Đưa các giá trị văn hóa vào trong lớp học kỹ năng nói tiếng Anh nhằm mục đích nâng cao năng lực giao tiếp cho sinh viên

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hi nhp Tháng 11/2014 629 ĐƯA CÁC GIÁ TRỊ VĂN HÓA VÀO TRONG LỚP HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH NHẰM MỤC ĐÍCH NÂNG CAO NĂNG LỰC GIAO TIẾP CHO SINH VIÊN Nguyn Th Thu, Thiu Ngc Hng Trường Đại học Cảnh sát Nhân dân Tóm t t: Văn hóa là một khái niệm quan trọng trong giảng dạy tiếng Anh, không thể tách rời khỏi việc giảng dạy ngôn ngữ. Một thực tế mà nhiều người thừa nhận là việc thiếu hiểu biết kiến thức văn hóa thường dẫn tới việc sử dụng những chiến lược giao tiếp không phù hợp và hậu quả là khả năng giao tiếp hạn chế, ngay cả những người nắm vững ngữ pháp và có vốn từ vựng tương đối. Chính vì thế trong những năm vừa qua, việc đưa vấn đề văn hóa vào trong chương trình giảng dạy ngoại ngữ nói chung, tiếng Anh nói riêng, đặc biệt là các lớp học giao tiếp được quan tâm. Bài viết này báo cáo về kết quả một nghiên cứu về việc lồng các giá trị văn hóa vào dạy nói tiếng Anh cho sinh viên ngành tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn, Đại học Quốc gia Tp. Hồ Chí Minh. Nghiên cứu này được thực nghiệm ở hai lớp dạy kỹ nói mà tác giả trực tiếp giảng dạy. Kết quả thu được từ các phiếu khảo sát cho giáo viên và giảng viên và từ chính quan sát của giảng viên trong quá trình giảng dạy cho thấy việc đưa các giá trị văn hóa vào trong lớp học nói tiếng Anh đã mang lại hiệu quả là tăng cường động cơ học nói và khả năng nói tiếng Anh cho sinh viên ngành tiếng Anh. Như vậy, nghiên cứu này sẽ hữu ích cho những ai quan tâm tới việc tìm kiếm những phương pháp cụ thể để lồng ghép những hoạt động mang tính văn hóa vào trong lớp học tiếng Anh mà mục đích là nâng cao năng lực giao tiếp. T khóa: văn hóa, giá trị văn hóa, năng lực giao tiếp, sinh viên ngành tiếng Anh Abstract: Culture is such a crucial concept in language teaching that it cannot be separated from language teaching. It is widely acknowledged that the lack of cultural awareness often leads to inappropriate speaking strategies, which results in limited communicative competence of English learners including those with good grammar and a wide range of vocabulary. Thus, the integration of culture in second language curriculum has been widely discussed in recent years, particularly if the course is for English majors or for communicative language learning. This article describes how cultural values were employed in teaching oral English to English major students at University of Social Science and Humanities (USSH). Experimental teaching was done in two speaking English classes at the USSH. The findings from questionnaires and observation show that the integration of cultural values was successful in increasing English majors’ motivation and speaking competence. Thus, this study would also be useful for those who are interested in finding specific ways to employ culture-related activities in English classes for successful communication. Key words: culture, cultural values, communicative competence, English majors HOW TO INTEGRATE CULTURAL VALUES INTO ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES FOR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE 1. Introduction The integration of culture in language classrooms has been prevalent for the past years, especially in the course whose purpose is communicative competence. Thus, language teachers have been attaching increasing importance to the improvement of students’ cultural understanding. However, not enough attention has been paid to students’ own-bound behavior or to the preparation required for opening students’ minds to new experiences. Thus, in order to improve students’ communicative Tiu ban 4: Văn hóa trong hot đng ging dy ngoi ng thi kỳ hi nhp 630 competence, teachers not only need to help students revise their linguistic and cultural patterns but also prepare students for acculturation. Laying this groundwork requires an understanding of a necessary preparation and of how meaningful culture teaching can be integrated into the foreign language classroom. When culture is presented, it must be employed in a gradual way and coordinated across levels. The gradual approach means that a culture-integrated course must take for granted the need to start with an awareness of one’s own patterns of behavior and proceeds from there to the examination of foreign patterns of behavior. Such a course will enable students to build a cultural framework and extend the new understanding to cultural differences. Following this procedure, practical activities will be presented with skill-building culture teaching in a foreign language class. This article describes how cultural values were employed in teaching oral English to English majored students at USSH. Experimental teaching was done in two speaking English classes at USSH. In the experimental teaching, a modified course syllabus with the integration of cultural values was employed to teach first year English majors. The instruction of the expression of cultural values (attitude towards challenges, completion and cooperation, relationships, individuals, money, health and leisure, etc. which are the unit topics of the course book Mosaic Speaking and Listening 1) and the reinforcement of the speaking skill are incorporated in the language classroom. The findings from questionnaires and observation show that the integration of cultural values was successful in increasing English majors’ motivation and speaking competence. Thus, this study would also be useful for those who are interested in finding specific ways to employ culture-related activities in oral English classes for successful communication. 2. Literature 2.1. Culture Culture is a very broad term which is very difficult to define. "Culture is a social system that represents an accumulation of beliefs, attitudes, habits, values, and practices that serves as a filter through which a group of people view and respond to the world in which they live." This is the definition of Culture given by Nobles in one of his textbooks in 1990. “Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that the members of a society use tocope with. Their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning”; “Culture consists of all the shared products of human society” (Robertson, 1981:67). To simplify, culture refers to the entire way of life of a society, “the ways of a people.” 2.2. Cultural values Values are: concepts or beliefs; about desirable states or behaviors; that transcend specific situations; guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events; and are ordered by relative importance.” (Schwartz &Bilsky, 1987, p.551). Cultural orientations differentiate fundamental ways of defining reality, or worldviews. 2.3. Culture and language teaching It is pointed by Politzer (1959) that “If we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning”. Politzer also states that unless the students are warned or unless they receive cultural instruction, they may wrongly associate cultural concepts or objects with the foreign symbols. Moreover, “Learning culture while learning language can be more enjoyable for the students, since they must read, speak, or write about something, and listen to something, why should not that something have a cultural content?” (Valdes, 1992:121) 2.4. Cultural introduction into English classes Methodological framework Dickinson (1987) offers a framework for the Chi
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hi nhp Tháng 11/2014 631 teacher’s role in FLL whose main aspects cover the methodological approach of culture teaching in which there are two essential function attributed to the teacher: to help students develop their communicative competence and their competence as learners. Since cross-cultural understanding must necessarily rely on communication, the development of students’ communicative competence is closely related to culture teaching. The communicative approach is based on two main principles: language is mainly considered as a vehicle of communication, so that the importance of message and content are emphasized; the selection of content requires taking a decision on the semantic fields involved and real communication take place, as well as on the specific functions of communication (Sanchez, 1987). Taking into account both the psychological preparation and the communicative methodology as guidelines for culture learning, three initial steps in teaching cultural concepts are presented (Seelye, 1987). First, teachers must identify the skills involved in cross-cultural understanding and communication. These skills become the goals of cultural instruction. The second step consists of the development of performance objectives that are goal-related and, finally, goal-related learning activities for cultural instruction are to be integrated in the FL classroom. Approaches of cultural value integration into English classes  Specialized course on culture introduction Nowadays more and more universities in Vietnam have been aware of the importance of the culture introduction into college English. Specialized courses on culture introduction are adopted nationwide. Thus, besides the basic knowledge about words and grammar, students also have access to a variety of cultures, which enriches their knowledge and inspires them to communicate more. Thus, their cross-culture communicative ability will gradually be improved.  Culture introduction with English language teaching. It is therefore indispensible to integrate college English with culture introduction. A good introduction of culture will help students understand the teaching material better, and motivate them to work harder. For example, when we are working on the text about George Washington, it is necessary for us to know the relevant knowledge about the great man involving US history and politics. And then we can make a comparison with the Vietnamese great leaders. Thus, it will be an easier and much more interesting task for the college students to learn English.  Create meaningful activities The background and culture of the target language is essential to English learning and teaching. So it is important for the learners of, who are members of a particular culture to interact with knowledgeable people in the society or the authentic context. However, thereal world environment that employs the context in which learning is relevant is rare in Vietnam. It is thus the teachers’ duty to create meaningful activities both in class and after class. There will be meaningful activities such as role-play, situation talk and classroom presentation, etc. The more they get involved in the real world environment, the better and faster they will master the cross - culture communicative ability. Necessity of cultural background knowledge in oral comprehension There are a number of cultural factors influencing English learners’ failure in successful communication, some of which are: lack of background knowledge of words and phrases, inadequate of daily expressions, ignorance of non- verbal language, neglect of different values, etc. Likewise, speaking is not merely concerned with pronunciation and intonation. Students can only improve their oral English and reach the aim of communication by means of enormous reading, mastering rich language material and acquaintance of western culture. Therefore, in oral training, teachers should lay stress on factuality of Tiu ban 4: Văn hóa trong hot đng ging dy ngoi ng thi kỳ hi nhp 632 language and adopt some material approaching to daily life, such as daily dialogues with tape, magazines, newspapers and report etc., because the material is from real life, and it helps students to be well acquainted with standard pronunciation and intonation, to speak English appropriate to the occasion, to understand western way of life and customs etc. Otherwise, misunderstanding and displeasure are inevitably aroused. 3. Methodology 3.1. Research questions 1) How are students at USSH aware of the importance of culture in their English learning? 2) To what extent is culture integrated in teaching English by teachers at USSH? 3) How is culture integrated in the teaching of speaking to English majorsin Language 4.1 course at USSH and how effective was it? 3.2. Research design This is a qualitative research. In order to find out the answer the research questions, the following instruments were used: questionnaires for students and teachers, and class observation. 3.2.1. Questionnaires - Questionnaire for students: A questionnaire of 20 questions were deliver 120 first year students in two English classes at USSH in order to find out students’ experience and attitude towards the integration of culture into their classes (10 questions) as well as their cultural awareness and understanding (10 questions). - Questionnaire for teachers: A questionnaire of 20 questions were deliver 15 teachers of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages to find out: their experience with the integration of culture in their teaching (10 questions in part 1); their awareness, understanding and attitude towards the integration of culture in their teaching (10 questions in part 2) 3.2.2. Teacher’s observation - The group discussions enable students to cooperate with each other and to pay attention to various opinions when other students express their opinions. Meanwhile, the teacher can observe how individual student participate in the discussion (Graves, 2000). Moreover, through observing, the teacher can judge students' interests and learning preferences (Graves, 2000). When observing the group discussions, the teacher can fill out the following sheet. - The role-play activity is employed in order to assess if students absorb the classroom content and to evaluate each student's speaking ability. The use of role play activities can be regarded as an on-going and communicative assessment tool (Kodotchigova, 2002). While students engage in the role-play activity, the teacher observes each group of students and fills in the sheet (Lambert, 2003). 4. Findings and discussion 4.1. Results of questionnaires to the students and teachers: Responses to the two questionnaires to students and teachers at USSH help to answer Research question 1 and 2. The results are briefly described as followed: - Based on the percentage of correct answers to questionnaire about cultural knowledge, it can be concluded that the students’ knowledge about the target culture is rather limited. Although it may be argued that information about the other culture should not be the aim of the teaching of culture, it cannot completely ignored. For language students, it means that this “core information” is crucial if they are to understand the other culture. - The results of the two questionnaires reveal that both teachers and students considered the teaching of culture important. However, when being asked to define culture, they did not appear to have a clear perception of concept as most of them (80%) defined culture by listing its elements. Few teachers described culture as an integrated system of various components. Chi
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hi nhp Tháng 11/2014 633 - A major problem concerning the teaching of culture seems to be finding time to do it. No teacher admitted that the never mention culture- related issues in their teaching, only one quarter of them responded that they did it in almost every lesson. Interestingly, it was agreed by many researchers that culture should be an integral part of every language class. Up to 90% of the students also thought that, they would like to know more about Britain and the best place to learn its culture is in the class. - The teachers’ and students’ preferences concerning the way culture is integrated into their English classes is not much different. + Both groups regarded talking about current events and discussions of cultural similarities and differences the most important. + Most of the teachers agreed that they use the Internet and newspapers to find out the sources for talks and discussions. + Not surprisingly, watching videos was also the most popular choice with both the students and teachers. + The students ranked songs were the third place. It means that the teacher s have not made full use of students’ interest. + Listening to radio received relatively low scores by the learners. It can be concluded from the responses to the questionnaires that little attention is paid to the integration of cultural factors into the teaching of English at the USSH. Besides, the students should more realize the significance of the native culture. The teachers should rethink what is to be taught and how it is to teach in an English speaking class. The teachers should make the lesson useful and meaningful for the students so that English learners are able to experience a sense of pride and achievement in successful second language communication. Information from the two questionnaires to realized the necessity of the integration of cultural values in the teaching speaking. The description of the Language 4.1 course at USSH and how the course is modified with the integration of cultural values in teaching speaking is briefly described. (see APPENDIX 1) 4.2. Results of teacher’s observation Observation students’ communication activities, the teacher and also the researcher have lotsinformation about the students’ speaking performance, which can be summarized as followed: - To a great extent, the integration of cultural values in the course has enrichedstudents’ awareness and understanding of cultural values of western people, similarities and differences in comparison with Vietnamese ones. - Students have been more and more active, motivated and self-confident in role-plays or groups discussion due to the frequent exposure to such types of activities. - Students’ communication or language mistakes have decreased remarkably with the help from the teacher. - Students’ vocabulary range used by Americans when expressing and responding in a conversation related to the speaking topic of the unit has been enriched. - More attention has been paid to the cultural values of the target culture in pair and group conversations, for example: giving complements, doing apology, expressing thanks, etc. - Students have increasingly connected specific language items to cultural ways of thinking, feeling and acting. - The majority of the students (71%) in the two classes of Language 4.1 got band C or above for their speaking performance, 25 needs improvement (band D), and 4 required (band E). In short, the reflection papers of the teacher signal students’ positive improvement in students’ speaking motivation, communicative competence, cultural knowledge and some other skills. Tiu ban 4: Văn hóa trong hot đng ging dy ngoi ng thi kỳ hi nhp 634 5. Conclusion and recommendation The lack of culture may lead to the failure in real communication. Thus, it is highly important to abandon the practices of teaching phenomenalistic descriptions and to li