(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) an investigation into the students attitudes towards the cultural contents in the textbook new headway pre intermediate at ho chi minh city university of industry based in thanh hoa

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
****************************************

LÊ THỊ NGA
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE
STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE
CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW
HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE AT HO CHI MINH
CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN THANH
HOA
( ĐIỀU TRA THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI NỘI DUNG VĂN HÓA TRONG GIÁO
TRÌNH NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CƠNG NGHIỆP
THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH CƠ SỞ THANH HĨA)

MINOR M.A THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410

HÀ NỘI, 2011
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

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UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
****************************************

LÊ THỊ NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE
STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE
CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW
HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE AT HO CHI MINH
CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN THANH
HOA
( ĐIỀU TRA THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI NỘI DUNG VĂN HĨA TRONG GIÁO
TRÌNH NEW HEADWAY PRE-IMTERMEDIATE Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CƠNG NGHIỆP
THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH CƠ SỞ THANH HÓA)

MINOR M.A THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410
Supervisor: Phan Thị Vân Quyên M.A

HÀ NỘI, 2011

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iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DECLARATION OF ORINALITY………………………………………………………...i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………ii
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………..iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………..…….iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………….v
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS………………………………………..........................vi
PART I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………............................1
1. Rationales………………………………………………………………………..1
2. Aims of the study………………………………………………………………..1
3. Research questions………………………………………………………………1
4. Scope of the study…………………………………….........................................1
5. Methods of the study…………………………………………………………….1
6. Design of the study……………………………………………………………...3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT………………………………………………………………...4
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………………4
1.
Culture……………………………………………………............................4
2.
Language and the relationship between language and culture……………..9
3.
Learning Attitudes……………………………………………………….....9
4.
Identifications of British and American cultural elements in New
Headway textbooks………………………………………………………..11
CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………..20
2.1. Current situation of teaching and learning English at the HUI………………..20
2.2. Research questions…………………………………………………………….22
2.3. Method of the study …………………………………………………………..23
2.4. Data Collection Instruments…………………………………………………..23
2.5. Data collection procedures…………………………………………………….24
CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………………………….25
3.1. Questionnaire for students…………………………………………………….25
3.2. Interviews with students………………………………………………………31

CHAPTER IV: FINGDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS…………………………………….32
Findings……………………………………………………………………….32
Suggestions for improving the situation………………………………………33
PART III: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………..……35
1. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..35
2. Limitations of the study……………………………………………………….35
3. Suggestions for further study………………………………………………….35
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………36
APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS...................................I
APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW…………………………III

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AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE
CULTURAL CONTENTS IN THE TEXTBOOK NEW HEADWAY Preintermediate AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY BASED IN
THANH HOA
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
•

Globalization leads to the remarkable teaching and learning English issue.

•

Besides, there is a dialectical connection between language and culture.

•

However, the students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa often neglect cultural contents

while studying English.

2. Aims of the study
The study focuses on investigating the attitude of students at Ho Chi Minh City University
of Industry based in Thanh Hoa Province towards cultural contents expessed in the
textbook Headway 2 to enhance the effect of using them as a means to provide
comprehensible input in learning English.
3. Research questions
This research is carried out to find the answer to the following research questions:
1. Are students interested in learning culture when studying language?
2. Do teachers include cultural contents in their lectures?
3. Are students satisfied with their teacher’s cultural teaching?
4. Scope of the study
As it has been stated above, the study is designed to explore students’ attitudes towards
cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre in order to make some methodological
recommendations for studying English. The study is, therefore, explorative by nature.
Given the aims of the study, I limited myself to focus on the first-year students at the HUI
who have studied the textbook NH Pre.
5. Methods of the study
-

Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used.

-

The data for the study are collected from questionnaires and interviews.

-

Discussion with the supervisor.

6. Design of the study
The study is presented in three parts: introduction, development and conclusion.

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Part one INTRODUCTION introduces the rationale, aims, focus, objectives, research
questions, scope, methods and design of the study.
Part two DEVELOPMENT concludes 3 chapters:
Chapter one is the literature reviews. This chapter intends to set up the framework of the
study. It focuses on the theory of the relationship between culture and language.
Chapter two includes two sections. The first section presents the local situation in the
foreign language group, Ho Chi Minh city University of Industry, the Branch in Thanh
Hoa, with a brief description of the learning and teaching conditions, students, teachers
and course book used for teaching basic English. The second section describes the research
methodology that includes the description of the subjects, setting, data collection
instruments and procedures.
Chapter three presents the results collected from the self-observation, questionnaires and
interviews in the form of tables and figures. This is followed by the discussion and analysis
of the data.
Part three CONCLUSION includes the implications and suggestions for teaching English
through teaching culture. Recommendations for further research are also mentioned in this
part.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1.Culture

- Definition of Culture
- Elements of Culture
1. 2. Language and the relationship between language and culture
1. 3. Learning Attitudes
- Definitions of attitudes
- The role of attitudes in language learning
1. 4. Identifications of British and American cultural elements in New Headway
textbooks.
- British cultural elements
- American cultural elements

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

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2.1. Current situation of teaching and learning English at the HUI
- Brief introduction of Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry based in Thanh Hoa
Province.
- Students and their background
Students of HUI come from all parts of Thanh Hoa province (Thanh Hoa city, districts and
mountainous areas). Some of them have learned English for 7 years at secondary and high
school whereas others have only learned English for 3 years. Specifically, some other
students have never learned English before. Most of students who learned English at
school experienced traditional method of English teaching (the Grammar- translation
method) the emphasis of which is on the learning of the rules of the language, not on the
acquisition of language skills and cutural contents. Furthermore, the majority of the
students does not have appropriate learning strategies and have passive learning styles.

Therefore, their General English skills are supposed to be at lower levels.
- The course book
New headway textbooks ( written by Liz and John Soars) consist of six levels
which are at beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate and
advanced. However, in my research only New headway at pre-intermediate level is under
investigation. New headway- pre-intermediate is divided into 14 units. Each unit of
textbooks is divided into sections such as reading, listening, writing, speaking, vocabulary
and grammar. The textbooks have been designed according to the miscellany approach. It
is a type of course books the content of which is eclectic.
New Headway Pre may satisfy the demands of the communicative approach to
language teaching. They emphasize the learning of the language for clearly defined
purposes and four major skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking in a very
systematic way. The Teacher’s Book also provides photocopiable progress tests and
additional activities as well as detailed answer keys and notes, so that teachers have a
wealth of support. In addition, we can see some notes and explanations for cultural
features of countries, especially English speaking cultures. Indeed, if we have a closer
look at New Headway Pre, we discover cultural elements in almost every text or activity. It
would be extremely difficult to cover all the cases in which the course books offer learners
information about the target culture. The presentation of culture takes various forms:
examining everyday life and cultural behaviour, looking into communication styles,
norms, values and attitudes, etc. The activities focus on particular subject areas like
shopping, food, meals, traffic, restaurants, jobs and many more. A great advantage of the

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course book is that it gives not only information and knowledge about the target culture but
also other foreign cultures. Learners are given an opportunity to deal with various cultural

issues. The aim is to develop an understanding of English countries in general. However,
British and American cultures are the most prominently described in the textbook.
2.2. Research questions.
This research is carried out to find the answer to the following research questions:
1. Are students interested in learning culture when studying language?
2. Do teachers include cultural contents in their lectures?
3. Are students satisfied with their teacher’s cultuhral teaching?
2.3. Method of the Study
To achieve the aims stated, quantitative method was mainly used. The data collected for
the study come from 100 first- year students at the HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province who
have just finished studying NH Pre.
Survey questionnaires were used to collect information and evidence for the study with the
hope that the research would be reliable and the processing of the data would be
manageable within limited time budget.
In addition, the research also used qualitative method that is the author collected some
information based on her informal classroom observations and interviews with 10 students
chosen from 100 students. The researcher hopes that these methodologies supplement each
other and the data are more reliable.
All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion provided in the study are based
on the data analysis.
2.4. Data Collection Instruments
The main instruments, which I have used in this study to collect data, are questionnaire and
interviews.
2.4.1. Questionaire
The research questionaire consists of nine questions that are divided into three parts: the
students’attitudes toward the culture, the students’attitudes towards the cultural contents in
the textbook NH Pre and the difficulties they enhance when studying the cultural contents
in this textbook.
The questionaire aims to investigate the students’attitudes towards cultural learning in
general and their attitudes towards the cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre as well as

their attitudes to cultural teaching in their English classes.
2.4.2. Interview

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The interview is carried out after finishing the questionaire part. 10 out of 100 students are
chosen to give further ideas.
2.5. Data collection procedures
In order to get results showing the differences in attitudes of the students towards the
cutural contents, nine questions were delivered to the participants. After the questionnaires,
students were chosen randomly for the interviews before and after the experiment, and
finally collected data is analized.

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS
This chapter analysed the collected data from the survey questionnaires and the interviews
to find the answers for the research questions.
3.1. Questionnaire for students
3.1.1. The attitudes of students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province towards culture
learning when studying language.
In short, it can be concluded that most of the students answer that they are not very
interested in culture because it is also not very important for them in studying English.
More than a third of studetns suppose that cutural knowledge is not important to them at all
in learning English. As a result, a very small percentage of them suppose that they are
interested in culture and determine its importance. Moreover, no one say that they master
general cultural knowledge such as its definition and elements very well; and more than
half of them do not understand these at all.
3.1.2. The attitudes of students at the HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province towards the

cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre.
- When these 100 students were asked whether they could identify the cultural elements in
the textbook NH Pre after finishing the course, well over a half of students can do although
it is not much. 36% cannot do at all.
- A great number of students at HUI based in Thanh Hoa showed a negative attitude
towards the cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre. Much more respondents said that the
cultural contents were not rich enough (61%), wheares only 39% said that these contents
were rich. The number of students who supposed that the cultural contents boring were
slightly higher than interesting, 41% and 35%. Similarly, this happened to the idea whether
these contents were obviously expressed or not.

3. 1. 3. The students’attitudes towards the cultural teaching
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Most of the students (78%) said that they were not satisfied with the teachers’ cultural
teaching in the class. None of them felt very satisfied but 22 % of the students have shown
good attitudes towards it.
3.1.4. Students’ difficulties when learning cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre
72% of the students admitted that they lack background knowledge of British and
American culture. 28% of respondents were worried about lack of vocabulary to express
their ideas said that they had difficulties in expressing ideas because they lacked
knowledge about the culture. It was difficult for 12% because they had not any visual
illustrations. Only 8% said that they had no time to acquire cultural knowledge.
3.2. Interviews with students
After gathering information from the survey questionnaires, the researcher conducted
instructional interviews with 10 students out of 100 students under questions 1, 2 in
interview part to confirm students’ further ideas about the cultural contents in current

textbook. All of the interviewed students said that:
The things that students unsatisfied are:
(1) Their teachers have not emphasized the importance of cultural knowledge when
teaching English yet.
(2) Time allowance for cultural contents in English classes is so limited.
(3) The cultural contents in the textbook NH Pre are not very obviously expressed to
identify them.
(*) The things that students will be satisfied and can improve students’ cultural knowledge
(1) they are reminded about the importance of British and American cultural knowledge in
studying English in the first lessons of the course.
(2) they are transferred the culture definition and its elements as soon as possible during
the course so that they can themselves identify the cultural elements in each part of the
lesson or discuss with their friends.
(3) the teachers should tell more stories and give more exercises related to culture as well
as use a variety of activities and techniques for integrating the cultural contents into their
teaching,
(4) the comparison between British and American culture and Vietnamese culture should
be done if possible in order that students not only find more interested in cultural contents
but they also can memorise these easily and deeply.

CHAPTER IV: FINGDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS
4.1. Findings

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Firstly, the first year students at the HUI show not very positive attitudes towards culture
and studying it. Not many of these students see the importance of cultural knowledge for

their learning English as well as communication with native speakers. Consequently, not
all of them are really interested in cultural lessons.
Secondly, it is clear from the survey that the students are not satisfied because cultural
contents are not always integrated into English lessons. To be more exact, they want to be
taught the basic knowledge of culture that helps them to identify the cultural elements in
each unit. The students also say that the teaching techniques and activities are not varied
enough. The students expressed their wish to acquire British and American cultural
knowledge through more interesting communicative activities such as games, songs, story
telling, picture describing,…
It is clear that nowadays there is a tendency to study English for communication, therefore
cultural knowledge plays an important role. However, a considerable number of the
English learners at HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province do not focus on this in class. This
situation is due to the following reasons:
4.2. Suggestions for improving the situation
4.2.1. Suggestions for students
Firstly, to be successful in learning English, students ‘attitudes towards English need to
change. They should consider English as important as other subjects in the curriculum and
appreciate the role of culture in studying English.
Secondly, students’ attitude towards cultural knowledge and cultural learning also should
be improved. It not only helps them to broaden their knowledge but it is also a vital part of
learning English for communication.
Thirdly, students’ role is no longer passive recipients. They can explore the cultural
knowledge by themselves from different sources. They should feel free to express their
own ideas, to put questions to the teachers, to show their disagreements with the teachers.
4.2.2. Suggestions for teachers
First of all, the teachers should provide the students with the knowledge of the cultures of
English-speaking countries which is considered the effective means of mastering English

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language and gaining good communication. In other words, teachers should raise the
students’ awareness of and attitudes towards the importance of culture in learning English
and make sure that the knowledge of culture which students are exposed to will benefit them.
For examples, teachers should first invoke interest and curiosity about the target culture.
Then, they should help their students to recognize the fact that social factors like age, gender,
social class, and ethnicity influence how people use the language. Teachers also need to
help their students understand why people of the target culture choose to behave in certain
ways in certain situations.
Secondly, the teachers ought to help the students understand more about the cultural values
and be aware of cultural differences. It means that the students may be pointed out that
certain behaviors, attitudes, lifestyles, etc are appropriate in English, American cultures but
not in Vietnamese culture. Students should be encouraged to relate to their native culture
and make a comparison between English speaking cultures and their native culture. For
example, after giving instructions about norm of driving of British, the teacher asks
students to relate to Vietnamese’s.

Or what will you take when you are invited to

someone’s home if you are in Britain, in America or in Vietnam?
Subsequently, teachers need to plan the cultural lessons and activities as carefully as
language activities and integrate them into the language lesson.
Furthermore, teachers need to encourage students to be more confident in participating in
class activities. The teachers should stimulate the students to volunteer to give questions,
and pay special attention to passive students.
Lastly, when teaching NH Pre, teachers are advised to create chances of social interactions
for students because one of the best ways to teach social English is in social situations.
Through these activities, teachers may help students recognize which behaviors are accepted

in British and American cultures, which are not. For example, teachers ask students to
imagine some situations and give solutions such as:
- Which topics do you talk about when chatting with a stranger? Obviously, the British often
talk much about the weather, but American often talk much about geography.
- What time should you expect your foreign business colleagues to arrive when you have
arranged a meeting at seven o’clock? If they are American, they’ll probably be 15 minutes
early. If they’re British, they’ll be 15 minutes late.

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All in all, teaching English can not be separated from teaching its culture. In order to help the
students in general and the students of HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province in particular
master English effectively via the textbook NH Pre, cultural elements should be highlighted
by teachers during the language lessons. Also, it should be noted gradually that it is
necessary to teach culture to the students so that they can overcome all difficulties or culture
shock in real-life communication.

PART III: CONCLUSION
1. Conclusions
This study set out to investigate the attitudes of the students towards the cultural contents
of the textbook New Headway Pre- Intermediate as well as the difficulties they meet in
cultural learning. Based on the data collection instruments such as questionnaires and
interviews, this research has discovered the significant findings with a view to improve the
English studying at HUI based in Thanh Hoa Province. The research reveals that students
show negative attitudes towards the cultural contents and do not have good British and
American cultural knowledge. Besides, the teachers do not often refer to cultural contents
in their lectures. So, the students suppose that these contents were not rich enough and not

obviously expressed.
2. Limitations of the study
Undeniable the study has certain strengths due to time limits, lack of resources and the
researcher’s ability, it is obvious that the study has got a number of drawbacks. That is the
number of class observation and interviews the researcher carried out is still limited, so the
findings may, to some extent, not be generalized to all the students. Therefore, this needs
further studies.
3. Suggestions for further study
Whoever interested to this matter or / and have met the same difficulties may continue this
study for further improvements.
Basing on the findings of the study, other researchers will give more helpful suggestions
for acquiring cultural knowledge in English classes or adapt the textbook or design a
complete syllabus of cultural content for the first year students at the HUI or choose an

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available textbook that more suitable with the level of the students with approve of the
researcher’s college and departments.

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