VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES MAI ANH
A STUDY ON TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TO SIXTH
GRADE STUDENTS AT NGO QUYEN SECONDARY SCHOOL

NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC DẠY NGỮ PHÁP TIẾNG ANH
CHO HỌC SINH LỚP SÁU TẠI TRƯỜNG
PHỔ THÔNG TRUNG HỌC NGÔ QUYỀN M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: English language teaching methodology
Code: 60.14.10
HANOI – 2012
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………….………… ii
ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………… iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………….… iv
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS ……………………… ……………….…… viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………… ,,,,ix
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study ……………………………………………………… 1
2. Aims of the study ………………………………………………………… 2
3. Research questions …………………………………………………………. 2
4. Scope of the study ………………………………………………………… 2
5. Significance of the study …………………………………………………… 3
6. Method of the study ………………………………………………………… 3
7. Design of he study …………………………………………………………. 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Definitions of grammar ………………………………………………… 5
1.2. Role of grammar in foreign language teaching and learning …………… 6
1.3. Explicit and implicit knowledge ………………………………………… 8
1.3.1. Explicit knowledge …………………… …………………… 8
1.3.2. Implicit knowledge ………………… ……………………… 9
1.4. Three approaches in grammar presentation …………………………… 10
1.4.1. Deductive approach …………………………………………. 10
1.4.2. Inductive approach ……………………… ……………….… 11
1.4.3. Communicative approach …………… …………………… 12
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1.5. Factors affecting language acquisition ……………………………… ….13
1.5.1. Internal factors …………………… ……………………… 13
1.5.1.1. Students‘ anxiety …… …………………………… 13
1.5.1.2. Motivation ………………………………….…….… 14

3.1.5. Students‘ evaluations of the grammar teaching in the Language Focus
Lessons ……………………………….…………………………… 26
3.1.6. The students‘ learning styles ………………………………………. 27
3.1.7. The students‘ assessment of the grammar exercises in the textbook 28
3.1.8. The students‘ difficulties and the causes for those difficulties in learning
English gramma……………………………… ……………….…… 29
3.1.9. Students‘ preference for the teachers‘ grammar presentation
approaches……………………………………………………………………… 31
3.1.10. Students‘ favourite practice activities ………………… ………… 32
3.1.11. Student‘s expectation for a better and more effective grammar
lesson……………………………………………………………………………… 33
3.2. Results from the questionnaire for teachers ……… …………………… 34
3.2.1. The teachers‘ awareness of the performance of grammar in teaching
English ……………………………… ………………………………… 34
3.2.2. The teachers‘ methods of teaching grammar …………………… 34
3.2.2.1. Teachers‘ methods of presenting grammar …………… ………… 34
3.2.2.2. Teachers‘ ways of giving grammar instructions …………………… 35
3.2.1.3. Teachers‘ grammar practice activities …………… ……………… 35
3.2.1.4. Teachers‘ techniques of dealing with the students‘ errors … …… 36
3.2.1.5. Factors affecting the way teachers teach grammar …… ……… 37
3.2.2. Difficulties in teaching grammar as perceived by the teachers … 38
3.3. Results from class observation ……………… …… ………………… 39
3.4. Summary …………………………… ………………………………… 40
CHAPTER 4: MAJOR FINDINGS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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4.1. Major findings ………………………………………… ……………… 42
4.1.1. Teacher‘s and students‘ attitude towards the teaching of grammar… 42
4.1.2. Teacher‘s performance in Language Focus lessons ………… …… 42
4.1.3. Difficulties the teacher face when teaching grammar ……………… 42

grade English grammar
Table 3: the students‘ evaluation of the grammar lessons at school
Table 4: Ways of learning English grammar
Table 5: Students‘ level of difficulties in learning English grammar
Table 6: Reasons for difficulties in learning English grammar
Table 7: Students‘ preference for the teachers‘ grammar presentation approaches
Table 8: Students‘ favourite grammar practice activities
Table 9: Suggestions for learning grammar better and more effective
Table 10: The teachers‘ awareness of the importance of grammar in teaching English
Table 11: Teachers‘ methods of presenting grammar
Table 12: Teachers‘ ways of giving grammar instructions
Table 13: Teachers‘ grammar practice activities – Frequency of use
Table 14: Teachers‘ techniques of dealing with students‘ errors
Table 15: Factors influencing the way the teachers teach grammar
Table 16: Teachers‘ difficulties in teaching grammar

Chart 1: The students‘ frequency in learning grammar after the lessons at school
Chart 2: Time for learning English compared with other
Chart 3: Students‘ level of understanding of grammar structures presented in the L.F
lessons
Chart 4: The students‘ assessment of the grammar exercises in the textbook
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
MOET: Ministry of Education and Training
L.F: Language Focus


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PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
It cannot be denied that English has nowadays become a common means of
communication of human being all over the world. Integrating into that trend of the
global integration, Vietnam has been more and more active to train active and dynamic
Vietnamese, who can use English fluently for communicative purposes. That is the
reason why in 2002, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has set out new
aims for English language teaching for secondary education as well as introduced new
series of English textbooks from grade 6 to grade 12.
The new English textbooks for high school students are divided into two sets:
the advanced and the standard. They are claimed to adopt the latest teaching and
learning approaches: communicative approach and learner-centered approach and aim
at developing both language skills and language knowledge for students. Each unit in
the new English textbooks consists of five parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing
and Language Focus, among which the Language Focus sections are to consolidate
students‘ pronunciation and grammar.
Since their nation-wide implementation in the school year 2006-2007, a great
deal of research has been carried out to evaluate these new textbooks as well as to find
out how these textbooks are actually implemented or the difficulties that teachers and
students at high schools have to face when teaching and learning by the new textbooks.
However, most of these studies have dealt with the teaching and learning of the four
language skills which are believed to be new for both teachers and students. There is
still a lack of research on the teaching and learning of language elements in the
Language Focus part. More importantly, the question whether teachers actually teach
grammar communicatively or in the traditional methods has not been answered yet.
Therefore, it is necessary to carry out more research on how teachers and students
teach and learn grammar in the actual classroom.
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As mentioned earlier, there are two sets of the new English textbooks for grade
6: the advanced and the standard sets. This study is only aimed at investigating the
reality of teaching and learning grammar in Language Focus lessons in the standard
set.
This study is limited to the teaching and learning reality with regard to teaching
and learning grammar in Language Focus lessons. The investigation of teaching and
learning language skills and pronunciation will be beyond the scope of this study.
This study is a detailed survey at Ngo Quyen Secondary School in Hai Phong.
Therefore, the findings of the study are not intended to be generalized to other school
contexts. Indeed the findings may not apply beyond the actual participants in this
particular study.
5. Significance of the study
This study helps to identify the problems of teaching grammar in the Language
Focus of the new English 6 and suggests ways of improving them; therefore, it is
hoped that this study will be beneficial in many ways. First, participants in the study
(the teachers and the learners at Ngo Quyen Secondary School) will benefit
immediately from the experience of reflection. Secondly, the findings of the study will
contribute information to textbook writers and educators to determine curricula and
program direction.
6. Method of the study
The study was designed to use both quantitative and qualitative methods. Then,
various instruments were used to collect the data for the study, which are:
- survey questionnaires to investigate the teachers‘ and students‘ attitudes towards
grammar, teacher‘s teaching habits and their difficulties in teaching grammar in
Language Focus lessons.
- class observations to get information about both the teachers‘ methods of teaching
grammar in the classroom and students‘ attitude and response to grammar teaching.
7. Design of the study
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Definition of Grammar
Although the term ―grammar‖ is very familiar to many people, it is defined
differently by different people.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (cited in Harmer: 1987:1)
defines grammar as ―the study and practice of the rules by which words change their
forms and are combined into sentences‖. From this definition, readers can see that there
are two basic elements to which attention should be paid: the rules of grammar, and the
study and practice of the rules.
According to Nunan (2003:154) ―Grammar is a set of rules specifying the correct
words at the sentence level‖. This definition represents a typical prescriptive grammar
view. It lays down the law, saying what is right and what is wrong.
Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992) in their Longman Dictionary of Language
Teaching & Applied Linguistics define grammar as: ―Grammar is a description of the
structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases
are combined to produce sentences in the language. It usually takes into account the
meanings and functions these sentences have in overall system of the language. It may
or may not include the description of the sound of a language‖ (p.161).
All the ideas mentioned above agree on a point that grammar is a set of rules which
form words and make sentences from words. However, Widdowson (1990:81) claims
that ―Grammar is not just a collection of sentence patterns signifying nonsense,
something for the learners‘ brain to puzzle over‖. For Widdowson, grammar means the
relationship between three things: grammar, words, and context. In other words,
grammar should be viewed as linguistic rules functioning in alliance with words and
context for the achievement of meaning.
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Thornburry (1999) viewed grammar as the relationship between three things:

grammar, learners can communicate effectively only in a limited number of situations.
Due to the fact that many language learners know the grammar rules of a
language well, but they cannot communicate effectively in that language (Hinkel &
Fotos, 2002), several scholars do not believe that grammar teaching will have any
impact on communicative purposes and therefore neglect it. Prabhu (1987), for
example, believes that development of competence requires the creation of conditions
in which learner engage in an effort to cope with communication, not a systematization
of planned grammatical input.
The strongest advocate of this view is Krashen (1983, 1987), who is famous for
his learning and acquisition hypothesis and his Monitor theory. Based on his learning
and acquisition hypothesis, Krashen argues that from learning the learners obtain
conscious knowledge of grammar which is not responsible for actual L2 performance.
On the other hand, acquisition is the underlying process which is responsible for the
actual performance and this can only happen unconsciously through natural exposure
to comprehensible inputs. What‘s more, according to his Monitor theory, consciously-
learned grammar can only function as monitoring and monitoring overuse will only
disturb the flow of production. Consequently, this grow-up holds that formal and
conscious study of grammar should be strongly rejected if the objective of learning the
language is productive competence. However, Krashen has received many strong
criticisms from other researchers as his acquisition theory seems to be merely based on
his own observation without supporting evidence.
According to Smith (2001:15), if teachers neither pay attention to grammar nor
create opportunities for learners to improve grammar, learners are likely to stand the
risk of fossilization or reach a point where they can cope with level of communication
that is demanded of them by making use of their existing grammatical resources and
communication strategies and probably with sufficient fluency. It is sure that, they do
not see the importance of developing their linguistic abilities any further.
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In conclusion, grammar plays a very important role in language teaching, even

exercise or a writing assignment). Thus, on the basis of Achmad‘s case, explicit
knowledge is learnable; for example, when grammatical items are given to learners,
they learn the items first in a controlled learning process. Explicit knowledge is also
obtained through the practice of error correction, which is thought to help learners
come to the correct mental representation of a rule. (Krashen, 1987).
1.3.2. Implicit knowledge
Implicit knowledge is automatic and easily accessed and provides a great
contribution to building communicative skills. Implicit knowledge is unconscious,
internalized knowledge of language that is easily accessed during spontaneous
language tasks, written or spoken (Brown, 2007). Implicit knowledge is gained in the
natural language learning process. It means that a person applies a certain grammatical
rule in the same way as a child who acquires her/ his first language (for example,
mother tongue). According to Brown (2007), the child implicitly learns aspects of
language (for example, phonological, syntactical, semantic, pragmatic rules for
language), but does not have access to an explanation of those rules explicitly. As an
example, Jack speaks and writes English with good use of present tense, although he
has no idea about the grammatical rule behind it. To sum up, implicit knowledge is
gained through a sub-conscious learning process. This is illustrated by the fact that
native speakers of a certain language do not always ―know‖ (consciously) the rules of
their language (Krashen, 1987).
1.4. Three approaches in grammar presentation
In presenting grammar, teachers should be aware that they teach grammar but not
teach about grammar or as Lewis (1986) states "language learning is more important
than language teaching". Besides, the main goal in grammar teaching is to enable
learners to achieve linguistic competence and to be able to use grammar as a tool or
resource in the comprehension and creation of oral and written discourse efficiently,
effectively, and appropriately according to the situation. Celce-Murcia and Hilles
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(1988) are in agreement with Larsen-Freeman (1991) that grammar should never be

presentation of a rule taught and then is followed by examples in which the rule is
applied. In this regard, learners are expected to engage with it through the study and
manipulation of examples.
1.4.2. Inductive approach
An inductive approach comes from inductive reasoning stating that a reasoning
progression proceeds from particulars (that is, observations, measurements, or data) to
generalities (for example, rules, laws, concepts or theories) (Felder & Henriques,
1995). In short, when we use induction, we observe a number of specific instances and
from them infer a general principle or concept.
In the case of pedagogical grammar, most experts argue that the inductive
approach can also be called rule-discovery learning. It suggests that a teacher teach
grammar starting with presenting some examples of sentences. In this sense, learners
understand grammatical rules from the examples. The presentation of grammatical
rules can be spoken or written. Eisenstein (cited in Long & Richards, 1987) maintains
that the inductive approach tries to utilize the very strong reward value of bringing
order, clarity and meaning to experiences. This approach involves learners‘
participating actively in their own instruction. In addition, the approach encourages a
learner to develop her/his own mental set of strategies for dealing with tasks. In other
words, this approach attempts to highlight grammatical rules implicitly in which
the learners are encouraged to conclude the rules given by the teacher.
Of the two approaches above, which is best? This question relates to a long-
standing debate among language teachers in the context of English foreign language,
since the two have their own significance for particular learner progress. For example,
a study of various language learners shows that some learners achieve better in
deductive language classes; on the other hand, others perform better in more inductive
classes. This difference in cognitive styles may be associated with different
neurological mechanisms in learners (Eisenstein, 1987). Whether grammatical rules are
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taught inductively or deductively relies upon certain structures, since some are more

managers of their own learning (Larsen- Freeman, 1986) which facilitates students'
memory of grammar rules that they learn and practice in class.
1.5. Factors affecting language acquisition
Some students learn a new language more quickly and easily than others. This
simple fact is known by all who have themselves learned a second language or taught
those who are using their second language in school. Clearly, some language learners
are successful by virtue of their sheer determination, hard work and persistence.
However there are other crucial factors influencing success that are largely beyond the
control of the learner. These factors can be broadly categorized as internal and external.
It is their complex interplay that determines the speed and facility with which the new
language is learned.
1.5.1. Internal factors
Internal factors are those that the individual language learner brings with him or
her to the particular learning situation. These consist of students‘ anxiety and their
motivation.
1.5.1.1. Students’ anxiety
Anxiety, simply speaking, is a kind of troubled feeling in the mind. Spielberger
(1983:1) defines anxiety as ―the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension,
nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system‖
(as cited in Brown (2007:161). More simply, it is associated with feelings of
uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension or worry (Scovel, 1978:134). If the
students are afraid of losing face as making mistakes or being laughed at by other
students, they are certain to keep quiet and wait until they are required to speak in
English lessons.
In short, anxiety is obviously an important factor in the second language
acquisition. Therefore, language educators should strive to promote a non – threatening
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environment and have techniques to reduce students‘ anxiety like: creating a relaxed
and safe atmosphere for students, avoiding negative evaluation of students in

mind.
1.5.2.2. Teacher’s methodology
The teacher‘s methodology refers to the approach or method and the teaching
techniques he uses in the classroom. Through the history we have experienced the
existence and development of many teaching methods that can be divided into two
types: teacher – centered and learner – centered methods. Traditional methods such as
the Grammar Translation Method, the Direct Method are teacher – centered ones which
mostly focus on grammatical and phonological accuracy. These techniques are choral
repetition, drilling substitution, content explanation and narrative presentation seem so
mechanical and simple that they will result in learners‘ passiveness and limit their
participation in learning. In the recent time, in the light of Communicative Language
Teaching, teacher‘s technique turn from teacher – centered method into learner –
centered method. The teaching techniques consist of games, pair work, group work,
etc. However, no teaching method is the best one as each one has its own advantages
and disadvantages. In order to apply a suitable teaching method, the teacher should
take some of the following factors into consideration including learners‘ level, interests
and purposes. Applying the appropriate method can have positive effects on students‘
learning and participation in classroom‘s activities.
1.5.2.3. Classroom atmosphere
Classroom atmosphere plays an important role in students‘ in language learning.
According to Underwood (1987:34-44), both students and teachers take the
responsibility for creating a good teaching and learning environment with the following
points:
- Balancing fluency and accuracy: The teacher should balance the encouragement
of fluency with the need for accuracy. If she focuses too much on accuracy, weaker
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students will be shy and reticent to practice. Then, they will lose the confidence in
showing their answers, and the gap between the weak students and other fellow
students become bigger.

language learning.
1.6. Summary
In this chapter, the researcher has presented a number of issues related to the
research questions. These include the definitions of grammar, the roles of grammar in
language teaching and learning, explicit or implicit teaching, three core approaches in
grammar presentation as well as the factors affecting grammar acquisition. This
literature review serves as the theoretical framework for the researcher to build up
questionnaires, then to analyze the data collected as well as to suggest some
pedagogical implications for learning of grammar at Ngo Quyen Secondary School.