This study deals with reading problems faced by the advanced level students in the Institute of International Relations (I.I.R.) in Hanoi. It seeks to identify ways in which the teachers there can help their students to read authentic texts in English with a high level of comprehension. The study begins with a description of the training of the young diplomats and researchers. It considers the problems faced by the teachers and students, and looks into the role of English in general and English reading comprehension in particular in the I.I.R. Bearing in mind the objectives of the training, the study discusses the goals for teaching reading comprehension at an advanced level and lays emphasis on the importance of using appropriate techniques for teaching reading skills at this level. The writer of the study also looks at the relevant issues in theories of reading comprehension which are discussed in current literature. These theoretical issues are then related to the reality of teaching in the I.I.R. Finally, to illustrate all the techniques and skills for teaching reading comprehension which have been dealt with earlier in the study, the writer presents a sample reading lesson. It is his hope that the presentation, and indeed the whole study, will be of value to his colleagues at the I.I.R., and to others who teach reading in similar situations.

The communicative approach is one of the most characteristic features of contemporary language teaching. This paper aims to study ways of achieving communicative competence of students by using informal language practice and games in teaching. It attempts to look more closely at the relationship between language acquisition, language games and communicative language teaching. This study is based on the theory that language games and informal language practice allow natural learning to occur and provide opportunities for developing communicative competence in a foreign language. While games and informal language practice are widely used in language classrooms in many countries, it appears from the writer's observation and experience of teaching English in China that there is still, among Chinese teachers and students, a great deal of suspicion and uncertainty about the functions and the effectiveness of such classroom activities. Problems detected in language classrooms in using these activities and games suggest that Chinese teachers and students have misunderstood and misused these activities. In this study, it is hoped to analyze in some depth the problems involved in using language games in China, including the attitudes, teaching methods and expectations of the teachers and students. Also, it is hoped to investigate the optimal use of games and practice in Chinese classrooms. As the use of games has received little serious attention in China to date, it is hoped, finally, to suggest ways of using games effectively to improve learners' communicative ability.

This study sets out to analyse the teaching skills of an effective Australian teacher of French in a primary school in Canberra. Chapter One provides an overview of the primary education in Singapore with particular emphasis on the language policies. The purpose and scope of the study and the approach used in carrying out the study are also described in this chapter. Chapters Two to Six present descriptive features of the teacher's teaching approach. Clarity in her goals and instructions to her Year 3 and Year 5 classes were analysed through extracts of the classroom discourse. The way the teacher provided encouragement and feedback on errors to her Year 3 class were also described. The variation in the pace of her speech in relation to the activities and the adjustments made when she posed questions according to the language proficiency of the pupils, also form part of the data analysed. In Chapter Eight, conclusions were made of the possibility of transferring the teaching approaches to the teaching of English as a second language in primary schools in Singapore by comparing the French program described in Chapter Seven with the primary education system in Singapore. The study concludes with an overview of the areas that need further research and study.

The process of second language vocabulary acquisition (L2VA) is investigated by looking at the learning, teaching, learner and environmental factors that affect the ways that adult Vietnamese learners of English acquire, store and use words. Data were collected by examination of informants' diaries, recorded classes, free conversations, interview-questionnaires and regular interviews during the English program. The data show that the process of building up the mental lexicon is slow, long and complicated. For adult learners coming from different English and job backgrounds, full time classroom learning is the biggest and most important source of L2 word input. It is also in this environment that the word storage and recall mechanisms are most facilitated. The L2VA process varies according to individual learners at different levels, with different learning goals, motivations, determination, areas of interest and word learning methods. It is hoped that the findings of the study help increase Vietnamese teachers' awareness of how to teach English vocabulary effectively and how to help learners work out individually suitable word learning methods.

This study attempts to investigate the teaching of written English in Vietnam with special attention to the main problems encountered by teachers of English at the main language institutions in the light of the literature and practices in general ELT. The first chapter is the introduction of the study. It covers the aim and scope to be achieved in the study, and explains the sources of data to be used for the study. Terminology of some phrases and abbreviations for convenient use are also given. Chapter 2 focuses on general ELT developments. Major trends in ELT and their practices are brought into discussion. Then in the light of the literature in ELT, the teaching of writing is taken into consideration. Being an important component in ELT, the teaching of writing has to satisfy this need of learners - the need for effective communication - without overlooking correctness, accuracy and other features of good writing. However, there is no single approach that can provide a perfect answer to all the learners' problems. Chapter 3 discusses the teaching and learning situation in Vietnam in three stages from 1959 to 1986. It is made clear that the situation is not satisfactory due to the methods, techniques, materials and the quality of teachers. Then special investigation is made into the writing area. It is discovered that complex writing is avoided because of the teachers' low standard and their methods and techniques in teaching written English. Improvement courses have been held, but they did not include writing programmes for teachers. Chapter 4 analyses the main problems affecting the teaching of writing in Vietnam, such as teachers' unawareness of language appropriateness and correctness, their difficulty at discourse level and lack of cultural knowledge. Teachers' misconceptions about errors and lack of methods and techniques in dealing with errors also result in ineffective teaching. In Chapter 5 some recommendations are made for teaching writing to inservice teachers in the upgrading course. They focus on the methods and techniques to be used in such a writing course. Some techniques for composition correction are also suggested. Unfortunately, there is no single book that is ideal for such a course. A selection of current writing coursebooks is given in the hope that teachers will find material to suit the needs of their students in them. The last recommendations are for teaching academic writing which involves more sophisticated skills than writing on general topics. Finally the writer makes some comments on her own work and suggests further research into the writing area.

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.

This study is mainly concerned with the common errors Vietnamese adult students make in learning English as a second/foreign language. Using the tools of contrastive analysis and error analysis, the researcher decribes and examines certain areas of similarity and difference between English and Vietnamese on some grammatical aspects, and then analyses the errors made by the Vietnamese students in two different learning contexts and at different levels of proficiency. This studies consists of six chapters : Chapter 1 introduces the position of English in Vietnam at present, raises the problems encountered in the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam, and states why this study is necessary. Chapter 2 is the summary of the main theories of second language acquisition and some of the principal studies of Vietnamese grammar. Chapter 3 discusses the techniques of contrastive analysis and error analysis, which provide bases for the comparative study in Chapter 4 and the error analysis in Chapter 5. In Chapter 4, a contrastive study is undertaken of eleven aspects of English and Vietnamese grammar, which serves as the basis for the discussion in Chapter 5. Chapter 5 presents an analysis of the common errors Vietnamese students make in two different learning contexts in Vietnam and in Australia. It also discusses the various strategies the students use in order to achieve language proficiency. Finally, some conclusions concerning the attitude towards, and the treatment of, errors are mentioned in Chapter 6. It also provides suggestions for further study in the subject area.

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.

This study aims to discuss equivalence and non-equivalence in some selected areas of English and Chinese lexis and their impact upon teaching, learning and translating. Attempts have been made to state the causes of lexical equivalence and non-equivalence and raise and solve some difficulties and problems arising particularly from nonequivalent lexemes between English and Chinese. As a subdiscipline of linguistics, contrastive linguistics is concerned with the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine the differences and similarities between them. Based on a practical aim this study tries to provide a model for the comparison and determine how and which lexemes are comparable so as to explore the notion of equivalence and non-equivalence. It is hoped to provide as much information as is possible in a limited study of this kind on lexical comparison between the two languages. It compares differences with examples, analyses some of the problems arising from the errors made by the Chinese students, and analyses their causes in the areas of noun, verb, preposition, compound lexemes, reduplicative words and phrases, negation, polysemy, idiomatic expressions and lexemes derived directly from the cultural background. Finally some suggestions and considerations are made for those who might have responsibility for designing courses to train interpreters, translators or teachers.

The study consists of five chapters. The first chapter gives a brief description of how English as a foreign language is taught in Indonesia and the need to improve the social competence of Indonesian speakers of English so that they will be regarded as competent speakers in social interaction. Language competence, including the notion of linguistic competence, together with the notions of communicative competence and social competence, is discussed in the second chapter, since it underlies the language learner's knowledge and ability to create and maintain a harmonious atmosphere in social interaction. Furthermore, the theory of communicative competence will include competency in sociocultural rules of use which will specify the ways in which utterances are produced and understood appropriately with respect to the components of communicative events outlined by Hymes. Speech act theory, particularly as it relates to complimenting behaviour is discussed. Chapter three reviews research on complimenting behaviour and considers some possible reasons why Indonesians do not pay as many compliments as Australians do. Ways of perceiving face - threatening acts and politeness are related to different cultures with different social values because of their different traditions, experience, ways of development and ways of thinking. Developing from these considerations of theory and research, the fourth chapter describes the study project which deals with what counts as a compliment in Indonesian and Australian English, what to compliment about and how people compliment as well as how people accept and respond to compliments. Analysis of some problems caused by lack of awareness of the differences between cultures and the effects of applying ones own strategy in complimenting behaviour, leading to misunderstanding, are also discussed. In the final chapter, the results of the project suggest what Indonesian learners of English need to be taught to help students develop social competence in complimenting behaviour. Suggestions for improving the social competence of Indonesian speakers of English are made.