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Vietnam national university, ha noi
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
o0o HỒ THỊ MỸ HẠNH

TREATMENT OF CROSS-CULTURAL
CHARACTERISTICS IN THE TEACHING
OF SPEAKING SKILL TO GRADE 12A1 STUDENTS
OF ENGLISH IN NAM DAN 1 HIGH SCHOOL IN
NGHE AN PROVINCE

Xử lý các yếu tố giao văn hoá trong giờ dạy nói tiếng Anh
cho học sinh lớp 12A1 Trường THPT Nam Đàn 1,
tỉnh Nghệ An

M.A MINOR - THESIS
NGHE AN PROVINCE

Xử lý các yếu tố giao văn hoá trong giờ dạy nói tiếng Anh
cho học sinh lớp 12A1 Trường THPT Nam Đàn 1,
tỉnh Nghệ An M.A MINOR - THESIS

Field: English linguistics
Code: 602215
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngô Đình Phương HÀ NỘI, 2010
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………… … i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………… ……………… ii
ABSTRACT………………………………………………….………………… iii

2.1. Situation analysis
2.1.1. Setting of the study 17
2.1.2. Participants and Classroom context. 17
2.2. Data collecting instruments…………………………………………………………….18
2.3. Data analysis
2.3.1. The attitudes of the learners towards the target culture
2.3.1.1. Positive attitudes towards the target culture 18
2.3.1.2. Negative attitudes towards the target culture 20
2.3.2. The attitudes of the teachers and learners towards the importance of culture
ELT 20
2.3.3. The attitudes of the learners and teachers towards cross-cultural characteristics in
speaking skills 21
2.3.4. The students' evaluation on the applied culture teaching activities 24
2.3.5. Speaking as the best way of enhancing cross- cultural knowledge 25
2.3.6. The change in NDI students' test result after inserting and treating English culture-
teaching activities into the teaching of speaking at NDI high school……………………… 25
2.4. Discussion of the findings …………………………………………………………… 27
Chapter 3: Suggestions for treatment cross-cultural characteristics into teaching of
speaking in English to grade 12A1 students in Nam Dan I high school
3.1. Implications
3.1.1. To teachers 29
3.1.2. To students 31
3.2. Suggestions for treatment cross- cultural characteristics into teaching of speaking in
English to grade 12A1 students in Nam Dan I high school
3.2.1. Teachers and students` sources in Nam Dan I high school for enriching cross-
cultural information 31
3.2.2. Activities for improving cross-culture teaching methods in NDI high school 32
PART C: CONCLUSIONS
1. Recapitulation……………………………………………………………………… 36
2. Suggested issues for further research………………………………………………37


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LIST OF FIGURE

Figure 1: The students` perception of the role of culture in English learning 20
Figure 2: The attitudes of the students toward the rank of skills in order of importance in
learning speaking skill 21
Figure 3: The attitudes of the teachers toward the rank of skills in order of importance in
learning speaking skill 22
Figure 4: the attitudes of teachers and students toward influence of the difference between
Vietnamese and English culture on their teaching and learning spoken English 23
Figure 5: The students` evaluation on the applied culture teaching activities 24
Figure 6: The change in students` test result after treating English culture-teaching activities
into the teaching of speaking skill 26

Nowadays, in teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam,
speaking has received a great deal of attention. Nonetheless, English is learnt and taught in a
non-native environment, students usually do not have close contact with native speakers of
English and have little opportunity to discover how these speakers think, feel, and interact
with others. That is the reason why they do not feel confident enough to converse with
English teachers or native speakers.
It proves everything clear that culture and language can not be separated and the
teaching and learning of a foreign language should always be a culture- based course. So as to
improve student's communicative competence, teacher should insert cross- cultural
knowledge into the learning and teaching of speaking skills. From my teaching experience,
cultural challenges in speaking-class have become a great source of inspiration for my thesis,
which deals with the problem: "Treatment of cross-cultural characteristics in the teaching
of speaking skill to grade 12A1 students of English.". This study is, hence, to aim at treating
cross-cultural characteristics into teaching of speaking in English for the teacher and students
at Nam Dan I high school. 11
2. Aims of the study
The major aims of the study are as follows:
- To investigate the teachers' and students' attitudes towards the importance of cross-
cultural knowledge to the learning of a foreign language.
- To find out the attitudes of teachers and students at Nam Dan 1 high school toward
the importance of culture in learning speaking skills in English language teaching.
- To find out the effective ways of treatment cross-cultural characteristics into teaching
of speaking in English.


6. Organization of the study
The study is divided into three main parts:
Part A is the INTRODUCTION. In this part, the rationale, the aims, research questions, the
scope of the study, method, and design of the study are presented.
Part B is DEVELOPMENT. There are three chapters in this part.
Chapter 1 reviews the related knowledge that helps to give the theoretical foundation for this
study. This review consists of the literature on the role of cross- cultural understanding ,
techniques that can be used to raise students' cross- cultural awareness, the role of speaking
skill in English language teaching and important factor in cross-cultural communication.
Chapter 2 can be seen as case study in real situation. This chapter discusses the context of the
study, data collection methods and analyses the data collected to answer specifically the
research questions for the study. It provides the detailed results of the instruments for data
collection and discussion of the finding.
Chapter 3 contains the summary of findings, the suggestions for treatment of cross-cultural
characteristics into speaking lesson. and the recommendation for further studies.
Part C is CONCLUSION.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Takdir Alisjahbana ( Indonesia) (cited in Soenjono Dardjowidjojo 1973) defined culture
as that which is left when all has been forgotten. He understood the culture of the individual
to be that hard-to-isolate element that distinguishes the "cultivated" man.
In Levine's definition (1993), culture is like an " iceberg", the exposed parts are those
which are easy to recognize such as language, food, ect. Meanwhile the others, most of which
are hidden under water, are not easy to be recognized. Such hidden aspects are the influence
of culture on individual, the ways of behavior and interactions with each other, which cannot
be seen.
Nguyen Quang's point of view about culture: " Culture is the whole complex of tangible
and intangible expressions that are created and adapted by society or a social group as well
as the ways it functions and reacts in given situations, this helps distinguish one society or
social group from another not only in term of the availability of those expressions and
behaviors, but also in terms of their proportionality and manifestability". (Nguyen Quang
2006:24)
Language learning is culture learning. Brooks (1975) defines that " Culture learning is
the process of acquiring the culture- specific and culture-general knowledge, skills, and
attitude required for effective communication and interaction with individuals from other
cultures, it is a dynamic, developmental, and ongoing process which engages the learner
cognitively, behaviorally, and affectively."
Montgometry and Reid-Thomas (1994:5), anthropologists define culture as " The
whole way of life of people or a group. In this context, culture includes all the social practices
that bond a group of people together and distinguish them from other." From point of view's
Montgometry and Reid-Thomas, we can see that the language classroom context is an
example of a cultural group and by being so is an excellent phenomenon to be analyzed and
observed.
As seen from these views, culture can be understood as something, which was and has
been created through the history of human development through their social activities in the
forms of materials and spiritual values in a society. Culture does not belong to a single person

flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes, and expectations of representatives
of foreign cultures".

1.1.2. The relationship between language and culture.
Culture, unlike language, does not consist of specific rules that apply to all people in
one culture. Nevertheless, Culture and language have a close relationship. Many linguists
have been discussed a question for a long time: how do the language and culture relate to each
other? One of the most well known sources is Sapir-Whorf's hypothesis (cited in Pinker
1994:59) state: "We cut nature up, organize it into concepts and as we do, largely because we
are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way an agreement that holds throughout
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our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of
course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory." Pinker shows
that Whorf did not do his research properly to prove his hypothesis. However, it cannot be
denied that language and culture are profoundly connected, or rather, that language is
inseparable from culture.
According to Claire Kramch (1998:3) "They give meaning to it through the medium
they choose to communicate with one another, for example on the telephone or face to face,
writing a letter or sending an e-mail message, reading the newspaper or interpreting a graph
or chart. The way in which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself to creates
meanings that are understandable to the group they belong to, for example, through a
speaker's tone of voice, accent, conversation style, gestures and facial expressions." Through
Clair Kramch's idea, we find that language embodies cultural reality. As Nguyen Van Do
(2006) has said: "Language and culture can be seen as the faces of a sheet of paper".
Language cannot exist outside the social context, language is a social institution.
Buttjes (1990:55) points out the reason why language and culture are inseparably
connected that:

skill in intercultural communication:

Goal 1: Interest- The student demonstrates curiosity about the target culture and empathy
toward its people.
Goal 2: Who- The student recognizes that role expectations and other social variables such as
age, sex, social class, ethnicity, and place of residence affect the way people speak and
behave.
Goal 3: What- The student realizes that effective communication requires discovering the
culturally conditioned images that are evoked in the minds of people when they think, act, and
react to the world around them.
Goal 4: Where and When- The student recognizes that situational variables and convention
shape behavior in important ways. (S/he needs to know how people in the target culture act in
common mundane and crisis situations)
Goal 5: Why- The student understands that people generally act the way they do because they
are using options society allows for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs, and
that cultural patterns are interrelated and tend mutually to support need satisfaction.
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Goal 6: Exploration- The student can evaluate a generalization about the target culture in
terms of the amount of evidence substantiating it, and has the skills needed to locate and
organize information about the target culture from the library, the mass media, people, and
personal observation.
The Nostrands (1970) listed nine objectives: students should have the ability to
1) React appropriately in asocial situation
2) Describe a pattern in the culture
3) Recognize a pattern when it is illustrated
4) “Explain” a pattern
5) Predict how a pattern is likely to apply in a given situation

the teacher gave questions but no one raised their hand or gave ideas. She did not understand
that most Vietnamese students are unselfconfident We can see that the role of language in
intercultural encounters applies entirely to the teaching situation. Therefore, developing cross-
cultural awareness in EFL classroom is an indispensable thing in teaching and learning
foreign language. Learning to understand a foreign culture should help students of another
language to use words and expressions more skillfully and authentically; to understand levels
of language and situational appropriate; to act naturally with persons of the other culture.
We need to understand that if we want our students to master another language, we
have to help them become communicatively competent in that language as much as possible.
Namely, fluently speaking is not just to master of using grammatically correct words and
forms but also knowing when to use them and under what circumstances. That is the reason
why culture is crucially important in learning and teaching foreign language.
Interest in culture is linked to the intrinsic motivation of a learner. Therefore, if the teacher
can get the learner interested in the culture of the L2, then they will hopefully end up with
more successful students.
When considering language learning, it is clear that the learning of both languages
would have cultural goals, and that students would be learning these aspects of culture in a
comparative process. To achieve culture goals, often teacher has to play a role in breaking
down cultural barriers prior to initiating teaching-learning activities. Student must be
receptive to concept of learning about other cultures more than their own. In Vietnam, the
learners learning the foreign language has a great limit in communication. Thus, the easiest
way to begin teaching culture or raise students' awareness is to emphasize similarities and
differences between members of students' s family, between schools and between cultures.
According to Valette, R.M.(1986:179), there are two main components of culture in
the language classroom: "one component is the anthropological or sociological culture: the
attitudes, custom, and daily activities of a people, their ways of thinking, their values, their
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1.4. Speaking skill and the position in E language teaching
1.4.1. Definition of speaking skill
Speaking is "The process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal
and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998:13). Speaking in a foreign
language has been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. It plays a vital role since
it is the step to identify who knows or does not know a language. When attempting to speak,
learners must muster their thoughts and encode those ideas in the vocabulary and syntactic
structures of the target language.
According to Brown, (1994); Burn and Joyce, (1997): "Speaking is an interactive
process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing
information." Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including
the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the
purposes for speaking.
Speaking is the productive skill, is known to have two main types of conversation
namely, dialogue and monologue, which are rather different. In monologue, you give
uninterrupted oral presentation while in dialogue you interact with one or more other speakers
for transactional and international purposes.
Martin Bygate (1987:11-12) shows that " First, spoken language is affected by the time
limitations, and the associated problems of planning, memory, and production under
pressure. Second, it is reciprocal activity, which has a crucial effect on the kinds of decisions
to be made." It can be understood that speaking is not spoken writing. It is different from
other skills in the teaching and learning of language. It needs to limit time in response and it is
not easy to correct when an utterance is made. The speakers must be responsible for their
utterances in a limited time and make sense with what they are saying. During speaking,

in term of ability to carry out a conversation in the language." It can be inferred from Nunan's
viewpoint that speaking is very important skill. Therefore, having dealt with the importance of
oral skills in language teaching and learning, it is essential that language teachers should pay
more attention to teaching speaking skills.
Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The goal of
teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. The ability to communicate in a second
language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the learner in school and success
later in every phase of life.

1.5. What types of culture should be taught in the foreign language classroom?
Culture and language exist in the same relationship as that in which, within language,
meaning and expression develop together. Today educators have become aware of the
importance of cultural factors in the teaching of speaking skills and they also see the influence
of inferences between two cultures-target and learner's cultures-on the teaching and learning
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skills. However, what types of culture should be taught in the foreign language classroom in
order to be suitable with student's awareness and class environment ?, this has been a problem
which many educators care about.
Like teaching other aspects in foreign language instruction, culture teaching requires
systematic development of its teaching principles. Principles for culture teaching are
mentioned in a number of studies and Kramsch's (1993:205,206) list may be considered one
of the most noticeable. Her principles of teaching culture has led to a new way of looking at
the teaching of language and culture. They are:
- Establishing a sphere of interculturality, which means that teaching culture is not
transferring information between cultures but a foreign culture should be put in relation with
one's own. The intercultural approach includes a reflection on both cultures.
- Teaching culture as an interpersonal process, which means replacing the teaching of facts

Behaviors
Customs
Habits
Dress
Foods
Leisure

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They claim that behavior culture should be systematically treated in every language
class. It is fact that many language teachers habitually begin their classes with a five-minute
presentation in the foreign language of subject that has not been previously announced. The
content of the topics may be ones that bring out identity, similarity, or sharp differences in
comparable patterns of culture.
Ismail Cakir (2006:155) suggests some topics that can be presented within the course.
Climate Meeting people
Clothing Money
Crime Non-verbal communication
Eating Pets
Education Population
Family life Religion
Geography Social occasions
History Sport
Holidays Transportation
Language Vacation
Leisure activities

According to Hasselgreen's idea (2003:47-52), the topics are centered around learner's
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CHAPTER 2. THE STUDY

2.1. Situation analysis
2.1.1. Setting of the study
The study is carried out at Nam Dan I high school where English is one of the
compulsory subjects in the curriculum and it is the subjects students have to pass at the
national examination by the end of grade 12th to be qualified for the secondary school
diploma. English curriculum for grade 12th students is divided into two semesters with a total
105 periods, 3 periods per week. Each period is 45 minute long.
The Textbook which our school are using for grade 12th is " English 10" with a new
curriculum which was designed following communicative approach. "English 12" textbook
consist of sixteen units. Each unit focuses not only on four different language skills: reading,

for study, ( See the Appendix). There are 10 questions and 2 tests. All the questions and tests
are clear and short to make sure students fully understand them before answering. The
questionnaire mainly focuses on 3 parts: The attitudes of the learners towards the target
culture, the attitudes of the teachers and the students towards the importance of culture ELT,
the attitudes of the learners and teachers towards cross-cultural characteristics in speaking
skills. The tests are given to see if there is any change in the participants' English culture
achievement after applying cross-culture teaching activities in ELT.
The questions are designed as multiple choices. The questionnaire is collected from
both teachers and students of NDI. The students were asked to answer the questionnaires in
fifteen minutes. Besides, informal class observations, interviews and discussions were of great
help or research.
The un-structured interviews with students and teachers of NDI were conducted for
more information. These interviews were aimed to clarify some information gained from the
questionnaire responses.

2.3. Data analysis

This section deals with the data collected from a survey on the teachers and students.
This study was set up to investigate the changes in students' cross-cultural knowledge after a
period of integrating cultural information into the speaking lessons.

2.3.1. The attitudes of the learners towards the target culture
2.3.1.1. Positive attitudes towards the target culture

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The first statements dealt with students' attitudes towards the learning of the target culture as
part of their language class. We can see the result in the table below.

3. The differences
between Vietnamese and
Englishculture influence
your learning spoken
English in class rooms.

3(7.5%)
2(5%)
10(25%)
25(62.5
%)
Table 1: Positive attitudes toward the target language
From the table, we can see that the first statement shows that more than two-thirds of
students (85%) understand that learning a foreign language means to learn another culture.
The remaining students have no idea about this issue. It suggests that they have no awareness
about culture of a language in learning that language.
For the second statement of the survey, 30% of the students appreciated the
importance of cross-cultural knowledge to effective English usage. 50% strongly agree with
the idea. 20% disagree and have no idea with the importance of cross-cultural knowledge in
communication. It indicates that they did not know English cross-cultural knowledge is
essential if one wants to use English effectively. It is easily understandable that in English
learning process in secondary school, communication and language usage are being ignored
and when students do not care the relationships between culture and communication, they will
know the importance of good cultural knowledge to a foreign language learner.