VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
 LÊ VŨ QUỲNH NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO USING AUTHENTIC
MATERIALS TO SUPPLEMENT THE COURSEBOOK ON
TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL FOR GRADE – 12 STUDENTS
IN GIA BINH II HIGH SCHOOL, BAC NINH PROVINCE
NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG TÀI LIỆU THỰC TIỄN
ĐỂ BỔ TRỢ SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TRONG DẠY KĨ NĂNG NÓI
CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 12 TRƯỜNG THPT GIA BÌNH II,
TỈNH BẮC NINH


IN GIA BINH II HIGH SCHOOL, BAC NINH PROVINCE
NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG TÀI LIỆU THỰC TIỄN
ĐỂ BỔ TRỢ SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TRONG DẠY KĨ NĂNG NÓI
CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 12 TRƯỜNG THPT GIA BÌNH II,
TỈNH BẮC NINH

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60 14 10
SUPERVISOR: TÔ THỊ THU HƯƠNG, Ph.D
HÀ NỘI – 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENT

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I. 2. Authentic Materials and Coursebook
I. 2. 1. Authentic Materials
I. 2. 1. 1. Definition
I. 2. 1. 2. Advantages of Using Authentic Materials
I. 2. 1. 3. Disadvantages of Using Authentic Materials
I. 2. 2. The Coursebook
I. 2. 2. 1. Definition
I. 2. 2. 2. Textbook Evaluation
I. 2. 2. 3. Textbook Adaptation
I. 2. 3. Conclusion
CHAPTER II. THE STUDY
II. 1. The Status of Teaching and Learning Speaking at Gia Binh II High School
II. 1. 1. Description of the Students at Gia Binh II High School
II. 1. 2. Description of the Teachers at Gia Binh II High School
II. 1. 3. The Status of Teaching and Learning Speaking at Gia Binh II High School
II. 2. Research Methodology
II. 2. 1. Questionnaire for the Teachers
II. 2. 2. Questionnaire for the Students
II. 3. Data Analysis
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II. 3. 1. 6. The using of Authentic Materials for teaching English speaking skill
(Part II, Section C)
II. 3. 2. Questionnaires for the Students
II. 3. 2. 1. Students’ experience in learning English (question 1)
II. 3. 2. 2. Students’ attitude towards learning English and learning speaking skill
(question 2, 4, 5)
II. 3. 2. 3. Students’ motivation in learning English (question 3)
II. 3. 2. 4. Students’ evaluation of an English speaking lesson (question 6)
II. 3. 2. 5. Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill (question 7)
II. 3. 2. 6. Students’ evaluation of using supplementary materials in speaking
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v LIST OF TABLES AND CHART

Table 1: Teachers’ age 21
Table 2: Teachers’ teaching experience 21
Table 3: Teachers’ Perceptions of CLT 22
Chart 1: Coursebook Evaluation of the Teachers 23
Table 4: Difficulties in teaching and learning in terms of learners 25
Table 5: Difficulties in teaching and learning in terms of facilities 26
Table 6: Perceptions of Authentic Materials 27
Table 7: Kinds of Authentic Materials often used 27
Table 8: Kinds of Activities used to develope speaking lessons 28
Table 9: Students’ motivation in learning English 30
Table 10: Students’ evaluation of an English speaking lesson 30
Table 11: Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill 31

students. In 2005, Ministry of Education and Training again introduced two new sets of
textbook, one for regular students (which is called as the standard textbook), and one
for specialized students with lots of revolutionary changes in comparison with
textbooks of English in the past.
The new English Textbook series written by Vietnamese writers pay more
attention on developing students’ communicative skills – Speaking, Listening, Writing
and Reading – and help students review grammatical rules in Language Focus. Task –
based lessons are the formation of the textbook. The tasks can be either pair work,

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group work or class work, which give students more chances to take part in the lessons
to gradually develop their communicative competence, and make them the center of the
teaching and learning process. However, with such changes, there are still some
problems. “Although the new textbooks emphasize the students' communicative skills
in English, it is observed that classroom teaching remains grammar-focused, textbook-
bound, and teacher-centered on account of teachers' inadequacy of required proficiency
in English and teaching skills as well as of the traditional image of the teacher as a type
of omniscient authority figure and a holder of all knowledge.” (Le, V. C., 2007).
Furthermore, some parts of the textbook’s content are different from real life in
Vietnam, espeacially in rural areas, which make teaching and learning challenging.
Lesson adaptation becomes inevitable.
From all the things mentioned above, I would like to devote my time and effort
to: (1) investigate the current situation of teaching and learning English speaking skill
of grade-12 students in Gia Binh II High School, Gia Binh District, Bac Ninh Province;
(2) study how the new textbook is perceived by English teachers in Gia Binh II High
School and their grade-12 students; and (3) investigate how the teachers adapt the
lessons to make them suitable for students and whether or not they use authentic
materials to supplement their lessons while teaching speaking.
2. The scope of the study

6. Design of the study
The thesis consists of three parts:
Part I is the Introduction, which presents the rationales, the scope, the
objectives, the significances, the method and the design of the study.
Part II is the backbone of the thesis with three chapters: Chapter I deals with the
Literature Review, in which we review some approaches of teaching English in history
so far, the theories about textbook evaluation and textbook adaption, and the
application of authentic materials to supplement textbook in teaching a language.
Chapter II presents the methodology of the study and the data analysis. Chapter III
discusses the findings and proposes some suggestions for using authentic materials
while teaching to supplement the textbook.
Part III is the Conclusion and Suggestions for further research. 4

PART II. DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I. LITERATURE REVIEW
I. 1. Approaches of Language Teaching
I. 1. 1. The Grammar – Translation Method
Rooted in the formal teaching of Latin and Greek, Grammar – Translation
Method (GTM) was the dominant method in language teaching until the end of the 19
th

century and continued to be used so far. However, it has long been believed to be old –
fashioned. According to Richards & Rodgers (1986: 3), this method has some principle
characteristics as follow: (1) It is a way of studying through detailed analysis of its
grammar rules and translation of sentences and texts into or out of the target language.
(2) Reading and writing are the major focus. Little or no attention is paid to listening
and speaking. (3) Vocabulary is taught through bilingual word lists, dictionary study

learning facilities are insufficient, or even worse, where the teachers’ ability is still in
need of training.
I. 1. 2. The Direct Method
Like the GTM, the Direct Method (DM) is not new. It has been applied by
language teachers for many years. Direct Method is considered very similar to another
method named “Gouin and the Series Method”. This method states that “Language
learning is primarily a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions. Children
use language to represent their conceptions” and pose a method that “taught learners
directly (without translation) and conceptually (without grammatical rules and
explanations), a series of connected sentences that are easy to perceive.” And DM’s
theory is “second language learning should be more like first language learning”.
Richards and Rogers (1986: 9-10) summarize the principles of the DM as: (1)
Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language. (2) Only
everyday vocabulary and sentences are taught. (3) Oral communication skills were
built up in a carefully traded progression organized around question – and – answer
exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes. (4) Grammar was
taught inductively. (5) New teaching points were taught through modelling and
practice. (6) Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and
pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas. (7) Both speech and
listening comprehension were taught. And (8) correct pronunciation and grammar were
emphasized.

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The DM was very popular in the end of the 19
th
century, and widely accepted in
private schools where students were highly motivated and also where the native
teachers could be employed. However, this method could not succeed in public
education where “the constraints of the budget, classroom size, time and teacher

interesting and meaningful; otherwise, the students might easily get bored with mechanical
repitition or be “well – trained parrots” as commented by Rivers (1981: 47).
By the 1960s, ALM committed some ultimate failure in teaching long – term
communicative proficiency. Together with it was Wilga Rivers’ eloquent criticism of
the misconceptions of the ALM, this method gradually became wan. People discovered
“that language was not really acquired through a process of habit formation and
overlearning; that errors were not necessary to be avoided at all costs; and that
structural linguistics did not tell us everything about language that we need to know.”
Certainly, any method passes through ups and downs, and the ALM is not the
exception. It has been considered as one of the most successful pedagogical theory so
far. Up to now, adaptations of the ALM still have been found in contemporary
methodologies.
I. 1. 4. Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) appeared because of the failure of
all the previous approaches and the need for a method which can help students build up
communicative competence. According to Jack C. Richards (2006, 3), “CLT can be
understood as 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.” Specifically, the goal of CLT is to
teach communicative competence; the process of learning a foreign language of the
learners includes “(i) interaction between the learners and users of the language, (ii)
collaborative creation of meaning, (iii) creating meaningful and purposeful interaction
through language, (iv) negotiation of meaning as the learner and his/ her interlocutor
arrive at understanding, (v) learning through attending to the feedback learners get
when they use the language, (vi) paying attention to the language one hears and trying
to incorporate new forms into one’s developing communicative competence; and (vii)
trying out and experimenting with different ways of saying things.” The kinds of
classroom activities that best facilitate learning, according to him, are “pair work
activities, role plays, group work activities and project work”.


resistance to class participation and the reasons may come from their anxiety, laziness
and unfamiliarity with communicative lessons. (iii) Students use Vietnamese during

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group work and the sources of the difficulty are also anxiety and unfamiliarity with
CLT. And (iv) Students are of low English proficiency. From educational system, (i)
Conductive facilities are inadequate. (ii) Class sizes are large. And (iii) Classes are of
multi – level. From teachers, (i) Teachers feel inadequate because they lack training in
CLT and experience in implementing CLT. (2) Teachers find it unable to assess
communicative competence because they are not given methods to access
communicative competence. Unless we solve these problems, CLT can never get
proper success in application to teaching and learning, espressingly in Vietnam.
I. 1. 5. Conclusion
Generally there have had many approaches in learning and teaching a language
and all of them seemed to gain the enjoyment of the community in a period of time, in
the past or at present. Nonetheless, at this moment, CLT is the most popular method
because it serves for the raising needs for communication through distinctive its theory
about the communicative competence. CLT also provides teachers and learners with a
chance to access to authentic, genuine materials in many sources, from the native
speakers or just from the speakers of English – speaking countries. There is no
restriction.
This minor thesis does not have ambition to cover all the approaches used in
teaching and learning a language history. It just wants to focus on CLT, the approach
allows using authentic materials, which is one of the best ways to teach learners how to
speak comprehensively. Besides, CLT is the approach advocated by the Vietnamese
education authority, therefore, the focus of this study is fully justified.

I. 2. Authentic Materials and Coursebook
I. 2. 1. Authentic Materials

scholars to ascertain the definition, the roles and the usage of this kind of materials in
language teaching and learning.
A. Gilmore (2007) listed in his writing “Authentic materials and authenticity in
foreign language learning” eight definitions from the liturature:
 The language produced by native speakers for native speakers in a particular
language community. (Porter & Roberts, 1981; Little, Devitt & Singleton, 1989)
 The language produced by a real speaker/ writer for a real audience, conveying a
real message. (Morrow, 1977; Porter & Roberts, 1981; Swaffar, 1985; Nunan,
1988/9; Benson & Voller, 1997)
 The qualities bestowed on a text by the receiver, in that it is not seen as
something inherent in a text itself, but it is imparted on it by the reader/ listener.
(Widdowson, 1978/9; Breen, 1985)

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 The interaction between students and teachers, and is a “personal process of
engagement”. (van Lier, 1996: 128)
 The types of task chosen (Breen, 1985; Bachman, 1991; van Lier, 1996; Benson
& Voller, 1997; Lewcowicz, 2000; Guariento & Morley, 2001; Rost, 2002)
 The social situation of the classroom (Breen, 1985; Arnold, 1991; Lee, 1995;
Guariento & Morley, 2001; Rost, 2002)
 Assessment (Bachman, 1991; Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Lewcowicz, 2000)
 Culture, and the ability to behave or think like a target language group in order to
be recognized and validated by them (Kramsch, 1998)
According to Gilmore, the ideas of Morrow (1977) is the best one: an authentic
text is a stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker or writer for a real
audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort. And in fact, this view is
agreed by almost teachers or pedagogues from country to country. In his writing,
Gilmore once used the word “graded teacher”; which come to another related term
“graded materials” to separate it with authentic materials. The Graded Materials are the

I. 2. 1. 3. Disadvantages of Using Authentic Materials
The disadvantages mentioned by several writers are: (1) They may be too
culturally biased, or unnecessarily difficult to understand outside the language
community. (2) The vocabulary might not be relevant to the student's immediate needs.
(3) Too many structures are mixed so lower levels have a hard time decoding the texts.
(4) Special preparation is necessary which can be time consuming. (5) With listening:
too many different accents. (6) The material can become outdated easily. This is true
with the cases of news, TV or radio programs.
I. 2. 2. The Coursebook
I. 2. 2. 1. Definition
Obviously, a textbook or coursebook (UK English) is a manual of instruction in
any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational
institutions.
There have been a plenty of pros and cons around the definition and the usage
of coursebook. A. Hasan & B Esmat (2009) synthetized the arguments and counter –
arguments for defining and using a textbook as below:
The arguments for using a textbook are: (1) A textbook is a framework which
regulates and times the programs. (2) In the eyes of the learners, no textbook means no

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purpose. (3) Without a textbook, learners think their learning is not taken seriously. (4)
In many situations, a textbook can serve as a syllabus. (6) A textbook is a cheap way of
providing learning materials. (7) A textbook provides ready – made teaching texts and
learning tasks. (8) A learner without a textbook is out of focus and teacher – depent.
(9) For novice teachers, a textbook means security, guidance, and support.
The counter – arguments are: (1) If every group of students has different
needs, no one textbook can be a response to all differing needs. (2) Topics in a
textbook may not be relevant for and interesting to all. (3) A textbook is confining, i.e.,
it inhibits teachers’ creativity. (4) A textbook of necessary sets prearranged sequence

Adaptation is another inevitable process in using a coursebook while teaching a
language in many parts of the world. We should understand that coursebooks are not
written for a specific group of people. They are written for a generalized target group
(children or adults, beginners or the advanced, ESL or EFL). No book can meet all the
needs and interests of each group of learners that use it. Graves (2000, 188 - 197)
explains that coursebook adaptation can happen at three different levels – the activity
level, the unit level and the syllabus level. Syllabus level adaptation is taking a
coursebook and reordering the units and/or adding supplementary materials to the units
to better fit the learners’ needs over a course of study. At the unit level, the steps in the
order of activities in a unit are changed. In an example of this, Graves gave twelve
activities from a course book unit to groups of teachers and asked them to produce a
unit plan for their students. At the end of the activity, each group had reordered the
units in a totally unique way, and none matched the original coursebook order.
Teachers adapt our coursebooks for many reasons: perhaps the particular page
they are working on doesn’t provide enough practice for the class in question, or
perhaps the particular topic doesn’t excite the interest of the group. Whatever the
reason is, the principles are the same and can be distilled into the following advices:
 Supplement, don’t replace: Supplementing means adding to the activities in the
coursebook to better suit the needs of the learners. In principle, we should
supplement to provide more than what is in the coursebook, however, the
coursebook activities are there for a reason and so you should try to include them.
 Supplementing doesn’t always mean photocopying: Many people think that
supplementing means creating or copying worksheets. This is not always the case.

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 Don’t follow rubrics slavishly: Just because the course book tells you to do
something in one way, it doesn’t mean you have to. Sometimes authors will miss
the opportunity, particularly for group and pair work. Doing an exercise in a new
and imaginative way can help to lift the book off the page.


II. 1. The Status of Teaching and Learning Speaking at Gia Binh II High School
II. 1. 1. Description of the Students at Gia Binh II High School
All the students when coming into Gia Binh II High School have studied
English as a compulsory subject since they were in lower – secondary school. The level
of students for grade 10 is said to be pre – intermediate, however, actually they are at
much lower level. Not only that, almost all students do not have much awareness about
English. Despite the fact that English is a compulsory subject, it is always considered
as no more than an optional one. Students are just forced to learn it to get marks to
complete the report. What’s more, Gia Binh is a completely rural area where almost all
people work as farmers - no extra job - which means that some people are really poor
and cannot invest for their children to study. Or if they do so, English will not be
chosen, but Maths, Chemistry, and Physics, or Literature, Geography, and History will
be. They also have little access to such mass media as newspapers, magazine
(especially in English) or the Internet, which use English a lot, then they are far from
familiar with English in every day life. The unfamiliarity and the incompetence of them
with English consequently make them shy and passive and make it very difficult for
them. Some of them are even afraid of learning English.
However, English has been learned for a long time and grammar is the focus of
all the textbooks, so some students are really good at grammatical rules, but bad at
listening or speaking. Communication in real life is certainly rare and a big challenge
for them. One thing we can hope about these students is that they have much ability in
learning how to communicate in the target language if they are trained and given a
chance.
II. 1. 2. Description of the Teachers at Gia Binh II High School
In Gia Binh II High School, there are 11 teachers. All of them are very young,
the oldest ones were born in 1976 and the youngest in 1984. None of them has ever
been to any English speaking countries. One of them is attending the MA Course, K17
in University of Languages International Studies – Vietnam National University. One


Some recent years, there have been changes. Firstly, the new textbook poses a
new formation of an unit: 5 lessons correspond with four skills and a language focus.

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This means that though the time for each lesson is still limited, teachers and students
still have time to interact with each other in the target language. In Speaking class,
asking and answering, playing roles, describing a picture or discussing… are the
popular activities which could never occur in the past. Secondly, thanks to the change
of the textbook again, speaking activites have other objectives than just focusing on
form and language accuracy as before. Then, students can review grammatical
structures, vocabulary and language functions, develop their speaking skill through
practicing situations given in the textbook and by the teachers, and build up confidence
in using English in real life. Thirdly, the teaching method used has changed from
teacher – centered to learner – centered. Teachers no more are the controllers of the
class but are guides, recommendators and organizers, ect… Students are more active in
getting knowledge. The last but not least change is on the facilities. Now, we have one
technical room, one video player, eight cassette players, one lap top given to the group
leader and one computer room with 40 computers used together with other subjects.
The matter here is that teachers rarely used these facilities except for cassette players,
one because they are not enough if many classes are in need at one time and the other
because the teachers are not used to using and exploiting modern teaching aids. It is
pity that the size of the class, from 45 to 50, is still too large for a language class. This
backward physical condition will be a high barrier for students to succeed in
communication.

II. 2. Research Methodology
Two questionnaires were designed for teachers and students to get information
to fulfil the aims of the study.
II. 2. 1. Questionnaire for the Teachers