Storytelling is widely applied in second language teaching, especially to Very Young Learners (VYLs), as this teaching technique is believed to be highly effective. However, storytelling application in VYLs classrooms may be challenging since these learners possess unique characteristics in terms of second language acquisition, which might cause a variety of difficulties for teachers. This paper examines the difficulties Vietnam - USA Society English Center’s teachers encounter during their storytelling application to teach VYLs. Accordingly, 60 teachers at the language school, who were selected based on their teaching experience, participated in the study. An online survey was carried out in order to find out the participants’ opinions on storytelling application challenges regarding the teaching method, the learners’ characteristics, and the materials. Additionally, in-depth interviews were conducted with twelve randomly chosen teachers to better understand their rationale and suggestions for those difficulties. For data analysis, descriptive statistics were calculated for questionnaire information while the qualitative responses were transcribed and put into themes. The results revealed that the participants encountered certain challenges while delivering storytelling lessons which mainly stemmed from the students and other subjects namely teachers and materials. The findings from this study may help teachers to mitigate the challenges of the storytelling lesson.
Nurturing critical thinking (CT) has been acknowledged as a core objective of tertiary education, and drawn attention from academia of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), particularly in EFL argumentative writing. It has been claimed that collaborative learning which stimulates the active exchange of ideas within small groups not only increases interest among the participants but also promotes critical thinking. One of the important aspects of learning and teaching through collaboration is the group composition or grouping “who with whom”. The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of homogeneous and heterogeneous groupings on critical thinking in collaborative writing. Having been required to write an argumentative essay as a pre-test, 75 participants, who were categorized by their prior critical thinking levels, were assigned into three group types: heterogeneous, homogeneous high and homogeneous low groups. As a consequence, four types of students were considered their improvement before and after the experiment: high-level students in heterogeneous groups, lowlevel students in heterogeneous groups, high-level students in homogeneous groups, low-level students in homogeneous groups. The results demonstrated that learners improved their critical thinking level through collaborative writing, whether working with stronger or weaker peers. However, heterogeneous grouping showed superiority over homogeneous grouping at the low level. The results revealed that cooperative learning could be especially beneficial for low students. It is hoped that the findings of the present study will give teachers deep insights into group compositions in collaborative learning courses, and will help them make better group experiences for students.
Learner-centeredness is an integral part of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and paired conversations are promoted by this method because it is considered to effectively increase the student talking time. In paired conversations, instead of being merely interlocutors during their speaking activities, students are expected to initiatively assist each other’s performances by exchanging feedback and comments. This study examined 28 intermediate students on how they gave their partners feedback during a paired collaborative speaking task. It also investigated their perceptions on exchanging feedback. Observation and semi-structured interviews were employed for data collection. A mismatch between their viewpoints and actual performances was found. The interview analysis suggests that the students were well-aware of the roles and benefits of giving and receiving feedback. Meanwhile, the empirical data collected from the observation scheme shows that only a modest number of feedback instances, particularly corrective feedback, were actually given by the students. This was mostly resulted from the students’ lack of proper strategies and skills on giving feedback and their fear of losing their partners’ faces.
At the School of Advanced Study, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, to ensure the quality of training, students must have a scientific research topic and have the research recognized by the school in order to be considered for graduation. This study was conducted in order to investigate the difficulties encountered by university students when carrying out scientific research difficulties as a whole and in regard to the academic year and academic major. There were 220 participants chosen randomly at the School of Advanced Study, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vo Van Tan Campus. The study was designed as a quantitative method. According to the findings, there are four major factors that the School of Advanced Study students face when conducting research: personal problems, problems related to lecturers, problems related to knowledge and skills, and problems related to the university. There are five differences in the academic year and one difference in majors among the 20 difficulties mentioned. Suggestions for future research are also mentioned.
This research investigated the perceptions of English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University of the use of ICT by their teachers in teaching their Listening-Speaking classes. Twenty- eight out of about 700 freshmen and sophomores who were studying the subject in-charged by 9 different teachers volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. The findings indicated that in general, the students have positive attitudes towards their teachers’ use of ICT in teaching English Listening-Speaking courses. Nonetheless, the interviews revealed the students’ difficulties and recommendations, which the school and the teachers should take into account. These findings set the ground for teaching recommendations and suggestions for future research presented at the end of the paper. Keywords: Students’ perception, English majors, English listening and speaking subject, use of ICT.
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