High-school teachers' attitudes toward English as a lingua franca (ELF) and classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province: Master's thesis report

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and their classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau province. The mixed-methods approach was employed in this study, i.e., both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from uestionnaires and semi-structured interviews. There were 109 high school teachers of English from 11 high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province who participated in the survey, and 22 of them were selected purposively for the individual interviews. As for data analysis, descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviation, and frequencies/ percentages) were used to analyse quantitative data, whereas qualitative data were analysed through content analysis. Based on the results obtained from the data analysis, there were two findings which were explored in this study. First, the collected data showed that high school teachers had positive attitudes toward ELF in three attitude components, including cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes. Second, high school teachers conducted some activities for the promotion of ELF among their students relating to eight sub variables from cultural knowledge, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar to four language skills of students. These included inviting non-native English speakers to talk to students about ELF, asking students to make dialogues and play roles using ELF in groups, organizing seminars for the students to compare English varieties, creating activities containing aspects relating to ELF for students to take part in, asking students to discover any aspects relating to ELF in the content of the textbook, and introducing pictures or posters used ELF as well. Finally, high school teachers found uneasy to create activities relating to ELF because of preparation time limit and scarce of source of materials. Notwithstanding that, teachers still tried their best to introduce the existence of ELF and help their students be accessible to ELF in language learning.