The research aims at investigating the language used by those native speakers in Vietnamese settings to know what kinds of language are used to have a successful English lesson

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the work contains no material previously published or written by other person, except where due to references has been made in the text. Hanoi – 2007 Ph
m Th Thu Trang

 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the English language that native English teachers use to conduct their lesson. It focuses on the presence of lesson phases, the language for presenting in each lesson phases; the speech acts as well as the grammatical expressions realizing those acts that they perform in instructing the lessons. Also, the comparison is made between the grammatical expressions and the acts they perform to identify the most preferable language expressions in performing a speech act in a language class. The data consist of 14 lessons collected with audio-recorder in Lomonosov Private School, Hanoi, Vietnam for analysis. The elements comprising lessons phases and the patterns making up the act of explaining tasks, significant speech acts and their equivalent grammatical structures are examined. It is indicated in the study that the lesson phases such as opening, instructional and closing phases were made up of various elements and can be applied in any order of appearance in the suggestion of possible paradigm for each of the phase. Moreover, the four speech acts are detected and analysis in terms of the language used; the polite strategies in performing the acts; the frequency and preference of use. This study can firstly be uses as reference for teachers of English at Lomonosov Private School, and for any teachers who are concerned about this matter. It is hoped that this study can help language teachers to improve and better their use of English as language of instructions in their own classes in order to provide a more and more natural interactions and communications to the students in Vietnam.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish, first of all, to express my deepest gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, who has enthusiastically and generously given me invaluable assistance and guidance during the process of carrying out the thesis. The success of my study would have been almost impossible without his support and encouragement. My profound thanks are also to all other teachers at Vietnam National University, Hanoi – College of Foreign Languages for their useful lectures which have laid the foundation for this research paper. My special thanks are due to all the volunteer teachers who willingly and nicely participated in my study with their great help in letting me record their teaching process. My sincere thanks are also to all the Vietnamese teachers at Lomonosov Private School who generously offered their help and support during the time of my teaching at Lomonosov Private School. I would also thank all of my friends and classmates at Vietnam National University, Hanoi – College of Foreign Languages, Postgraduate Studies as well as my old friends who have been studying in England for their great support in sharing experience and providing me with invaluable reference books, which was of great help in the completion of this study. Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my parents, who have always been by my side, supporting and encouraging me for the whole course of my study, to whom I have never found enough words to express my gratitude.
 TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................1 1.1 RATIONALE.............................................................................................................1 1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES........................................................................................2 1.3 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH...................................................................................2 1.4 THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .............3 1.5 METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................................3 1.5.1. Approach ........................................................................................................3 1.5.2. Techniques ......................................................................................................3 1.6 STRUCTURES OF THE STUDY .............................................................................5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...............................................................................6 2.1 THE LANGUAGE OF CLASSROOM INSTRUCTIONS .......................................6 2.1.1. Classroom interaction....................................................................................6 2.1.2. Language of opening – closing the lessons .................................................10 2.1.3. Language of introducing vocabulary – introducing and transiting activities ........................................................................................................14 2.1.4. Language of managing class .......................................................................15 2.1.5. Language of instruction...............................................................................15 2.2 SPEECH ACTS........................................................................................................18 2.2.1. Definition ......................................................................................................18 2.2.2. Classification and grammatical expressions..............................................20 2.3 CLASSROOM INSTRUCTIONS AS SPEECH ACTS ..........................................22 2.4 STATEMENTS ON PREVIOUS STUDY ON LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION IN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS...........................................................................24 CHAPTER 3: FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE OF NATIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS USED IN EACH PHASE OF THE LESSON................................................26 3.1 THE LANGUAGE OF OPENING AND CLOSING THE LESSONS ...................26 3.1.1. Greetings .......................................................................................................26  3.1.2. Social English ...............................................................................................28 3.1.3. Signals to start ..............................................................................................28 3.1.4. Procedural English.......................................................................................28 3.1.5. Statements of lesson plan.............................................................................28 3.1.6. Links to previous lessons .............................................................................30 3.1.7. Transitional signals ......................................................................................30 3.1.8. Transitional stage.........................................................................................30 3.1.9. Summary.......................................................................................................30 3.2 THE LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTIONS...............................................................32 3.2.1. Signals to engage class’s attention ..............................................................33 3.2.2. Statements of task or topic ..........................................................................34 3.2.3. Organizing seating/ groups .........................................................................36 3.2.4. Main instructions .........................................................................................38 3.2.5. Monitoring understanding; repeat/ rephrase............................................43 3.2.6. Signals to start ..............................................................................................44 3.2.7. Summary.......................................................................................................45 3.3 SUMMARY .............................................................................................................46 CHAPTER 4: AN INVESTIGATION INTO SPEECH ACTS IN LANGUAGE LESSONS PERFORMED BY NATIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS ....................................47 4.1 THE ACT OF REQUESTS AND MANAGING CLASS .......................................47 4.1.1. Classification of grammatical forms ..........................................................47 4.1.1.1. Modals.................................................................................................47 4.1.1.2. Infinitives ............................................................................................49 4.1.1.3. Gerunds...............................................................................................50 4.1.1.4. Questions.............................................................................................50 4.1.1.5. Others..................................................................................................51 4.1.2. Possible functions of requests in language classroom...............................52 4.1.2.1. Modals.................................................................................................52 4.1.2.2. Infinitives ............................................................................................56 4.1.2.3. Gerunds (V-ing) .................................................................................57 4.1.2.4. Interrogatives .....................................................................................58 
 4.1.2.5. Nouns – Adjectives and Others (mainly for managing class) ......60 4.1.3. The comparison of the frequency in using each grammatical form to perform the acts of requests in language classroom .................................61 4.2 THE ACT OF ENCOURAGING.............................................................................62 4.3 THE ACT OF EXPLAINING TASKS ....................................................................64 4.3.1. Identification of patterns of the act for explaining tasks..........................64 4.3.2. Classification of grammatical structures ...................................................67 4.3.3. Summary.......................................................................................................69 4.4 THE ACT OF GUIDING AND ASSISTING..........................................................70 4.4.1. Repeat and rephrase the instructions ........................................................70 4.4.2. Define or suggest the meaning of the new vocabulary..............................71 4.5 SUMMARY .............................................................................................................73 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................74 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE STUDY................................................................................74 5.2 FINDINGS ...............................................................................................................74 5.3 CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................75 5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY...........................................................................76 5.5 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY ............................................................77 APPENDICES .........................................................................................................................78 APPENDIX 1 ................................................................................................................... I APPENDIX 2 ..............................................................................................................VIII APPENDIX 3 ...........................................................................................................XXIX APPENDIX 4 ...................................................................................................... XXXVII REFERENCES........................................................................................................................79 

 LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND FLOW CHARTS LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 Types of classroom interactions Figure 3.2 Le Cong Tien’s proposed elements for transitional phase LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Examples for greetings from data 1-14 ............................................................ 27 Table 2: Examples for procedural English in the data 1-14 ........................................... 28 Table 3: Summary of elements of the opening phase found in data 1-14 ...................... 31 Table 4: Signals to engage class’ attentions found in Data 1-14 .................................... 34 Table 5: Requestive/ Politeness strategies used in the statement of tasks in Data 1-14 . 36 Table 6: Language of organizing seating/ groups of data 1-14 ...................................... 37 Table 7: Strategies for giving instructions ...................................................................... 42 Table 8: Summary of the language for monitoring understanding; repeat/ rephrase ..... 44 Table 9: Summary of signals found in 21 instructions in data 1-14 ............................... 45 Table 10: Examples of requests realized by Modals in data 1-14 .................................. 48 Table 11: Examples of requests realized by Infinitives in data 1-14.............................. 49 Table 12: Examples of requests realized by Gerunds in data 1-14................................. 50 Table 13: Examples of requests realized by Interrogatives in data 1-14 ........................ 51 Table 14: Examples for other types of requests expressions .......................................... 51 Table 15: Possible strategies to perform requests using MODALS in language classrooms............................................................................................................... 55 


 Table 16: Summary of the frequency of using syntactic classes (Declaratives and Interrogatives) in performing the act of request by Modals ................................... 55 Table 17: Possible strategies to perform requests using INFINITIVES in language classrooms............................................................................................................... 57 Table 18: Possible strategies to perform requests using GERUNDS in language classrooms............................................................................................................... 58 Table 19: Possible strategies to perform requests using INTERROGATIVES in language classrooms............................................................................................................... 60 Table 20: Possible strategies to perform requests using NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, PREPOSTIONS and OTHER FORMS in language classrooms ............................ 61 Table 21: Summary of frequency of grammatical forms used to convey requests in language classrooms ............................................................................................... 62 Table 22: Classification of linguistic forms used to perform the act of encouraging students in language classrooms ............................................................................. 63 Table 23: Identification of patterns for the act of explaining found in 14 data .............. 66 Table 24: Examples of defining and suggesting the new vocabulary............................. 72 LIST OF FLOW-CHARTS Flow-chart 1: Sequence and paradigm for the Opening Phase....................................... 32 Flow-chart 2: Proposed sequence and paradigm for instruction-giving ......................... 45 Flow-chart 3: Paradigm of task – explanation – giving.................................................. 66  CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE Nowadays, English has become an international language. Learning English is not only fashion as over ten years ago, but also a must for anyone to want to access the world. More and more Vietnamese learn English to attain knowledge and achieve communicative competence. In fact, the weakest point of Vietnamese learners is that they are not able to produce meaningful utterances and communicate in real situations. This fact raises the awareness of teaching and learning English communicatively to both teachers and learners. The new textbooks in Vietnam are formed, edited in this way. In addition, language teachers at high school now are trying to apply new methods to teach English communicatively. The aim is to prepare students with authentic sources of language, real situations, and practical use of language. Lomonosov Private School (My Dinh – Tu Liem – Hanoi) is specialized in foreign languages such as English, French, Chinese, and Japanese. In here, most language teachers try to maximize the use of the target language and the talking time of the students in class. Furthermore, the school has many exchange programs with some voluntary organizations in Europe, Australia and America. Every year, there are many volunteer teachers from the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, England… coming to this school and teaching the children for about one period a week in each class, they have created a good language environment for the students. During those lessons, the native teachers deal with the children without the help of Vietnamese teachers in class. Most students like those lessons much; they usually become more active, interested, motivated, and confident in speaking English, especially to foreigners. As a teacher, I always try to make full use of my English to familiarize the students with real communication. Sometimes I failed and had to come back to our mother tongue, Vietnamese. This fact raises a question to me: “How can English teachers get our secondary students understand the lessons, get involved, actively participate and freely  express their own ideas, despite incorrectness, misunderstanding or wrong word uses?”, and “What makes the students understand the teachers’ instructions and motivates them better after each lesson with the native teachers?”. So as to answer such difficult questions, I decided to do a research on the language used by those native teachers in my school for a semester. 1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The research aims at investigating the language used by those native speakers in Vietnamese settings to know what kinds of language are used to have a successful English lesson. The main aims of this study, first of all, are to see what English language expressions used by native teachers of English to conduct English language lessons. Secondly, comparison is made to identify the equivalence and the variants of the grammatical structures and the acts that they perform. Based on the findings, the question of why native teachers of English are successful in conducting the lessons in a high school in Vietnam will be answered. Finally, the study has some implications for English teachers in that school in respect of what English language can be used in language classroom for the effectiveness of conducting the lessons communicatively in English, the target language. 1.3 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH The study focuses on the instructional language used by native English teachers in a specific secondary school in Hanoi. The school is specia