VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NÔNG THỊ LEN USING SMALL-GROUP ACTIVITIES TO COMPENSATE FOR THE LIMITATION OF LARGE CLASSES: THE CASE OF EFL CLASSES IN QUANGNINH UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm bù đắp cho hạn chế lớp học đông: Một trường hợp nghiên cứu lớp tiếng Anh đông sinh viên trường Đại học Công nghiệp Quảng Ninh M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi - 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NÔNG THỊ LEN USING SMALL-GROUP ACTIVITIES TO COMPENSATE FOR THE LIMITATION OF LARGE CLASSES: THE CASE OF EFL CLASSES IN QUANGNINH UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm bù đắp cho hạn chế lớp học đông: Một trường hợp nghiên cứu lớp tiếng Anh đông sinh viên trường Đại học Công nghiệp Quảng Ninh M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, PhD Hanoi - 2015 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the paper is my own original work and is neither copied from another source without proper acknowledgement, nor written for me by another person, in whole or in part, though I may have discussed the paper with others and used advice and suggestions from others in writing it This minor thesis is the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies - University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, Hanoi and it has not been submitted for any degrees at any other universities or institutions Nông Thị Len Hanoi, October 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, for her invaluable guidance, critical feedback, and especially, her enormous encouragement, without which my thesis would be far from completion My sincere thanks also go to all the lecturers and the staffs of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies for their useful lessons and precious helps Moreover, I am greatly thankful to all my colleagues and students at Quangninh University of Industry for their assistance during the process of data collection In addition, my high appreciation extends to all the authors whose materials have been used in the study Thanks to them, I could accomplish my study Last but not least, the whole-hearted thanks and debt gratitude are reserved for my dear family, friends and relatives who have supported and helped me to overcome the difficulties during my study ABSTRACT It is never easy to teach English as a Second / Foreign Language (ESL/ EFL) effectively because of so many common reasons Among them, one of the objective reasons causing ESL/ EFL teaching a lot of difficulties is large classes In Vietnam, large ESL/ EFL classes are unavoidable, especially in higher education, because of the increasing English-learning needs associated with the limitations of class facilities (limited number of classrooms), limited number of teachers and so on In order to overcome the disadvantages of large classes, this study makes clear on how properly the small-group activities can compensate for the limitations of big size EFL classes In other words, this minor thesis examines students’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of small-group work in large EFL classes More specified, it considers and illustrates how small-group activities could reduce students’ anonymity connected with large classes and promote students’ accountability In addition, strategies to use these types of activities to compensate for the limitations of a big size EFL class are worked out PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study Touching upon EFL teaching, it can be seen that large class nowadays is becoming a global issue In Vietnam, EFL teachers and learners also have to face with this problem According to Van (2010), after 1986, the teaching of English has grown and expanded rapidly in Vietnam There has emerged a boom of learning English as foreign language in the whole country The number of English learners in Vietnam has increased at an overwhelming speed with Vietnam’s entry into the WTO along with the rapid development of globalization and communication among all countries in the world Thereafter, due to the lack of quality teachers and resources, the size of language class at any educational level tends to be larger and larger It is very common for Vietnamese teachers to teach a class with more than 50 students and even not rare to have a college class with over 100 students especially after the expansion of college enrollment Teachers face many challenges in teaching in large classes which cannot be easily avoided in Vietnam context So much research has been conducted in such environment in order to facilitate teachers to cope with the problems arisen by the increase of the students in the classroom With the experience of four-year teaching EFL at Quangninh University of Industry (QUI), I can see that QUI also cannot avoid the current real situation of Vietnam’s EFL teaching It is usual to have an EFL class of over 50 students, even 120 students at QUI Our students come from all over the country, with different background and learning habits It is really difficult for me, as well as other EFL teachers at QUI, to manage these large classes from the very easiest thing namely checking students’ attendance Therefore, I would like to the research in order to find out a better solution for the problem of large class in QUI More specifically, this research was carried out to make clear to what extent the small-group activities can compensate for the limitation of large EFL classes The pedagogical implications withdrawn from this study are definitely beneficial for QUI teachers and students I sincerely hope that thanks to the findings of this action study EFL teachers at QUI can better manage large classes, improve teaching quality, and help students in large EFL classes to significantly improve the effectiveness of their English learning Aim of the study The aim of this study is to find out the extent to which the use of small-group activities can compensate for the limitations of the large EFL classes For more detail, this study is aimed to promote the students’ participation through the employment of small-group activities in a big size EFL class A big size EFL class truly has some limitations in which the most undesirable one is discouraging the participation of students In this action research it is hoped that small-group activities can be effectively used to compensate for that limitation of large EFL classes at QUI Research question This study is conducted to find the answers for the following question: To what extent small-group activities promote students’ participation in large class? The significance of the study For the teachers of English division, this study is hoped to bring them the detailed and full view on the reality of big size classes at QUI and the necessary use of group activities to compensate for some of large class’s limitation As a result, they can apply the proper teaching methods to their large classes For the students in the large EFL classes, this action research can help them to realize their strengths and their abilities to learn, develop their language skills and contribute in a large class Methods of the study Action research is employed in this study Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in this research The data were collected by means of: - Questionnaires - Classroom observations - Interviews These three research instruments are used in three phases of the action research for preliminary investigation, exploration of the effects that the action created, and reflection on the action phase Scope of the study To promote students’ participation in large classes, EFL teachers can use varieties of techniques However, this study merely focused on studying how effective small-group activities, that are considered well-matched to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach – a learner-centered approach, can be used to reduce students’ anonymity connected with large classes and promote students’ accountability Small-group activities seem to be the most suitable to the context of large classes Among so many different useful small-group activities, only two activities are employed in this thesis: Small-group discussion and Role play This action research is applied in six consecutive speaking lectures Speaking skill is chosen because it is the best in expressing the students’ participation among four performance indicators for language skills (reading, speaking, writing and listening) The action is carried out for the first-year students of all majors in a class of 50 at QUI The collected data are analyzed and discussed to figure out how small-group activities contribute to encourage students to participate in their oversize class Then some solutions were proposed to improve the quality of teaching and learning in large classes Design of the study The study is organized into three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion In part A – Introduction, the rationale, aims, research question, significance, methods, scope and the organization of the study are presented In the second part, part B - Development, there are four chapters Chapter I, Literature Review, mentions some main points about the theoretical background for the field of the study This is the review of literature on small-group activities and large classes Chapter II describes the methodology, or the overall picture of how the research was carried out from the first step of determining the research design to the last step of gathering the results Chapter III presents data analysis and findings This chapter attempts to provide answers to the posed research question: To what extent the small-group activities promote students’ participation in large class? 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