THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE AND DISCOURSE COMPETENCE OF 3 rd YEAR COLLEGE STUDENTS OF THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY: BASIS FOR INTERVENTION EXERCISES A Dissertation Proposal Presented to The Faculty of Graduate School Batangas State University Batangas City, Philippines In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Major in English By: NGUYEN THI HONG CHUYEN (JENNY) THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TITLE PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS i Page i CHAPTER I 1 THE PROBLEM 1 Introduction 1 Statement of the Problem 6 Scope, Delimitation and Limitation of the Study 8 Significance of the Study 9 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 11 Conceptual Literature 11 Research Literature 38 Synthesis 45 Theoretical Framework 49 Hypothesis 51 Definition of Terms 52 RESEARCH METHOD AND PROCEDURE 55 Research Environment 55 Research Design 60 Subjects of the Study 60 Data Gathering Instrument 62 Data Gathering Procedure 64 Statistical Treatment of Data 65 PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 66 SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATION 114 Summary 114 Findings 116 Conclusion 123 Recommendations 124 i THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines BIBLIOGRAPHY 125 APPENDICES 133 Appendix A. Letter of Requests 134 134 135 136 137 138 139 Appendix B. Questionnaire 140 Appendix C . Documentations 149 Study sites 149 Thai Nguyen University of Education 149 149 Thai Nguyen University of Education 150 ii THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines LIST OF TABLES Table Title Page 1. Distribution of the Respondents of the Study 61 Level of Grammatical Competence of Students in Parts of Speech 68 Level of Grammatical Competence of Students in Morphology 69 Level of Grammatical Competence of Students in Syntax 71 Level of Grammatical Competence of Students in Vocabulary Meaning.72 Level of Discourse Competence of Students in Cohesive Devices 74 Level of Discourse Competence of Students in Transitional Phrases 76 Level of Discourse Competence of Students in Coherence 77 Level of Discourse Competence of Students in Connectors 79 Level of Discourse Competence of Students in Choice of Words 80 Validated Students’ Skills Employed in Teaching the Basic English Course 83 Students’ Skills and their Frequency of Use 84 Student Skills and their Degree of Importance 85 Students’ Level of Grammatical and Discourse Competencies and their Performance as Assessed by English Teachers 87 Bases in the Design of Integrative Learning Exercises on Morpho- Syntactic Competencies 90 iii THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM Introduction In Vietnam, students are required to learn English through compulsory programs and as a requirement in school and universities and in most countries in the world. Many students take English course because of its utility value as lingua franca or a world language. Most of them fail to learn the language successfully. This situation also applies to students in other countries where learning a foreign language is also compulsory. Students enrolled in the English courses have either high dropped out rates or failed students at the end of the term. This situation is true to countries like the United States and Australia where students literally drop out in their foreign language studies, while in countries like China, Japan and Vietnam students either mentally withdraw or look for strategies that will help them to learn the English language. In the last decade, the use of English as the main foreign language taught and employed in communication with foreigners, has dramatically increased in Vietnam. According to the Ministry of Education, the number of off-shore students exceeds 60,000 in Vietnam nowadays and Vietnamese students who want to work and study abroad are increasing. 1 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines However, English language teaching in Vietnam still utilizes the traditional teaching model where students are taught English just for passing examination purposes only and teachers just give lecture mainly to help students achieve this goal. The result is that students do not have the ability to communicate effectively with others in English. This is referred to as dumb English or deaf English in Vietnam. Obviously students’ overall skills are not enhanced, especially for students at the college and university level. In order to improve the situation based on need analysis, Vietnam Ministry of Education states that the aims of Vietnam English Language Teaching (ELT) at general educational level expressed in the new curriculum are that at the end of the upper secondary level, students will be able to use English as means of communication at a certain level of proficiency in four macro skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing and to be able to read materials at the same level of their textbook, using a dictionary, to have a mastery of basic English phonetics and grammar, to have acquire the minimum of around 2,500 vocabulary items of English; to attain a certain level of understanding of English and American cultures, to become aware of cross cultural differences in order to become better communicators, to better inform the world of the Vietnamese people, their history and culture and to take pride in Vietnam, its language and culture (MOET 2007). 2 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines To promote the English language teaching and learning at tertiary level in recent years, Vietnamese government has encouraged the private tertiary institutions to carry out advanced programs in which English is required to be the medium of instruction. They have also encouraged tertiary institutions to teach in English in fundamental science subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and some specialized subjects in the senior years. It is suggested that work start at the two national universities namely; Hanoi National University and Vietnam National University; three regional universities such as Thai Nguyen University, Hue University and Danang University and other pivotal universities in Vietnam with twenty percent of the students being involved in these advanced programs. This percentage will be increased and expanded so that finally all advanced programs will be applied throughout the tertiary educational system. In Vietnam, English is the most important foreign language since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy. One of the major goals for English teaching is to develop communicative competencies of the learners. It is the initial and ultimate goal of English teaching. Communication on the other hand is considered the essence of English teaching. 3 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines In language teaching, the ability to communicate should be cultivated. Students should learn how to use a language in their daily communication in order to demonstrate their mastery of a language. Different language skills included under communicative competence are linguistic, socio-linguistic, discourse, strategic and pragmatic competencies. The expression, interpretation and negotiation of meaning between two interlocutors or between a text and its readers is referred to as language learning. It is believed that one of the main goals of both English language teaching and communicative English teaching in Vietnam nowadays is to develop students’ communicative competence, as more students will regard English as a communicating tool after graduation. If students can use the English knowledge, skills and cultural aspects they have learned to communicate with people of different cultural backgrounds in real language contexts, they are then using English as a communication tool. The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has set a target of boosting foreign language teaching in high schools. At the start of Academic Year 2011-2012, students at specific schools will have to study mathematics and information technology in English. Despite the significance of English language, majority of the Vietnamese students remain handicapped in the use of English. It was even reported by the 4 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines MOET in 2011 that English language competence of Vietnamese students was rapidly deteriorating. This implies that the government, in particular the education sector can hardly address such perceived deterioration of English. It was also reported by the MOET of Vietnam and the AETS or the American Educational Testing Service that fifty one point seven percent (51.7%) of Vietnamese students who graduated from college in 2009 had substandard English skills. There are several reasons cited why English language teaching in Vietnam becomes a problem. Reasons include the deterioration in students’ English competence and less opportunities for students to practice English in the classroom. Most of the English classes are still adopting the traditional teaching in which teachers do the talking while students are merely listening and note taking so that the chance to speak diminished. Most college graduates in Vietnam have deteriorating English because during their college days, they spend only at least one and half year of English language studies. So that when they embark on a more complex academic work which demands the use of English as well as the language skills, they fail because of lack of knowledge. 5 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines Another reason cited is the incompetency of Vietnamese students in the use of English. This problem leads to losing the most useful assets of Vietnamese people in contributing to national development and international communication. Many of the students in Thai Nguyen University (TNU) system struggle to keep up with the expectations of the school for them to communicate in good English. For decades the university system in Thai Nguyen worked to address the need of all students. But somehow, the expected outcome has a very slow progress. With this scenario, as college teacher teaching English subject in this institution, the researcher is interested to determine the English language grammatical and discourse competence of the Third year college students of Thai Nguyen with the end view of proposing intervention exercises that will enhance further their knowledge along the said competencies. Statement of the Problem This study is focused on determining English language grammatical competence and discourse competence of 3 rd year college students of Thai Nguyen system. Specifically, it sought answers to the following questions. 6 [...]... described in terms of: 1.1 parts of speech; 1.2 morphology; 1 .3 syntax; and 1.4 vocabulary? 2 What is the discourse competence of student respondents relative to: 2.1 2.2 transitional phrases; 2 .3 coherence; 2.4 connectors; and 2.5 3 cohesive devices; choice of words? How do English teacher assess the grammatical and discourse competencies of 3rd year college students? 4 How do the respondents’ grammatical... language teaching strategies to enhance students’ grammatical and discourse competencies The study covered the three (3) Thai Nguyen Universities in Thai Nguyen City and made used of the 40 teachers teaching English and 30 0 3rd Year College students who were enrolled in the Academic Year 20 13- 2014 9 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines... relative to cohesive devices, transitional phrases, coherence, connectors and choice of words Further, the study covers the assessment of the English teacher on the grammatical and discourse competencies of 3rd year college students, the comparison of the respondents’ grammatical and discourse competencies and English teachers’ responses, the significant differences on students’ grammatical and discourse... Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines Scope, Delimitation and Limitation of the Study The study determines the English language grammatical competence and discourse competence of 3rd year college students of Thai Nguyen system This includes the grammatical competence of student respondents in parts of speech, morphology and syntax, and vocabulary meaning Included also in the study... system is universal grammar Competence or skill is referred to as the ideal language system that makes it possible for speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences in their language 13 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines and to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical sentences Competence is unaffected... factors and non- verbal communication factors Some of these components are often neglected in ESL education, thereby causing confusion or comprehension difficulties Language and culture as Alptekin (19 93) emphasized is interrelated and studying language needs to be aware of the culture of that language In addition, Guest (2002) explained that in culture, whether the language is for interactive or instrumental... the language that allows the user to know when, where, and how to use language appropriately Grammatical competence increases in importance as the learner advances in proficiency Richard and Schmidt (19 83) stated that since communicative competence focuses directly on the knowledge and skill required to understand and express accurately the literal meaning of utterances it becomes an important concern... language to convey meaning in a way that the native speakers of that language would use such sentences to express in the same meaningful way is grammatical or linguistic competence It is also referred 23 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines to as the potential ability of the speaker based on the knowledge of his language as well as... actually done and what the doing entails All these indicate that linguistic competence is largely a part of communicative competence 24 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam Fromkin et al (20 03) BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines associated grammatical or linguistic competence with language activity which supported the creative aspect of language Sentences that have never... Republic of Vietnam in a way that is BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines coherent to the readers and hearers (elearning.la.psu.edu.ap/ng802) According independent to Canale component (19 83) next discourse competence to sociolinguistics is competence an and comprises rules of cohesion and coherence Cohesion refers to how ideas are linked linguistically while coherence refers to how meanings . of the Philippines BIBLIOGRAPHY 125 APPENDICES 133 Appendix A. Letter of Requests 134 134 135 136 137 138 139 Appendix B. Questionnaire 140 Appendix C . Documentations 149 Study sites 149 Thai. three (3) Thai Nguyen Universities in Thai Nguyen City and made used of the 40 teachers teaching English and 30 0 3 rd Year College students who were enrolled in the Academic Year 20 13- 2014. 8 THAI. 116 Conclusion 1 23 Recommendations 124 i THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY Socialist Republic of Vietnam BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY Republic of the Philippines BIBLIOGRAPHY 125 APPENDICES 133 Appendix A. Letter