim that students' achievement can affect strongly
their motivation, that is, students' desire to learn would increase with attainment in their
language proficiency. In addition, students' intrinsic interest is also considered to be one of the
main elements of motivation. The studies by Crookes and Smith (1989) and McNamara (1973)
(as cited in Ellis 1994) point out that students' motivation could be activated if they have a
chance to participate actively in learning tasks and it is teachers’ job to motivate students by

The subjects for this study consist of 60 participants placed in two groups:
- The first group includes 50 pupils at Thinh Hao primary school in Hanoi. They were
chosen at random from 5 classes of 5
th
grade. All the pupils follow the same three - year
course of English and their textbooks in use are Let’s Go 2. This group of pupils is taught by
Vietnamese teachers of English.
- The second group includes 10 teachers, who were chosen from three primary schools in
Hanoi (Dai Tu primary school, Thinh Hao primary school, Thanh Liet primary school). They
are in charge of teaching English for 5
th
grade. Five of them are in their early thirties with 8
years of teaching experience; five others are in their late forties with more than 20 years of
teaching experience.
III. 2 Data collection
III.2.1 Questionnaire
We have designed two sets of questionnaire. One is for teachers and the other for primary
pupils. In order that the answerer could be free to express their specific thoughts about the
items raised in the questionnaire, some questions are designed to be open - ended or to allow
interviewees give free answers (these are often the last choice in the suggested group of
answer).
Questionnaire No. 1, consisting of 11 questions all written in English, was administered to the
10 English teachers.
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Questionnaire No. 2, including 14 questions, was administered to the 50 primary pupils. All
questions were written in Vietnamese in order to make sure that they can be fully understood
by the pupils before they give their answers. They were also requested to answer in
Vietnamese, so as to fully express their ideas. For easier reference, these questionnaires are
included in the appendixes.
The questions for the teacher focus on the following points:

pupil is thinking about or processing the subject material, formulating a question or an answer,
or simply listening and absorbing, he may be judged to be doing nothing when he is in fact on-
task and actively learning. The five-second sampling interval requires the observer to make a
snap decision without benefit of careful study.
The calculation of time-on-task is made by dividing the number of on-task observations by the
total number of observations. Should the "nothing" data points be excluded from the total?
This bears careful consideration. The number of these null points, of course, has a bearing on
the decision. A data set with very few null points will not be greatly affected either way, but a
large number of null points can sway the on-task percentage significantly. If the objective of
the evaluation is to determine time spent effectively on learning activities, and the observer
confidently assigns the null value to mean "not on task, not misbehaving", then the points
should be included. Excluding them will give a falsely high on-task rating. If the observer
cannot confidently determine that the pupil is not on task, the points should be excluded.
III.2.3 Informal follow-up interview
To consolidate the results of survey and classroom observations, the researcher contacted
directly with answerers (the teachers and pupils) to ask for further information. Here is the
question used for the follow-up interviews:
- How can you compare advantages of VCDs over cassettes?
The questionnaires and class observations are represented in Appendix I, II and III,
respectively at the end of the study.
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CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
IV.1 Data analysis and discussion
IV.1.1 Result of teachers’ survey
After collecting, summarizing and analyzing the teachers’ answers, the researcher has found
many interesting and significant points that are present here below selectively.
The first question was used to find out whether the teachers used VCDs or cassettes in their
teaching. The result is presented in Table No. 1 and Chart No. 1 below:
Table 1. Q1 What is the type of teaching aid you are using in your English class?
Question Answers Total (%)

examinations. The principal teaching equipment used at class includes the black board and
chalk. The curriculum also needs a lot of attention. In a world in which technology is changing
rapidly and students are to be able to think creatively, make decisions, and solve problems, it
is clear that we have to find out means to deal with above-mentioned situation and improve the
teaching-learning process quality.
Table 3. Q3 Please indicate roughly how many percents of your pupils actively
participate (voluntarily answering teacher’s questions, pair work, team work, role-play,
0
20
40
60
80
100
Don’t like Don’t have Don’t know
Please indicate why you do not choose
VCDs for your English class?
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freeze-frame control - prediction, freeze-frame control - description, discussion) in the
class activities?
Question Code Activities Total(%)
Please indicate roughly
how many percents of
your pupils actively
participate in the class
activities?
A Voluntarily answering teacher’s questions 25
B Pair work 65
C Team work 60
D Role-play 45
E Freeze-frame control - Prediction 0

is only less than 50 % of the students achieve good marks (from 8 to10)
* Specific questions for those who say they use VCDs:(From Q6 to Q10)
Table 6. Q6 Please indicate why you have chosen VCDs for your English class?
Question Code Answers Total
Please indicate why
you have chosen
A Make pupils understand easier 100
B Increase pupils’ activities in English class 100
≥ 50% ≤ 90%
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VCDs for your
English class?
C Make an exciting class 100
This question presents the purpose of using VCDs while teaching. All teachers recognize the
benefit of using VCDs in English class which is to bring the best explanation to the pupils.
The combination between pictures and sound make pupils understand easier and remember
longer. The lively, clear communicative situations make pupils easier to listen, speak, repeat
and participate in a single activity. The advantages of using VCDs in English class are also
clearly understood as shown in the table and chart above.
One of the most appreciated materials applied to language learning and teaching is, of course,
video. A recent large-scale survey by Canning-Wilson (2000) reveals that the students like
learning language through the use of video, which is often used to mean quite different things
in language teaching. For some, it means no more than replaying television programmes on a
video recorder for viewing in class or private study. For others, it implies the use of a video
camera in class to record and play back to learners their activities and achievements in a
foreign language teaching. But our concern here is to present the use of video in language
teaching most effectively as a visual aid presenting the target language naturally. It is a fact
that most students who have taken English courses formally remain insufficient in the ability
to use the language and to understand its use, in normal communication, whether in the spoken
or the written mode. The problem arises not from the methodology itself but from the misuse

A Yes, they like them very much 100
B Yes, but sometimes they get bored with it 0
C No, they don’t like it at all 0