Communicative Language Teaching: Do Tasks and Activities in School Textbooks Facilitate Learners’ Development of Communicative Competence?

Abstract

This paper reports a theoretical evaluation and findings from teachers’ and students’ evaluations of activities and tasks in English 6, an English textbook from a series of four textbooks which have been used as the compulsory textbooks for all students from grades 6 to 9 (ages 12 to 16) in all junior secondary schools in Vietnam since 2001 (Nguyen, 2005). It presents results from a study which involved 8 teachers and 126 students in four secondary schools in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Combining a theoretical evaluation and the analysis of the data collected from the questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and classroom observation. It is concluded that there is a lack of a variety of activities and tasks and they mostly focus on form. Therefore, they do not help develop learners’ communicative competence. The present study also draws implications regarding how to use teaching materials effectively for EFL/ESL for developing learners’ communicative competence.

Revisiting views of grammar and grammar learning strategy use: A multiple case study in Vietnam

“…Thus, there remains a myth concerning what high school Vietnamese students think about this way of learning grammar and their beliefs about grammar teaching methods. Although most Vietnamese high school students have learned English for many years, they still find it hard to use even simple and common vocabulary and grammar to communicate in the English language in daily conversations (Nguyen & Le, 2020). Dan (2008) conducted a study with seventytwo Vietnamese college students, including both English majors and non-English majors, to explore common problems that Vietnamese students encountered with grammar.…”

Role-Playing or Retelling Stories: Which One is Preferable in the Post-Reading Stage? - Answers from Direct Stakeholders in English Classes

“…As a result, two particular activities for the post-reading stage, including retelling stories (RS) and role-playing (RP), are often recommended for implementation in this stage of a reading lesson (Gibson et al, 2003;Krebt, 2017). Even though RS and RP are just two out of many more techniques for the post-reading stage, their values have been approved by a number of previous studies in the Vietnamese context (e.g., Lap et al, 2022;Nguyen & Le, 2020). Besides, these communicative teaching techniques have been confirmed to contribute to developing EFL students' speaking and listening skills by educators from other contexts (Gibson et al, 2003;Ruslan, 2020).…”