With the increasing contact between Vietnam and English speaking countries and the growing demand for foreign language professionals in the last decades, the teaching of foreign languages, especially English, has gained considerable prominence in Vietnamese education. However, English has been taught in Vietnam for a relatively short time, there are significant deficiencies in this area. If these deficiencies are to be addressed then methodology is a crucial variable worthy of examination. Many of the EFL teaching (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) methods developed in the last twenty years are unfamiliar to a great number of the Vietnamese teachers, although they may be introduced to Vietnam in the near future. In this study a historical overview of language teaching development is provided. Since language teaching methods are products of Western experience, a scrutiny of their relevance to the Vietnamese teaching situation is necessary. In particular it is important to focus on the psychological and cultural appropriateness of different methods to the Vietnamese settings. A number of most crucial psychological issues such as the learner's motivation, aptitude, personality and learning style are discussed together with some social and cultural influences which may affect the learner's psychological attributes, The study also provides a specific investigation of the psychological attributes of Vietnamese students and a number of cultural problems faced by this type of learners in their English learning process. Finally some practical, though tentative, suggestions are made in the hops that more and more Vietnamese teachers of English will respond to the problem of teaching methodology and search for ways to bring about effective learning.

The major concern of the Field Study is the teaching of composition, with particular reference to Chinese foreign language institutes. Robert B. Kaplan (1966), having analyzed the rhetorical behaviours of several linguistic groups, claims that different cultures develop different rhetorical conventions, which influence the non-English native speaker's way of writing in English. Recent years have witnessed many developments in language teaching as a result of research done in sociolinguistics, yet the implication of Kaplan's finding for EFL teaching is still unexplored. This paper thus intends to examine this issue of "cultural differences in the nature of rhetoric" by comparing the Chinese linguistic system with the English linguistic system in terms of rhetorical organization in exposition. The following aspects are to be discussed. In the first place, an introduction delineates the need for this Study, its aims, scope and sources of data. After the Introduction, there is a brief review of the EFL composition teaching in China and the influence of overseas composition teaching in foreign language institutes in China today. An attempt is then made to study Kaplan's theory by exploring both Chinese and English rhetorical patterns; and devices. The emphasis of this chapter is on a comparison and contrast of expository modes and strategies in the two rhetorics. Having studied rhetorical principles in a broad sense, the report narrows its focus to the differences in their use of English rhetorical devices between Australian English native speakers and foreign language learners from China; the material studied is a selection of compositions produced by Chinese students and rewritten by Australian students. The final section contributes practical suggestions for EFL composition teaching in foreign language institutes in China.

This Field Study Report aims to advocate that the target culture should also be taught while teaching the English language to Chinese students. Chinese students are learning English to communicate and socialize with the English speaking people. But learning only the English language is not enough for this purpose. They have to learn the way the English speaking people express themselves, their value judgements, and their customs. In the review of literature, many linguists like Chastain and Rivers share this same opinion. English teaching in China started more than one hundred years ago. The traditional teaching method still has some influence. The present curriculum appears a little unbalanced. Some of the teaching materials are found to be inadequate to teach the target culture. To illustrate some cross-cultural interferences, a survey questionnaire was conducted among some Chinese students and some Australian students. The data obtained from the survey indicated some selected problem areas for the Chinese students in talking with the native speakers of English. Two teaching aids were designed. One is a fifteenminute video tape, the other is three simulation exercises. They demonstrate several cultural conflicts between the English speakers and Chinese English learners. Both the video tape and the simulation were trialled among the Chinese students. They proved to be relatively effective in teaching the target culture. The trialling convinced this writer that it was possible for a teacher of English to prepare teaching aids such as video and simulation exercises. However, this may be very time consuming. But the result of the trialling proved that it was worth the time and effort.

This study examines the problems of constructing and administering a test of spoken English for Vietnamese EFL teacher-trainees. In an attempt to standardize the assessment, a planned oral interview was pilottested with a group of ten Vietnamese EFL teachers currently enrolled in a Graduate Diploma Course in TESOL at the Canberra College of Advanced Education, Australia. Results of the study indicate that the validity and reliability of such measurement can be achieved if certain carefully outlined procedures in planning the test and training the testers are carefully followed. Given the close relationship between testing and teaching, it is suggested in this study that there could be an improvement in the teaching of spoken English to Vietnamese EFL teacher-trainees if (i) the amount of time allocated to testing oral proficiency in the curriculum was increased, (ii) Vietnamese EFL teachers were provided with formal training in language test construction, and (iii) research on EFL oral testing was encouraged. Further, this study recommends co-operation between TEFL institutions in Vietnam to develop standard instruments for the assessment of spoken English of EFL teacher-trainees on a national level.

China urgently needs a large number of interpreters, guides and teachers who are competent communicators in the English Language. One of the foreign language institutes that is attempting to satisfy this need is the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute (or Erwai). It is argued that Erwai fails to produce competent communicators in English, a failure that is seen to be due to three interdependent factors: 1) the lack of teacher training, especially in the area of teaching methodology; 2) the resultant inability to select and effectively exploit teaching materials; and 3) the inappropriateness of currently-used teaching approaches to the perceived goals of the Institute. It is the third of these factors that receives particular attention in this paper. A survey is made of the merits and shortcomings of the three teaching approaches that have been used at Erwai, namely the 'grammar-translation,' 'audio-lingual' and 'cognitive' approaches. This serves as back-ground to the proposal that a 'communicative approach' to teaching be introduced at Erwai. It is claimed that the communicative approach is the most appropriate to the goals of Erwai students, the majority of whom will need to be communicatively competent in their future professions. The communicative approach is applied to the four basic skills of language and it is suggested that these skill areas be integrated in the classroom, rather than be taught in separate courses, as is presently the case at Erwai. Finally, the adoption of a communicative approach is seen to involve changes not only in classroom activities and materials, but also in the role of the student and the role of the teacher.

Foreign language teaching in recent years is very much concerned with the concepts of authenticity and relevance to students' needs and interests. Using newspapers in foreign language classes is one way of working towards the development of an authentic environment and promoting the language learning process. For EFL students in the Institute of International Relations (IIR) newspapers are not simply an important source of learning material, but an important source of information. Vietnamese EFL students who learn to read English newspapers, however, constantly encounter difficulties in comprehension. This study report attempts to identify the common areas of comprehension difficulty for Vietnamese learners, when confronted with newspapers. To achieve this aim, the study first reviews schema theory in order to establish the factors which affect the reading process. It also examines studies on news reporting style in English. Attempts have also been made in the contrastive study of the differences in reporting styles of international news in English and Vietnamese to investigate what might cause difficulties for Vietnamese readers. Accordingly, the study considers implications for teaching newspaper reading to Vietnamese EFL students at intermediate level, who have not practised this before. Finally, the study also suggests further areas of research in using newspapers in a foreign language class.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-107). Also available on the World Wide Web.

This is a study of English language learning for adult immigrant students in Sweden, and how it affects their integration into society. The primary aim of this study is to highlight and analyze the problems that adult immigrant students face, based on teachers beliefs, when learning English in a foreign country, and is backed up by various secondary sources in the subject as well as data collected in qualitative face-to-face interviews with teachers from adult education centres designed to help immigrant learn the native language as well as English. The results show the teacher viewpoint on the learning problems, which stem from cultural, lexical and mental blockades. They are analyzed according to the research questions and theoretical concepts, and presented with an accompanying discussion that aims to inform of the reader of the current learning situations.

Each year a group of university students from English speaking countries go to Chile and work as volunteers under the National Volunteer Centre Program. The purpose of this case study is to examine how a group of novice volunteer teachers describe their experiences in a foreign country and how these experiences shape their understanding of teaching. Participants went through the process of open-ended questionnaires and one-on-one interviews of their experience. This study was sustained in the literature by the domains of volunteerism, English Language Teaching, and volunteerism and ELT, and a socio constructivist and experiential lens was adopted. Even though volunteer teaching abroad is an increasing worldwide trend, there are few studies that combine these areas, showing that the existing blend of volunteerism and English language teaching needs to be further examined. The analysis of the data showed that novice volunteer teachers experience five types of experiences when teaching English: language teaching experiences, language learning experiences, challenges, general experiences, and volunteering experiences. Novice teachers recalled their expectations before teaching and those were maintained, modified, or unfulfilled. Volunteers stated what teaching means to them after working in public schools, they were able to describe diverse language teaching experiences, and make recommendations to future volunteers.

This study investigated relationships between individual learner differences and the learning of two English structures that differed in their grammatical difficulty. Using a quasi-experimental design, 66 secondary-level learners of English as a foreign language from three intact classes were provided with four hours of instruction on two L2 structures –one considered relatively easy to learn (i.e., past progressive) and the other relatively difficult to learn (i.e. passive construction). The participants were pretested on their knowledge of both structures and posttested immediately after the instruction. Learners’ progress was measured via written grammaticality judgment tests (GJT) and oral production tasks (OPT). The instruments to measure individual learner differences included a computerized language aptitude test, an L1 metalinguistic awareness test, a motivation questionnaire, a backward digit span test, and a learner retrospection questionnaire. The results revealed that aptitude and motivation were the two variables that significantly contributed to learners’ gains with respect to the ‘passive’ and that L1 metalinguistic awareness explained significant variation in learners’ gains regarding the ‘past progressive’. These relationships were observed with learners’ performance on the written but not oral measures. A detailed analysis of the aptitude test components revealed that the grammatical inferencing subtask was significantly related to L2 gains on the ‘passive’ – again only with respect to learners’ performance on the written GJT. The results also revealed that learners with different aptitude profiles (i.e., low, medium, high) benefited differently from instruction on the two target features. High aptitude learners performed better than low aptitude learners on the ‘passive’ as measured by the GJT posttest. With respect to the ‘past progressive’ only learners in the medium aptitude profile group improved significantly on the written GJT. These findings confirm that language aptitude holds a role in language learning but that there are other factors (i.e., motivation and L1 metalinguistic awareness) that also contribute to L2 progress. These results also provide evidence from a classroom-based study that the grammatical difficulty of what is to be learned is a factor in determining what cognitive abilities L2 learners rely on in their efforts to learn a new language.