VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY,HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE-STUDIES
**************************************** ĐẶNG THỊ KIM DUNG

GIVING FEEDBACK STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH
LITERATURE PRESENTATIONS OF STUDENTS
OF PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY

(Chiến lược sử dụng hành động ngôn từ trong việc đưa ra
thông tin phản hồi cho các bài thuyết trình môn Văn Học
Anh của sinh viên trường Đại Học Phương Đông)

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis

Linguistics
Code: 602215
Code: 602215

SUPERVISOR: Assoc.Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm, PhD

Hanoi-2010

iv
TABLE OF CONTENT

Declaration
Acknowledgements
Abstract

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale for the study 1
2. Objectives of the study 2
3. Research questions 2
4. Methods 2
5. Scope of the study 3
6. Design of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter 1: Literature review 5
1.1 Teaching English Literature 5
1.1.1 Definition of English literature 5

2.2.3.1 Data analysis of the questionnaire done by teachers 25
2.2.3.2 Data analysis of the questionnaire done by students 30
2.3. Findings 36
2.3.1. Research question 1 36
2.3.2. Research question 2 37
2.3.3. Research question 3 38
2.3.4. Research question 4 39
Chapter 3 – Recommendations 41
3.1. Teachers should balance their use of different types of feedback 41
3.2 Teachers should be more specific in giving feedback 41
3.3 Teachers should provide extra suggestions or guidance 41
PART III: CONCLUSION …………………………………………………… ….42
References
Appendices1

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale for the study
English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the
world. To learners of English as a foreign language, English literature, though difficult,
brings information about the cultural life of the country. This subject can also facilitate oral
discussions and exchanges of opinion among students, which can do a great deal to help
students improve their language competence.
To teachers of English, Literature is a very versatile subject and it has long been
considered one of the most difficult subjects to teach. There is no right or wrong way to
teach Literature. And the job of the teacher is, generally believed, not to teach the students
but to lead them.

The study aims at investigating the use of speech acts by teachers in giving feedback for
English Literature presentations of Phuong Dong University fourth year language students.
It is directed to achieve these four purposes:
(i) To study the techniques used by teachers when giving feedback for literature oral
presentations of fourth year English students in Phuong Dong University: their responding
practices, feedback focus, language uses and especially the application of speech acts in
feedback giving.
(ii) To investigate students’ attitude and opinion on the way they are responded after
having finished their presentations
(iii) To judge students’ enhancement after receiving feedback from teachers
(iv) To offer some recommendations and suggestions for teachers to improve their practice
so that their feedback will be effective and useful to students
3. Research questions
In order to achieve the goals above, there are four research questions and sub questions
raised in the study:
(i) What are the strategies used by teachers when giving feedback for English Literature
presentations?
(ii) What types of speech acts do teachers use when giving feedback?
(iii) What are the students’ opinions on the feedback they receive from their teachers?
(iv) How do students assess their enhancement?
4. Methods
There are three sources of collecting the data:
(i) A survey questionnaire done on 120 fourth year students of 4 groups in English
Division, Department of Foreign Languages, , Phuong Dong University to get their opinion 3

on the feedback they received and their judgment on their enhancement. The questionnaire
also aims at getting students’ recommendations and suggestions to make teacher feedback
4

Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background of the study. This includes reviews on the
works done by linguistics, researchers…on feedback, speech acts and English literature
teaching.
Chapter 2 introduces more details about the setting, methods, data analysis and most
importantly, the findings of the study
Chapter 3 attempts to give some recommendations to teachers, students and further study.
The conclusion aims at summarizing the main points of the study.


The web page Wikipedia defines English Literature as ― the literature written in the
English language‖. This obviously means the writers of English Literature are not
necessarily from England. Joseph Conrad, for example, was polish-born and could not
speak English very fluently until his twenties but was still considered to be one of the
greatest novelists in English.
Ronald Carter and Michael N. Long in their book Teaching Literature(1991), on the other
hand, introduced a different way of using the term. According to them, many teachers of 6

literature preferred the term literature in English to the term English literature because the
term English literature carried very specific associations of literature written by authors of
English nationalities within the geographical confines of Great Britain. They suggested that
the term English Literature was narrow and exclusive. They provided a definition of
literature in English as: ―the considerable diversity of literature produced in the English
language not only in the more obvious context of American literature, but also literature in
the following contexts: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa…”( p.156). In this
sense, Literature in English also includes a growing and important body of work produced
in countries where English is an institutionalized second language or where it is a foreign
language but carries important social and cultural functions within the society. Such
countries as Nigeria, Kenya, and India…can be cited as examples.
1.1.2 Why teaching English Literature?
Rodrigo Fernandez Carmona in his article How to Teach English Literature (2004) listed
many interesting reasons for teaching literature in general and teaching English literature in
particular. The reasons can be summarized as follow:
 English literature transmits information about cultural life of the country
 Literature provide authentic language-literary works that have not been written
specifically for language students
 Literary offers a wide variety of language. The literary text is one of the few

ways into a text in a methodical way and for themselves. The proponent of this model
argue that language is the literary medium, that literature is made from language and that
the more students can read in and through language, the better able they will be to come to
terms with a literary text as literature.
(iii) The personal growth model: for teachers who are committed to personal growth
model, the main goal of teaching literature in general and English literature in particular is
to help students to achieve an engagement with the reading of literary texts. Teachers’
success in teaching this subject is the extent to which students carry with them beyond
classroom an enjoyment and love for literature which is renewed as they continue to
engage with literature throughout their lives. Students’ personal growth in such cases is a
lasting pleasure in reading and a deep satisfaction in continuing growth of understanding.
To encourage personal growth, teachers has to stimulate students in literature class by
selecting texts to which students can respond and in which they can participate, by
promoting the kind of conditions for learning in the classroom which will make the reading
of literature a memorable, collective experience and, above all, by enthusiasm for and
commitment to the teaching of literature as literature.
1.1.3 Motivating students in English literature lessons 8

Motivating students is a challenge that almost all teachers face, not only in English
literature subject but also in others. Students need to be motivated in order to focus on the
task they will accomplish. According to Ronald Carter and Michael N. Long, in English
literature, students must see the point to reading, particularly to reading extended
texts(p.9). They suggested that the media tend to provide students with short term
satisfaction. Topics are switched rapidly and they do not demand sustained concentration.
Reading literary works in general and English literary works in particular, however,
requires concentration over a period of time. It asks for a hard work from readers and it
requires considerable patience. Thus, many teachers of this subject immediately see the

science, mechanical engineering……In education, there is a tendency that young students
will look up to instructors as experts in the field and remember most of the things that they
say. Therefore, it is believed that for teachers to spend a fair amount of time and effort
thinking about how to respond to students may be a worthwhile time investment.
Longman Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics defines feedback as
―any information which provides a report on the result of behavior” (p 137). In teaching,
feedback is viewed as ―comments or information learners receive on the success of a
learning task, either from the teacher or from other learners”.
In foreign language teaching and learning, feedback from teachers plays a vital role in
students’ enhancement. Without proper feedback, learners can be confused and be at loss
of specifying their position in the process of learning language. For long, feedback has
been considered as a means of communication between teachers and students about their
works.
Showing his attention to the same field, Penny Ur in his A Course in Language Teaching
stated that ―in the context of teaching in general, feedback is information that is given to
the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of
improving this performance” (p.242). This means, the key function of feedback is to help
students make progress and avoid mistakes in their language learning. The same view has
also been confirmed by Davies (2000): the purpose of giving feedback is to provide
opportunities for the learner to make adjustments and improvements toward mastery of a
specified standard
1.2.2 Types of feedback
Teachers provide feedback to students in their classrooms every day. When used properly,
feedback is a powerful tool for improving academic and behavioral performance. There are
many ways of categorizing feedbacks, one of which is to divide feedback into oral and
written feedback. Konold in his Using Teacher Feedback to Enhance Student Learning
(2004) stated that feedback can be provided verbally, nonverbally, or in written formats 10

at improving students’ learning and language competence.
Besides, there are other names for feedback classification:
Positive and negative feedback 11

As their names imply, positive feedback shows teacher’s interest in student’s work. The
teacher, in this case, gives feedback to encourage the student and sometime, make some
nice comments or praises on student’s work. Negative feedback, in contrary, expresses
teacher’s disagreement or discontent. Sometimes this kind of feedback involves some
correction or even punishment.
Immediate and delayed feedback
Researchers believe that immediate feedback is often employed when the aim of the
teacher is to promote accuracy, particularly during the guided practice. Immediate
feedback refers to teachers’ comments delivered on the spot when a mistake or a good
point is made by students. It enables teachers to give support or encouragement when
students are confused about their making mistakes or in need of being motivated. On the
other hand, if the aim of the teacher is to promote fluency, not accuracy, immediate
feedback is not recommended. In this case, delayed feedback should take place because
interruption may distract the student and make it difficult for him/ her to come back to the
point he/ she stops before being interrupted. Researchers believe that immediate feedback
should be used for individual’s performance and delayed feedback should be used for
group work.
Explicit and implicit feedback
Explicit feedback means that teachers show an error and provides the correction, while
implicit feedback refers to the situation when teachers point out an error without providing
the correct form.
1.2.3 The importance of feedback to students’ improvement
Many researchers and educators have agreed that for students to work without feedback is

1.3 Speech act theory

1.3.1 General concepts
In language teaching and learning, the term speech act is not at all a new one and in fact, it
has become one of the most challenging but compelling concepts in the study of numerous
linguistics and researchers. John H. Austin is considered to be the person who initiated the
notion of speech act by stating that by saying something, one is actually doing something
in his series of lectures the William James Lectures at Harvard, which were later published
as a book entitled How to Do Things with words (1962). According to him, utterances can
be found, satisfying the conditions:
(i) They do not “describe” or “report” or constate anything at all, they are not
“true or false”; and
(ii) The uttering of a sentence is, or is part of, the doing of an action, which again
would normally be described as, or “just”, saying something
(Page 5) 13

For example: By saying ―I name this ship Queen Elizabeth‖ (page 5), the speaker actually
names the ship, not just makes any kind of statement that the hearer(s) can regard as true or
false. This can be viewed as a breakthrough in linguistics as it indicates that through many
everyday utterances, people perform certain linguistic actions like promising, requesting or
apologizing…This type of sentence or utterance is proposed the name performative. Austin
categorized the acts as locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary, the acts that constitute
what people do with words.
A locutionary act is the act of saying something. Quite simply, it is the ordinary sense of
meaning of what is said of a speech act.
An illocutionary act is the act performed in saying something. It is its real, intended
meaning which is what the person really means. The illocutionary act is not in one-to-one

literal utterance of the sentence (p.178).
Kent Bach in his Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998) believes that making a
statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are all sorts of other things
we can do with words. Some of the things that people can do with words, in his opinion,
are making requests, asking questions, giving orders, making promises, giving thanks,
offering apologies, and so on. Moreover, he also points out that almost any speech act is
really the performance of several acts at once, which are distinguished by different aspects
of the speaker’s intention.
1.3.2 Speech Act classifications by Austin and Searle
According to Ken Bach, the theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly
explanatory. It must systematically classify types of speech acts and the ways in which
they can succeed or fail. There are numerous linguists attempt to classify speech acts, most
of them, however, do not reach a kind of consensus.
Despite feeling far from equally happy about all of the terms used, Austin classified
illocutionary force into five classes, namely verdictives, exercitives, commissives,
behabitives and expositives ( page 150).
As explained by Austin himself, verdictives are typified by the giving of verdict by a jury,
arbitrator or umpire. They may be an estimate, reckoning or appraisal. Exercitives are the
exercising of powers rights or influence. Examples of this type can be voting, urging,
advising and warning….The third type, commissives are typified by promising or
otherwise undertaking. They commit one to doing something but also include declarations
or announcements. Behabitives do with attitudes and social behavior. Examples of these
are congratulating, commending, apologizing, cursing….Lastly, expositives make plain
how utterances fit into the course of an argument or conversation. John Austin admitted
that he found the last two classes behabitives and expositives the most troublesome and that
perhaps they are not clear or are cross-classified. In fact, many researchers claim that
Austin seemed to base on no clear principle to construct his classification. Therefore, many 15

Suggestions belong to the group of directive speech acts which, according to Searle (1976),
are those in which the speaker’s purpose is to get the hearer to commit him/herself to some 16

future course of action. Bach and Harnish (1979) when proposing their definition of
directives also implied that the speaker’s attitude and intention when performing an
utterance must be taken as a reason for the hearer’s action.
Schmidt and Richards (1980) claimed that directives contain speech acts such as requests,
commands and suggestions… They pointed out that the main goal of these speech acts was
to get the hearer to do something, although the force of the attempt could differ from one
speech act to another. Haverkate (1984) distinguished between impositive and
nonimpositive directives. The impositives include more threatening acts, such as
requesting, pleading and ordering, whereas non-impositive directives refer to suggestions
and instructions. The main difference between these two groups lies in the fact that the
benefits obtained by carrying out an impositive speech act are exclusively for the speaker
(the teacher), whereas the objective of the non-impositive speech acts is to benefit the
hearer ( the student)
However, although suggestions are made in the best interest of the student, Brown and
Levinson (1987) regarded this speech act as a facethreatening act since the teacher is in
some way intruding into the student’s world by performing an act that concerns what the
latter should do. Banerjee and Carrell (1988) believed that, in this sense, suggestions are
regarded as an imposition upon the student by affronting his/her negative face. As these
authors claimed, if a speaker decides to make a suggestion, there are some factors to take
into consideration: the urgency of the suggestion, the degree of embarrassment in the
situation, and the social distance and power between the speaker and the hearer. For this
reason, and depending on these factors and the extent to which the situation can be more or
less threatening, the teacher might try to soften this speech act through the use of specific
politeness strategies in order to minimize, as far as possible, the chances of the student’s

criticism could be better described in terms of speech act sets which were made up by
multiple components.
Tracy, et all. (1987) explored the characteristics of good and bad criticism and found out
five characteristics to distinguish between good and bed criticisms.
 A good criticism needs to display a positive language and manner
 The changes suggested in a good criticism must be specific enough and the critic
must offer to help make them possible
 The reason for criticizing must be justified and made explicit
 A good criticism is compensated for by being placed in a larger positive message
 A good criticism does not violate the relationship between interlocutors
In short, researchers have reached an agreement that criticisms should be simple, specific
and well-grounded in the lesson. They should be for the purposes of student’ improvement
and need to be softened. The softening strategies include ―measuring words‖ to avoid 18

being too negative, ―soft-pedaling‖ to lessen the harshness of criticism, ― using affirmative
language to depersonalize the criticism and ― using negotiating language‖ to avoid
imposing on the addressee.


freshmen, about 200 to 250 choose to major in foreign languages. The English Division is
often seen as the biggest section in the Department of Foreign Languages with about 140
newly enrolled students annually divided equally into classes.
In Phuong Dong University, English is taught according to two distinctive syllabuses:
majored and non-majored. The non-majored syllabus is for students of other departments
like accounting or banking…and for students of other divisions in Foreign Language
Department like Chinese and Japanese…The majored syllabus is obviously for students
who choose to specialize in English. For these students, English is taught in a setting with
two stages, each of which lasts for two years. In the first stage, students learn general
English ( in Phuong Dong it is named GE) which centers students into four basic skills
namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. This stage, by no means, causes students
any big trouble for most of them have been familiar with the subjects at high school
already. By finishing this stage, students are considered to be of intermediate level. The
second stage is believed to be much more challenging for students. In this stage, students
have to study difficult subjects such as translation, interpretation, phonetics, grammar,
country studies ….and English literature. The biggest obstacle in this stage, according to
students, is not only that they have to study much more complicated and difficult subjects
but they also have to study several of them at the same time.
Regarding the language competence of English majors of Phuong Dong University,
students’ level of English proficiency is generally various and not as high as that of their
counterparts from other public universities of foreign languages. There are many reasons to
explain for this reality, but the most obvious one must be students’ low academic results at
the entrance examinations. 20

2.2.2. The English literature course in Phuong Dong University
English Literature has been adopted to teach in Phuong Dong University for 8 years. Since
being adopted, it has always been one of the indispensable components for the four-year-

9
Man of property
10
William Wordsworth
11
The daffodils
12
George Bernard Shaw
13
Widower’s house-act II
14
Widower’s house-act III
15
Revision
21

In order to explore the course in more detail, some of its important elements need to be
taken into consideration: the teaching materials, the course objectives, student’s oral
presentations and ways of assessments
2.2.2.1 Teaching materials
The major material currently used to teach English Literature for final year students in
Phuong Dong University is the book English Literature (2001) Published by Vietnam
National University Press. The book was compiled by teachers of Vietnam National
University, Hanoi-College of Foreign Languages, who have been involving in teaching
English Literature for many years and based themselves on authentic resources and
relevant materials when designing this book. The book introduces five major authors
namely Oscar Wilde, William Summerset Maugham, John Galsworthy, William