ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to people who have, in various ways,
contributed to the completion of this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to give my
most sincere thanks to Dr. Le Van Canh, my supervisor, for not only his responses to any
of my questions but also for his encouragement at any time of my hardship.
I would like to thank Nguyen Viet Hung, my friend, a PhD student at the University,
for helping me much with advice and encouragement.
I am grateful to the students and teachers at my researched Upper-Secondary School
for their cooperation during my data collection period.
I owe a great debt to my wife, daughter and my families for the patience and
encouragement I have had from them.
I believe that with all contribution of the people mentioned, I have an improved final
thesis; however, there are unavoidably remaining weaknesses in this thesis, all of which
belong to my responsibility, and all of which I should learn from.
i
ABSTRACT
The present study explored the influence of Vietnamese learning culture on upper-
secondary school students’ attitudes towards communicative activities in English learning.
The survey study method was adopted, and the questionnaires were delivered to a
systematically selected sample of 166 students from one upper-secondary school in a
mountainous region in Vietnam. This aimed at collecting necessary data for answering
three research questions about the students’ belief about language learning, the influence of
this belief on the students’ opinion about the role of teacher and learner and on their
preferences for English learning activities both inside and outside the classroom.
The findings demonstrated influence of the Vietnamese culture of learning on the
students’ attitudes towards communicative English learning activities, some of which were
favourable for utilisation of communicative activities. These concern their openness in
communication, and a greater responsibility they took for their own learning. They also
indicated the students’ positive attitudes towards group work activities, which are typical
of CLT techniques. Besides, the study showed evidence of the students’ negative attitudes
towards communicative activities, which resulted from the incompatibleness of these

TABLE 3. STUDENTS’ BELIEF ABOUT THE ROLE OF TEACHER AND LEARNER 31
TABLE 4. STUDENTS’ PREFERENCE FOR ENGLISH LEARNING ACTIVITIES 34
TABLE 5. STUDENTS’ MOST FAVOURED, MOST DISFAVOURED AND HOME ACTIVITIES 36
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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of Study
Since the time of Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman philosopher, and later in the
Renaissance theories, until now all languages have been considered to be of equal status
(Pym, 2007). This is because “there is nothing intrinsically limiting, demanding, or
handicapping about any of them” (Crystal, 1987, p.6, cited by Kasaian and Subbakrishna,
2011, p.165). The English language is not an exception. Although English was said to be a
source of gratification to mankind because it was spoken in two of the greatest powers of
the world (Jesperson, 1905), that is, America and Britain, it has no intrinsic linguistic
supremacy over other languages in the world (Kasaian and Subbakrishna, 2011).
Nonetheless, “for good or ill, the dominance of English as the world’s preferred second or
foreign language has been increasing in recent years” (Canh, 2004). For this reason, “those
who are able to exploit it, whether to sell goods and services or to sell ideas, wield a very
considerable power”; furthermore, “if you want to resist the exploitive power of English,
you have to use English to do it” (Halliday, 2006, p.362, cited by Van, 2010, p.17).
Although the statement is ideological, it has some truth in it.
Since the utility of English has been perceived as a passport for many desired things
in life, English teaching has consequently been regarded to be able to serve individual,
national, and international needs (Canh, 2004), and “if people are deprived of the chance of
learning it, they are the ones who suffer” (Halliday, 2006, p.362, cited by Van, 2010, p.17).
During the course of teaching and learning English, numerous methods have come
and gone because there is no one-size-fits-all method that can meet the goals and
needs of all learners and programs. As a matter of rule, in the 1970s Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT) emerged, in the West, and started being discussed as a
fashionable way of teaching languages, and by the turn of the new millennium, CLT had
become a real buzzword in language teaching methodology around the world (Dornyei,

centred by modifying the principles of CLT to the students’ learning culture for better
educational results. With this aim in mind, the study was designed to seek answers to the
following research questions:
1. What is the students’ belief about language learning?
2. How do their beliefs about language learning affect their opinions of the teacher’s
role and student’s role in the English language classroom?
3. How do their beliefs about language learning affect their preferences for language
learning activities both inside and outside the classroom?
2
It is hoped that answers to the above questions can inform classroom teachers of how
to adapt CLT in their classrooms.
3. Methods of Study
In order to achieve the above-stated aims, this research adopts the survey study
framework with the use of a questionnaire as the key instrument for data collection. As the
purpose of this study is to gain insights into students’ attitudes to, and opinions of, learning
activities, the survey method is appropriate. However, the survey was conducted with a
small group of upper-secondary school students who were chosen purposefully in one
school in a mountainous region of Vietnam. Therefore, no generalization of the findings
was intended. Rather, the findings can be used to inform teachers of English in this and
other similar schools of how to adapt CLT more effectively.
4. Scope of Study
The study limits itself to the exploration and description how the students’ learning
culture influences their learning of English within the context of an upper-secondary
school in one northern mountainous province.
5. Significance of Study
This study hopes to be significant in pointing out some culturally inappropriate
aspects of the CLT approach to a group of school students in a mountainous area. This
understanding can lead to some suggestions for how to adapt CLT to the local learning
culture so as to raise the educational effectiveness.
6. Organisation of the Thesis

means not solely knowing how to construct sentences in isolation, but also knowing how to
combine sentences into texts and to put texts in discourse of the speech community in
order to fulfil some task and meet some need. CLT has made this one of its most
characteristic features when “it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural
aspects of language, combining these into a more fully communicative view” (Littlewood,
1981, p.1, cited by Dornyei, 2009). Moreover, it also puts more emphases on meaningful
use than on the form with the guiding principle that “accuracy and acquisition of the
formal features of the L2 [second language] are less a measure of successful language
learning than are fluency and an ability to get something across comprehensibly to a native
speaker” (Sanders, 1987, p.222, cited by Beale, 2002, p.19).
4
In order to communicate effectively in a language, people need to have the following
four aspects of abilities (Stern, 1983, cited by Ma, 2009):
• The intuitive mastery of the forms of language
• The intuitive mastery of the linguistic, cognitive, affective and social-cultural
meanings expressed by the language forms
• The capacity to use the language with maximum attention to communication and
minimum attention to form
• The creativity of language use
Hymes (1971 cited in Ma, 2009), while reacting to Chomsky’s conception of
competence and performance, is concerned more with language in the speech communities
and in its integration with communication and culture. To him, linguistic knowledge is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for successful communication. People also need to
understand about culture, through which they know how to interact in culturally acceptable
ways with others in different situations and relationships. He proposes an influential theory
of communicative competence.
Communicative competence is defined as “the ability to communicate in a personally
effective and socially appropriate manner” (Trenholm and Jensen, 1988, cited by Ma,
2009, p.41). Canale and Swain (1980) conceive it more broadly by relating it with the
concept of social behaviour: communicative competence is the ability to interpret and

of texts, and perceiving and comprehending the meaning that the conversational partners
want to convey.
Strategic competence is the knowledge of communication strategies that people
employ in interaction. It is, for example, “the ability to know how to keep a conversation
going, how to terminate the conversation, and how to clear up communication breakdown
as well as comprehension problems” (Ma, 2009, p.41). Basically, when people use
communication strategies, they manipulate their language to meet their communicative
purpose. For this reason, it can be said that this kind of understanding is the compensation
for the limitation in or reinforcement of people’s understanding of linguistic,
sociolinguistic and discourse rules.
From the communicative competence perspective, learning a language is to facilitate
the integration of the four types of knowledge for learners (Canale and Swain, 1980;
Asassfeh et al., 2012; Richards, 2006; Savignon, 2002; Hu, 2002; Ma, 2009; Latha and
Rajan, 2012), as dissected above.
6
1.3. Learning Activities in Light of CLT
CLT emphasizes “activities that involve real communication promote learning”
(Richards and Rogers, 1986, p.72). It requires that the input language for teaching and
learning must be “realistic samples of discourse use surrounding native speaker and non-
native speaker accomplishments of targeted tasks” (Doughty and Long, 2003, p.61). On the
other hand, since the language classroom aims at preparing for learners’ survival in the real
world, the relationship between classroom activities and real life is essential; therefore,
learning and use of language must be contextualised and must utilise authentic materials,
situations, activities, and tasks (Richards, 2006; Hu, 2002), through active participation
into which, learners are better prepared to function in real-world communicative events.
Furthermore, the input language must also be rich, meaning that it is complex in terms of
not only language but also quality, quantity, variety, genuineness, and relevance.
In addition, since CLT activities are required to involve real communication, they
must promote cooperative and collaborative learning. As pointed out by Vygotsky (1978),
teacher’s assistance and social interactions play a crucial role helping learners reach a

Examples of activities of this type are information-gap activities, jigsaw activities,
task-completion activities (puzzles, games, map-reading), information-gathering activities
(surveys, interviews, and searches), opinion-sharing activities, information-transfer
activities, reasoning-gap activities, role plays.
1.5. Role of Teacher and Learner in CLT
It is widely accepted that changes in teacher’s and learner’s role are one of the
biggest differences between traditional language teaching approaches and CLT, which
results from the type of classroom activities, i.e. communicative activities, proposed in
CLT, which are in turn led from the emphasis in CLT on the processes of communication,
rather than mastery of language forms. For this reason, CLT is conceived to derive from “a
set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the
kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and
learners in the classroom” (Richards, 2006, p.2, italics added). Jacobs and Farrell (2003),
cited by Richards (2006), see the shift toward CLT as marking a paradigm shift in our
thinking about teachers, learning, and teaching.
Accordingly, language education with CLT is no longer a “banking” system with
bank-account-learners into which regular deposits (knowledge and skills) are made to be
drawn later for specific purposes like examination (Choudhury, 2011), but “landscapes of
practices” (Wenger, 2010, p.3), in which learners have greater choice over their own
learning, both in terms of the content of learning as well as processes they might employ
(Richards, 2006). They can develop their own routes to language learning, progress at
8
different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning. They are
considered to be the centre of the learning process in which diversity among learners is
paid greater attention and viewed not as impediments to learning but as resources to be
recognized, catered to, and appreciated. Learning language with CLT, learners have to
participate in classroom activities which are based on a cooperative rather than
individualistic approach to learning. They have to become comfortable with listening to
their peers in group work or pair work tasks, rather than relying on the teacher for a model.
They are expected to take on a greater degree of responsibility for their own learning

p.34), remark that values, as constituent of culture, can be seen as determinants for
attitudes and behavioural intentions and can be used to predict attitudes towards specific
subjects. Although this study does not delve into exploring the connection between culture,
attitude and behaviours, this section reviews the related literature to make explicit, to some
extent, this relationship as well as to give a theoretical evidence for the cruciality of taking
into consideration culture/learning culture in adoption of CLT.
Culture plays a very important role in constituting a person’s attitude toward an
object, an act/behaviour or another person, which in turn influence, to a large extent,
his/her behavioural intentions and subsequently overt behaviours. This can be summarised
figuratively as follows:
Figure 1. Culture – Attitude – Behaviour
(Adapted from Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975, and Bakker, 1996)
As can be seen in figure 1, overt behaviours not only are influenced (the solid
arrows) by cultures through the two paths of attitude and subjective norm but also give
feedback (the dashed arrow) to the actor’s cultural values and normative beliefs. This may
inspire some implications for implementation of CLT at the researched school, which will
be discussed later Part 3.
Bearing a similar view to Ajzen’s and Fishbein’s but specific to the field of second
and foreign language learning, Spolsky (1989, p.131) proposes that social factors, which
include culture, influence second language learning in two indirect but essential ways
10
Culturally
determined
values
Attitude
Subjective
norm
Behavioural
intentions
Normative

are questioning the teacher’s authority and challenging his/her knowledge. This is
categorised as showing disrespect to the teacher because if learners pose a question that
teacher cannot answer, the teacher (and the learner questioning) will lose face. Therefore,
if learners have some issue needing explicating, they will simply wait thinking that the
teacher will probably mention it later. In case it is not mentioned, it is because the issue is
11
not worth mentioning, and leaners will probably ask questions to the teacher individually
after the class time. Learners’ respect to teachers can also be seen in other ways learners
behave in classroom. They would all stand up to greet the teacher at the beginning of the
lesson and would remain standing until being allowed to sit. When they want to go out,
they are expected to ask the teacher for permission to do so. This is similar to the case
when they have something to say: they have to raise their hand and wait for the teacher’s
allowing them to speak.
1.8. Beliefs of Learning in Vietnamese Culture
It can be said that learning in Vietnam is influenced, firstly, by face-saving and
harmony-maintaining culture. This features the collectivist nature of Vietnamese culture.
In Vietnam, each member of the community sees themselves as belonging to an in-group;
they do not want to stand out from this collective and do not want to be seen as the “nail
that sticks up” (Anderson, 1993, cited by Littlewood, 2000). For this reason, they are
reluctant to participate in discussions, in which people have to challenge each other’s ideas
to reach agreement on certain issues. By doing so, they can avoid the risk of their ideas
being vetoed by other members or their vetoing others’ ideas, through which they can save
face for not only themselves but also for others, and maintain a harmonious relationship
with and among members (Littrell, 2005; Kramsch and Sullivan, 1996; Qiao and Tan, n.d.;
Littlewood, 2000; Phuong-Mai et al., 2006; Trang and Baldauf, 2007; McCornac & Chi,
2005; Lee, n.d.; Lewis and McCook, 2002; Huong, 2008). Since losing face inflicts
extremely serious personal damage, and one should try to avoid it at any price (Hofstede
and Hofstede, 2005, cited by Phuong-Mai et al., 2006), there is an intense fear of making
mistakes among Vietnamese people; these are reflected in common proverbs that serve as
maxims for interpersonal communication. Examples include “twisting your tongue seven

Huong, 2008; Lee, n.d.). For this reason, the focus of teaching is not on how teachers and
students can create, construct, and apply knowledge in an experiential approach, but on
how extant authoritative knowledge can be transmitted and internalised in a most effective
and efficient way. This conception can also be explained with the respect that people have
for knowledge as well as knowledgeable men. Therefore, the importance is attached to
knowledge and memory over creativity as the dominant method of acquiring knowledge
(Lee, n.d.; Kramsch and Sullivan, 1996). This way of learning has been reckoned as
“passive learning”, “rote learning”, “silent learning” or “memorisation”, through which
knowledge is “poured” into the students’ heads without them having any real opportunity
to exercise. However, an interesting feature of Vietnamese learners is that though they are
thought of learning by rote or memorisation, they are only silent and inactive in the
surface. The survey conducted by Duong Thi Hoang Oanh and Nguyen Thi Hien (2006)
13
showed that both teachers and students at the tertiary level emphasised memorization as an
important strategy for learning grammar and vocabulary.
Vietnamese learners prefer learning through exemplars or models. This leads to the
importance of the textbook and, especially, the teacher as the model of not only knowledge
but also morality, who learners have to strive to become alike. Therefore, Phuoc (1975),
cited by An (2002), comments that the Confucian teaching model is “teacher-centred,
closed, suspicious of creativity, and predicated on an unquestioning obedience from the
students”.
Besides, the notion that learning is a process of accumulating knowledge
spontaneously leads to the belief that learning is a hard and serious undertaking, which
requires a full commitment and painstaking efforts (Phu, 2008; Ha, 2013). Learning is a
life-long job; it involves learners’ perseverance and patience “to grind an iron bar into a
needle” (Hu, 2002) and not concerning to or associated with light-heartedness (Phu, 2008).
For this reason, Vietnamese learners are expected to be hard-working and willing to
participate in activities; however, with all the conceptions of learning, as explicated above,
they tend to be silent and shy in class (Huyen and Ha, 2013).
To sum up, as culture affects cognitive structures and the structure of personality

aspects of Canale and Swain’s model are unsuitable for Asian learners and teachers. She
exemplifies that the focus of CLT on meaning rather than form ignores the observance of
rituals in the “collectivist societies” of Asia and the reverential attitude towards the
mastery of individual linguistic forms. McKay (2003) discovers that in many countries,
such as Chile, China, Japan, and Korea, the appropriateness of CLT in light of the local
context and learners’ needs has been challenged. On this basis, they recommend that when
selecting a methodology for a particular context, it is vital that teachers consider the local
needs of the students rather than assume that a method that is effective in one context is
effective in all contexts. Barnard and Viet (2010) review a large amount of literature which
shows that in many Asian contexts, including Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, and
Thailand, there has been a great mismatch between the tenets of CLT as well as Task-
Based Language Teaching and local cultures of learning.
Taking a step closer to the issue, Hu (2002) analyses that CLT takes the drudgery out
of the learning process and injects elements of entertainment, such as various language
games, with a view to making learning become a light-hearted, pleasant experience in
learning. However, it is inappropriate for CHC learning context in terms of teacher-learner
relationship, learning methods and learning content. It is because CLT aims to create an
egalitarian communicative learning environment and practices in which the relationship
15
between teacher and learner is not the one of hierarchy but equality, and learning is not
concerned with hardness and serious-undertaking but with light-heartedness. Besides, CLT
downplays the importance of memorisation as the philosophy of CHC learning, stress
verbal interaction (often at the expense of inner activity), and encourage speculation (e.g.
guesswork) and tolerance for ambiguity. Hu (2010) also agrees that one of the main
obstacles of CLT implementation in China is the teachers’ authority and students’ passive
role. The passivity is generalised to learners of other Asian countries and is said to be a
cultural barrier to successful CLT (Lewis and McCook, 2002; Stroupe, 2012). In their
studies, Hsiao (2010) and McClintock (2011) clarifies some contradictions between CLT
approach and Confucian views of learning. These include the centredness of learning,
respect and reverence for teachers and education, nature of learning activities, teachers’

which they maintain close relationship throughout their lives, forming ties that encompass
financial, familial, and social obligations. In this respect, whole class activities would be
preferred, and it would be divisive and detrimental to learning to divide the class into
subgroups.
So far, this current chapter has presented a review of the extant literature on CLT,
culture, the connection between culture, attitude and behaviour. It has also referred to a
brief about Vietnamese culture of learning as well as implementation of CLT under the
influence of learning culture. This is hoped to be a theoretical basis for the empirical
research into the claimed field.
17
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
2.1. The Research Site
The study reported in this thesis was conducted in a state upper-secondary school in
Cao Bang province. Economically, the area where the school is located is underdeveloped,
with 93.7 per cent of the population being ethnic minorities (2009). Admission is usually
based on the results from entrance exams organised by the Provincial Department of
Education and Training. The English proficiency of students as indicated from the result of
the entry examination is low, which may be due to the language learning education
condition which is characterized as low input and poorly-resourced.
At the time when this study was conducted, the school had the total number of
students of 700 accommodated in 20 classes (7 grades 10, 6 grades11 and 7 grades 12).
The average number of students in each class is 35. There were six teachers of English.
The textbook used in the school was mandated by the Ministry of Education and Training
(MOET), which are based on the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach (Canh
& Barnard, 2009; Van, 2010; Hung, 2011), offspring recent development of the CLT
approach. The time allocated for formal English teaching and learning at the school is, as
nationally, 3 periods (45 minutes each) per week.
2.2. Methodology
Collis and Hussey (2009) explain that there is a link between the research paradigm
and the method. They suggest that a researcher needs to take into account the

students of the school was established, which included students’ full name and their class.
In order to do this, the student name lists of all the classes were collected in the form of
computer files (Microsoft Excel). These separated lists were then combined into one list,
which was again sorted alphabetically according to the students’ names. After that, 150
students were randomly chosen out of the total student body of the school (N=700).
Randomization was achieved by choosing one in the list out of every four students. Then
the chosen students were sorted out according to their grade. The final list of participants
was composed of 50 grade 10 students, 63 grade 11 students, and 62 grade 12 students.
As a critically important issue, the research ethics was assured by observing the
principles of confidentiality and anonymity. No real name of the students was used in this
thesis.
2.4. Instrument
2.4.1. Rationale for choosing the questionnaire and question type
As stated previously, this study is an exploratory inquiry using the survey method.
Therefore, the self-reported questionnaire was used as the key instrument of data
19
collection. Questionnaires are considered to be very popular among educational
researchers in general and ELT research in particular, especially in the survey context
(McDonough and McDonough, 1997). It is more economical and practical than the
interview (Mackey and Gass, 2005; Selinger and Shohamy, 1989; Bryman, 2004). It can
elicit comparable information from a number of respondents, and in conducting a study
with the questionnaire the researcher has a greater degree of flexibility in the gathering
process (Mackey and Gass, 2005). It is also said to afford a good deal of precision and
clarity (McDonough and McDonough, 1997). In terms of the quality of the data collected,
since questionnaires are given to all subjects of the research at the same time the data is
usually more accurate, more uniform and standard. Furthermore, when anonymity is
assured, subjects tend to share information of a sensitive nature more easily (Selinger and
Shohamy, 1989); thus, the information collected tends to be more truthful. In addition, the
questionnaire is highly appropriate for descriptive and explanatory studies which
investigate attitudes, opinions of people and cause-effect relationships between variables

way intended by the researcher”, and “the answer given by the respondent must be
understood by the researcher in the way intended by the respondent” (Saunders et al.,
2009, p.371). For this reason, the aims of the research and the content of the questions
together with the instructions on how to answer the questions were made clear to the
respondents. Accordingly, general information about the aims of the research and a simple
and lucid instruction about how to complete the questionnaire were clearly explained to the
students prior to the questionnaire delivery. This was intended to contribute to the
respondents’ basic understanding about what they were expected to do and to minimise the
possibility that the participants would not answer the questions or their answers would not
be reliable (McDonough and McDonough, 1997).
On the other hand, special attention was paid to the wording of the questions by
using clear and simple language with familiar terms and avoiding jargons or words which
do not have an everyday usage. Leading questions, double-barrelled questions and double
negative ones were all avoided, since they can cause misunderstanding and confusion to
both the respondents and researcher. Furthermore, the questions were kept short to make
them clear and unambiguous. However, some longer questions were included to clarify the
terms unfamiliar to the respondents. All of this aimed at making all the questions good
ones which are relatively easy to answer, easy to record and evaluate, user-friendly and
unambiguous (McDonough and McDonough, 1997). In addition, the order and
arrangement of the questions was carefully considered. All the questions were grouped into
21