VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
DEPARTMENT OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
====== HONG TH MINH PHƯƠNG
USING GROUP WORK IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR LESSONS
FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN THE COLLEGE OF
TECHNOLOGIES AND ECONOMICS IN TRADE
NGHIÊN CƯ
́
U VIÊ
̣
C SƯ
̉
DU
̣
NG PHƯƠNG PHA
́
P HO
̣
C NHO
́
HONG TH MINH PHƯƠNG
USING GROUP WORK IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR LESSONS
FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN THE COLLEGE OF
TECHNOLOGIES AND ECONOMICS IN TRADE
NGHIÊN CƯ
́
U VIÊ
̣
C SƯ
̉
DU
̣
NG PHƯƠNG PHA
́
P HO
̣
C NHO
́
M TRONG VIÊ
̣
C
DY NG PHP TING ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM TH NHT TRƯNG
CAO ĐĂ
̉
2.3. Group work in CLT: advantages and limitations of using group work 6
2.3.1. Advantages of using group work 6
2.3.1.1. Group work increases students’ talking time. 6
2.3.1.2. Group work creates a more secure and positive classroom atmosphere 6
2.3.1.3. Group work gives chance for students learning from each other 7
2.3.1.4. Group work motivates learners 7
2.3.1.5. Group work has positive effect on the teachers 7
2.3.2. Limitations of using group work 8
2.3.2.1. Students often speak in their native language. 8
2.3.2.2. Students do not take the same equal responsibilities in the group. 8
2.3.2.3. Using group work can make noise and indiscipline. 8
2.3.2.4. Teacher may lack of time 9
2.4. Studies on the use of group work in foreign language teaching and learning 9
2.5. Reasons of using group work in grammar teaching 10
2.5.1. Challenges in teaching grammar 10
2.5.2. Reasons of using group work in grammar teaching. 11
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2.6. Design group work activities for grammar lessons 12
2.6.1. The co-operating arrangement 12
2.6.2. The superior inferior arrangement 12
2.6.3. The combining arrangement 12
2.6.4. The individual arrangement 13
2.6.5. The grammar activities for group work. 14
2.6.5.1. Doing grammar exercises 14
2.6.5.2. Reading dialogues 14
2.6.5.3. Practicing using language according to situations 14
2.6.5.4. Playing games 14
2.6.5.5. Discussion 14
2.7. Summary 15
3.4. Summary of the findings 36
Chapter 4: Suggestions and conclusion 37
4.1. Suggestions for grammar teaching for the first-year-student in CTET 37
4.2. Limitations of the study 38
4.3. Recommendations for further research 39
4.4. Conclusion 39
References 40
Appendices I
Appendix 1: Pre-treatment questionnaire I
Appendix 2: Post-treatment questionnaire III
vii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1: Factors involved in group work 13
Table 2: The student’s justification of the learning atmosphere in grammar lessons 21
Table 3: The reasons lead to boring learning atmosphere in grammar lessons 21
Table 4: Students’ attitude towards using group work for grammar lessons 23
Table 5: The personality of students in learning generally 25
Table 6: The changes in students’ attitudes towards using group work 27
Table 7: Students’ evaluation of using group work to learn grammar 30
Figure 1: Students’ participation in grammar lesson before and after using group work 30 1
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
In the past few years, the trend of globalization has become faster than ever before,
the students’ awareness of learning English has been raised dramatically. However, the
question of how to teach and to learn English well is still in controversy; especially,
To find out the students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of applying group work
in teaching English grammar.
1. 3. Research questions
The aim of the research is to find out students’ attitude and the effectiveness of using
group work to teach English grammar lessons in CTET. In order to achieve this aim, the
researcher intends to find out the information needed to answer the following questions:
1) What are the first-year-students’ attitudes towards grammar?
2) How does grammar practice in groups affect the students’ attitudes towards
grammar?
3) What do students perceive of the benefits and limitations of using group work in
learning grammar?
1.4. Methods of the study
The main methods used in this action research are questionnaires survey and
classroom observation. A survey on the use of group work in teaching English grammar
was conducted for two classes with about 85-first-year non-English major students in
CTET College. Besides using questionnaires, classroom observation is also used to
observe the classroom behavior and students’ performance on the grammar lessons.
1.5. Scope of the study
Using group work in English teaching methodologies is one of the most popular
methods of communicative language teaching and it can be applied widely for all of the
language teaching skills. However, due to the time and length constraint of the study, this
thesis only focuses on the use of group work in English grammar lessons for first year
students in CTET College. 3
1.6. Design of the study
This thesis consists of four main chapters:
Chapter one, the introduction, provide an overview of the study with brief information
about the reasons of choosing the topic, the aims, the scope of the study, the methods as
ELT and the use of group work in grammar practice. First, a review of the role of grammar
in foreign language teaching is presented. This is followed by a discussion of using group
work in teaching grammar.
2.1 The role of grammar in ELT
Over the past few years, whether or not grammar should be taught explicitly or
implicitly has been a controversial issue. Until now two main opposing opinions exist
among many linguistics and researchers. The first view is against teaching grammar.
Extensive grammar research has shown that grammar should be neglected in teaching
English ever since communicative methodology appeared in 1970s. It was claimed that
language should be acquired through natural exposure, not through formal instruction
(Krashen as cited in Nassaji & Fotos). In Natural Approach ( Krashen and Terrell: 1983),
Krashen distinguishes leaning ( explicit knowledge) and acquisition ( implicit knowledge).
He points out that these are cases where leaning has taken place, but some learners are still
unable to use what have learnt in the conversation, because he has not yet acquired them.
So, according to him, teachers should give a lot of communication activities in class so
students can acquire language. Opposing with the views above, recent studies have
demonstrated that grammar instruction enables learners to attain high level of proficiency,
both in accuracy and fluency. Without grammar, learners can communicate effectively
only in limited number of situation (Florez, 1999). Giving strong support to grammar
teaching, Smith (2001) claimed that if we do not pay attention to grammar nor create
opportunities for learners to improve their grammar, they are likely to stand the risk of
fossilization.
As for me, through my experience and observation, poor English grammar hinders the
pace and quality of learning English. Students can obtain English much more easily if they
pay enough attention to grammar right from the beginning. Further more, grammar
teaching can be beneficial to learners in the sense that it raises learner’s consciousness
concerning the differences and similarities of the fist language and the second language.
This will help students to avoid making mistakes when learning English.
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together. Groups can be homogeneous or heterogeneous on the basis of students’ physical
characteristics, gender, race, ethnic origin, individual differences and interests. On the
other hand, teachers plan, organize and supervise them.
2.3. Group work in CLT: advantages and limitations of using group work.
2.3.1: Advantages of using group work
2.3.1.1. Group work increases students’ talking time
The first and foremost benefit of group work is that they increase the amount of
student practice. Long and Porter (1985) estimated that in a 50 minute lesson with 30
students, if the students talked only to the teacher, they would get 30 seconds of talking
time per lesson. They calculate that this equals “just one hour per student per year” (p.208).
This amount of time is not enough for students to practice the new language, which cause
to low achievement by many classroom SL learners. Hubert Skrzyński (2005) proved that
using group work can help to solve this problem. When working in groups, instead of only
one student speaks to the teacher, a lot of other students can talk and exchange ideas to
each other at the same time, and it substantially increases the opportunities the students get
to talk English.
2.3.1.2. Group work creates a more secure and positive classroom atmosphere
According to Yasemin Godek (2004), another extremely important advantage of using
group work is the learner’s confident. With many students, it can be a frightening
experience when being called on by teacher to answer a question in front of the whole class.
Martine, L. (2006) proved that even if students know the answer to the question, they are
often not sure if it is correct and do not want to give their opinion (p. 35). As a result, the
atmosphere of the class is often very boring and stressful, which is counterproductive to
language learning. However, in a small group, there is a sense of security as students feel
much more comfortable to speak in a foreign language to just for some people than to the
whole class and to the teacher. Especially timid students or ones who are not good at
manipulating the language yet, feel more relaxed and self-confident to come up with
answer that reflect their own thinking (Hubert Skrzyński, 2005).
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and activities. This way of teaching will be for sure appreciated by students and the teacher
will be liked by his students, and he will enjoy their work because it brings him satisfaction,
pleasure, and fulfillment.
2.3.2: Limitations of using group work
Besides mentioned advantages, using group work also brings about a lot of limitations.
These are four main limitations.
2.3.2.1. Students often speak in their native language.
In her study, Martine, L. (2006) shows that it is very common problem that students in
the same group use their mother tongue to speak English, especially when they find the
activities is difficult or boring, or even when they do not understand the instruction from
the teacher. However, it is usually because of the inability of students to express their ideas
in English that leads to the overuse of mother tongue between students. So the solution is
that teacher should choose activities that relevant, interesting and fun for the students. The
teacher should also encourage students to use English to discuss by giving very clear
instructions, moving around the class to control and give help to students when necessary.
Yasemin Godek, (2004) in his research also pointed out some more problems of using
group work as follow:
2.3.2.2. Students do not take the same equal responsibilities in the group.
One of the main disadvantages for the learners is that shy or weak students can be
eliminated from the practice; because of better students who are always tend to dominate.
Subsequently, low achieving students may not have chance to take part in the discussion
and show their opinion so they may feel discourage or less confident. The situation
becomes worse when students in the group do not help each other.
2.3.2.3. Using group work can make noise and indiscipline.
It is usually more troublesome for the teacher than for the students that using group
work can cause noise and indiscipline. Students in group work activities are usually not
aware of noise, and they even do not care about what other group are doing. However, this
can be considered as good noise or productive noise because it means that students
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The research study conducted by Aisha Bibi (2002) concludes that: teaching of
English grammar through group work activities has positive effect on the academic
achievement of students. By using group work, not only students can significantly improve
the ability of applying the rule of grammar, they can also improve reading, writing,
listening and speaking ability. Moreover, the attitudes of students toward using group work
to learn English grammar are very good.
Ney, James (1989) examined the effectiveness of collaborative learning models for
the teaching of a modern English class at the college level. According to the author, the
collaborative learning resulted in a more adequate mastery of the subject matter and in
better attendance for the class.
Davidheiser (1996) explored a successful student-centred method of grammar
instruction in second language classes. He concludes that by using group work and pair
work, teachers can improve the quality of grammar instructions and the ability of recalling
the grammar structures of the students.
There are so many other valuable studies related to using group work to teach English
in general and English grammar lessons that it is unable to list down in my small research.
Thanks to these researches, I can gain precious knowledge for my own research.
2.5. Reasons of using group work in grammar teaching.
2.5.1. Challenges in teaching grammar
English grammar is considered especially important in Vietnamese school from
secondary to higher education; however, it seems to contain a lot of problems in both
teaching and learning methods. Although grammar is not so difficult to understand,
students find it hard to perceive. More seriously, students could hardly apply grammatical
rules to make real communication. The traditional method of teaching English grammar is
mostly the deductive method, i.e. definition of the aspect of grammar is dictated and its
examples are illustrated (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 6). This way can help students know
how to label certain sentence elements but cannot produce any English themselves,
illustrate the fact that just teaching grammar in itself is not exactly effective.
grammar. Above all, because using group work is interesting and effective (Martine, 2006),
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the attitude of students toward it is positive. They are motivated and can help each other to
make progress in learning through group.
That’s why group work is supposed to be a very suitable way to teach English
grammar.
2.6. Design group work activities for grammar lessons.
According to Nation, Paul (1989), “a useful way of classifying group work activities
is to look at the distribution of the information needed to do the activity.”(p. 20). He
divides group work activities into the four following types:
2.6.1. The co-operating arrangement
In this type of group work activities, learners have equal access to the same material
or information and co-operate to do the task.
This type of activity can have more effective result if it is carried out follows Robert
Slavin (1991) method, called “Student teams-achievement divisions”. In this method,
students are assigned to four or five member in a group, called learning teams. Each team
is a microcosm of the entire class, made up of high, average, and low-performing students.
These students may take turns quizzing each other, discuss problems as a group, or use
whatever means they wish to master the material. By this way, students can help each other
and create exciting learning atmosphere.
2.6.2. The superior-inferior arrangement
In this type of group work activities, one member of the group has information that all
the others need. This student presents this information for the group.
2.6.3. The combining arrangement
In this type, each learner has a different piece of information that all the others need.
This method can be called the Jigsaw method. In this type, students are assigned to four or
five members; academic material is broken into some sections.
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use a different
part
Sitting
arrangement
Learners site at an
equal distance from
each other, facing
each other
Learners sit beside
each other facing the
information
The knowers face
the seekers
The learners
face each other
Social
relationship
Equality, mutual
dependency
Equality
Inequality, the
knowers are in a
superior position
Equality, but
with focus on
individual
performance
Most suitable
learning
goals
example
A strip story
A ranking exercise
An interview
A chain story or
role play
Table 1: Factors involved in group work (Nation, 1989: 21)
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2.6.5. The grammar activities for group work.
According to Hubicka (1985); Williams (1980), and Braughton (1969) (as cited in
Aisha Bibi, 2002: 17), the following activities can be used for group activities in practicing
grammar:
2.6.5.1 Doing grammar exercises
Teacher can design exercises suitably for each kind of grammar items. These
exercises can be easily found in a lot of grammar textbooks and they can be done either in
the class or at home. Students will do these exercises in group, helping each other and
discussing the answers.
2.6.5.2 Reading dialogues
Students work in small group, practice reading the dialogues, or making the similar
dialogue to the one they have been learnt, dealing with new lexis, problem of
pronunciation, stress and intonation.
2.6.5.3 Practicing using language according to situations
Teachers can give situation suitably for each kind of grammar item and then ask
students to practice, e.g. inviting and responding and using maps for giving directions;
telling a story about the past event, etc.
2.6.5.4 Playing games
Students can play games, using the grammar items they have learnt. These games can
be simple games that can be done for the whole class, or more complex games like “teams-
games-tournament” (Slavin, 1991), where students play academic games to show their
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CHAPTER III: DEVELOPMENT OF THE RESEARCH
In this chapter, firstly the context of the studies is presented, and then is the research
methodology which describes how to achieve the aims and objectives of the study and the
data collection procedures. Finally are the data analyses as well as the discussion of the
findings.
3.1 The context of the study
3.1.1 The students and the text book
Most of my students follow group A, which means they are supposed to be non-
English major students and they have to take the general English training course during
their first year before studying English for Special Purpose in their second years. As their
major relates to trade and economy, we choose the textbook Power Base by author David
Evans to provide them with basic English for trade and economy. After studying these two
books, students are expected to be fluent in English communication, especially they can
understand and use words relate to their majors. Because of these aims, using group
activities in practicing grammar may be useful to help students to increase the ability of
communicating in English.
The text book I use to teach my students is “powerbase – pre intermediate”, it
includes of 10 lessons written from easy to difficult ones. All the lessons begin with the
introduction part, and then come grammar, working life, and real world. In this text book,
the main grammar items that students have to learn are: the present simple and continuous,
the future simple, and the past simple, modal verb, comparative and superlative, the order
English grammar with 8 questions. They were designed to find out the attitudes of students
about English grammar and the use of group work in English grammar lessons. The
questions emphasizes on the following categories:
- The students’ awareness of the importance of English grammar (Q1).
- The students’ general attitude toward leaning English grammar (Q2 and 3).
- The students’ evaluation of English grammar teaching they have learnt in the class
(Q4-6).
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- The students’ attitude toward using group work for English grammar lessons (Q7-8).
The post-treatment questionnaire was carried out after using group work to teach
English grammar with 11 questions. They were designed to find out the differences in
students’ attitude toward learning English grammar before and after using group work as
well as their evaluation about the effectiveness of using group work to learn grammar. The
questionnaire also aims at finding how students perceive the benefits and limitations of
using group work in learning English grammar.
The process of collecting the questionnaires in the class above is also the procedure
of the research.
3.2.2.2. The classroom observation
Along with the survey questionnaires, classroom observation is also used to collect
data for the study. My observation falls on the classroom procedures as well as the
students’ behavior and performance in the grammar lessons. During the research period, I
acted as a non-participant observer and my observation was noted down in my teaching
journals after each lesson.
3.3. Data analysis and discussions
3.3.1. Questionnaire
3.3.1.1 Pre-treatment questionnaire.
3.3.1.1.1 Students’ awareness of the importance of learning English grammar.
Question one in the questionnaire relating to the students’ awareness of the
importance of learning English grammar. The results showed that the majority of students
- 70.6 % of students neither liked nor disliked learning English grammar.
- 9.4 % of students didn’t like learning English grammar at all
- 1.2 % of students felt very bored with learning English grammar.
- 1.2 % of students had no idea at all.
To my surprise, although all students were aware of the important role of learning
English grammar, 70.6% of them said they neither liked nor disliked learning English
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