VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYỄN THANH THỦY

THE EXPLOITATION OF ELICITING

TECHNIQUES BY FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS

IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM

AT English division I, Faculty of

english language teacher education,

University of languages and

international studies –

Vietnam national university

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

Hanoi, May 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYỄN THANH THỦY

THE EXPLOITATION OF ELICITING

TECHNIQUES BY FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS

IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM

AT English division I, Faculty of

english language teacher education,

University of languages and

international studies –

Vietnam national university

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

SUPERVISOR: LƢƠNG QUỲNH TRANG, M.A.

Hanoi, May 2011

ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, 071.E1, being a

candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the

requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of

Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper

deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study

and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by

the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper.

Signature

May 4th

2011

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, on the completion of the study, I would like to express

my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Luong Quynh Trang for her

immeasurable help, constant guidance and support during all stages of the

study and beyond, from whom I have received valuable suggestions and

careful critical comments.

Besides, I am also obliged to my friends Pham Thi Thuy Linh, Vu

Thi Kim Chi, Pho Quynh Anh and Le Quynh Hoa for their precious

suggestions, encouragement and technical support to help me overcome

the obstacles I have encountered when conducting this research paper.

Furthermore, I would like to show my appreciation to the

participants, both the student-teachers from class 071.E1 and 189 first-

year mainstream students at English Division I, FELTE for assisting me

in collecting data. Also, I would like to express my sincere thanks to nine

mentors from English Division I – FELTE, namely Mr. Khoa Anh Viet,

Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, Ms. Tran Thi Quynh Le, Ms. Tran Thi Thanh

Phuc, Ms. Pham Thi Dieu Anh, Ms. Nguyen Kim Hue, Ms. Nguyen Thi

Thom Thom, Ms. Luu Ngoc Ly and Ms. Pham Hoang Long Bien, who

gave me allowance to conduct observations and videotape the lessons

during the teaching practicum.

Last but not least, I am grateful to my beloved friends and family

for supporting me wholeheartedly during the time I carried out this

research paper.

ii

ABSTRACT

In the language teaching context, eliciting is praised as an effective

technique, from which both teachers and students can benefit. It is

believed to increase student talking time, maintain student attention, draw

on what students already know or partly know, provide weaker students

with opportunities to participate in class and motivate student to learn

(Doff, 1988; Ur, 1996). Therefore, using eliciting techniques effectively

is of great importance to teachers in general and to student-teachers in

particular. Attempting to investigate the student-teachers’ exploitation of

elicitation during practicum at university level, the current research aimed

at investigating how the student-teachers from the Faculty of English

Teacher Education (FELTE), University of Languages and International

Studies (ULIS) used eliciting techniques during their practicum at

English Division I, FELTE. Specifically, it explored these student-

teachers’ perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in language

teaching together with the frequency of using each technique. Besides,

the study discovered the student-teachers’ and first-year students’

evaluation of the student-teachers’ elicitation. Also, it found out the

student-teachers’ difficulties when using these techniques in class and

their suggested solutions to such difficulties. Data for the study were

collected, firstly, by means of questionnaires with the participation of 26

student-teachers and 189 first-year mainstream students at FELTE. In

addition, observing lessons of nine student-teachers and interviewing

them helped provided valuable data for the study. The study found out

that the student-teachers believed in the necessity of eliciting techniques

for many reasons. Moreover, all eliciting techniques, namely asking

questions, asking questions combined with pictures, with games or

iii

activities, with texts or dialogues and with nonverbal language were

employed, among which asking questions was the most frequently used

technique. Regarding the effectiveness of the techniques, most student-

teachers identified positive influences of these techniques on their

teaching. Besides, as the direct beneficiary of elicitation, the surveyed

first-year students shared this opinion and considered asking questions

combined with games or activities the most effective technique. The

student-teachers suggested plenty of solutions to deal with their

difficulties in exploiting elicitation, which are grouped into three main

categories: difficulties related to the student-teachers’ subjective factors,

students’ uncooperative behaviors and attitude, and objective factors (e.g.

time limitation, teaching-learning conditions and the nature of the target

knowledge). The paper was, therefore, expected to serve as a reference

for both student-teachers and experienced teachers in mastering

elicitation.

.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... i

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... ii

TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................... vii

LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................... viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................... ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................... ix

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1

I. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study ................................ 1

II. Aims and research questions of the study ................................................ 3

III. Scope of the study .................................................................................... 4

IV. Significance of the study .......................................................................... 5

V. Methodology of the study......................................................................... 5

1. Data collection method ....................................................................... 5

2. Data analysis method .......................................................................... 6

VI. Organization of the paper ......................................................................... 6

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................... 8

I. Key concepts ............................................................................................ 8

1. Learner-centered learning and new roles of teachers and students .... 8

1.1. Learner-centered learning ......................................................... 8

1.2. New roles of the teacher and students ....................................... 9

2. Classroom interaction ....................................................................... 10

3. Teacher talk ....................................................................................... 11

4. Eliciting techniques........................................................................... 13

4.1. Definition ................................................................................ 13

4.2. Types of eliciting techniques .................................................. 14

4.3. Benefits of using eliciting techniques ..................................... 24

4.4. Drawbacks of using eliciting techniques ................................ 27

II. Related studies ........................................................................................ 29

1. Review of related studies on elicitation ............................................ 29

2. Review of related studies on elicitation in practicum ....................... 31

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .............................................................. 33

I. Research setting ...................................................................................... 33

II. Participants ............................................................................................. 34

1. The student-teachers ......................................................................... 34

2. The first-year mainstream students ................................................... 36

III. Sampling method .................................................................................... 39

v

IV. Data collection instruments .................................................................... 40

1. Questionnaires .................................................................................. 40

1.1. Reasons for choosing questionnaires ...................................... 40

1.2. Questionnaire format and content ........................................... 41

1.3. Questionnaire procedure ......................................................... 44

2. Observations ..................................................................................... 45

2.1. Reasons for choosing observation .......................................... 45

2.2. Observation scheme ................................................................ 46

2.3. Observation procedure ............................................................ 46

3. Interviews .......................................................................................... 47

3.1. Reasons for choosing interviews ............................................ 47

3.2. Interview format and content .................................................. 48

3.3. Interview procedure ................................................................ 49

V. Data collection procedure ....................................................................... 49

VI. Data analysis procedure.......................................................................... 52

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ......................................... 55

I. Research question 1: How necessary are eliciting techniques in language

teaching as perceived by the student-teachers? ........................................... 56

II. Research question 2: What eliciting techniques are most commonly used

by the student-teachers during their practicum? .......................................... 60

1. The student-teachers’ frequency of using elicitation ........................ 60

2. The frequency of using each eliciting technique .............................. 62

III. Research question 3: What is the effectiveness of each technique as

perceived by the student-teachers? .............................................................. 69

1. Asking questions ............................................................................... 69

2. Asking questions combined with games or activities ....................... 70

3. Asking questions combined with nonverbal language ..................... 71

4. Asking questions combined with pictures ........................................ 73

5. Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues ........................ 74

IV. Research question 4: What is the effectiveness of each technique as

perceived by the learners who are first year students at FELTE, ULIS -

VNU? ........................................................................................................... 76

1. Students’ reactions to the student-teachers’ elicitation .................... 76

2. Students’ evaluation of each eliciting technique’s effectiveness ..... 78

V. Research question 5: What are the difficulties of using eliciting

techniques as reported by the student- teachers? ......................................... 79

1. Student-teacher-related factors ......................................................... 81

2. Student-related factors ...................................................................... 83

3. Objective factors ............................................................................... 84

vi

VI. Research question 6: What are the solutions to such problems as

suggested by the student teachers? .............................................................. 87

1. Improving the comprehensibility of the student-teachers’

elicitation... ............................................................................................. 87

2. Dealing with the students’ behaviors and attitudes .......................... 89

3. Conquering time limitation ............................................................... 89

4. Dealing with the unfavorable teaching and learning conditions ...... 90

5. Tackling with the difficult nature of the target knowledge .............. 91

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 93

I. Major findings of the study .................................................................... 93

II. Pedagogical implications ........................................................................ 96

III. Contributions of the study ...................................................................... 97

IV. Limitations of the study .......................................................................... 98

V. Suggestions for further studies ............................................................... 99

REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 101

APPENDICES ................................................................................................ 106

APPENDIX 1. Questionnaire for student-teachers.................................... 106

APPENDIX 2. Questionnaire for first-year students ................................. 107

APPENDIX 3. Observation checklist ........................................................ 108

APPENDIX 4. Interview guiding questions .............................................. 109

APPENDIX 5. Interview transcript (Student-teacher 1) ........................... 110

1. General information ........................................................................ 110

2. Interview transcript ......................................................................... 110

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

Figure 1: Question classification by the communicative value ........................ 18

Figure 2: The necessity of eliciting in teaching (%) ........................................ 56

Figure 3: Benefits of elicitation as perceived by the student-teachers ............. 57

Figure 4: The student-teachers' frequency of using elicitation......................... 60

Figure 5: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (%) ..................... 63

Figure 6: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (number) ............ 66

Figure 7: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions .............................................................................. 69

Figure 8: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with nonverbal language .................... 71

Figure 9: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with pictures ....................................... 73

Figure 10: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues ....................... 74

Figure 11: The first-year students' frequency of response ............................... 76

Figure 12: The student-teachers' difficulties of using elicitation ..................... 80

Figure 13: Suggested procedure for elicitation ................................................ 91

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

Table 1: Types of eliciting techniques according to Doff (1988, cited in

To et al., 2010, p.12) .....................................................................................

Table 2: Student-teacher group allocation in 2011 at English Division I,

FELTE, ULIS – VNU ...................................................................................

Table 3: The differences between ELT Program and Double-major

Program for first-year students at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS -

VNU (cited from Course Outline for ELT Program and Course Outline for

Double-major Program / Semester 2 / 2010 – 2011 ......................................

Table 4: Summary of the student-teacher and the first-year student

selection ........................................................................................................

Table 5: Data collection procedure ..............................................................

Table 6: Mean score for the frequency of each employed eliciting

technique (Reported by the first-year students) ...........................................

Table 7: Mean score of the frequency of each employed eliciting

technique (Reported by the student-teachers) ...............................................

Table 8: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with games or

activities.........................................................................................................

Table 9: The first-year students’ evaluation of the effectiveness of the

student-teachers’ eliciting techniques ...........................................................

15

36

38

40

50

62

65

70

78

ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

FELTE Faculty of English Language Teacher Education

ULIS University of Languages and International Studies

VNU Vietnam National University, Hanoi

EFL English as Foreign Language

ESL English as a Second Language

L2 The second language

FLSS Foreign Language Specialized School

ELT English Language Teaching

ELT I An introduction to language teaching methods

(two credits, semester six)

ELT II ESL/EFL classroom techniques and practices

(four credits, semester six and seven)

ELT III Language Assessment & ELT Materials Development

(two credits, semester seven)

ELT IV Pedagogical Techniques

(two credits, semester eight)

1

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

This initial chapter outlines the research problem and rationale for

the study together with its aims and objectives, the scope and the

significance of the paper. Particularly, it is in this chapter that six

research questions are identified to serve as guidelines for the whole

study. Finally, the chapter concludes with a sketch of the organization of

the paper to orientate the readers throughout the paper.

I. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as evaluated by Nunan

(1991) puts emphasis on learning to communicate through the interaction

between the teacher and students and among students themselves in the

target language. Students are required to create and develop the habit of

getting involved in the lesson. The language classroom now has become

more learner-centered. Besides, Harmer (2001, p.56), when discussing

learner-centered teaching, has put forward that teaching should make “the

learners’ needs and experience central to the educational process.” In

other words, the teacher no longer keeps the center position in class.

Instead, students are encouraged to actively take part in the lesson by

interacting with the teacher who uses eliciting techniques to facilitate this

involvement. As suggested by Darn (2008), eliciting is a preferable

method that helps promote student involvement in the lesson and develop

the learner-centered classroom. To be more specific, elicitation offers

learners an environment with opportunities to participate; as a result, it

increases student talking time and at the same time decreases teacher

talking time.

2

In Vietnam, CLT has been adopted for a long time. However, the

adoption of CLT in Vietnam has gained limited outcomes owing to the

dominance of the grammar-translation approach, especially in high

schools where the teacher plays the role of an expert who transfers his or

her knowledge to students (Rudder, 2000). This matter leads to the fact

that the majority of Vietnamese high school students appear rather

passive in English classrooms and they maintain this inactive learning

style up to university. Eliciting techniques are believed to make the

students become more active as they increase student talking time,

maintain students’ attention, draw on what students already know or

partly know, provide weaker students with opportunities to participate in

class and motivate students to learn (Doff, 1988; Ur, 1996).

Despite their importance, the exploitation of eliciting techniques in

language classroom has scarcely been researched so far, especially in the

context of Vietnam and particularly in ULIS – VNU. The only three

studies that the researcher could find are those by Pham (2006), Tran

(2007) and Chu (2009). While Pham (2006) investigated the use of

elicitation in teaching vocabulary to 11th form students in Hanoi, Tran

(2007) examined eliciting techniques used to teach speaking skill to grade

10 students in Hanoi. Most recently, Chu (2009) did research on the

teachers’ use of techniques to elicit grade 10 students’ talk. These studies

left gaps for the present research to continue exploring the teachers’ use

of eliciting techniques.

First, the first two studies focused on elicitation in lessons of only

one English language skill and one English language component at high

schools whereas the third one studied eliciting in lessons of all four skills

but still in the high school context. Besides, the subjects of the above

3

mentioned studies were high school teachers with a great amount of

teaching experience. Meanwhile, there have not been any studies

focusing on student-teachers, who are learning to become teachers and

needed to practice necessary techniques and skills of teachers. Therefore,

the researcher wanted to fill these gaps by expanding the scale of the

present research to the student-teachers in their teaching practicum at

university level. The study was entitled “The exploitation of eliciting

techniques by fourth-year students in their teaching practicum at

English Division I, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education,

University of Languages and International studies – Vietnam National

University.”

II. Aims and research questions of the study

The overall aim of this study was to explore how the fourth-year

students (the student-teachers) exploited eliciting techniques in teaching

the first-year students during their practicum at FELTE, ULIS – VNU. To

achieve this overall aim successfully, firstly, the researcher wanted to find

out the student-teachers’ perceptions of the necessity of eliciting

techniques in teaching because what teachers believe and think serves as

the basis for their classroom behavior and activities (Borg, 2003, pp. 81-

82). Whether the student-teachers thought eliciting techniques were

beneficial or not in teaching could influence the way they used these

techniques in the classroom. Secondly, the study aimed to investigate the

common eliciting techniques that these student-teachers employed in their

lessons during their practicum. Next, the study hoped to find out the

effectiveness of these techniques as perceived by the student-teachers and

the first-year students. After that, the researcher expected to figure out the

difficulties of using eliciting techniques that these student-teachers

4

encountered. Suggested solutions to such problems as reported by the

student-teachers themselves were also what the researcher aimed at.

The aims of the study could be summarized into the six following

research questions:

i. How necessary are eliciting techniques in language teaching

as perceived by the student-teachers?

ii. What eliciting techniques are most commonly used by the

student-teachers during their practicum?

iii. What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by

the student-teachers?

iv. What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by

the learners who are first-year students at FELTE, ULIS -

VNU?

v. What are the difficulties of using eliciting techniques as

reported by the student- teachers?

vi. What are the solutions to such problems as suggested by the

student-teachers?

III. Scope of the study

From 21st February to 1

st April 2011, 26 student-teachers from

FELTE, ULIS – VNU were allocated to conduct their teaching practicum

at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS – VNU. The researcher specifically

aimed at investigating the use of eliciting techniques among these 26

student-teachers during their six-week teaching practicum at different

first-year mainstream student groups at English Division I, FELTE. The

reason was that the researcher was one of these student-teachers;

therefore, it was easier for her to access the prospective participants. In

5

addition, the use of eliciting techniques was one of the teaching skills

assessed by university mentors.

IV. Significance of the study

Conducting this research, the researcher expected to identify the

student-teachers’ perceptions of the necessity of elicitation in language

teaching and the most common eliciting techniques student-teachers

tended to employ in their lessons during the teaching practicum.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of these techniques as perceived by both

the student-teachers and the first-year mainstream students, the

difficulties the student-teachers encountered when using these techniques

as well as solutions to such problems were also examined in this research.

Once completed, the research is hoped to serve as a reference for

those who want to have a clearer view of what happens during the

teaching practicum in general and of the use of eliciting techniques in

particular. Moreover, the findings could help the student-teachers

improve their eliciting techniques as well as classroom management

when becoming real teachers after graduation. In addition, the findings of

the paper could be considered a reference for ELT lecturers when they

want to make amendments to the course to help students use more

effective elicitation.

V. Methodology of the study

1. Data collection method

The researcher used both quantitative (questionnaires) and

qualitative (observations and interviews) methods to collect data for the

research. To be specific, two sets of questionnaires were distributed to 26

student-teachers and 189 first-year mainstream students who studied in

6

nine specific classes. In addition, nine student-teachers were asked for the

permission to be observed, videotaped and interviewed to get more in-

depth information for the study. Also, ten more student-teachers were

invited to clarify their answers in the questionnaires.

In terms of language use, except for the questionnaires for the

student-teachers, the questionnaires for first-year students and interviews

were in Vietnamese in order that the respondents were at the most

confident and comfortable status to express their opinions.

2. Data analysis method

The information collected from two sets of questionnaires,

observations and interviews was transcribed as the primary source of data

for the research. The general approach for data analysis was content

analysis (Grbich, 2007). Relevant sections were identified or underlined

during the evaluation of each piece of data. The contents were to be

sorted into categories based on the six research questions.

VI. Organization of the paper

The rest of the paper includes the following chapters:

Chapter 2 (Literature review) provides the theoretical background

of the study, including discussions of the key concepts and related

studies.

Chapter 3 (Methodology) describes the research setting,

participants, instruments of data collection as well as the procedure

employed to carry out data analysis.

Chapter 4 (Findings and discussion) presents, analyzes and

discusses the results that the researcher found out from the collected data

7

according to the six research questions. This chapter contains six smaller

parts, equivalent to give answers to the six research questions.

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) summarizes the answers to the six research

questions, several pedagogical recommendations concerning the research

topic, the limitations of the research as well as some suggestions for

further studies. Following this chapter are the References and

Appendices.

8

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

This second chapter sheds light on the literature of the study,

specifically the background theory and a number of studies related to the

research topic will be provided. To start with, a detailed presentation of

research background will be provided with the four key concepts,

including “learner-centered learning”, “classroom interaction”,

“teacher talk” and “eliciting techniques”. Finally, a brief review of the

related studies will reveal the research gaps and hence lays the concrete

foundation for this research paper.

I. Key concepts

1. Learner-centered learning and new roles of teachers and students

As suggested by Darn (2008), the employment of eliciting

techniques in the EFL classroom leads to the shift of the center role in the

classroom, i.e. students have now received more attention and become the

center of the classroom. Consequently, it is important to have a thorough

understanding of learner-centered learning and the new roles of the

teacher and students in this context.

1.1. Learner-centered learning

According to Cannon, Christine, Margaret and Tim (2000),

learner-centered learning is the approach which gives emphasis on

learners’ responsibility for their learning. In other words, learners’ greater

role of managing their own learning is more concerned. Nunan (2003,

cited in Chu, 2009) has suggested two ways of achieving learner-centered

learning: (i) providing opportunities for learners to decide what to learn,

9

how to learn and how to be evaluated; (ii) maximizing students’

performing time when minimizing that of the teacher. As being seen,

more freedom is given to learners but the lessons are still put under the

teacher’s management. As Belchamber (2007) has implied, more learner-

centered lessons do not mean they are unstructured. Accordingly, the new

roles of the teacher and learners in the classroom should be made clear.

1.2. New roles of the teacher and students

Harmer (2001) in his book has focused on learner-centered

teaching, in which teaching “makes the learners’ needs and experience

central to the educational process” (p.56). In other words, the center

position in class no longer belongs to the teacher but switches to the

students. Therefore, the new form of learning and teaching requires the

new roles of both the teacher and students, in which students actively get

involved in the lesson. The teacher’s roles have been clarified by Harmer

(2001) when he has stated that the teacher now performs multi-roles at

the same time such as a controller, an organizer, a prompter, an assessor,

a participant, a tutor, an observer, a resource, a performer and a teaching

aid. Also, in the light of learner-centered learning, students have to take

into consideration their responsibility for learning since “there are many

activities encouraging students to solve their own problems on their own”

(Harmer, 2001, p.56). They no longer play a passive role in class but

actively get involved in the lesson.

Understanding the new roles of the teacher and students, Rogers,

the coordinator for Business Courses at the British Council, Bangkok in

the 2002-Thai-TESOL paper has suggested that eliciting information (or

elicitation) from students plays an important role as one of the main

10

features of learner-centered learning. Since the teacher takes advantage of

eliciting students’ talk, students in turn gain more opportunities to talk in

class, thus actively participating in the learning process.

2. Classroom interaction

In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistic, interaction refers to “the way in which a language is used by

interlocutors” (Richard, 2006, p.263) who are teachers and students in

classroom communication.

In the teaching and learning condition, classroom interaction

defined by Brown (2001) is the action which is performed by the teacher

and learners during instruction, such as exchanging ideas or information,

and sharing feelings or experience. Based on the participants’

involvement in the mentioned communication, classroom interaction falls

into three types, namely learner-content, learner-learner and learner-

instructor interaction (Moore, 1989). According to the author on

http://www.ajde.com/Contents/vol3_2.htm, learner-content interaction is

the “interaction between the learner and the content or subject of study”.

The second type is conceptualized as “the interaction between one

learner and the other learners, alone or in groups, with or without the

real-time presence of the instructor.” The last type, learner-instructor

interaction, concerns the interaction between learners and the teacher

(Moore, 1989).

Within the scope of this study, the third aspect of classroom

interaction, which is learner-instructor, or in other words, learner-teacher

interaction, was focused on.

11

In order to create an exchanging process, eliciting students’

expressions and responses is an important aspect of teacher-student

interaction. By various verbal and nonverbal clues, the teacher can

stimulate students to talk in the classroom, thus inspiring students to share

their ideas and information (Brown, 2001).

From the explanation above, it can be concluded that the teacher-

student interaction plays an important role, without which the teaching-

learning process cannot exist. Also, the message transmission and

interpersonal relationship can be built up between the teacher and

students, leading to the increase in students’ achievement of the target

language.

3. Teacher talk

Several interpretations of the concept “teacher talk” have been

presented in different studies within the field of language teaching and

learning, which result in the immensity of definitions. The term has been

widely discussed in ESL literature. Researchers in the field have reached

an agreement that teacher talk is one kind of language being used by the

teacher in the classroom setting as opposed to their use of language in

other settings (at home, at the store, at the doctor’s office, etc.)

In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics, Richards (1992, p.471) defines the term as the “variety of

language sometimes used by teachers when they are in process of

teaching.” According to this author, teachers are able to “simplify their

speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk and other

simplified styles of speech” in order to make use of the target language

when communicating with learners.

12

As one of the researchers who have interest in this field, Ellis

(1985, cited in Xiao, 2006, p.5) has viewed teacher talk as “the language

that the teachers use when addressing L2 learners in classroom.”

Standing on this point of view, Ellis has continued commenting that the

used language of the teacher in class “is treated as a register, with its own

specific formal and linguistics properties” (Ellis, 1985, cited in Xiao,

2006, p.5). In 1994, Ellis revised and developed his definition of teacher

talk. In his opinion, teacher talk is the process through which “teachers

address classroom language learners differently from the way they

address other kinds of classroom learners. They make adjustments to

both language form and language function in order to facilitate

communication” (Ellis, 1994, p.726).

Teacher talk is regarded as “a special simplified code” (Xiao, 2006,

p.13) with the formal feature and the functional feature. The former one is

concerned with the form of teacher talk, such as the speed, pause,

repetition and modifications while the later feature refers to the quality

and quantity of teacher talk, the questions the teacher use, the

interactional modifications and the teacher’s feedback (Xiao, 2006).

Regarding the feature of the teacher talk language, a great number

of arguments about teacher talk quantity (also known as teacher talking

time or teacher talk time) have been raised. Following the trend towards

more learner-centered teaching, Nunan (1991, p.198) has stated that

research “shows that teachers need to pay attention to the amount and

type of talking they do, and to evaluate its effectiveness in the light of

their pedagogical objectives.”

13

Other researchers have found out that the amount of teacher talk is

of about 70 percent of the total talk in a lesson, which means most of the

class talking time is allocated for the teacher to perform (Cook, 2000;

Legarreta, 1977; Chaudron, 1988; Zhao Xiaohong,1998; cited in Xiao,

2006). In other words, teacher talk dominates the class, thus restricting

student talking time and giving limited opportunities for students to raise

their voice and develop their language ability. As a result, maximizing

student talking quantity together with minimizing that of the teacher has

been suggested as a solution to the problem of teacher talk overuse (Zhao

Xiaohong, 1998; Zhou Xing and Zhou Yun, 2002;cited in Xiao, 2006).

As suggested by Darn (2008), elicitation is a preferable technique

that helps develop the learner-centered classroom. To be more specific,

elicitation offers learners an environment with opportunities to

participate; as a result, it increases student talking time and at the same

time decreases teacher talking time. This concept is studied more

carefully as the next key term of the research.

4. Eliciting techniques

4.1. Definition

The term “eliciting” hardly has any specific definition in the

literature, so the nature of this term can be seen in the light of the verb “to

elicit”. As stated in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “to elicit”

is “to get information or reaction from somebody, often with difficulty”

(7th edition, p.474). Afterwards, “eliciting techniques” are various ways

people choose to use in order to provoke ideas from others.

14

According to Darn (2008), “eliciting” is the term referring to a

range of techniques teachers use to draw out answers and responses from

their students and to “get students provide information rather than giving

it to them”. Sharing the same view but to a broader extent, Dictionary of

Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics defines “elicitation” as

techniques or procedures used by teachers to help students “actively

produce speech or writing” (Richards et al., 2002, p.176). In other words,

eliciting techniques are considered effective tools that teachers should

make use of in order to stimulate and get their students to raise their voice

in class. Therefore, elicitation can be applied in any activity in a lesson,

such as teaching vocabulary or grammar, getting students to brainstorm

for ideas, etc. There is no special time for elicitation to occur because it

can be used whenever needed.

As suggested by Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010), elicitation is

mainly done by asking questions merely or asking questions combining

with some other tools.

4.2. Types of eliciting techniques

Although different authors have various view points about types of

eliciting techniques, they share the common belief that eliciting is not just

asking “What does this or that mean?” but to draw out to what extent

students know about the target knowledge. In order to fulfill that purpose,

eliciting, as in Doff’s (1988, cited in To et al., 2010) idea, is mainly

carried out by the teacher asking questions or asking questions combined

with other tools including pictures, games or activities, texts or dialogues

and nonverbal language.

15

Asking questions

Asking questions combined with using pictures

Asking questions combined with using games or activities

Asking questions combined with using texts and dialogues

Asking questions combined with using nonverbal language

Table 1. Types of eliciting techniques according to Doff (1988, cited in To et al.,

2010, p.12)

A. Asking questions

Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12) claimed that “eliciting

can take place at any stage of the lesson and is mainly done by asking

questions,” which means that asking questions is the leading technique to

elicit ideas and responses from students. As acknowledged by Darn

(2008), asking questions is not only the natural feature of communication

but also one of the most important tools teachers have at their disposal. In

the light of this perception, questioning is essential for the way teachers

manage the class, engage students in the lesson, encourage participation

as well as increase students’ understanding. Furthermore, according to

Darn (2008), asking questions is considered as an art and science with

some rules teachers should take into account, including the various types

and the appropriate quantity of questions should be raised in a lesson.

While an estimation of 300-400 questions per day should be asked by

teachers, their quality and value varies over different and specific

situations (Darn, 2008).

16

Regarding types of questions to elicit, there are numerous ways of

classification. This section of the study would introduce the most

common systems of question classification according to four different

criteria covering four aspects: grammatical form, communicative value,

cognitive level and content orientation (Wei Liu, 2005, p.16). However,

“the dimension of the content-oriented question has long been ignored in

questioning study” (Wei, 2005, p.18). As a result, this criterion of

questioning system will be discussed in another study.

A.1. Classification of questions by grammatical form

With the purpose that students can give the shortest possible

correct and natural answers, Doff (1988), Stevick (1988), Hakansson and

Lindberg (1988, cited in Ellis 1994, p.588) and Cross (1991) share the

same opinion that questions are grammatically categorized into three

types: i) yes/no questions or nexus questions which expect affirmation or

negation; ii) “or” or alternative questions which require students to reply

by merely choosing one of two options supplied by the questions; iii) wh-

or information questions which want students to give responses by

coming up with some information that is not contained in the question

itself.

i. Yes/no question: This is the type of questioning which expects

the answer to be either “yes” or “no”. It helps teachers check

students’ comprehension at any point related to the lesson. Doff

(1988, p.23) has emphasized that yes/ no questions are “often

the easiest questions to answer” as “they do not require students

to produce new language.” This is the reason why this type of

17

questioning cannot help much in eliciting student talk but is still

used in the classroom for certain purposes.

ii. “or” question: This type is also called alternative questions.

The raised questions contain two options and require the

answerer to select one option among the available ones. With

this type of questioning, teachers cannot only check students’

careful thinking for the right answer but also motivate students

to review their knowledge by justifying their choice.

Consequently, asking alternative questions is an effective

instrument to call for students’ responses.

iii. Wh- question: The third type of question normally begins with

what, where, when, which, why, how in order to get specific

information, thus forcing students to think, synthesize and

understand their existing knowledge as well as the new

knowledge.

A.2. Classification of questions by communicative value

In class, teachers’ questions play various roles. They can activate

the teacher-learner interaction and ensure that all students participate in

learning. Classroom questions can fall into two main types as in the

following figure.

18

First, with the aim of supporting classroom management,

classroom procedures and routines, teachers raise procedural questions,

which are also termed “social questions” (Barnes, 1969; 1976, cited in

Ellis, 1994, p.587), or “instruction questions” (Wang, 2001, cited in Wei,

2005, p.17). In other words, the main functions of this questioning type

are directing, propelling and managing classroom activities. Besides,

Wang (2001, cited in Wei, 2005) added that these questions could also

serve the functions of developing students’ pronunciation, intonation,

sense of language and the use of language that students can imitate in the

real English use. For example, “Is everything clear? Any problems? Can

you understand? Can you read this or that?”

Second, the fact that teachers have already known the answers of

such questions or not divides the questioning types into two subtypes,

including “display questions” and “referential questions”.

Figure 1: Question classification by the communicative value

19

i. “Display questions” or “pseudo questions” (Tsui, 2001), or

“factual questions” (Borg et al., 1970, cited in Nunan, 1991), or

“known-information questions” (Allright & Beiley, 1991) are

those used to help teachers test students’ knowledge and

understanding while teachers have already known the answers.

As a result, display questions are form-oriented or known-

information-based (Wei, 2005, p.17). “Who is the main

character?” can be taken as an example. These questions are

not only easy for students as a number of students’ answers are

available in the texts but also unproblematic for teachers to

make and check because they have already known the answers.

However, the mere use of this questioning type throughout the

lesson may make the lesson boring or less active.

ii. In contrast, “referential questions” encourage authentic

language production as they are questions used in real

communication (Doff, 1988). The answers have not been

known by both teachers and students, which increases teachers’

interest in hearing students’ responses. Therefore, “referential

questions” can be called “meaning driven” as stated in Wei

(2005, p.17). Referential questions are able to elicit students’

talk longer, or in other words, increase the amount of stalk

because they require more thoughtful responses. However, they

may discourage less-competent students or weaker students who

may be put into inactive situations without knowing how or

what to answer teachers’ questions.

A.3. Classification of questions by cognitive level

20

According to Darn (2008), a number of typologies and taxonomies

of questions have been discovered so far. Among them Benjamin

Bloom’s (1965, cited in Brown, 1994) taxonomy identified six types of

questioning that help develop and test thinking skills. They are ranked

from the lower to the higher level of thinking as follows:

i. Knowledge questions: ask students to remember or recognize

information that is in the textbook or was told by the teacher.

Students’ task at this level is to remember facts, observations,

definitions or any kind of knowledge they have learnt.

ii. Comprehension questions: ask students to interpret, explain,

rephrase or describe the information they want to raise in their

own words.

iii. Application questions: ask students to explain other related

events to solve a problem or speculate about broader causes or

issues.

iv. Analysis questions: ask students to look at individual parts of

the situations, together with the provided information to draw

conclusions. Questions at this level require students to involve

through three kinds of cognitive process:

Identifying the motives, reasons or causes for specific

occurrence.

Considering and analyzing available information in order

to draw a conclusion or generalization basing on this

information.

Analyzing a conclusion or generalization to find

evidences to support or refuse it.

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v. Synthesis questions: ask students to use their knowledge to

create new ideas by combining or restructuring ideas.

Specifically, students’ tasks at this level of thinking are:

Producing original communication

Making prediction

Solving problems

vi. Evaluation questions: ask students to make judgment or

support an idea or opinion.

Regarding the context of language teaching and learning, Bloom

(1965, cited in Darn, 2008) has concluded that “the major purpose in

constructing taxonomy of educational objectives is to facilitate

communication”, which means that the main goal of language teaching is

to put students in real communication.

B. Asking questions combined with using pictures

Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12) gives his support for this

technique as one of the easiest way to elicit new vocabulary or structure:

The teacher uses pictures to set the scene and asks questions about what they

[students] see, why they think it happens, what they think will happen next

and how they feel or what they think about it.

By using pictures from students’ textbook or from any

supplementary sources, teachers can fully motivate students by catching

their attention as well as stimulating their curiosity, imagination, guessing

and desire to present the target language items.

22

This picture can serve as an

example. The picture is accompanied by a

reading text and could be used to get

students’ thinking about the theme of the

text before reading it. Furthermore, the

teacher can use the same picture to pre-

teach or revise vocabulary necessary for the reading text; consequently,

students will clearly and easily understand the words.

Teacher (T): Who are these people?

Student (S): Swimmers.

T: What are they doing?

S: They're diving into the swimming pool.

T: What are they wearing?

S: Bathing caps, goggles and swimming costumes.

C. Asking questions combined with using games or activities

In the past, there used to be a common conception that in-class

learning meant seriousness and formality. Nonetheless, Lee (1995, p.35)

has stated that it is possible to learn a language and enjoy itself at the

same time. Wright, Betteridge and Bucky (1984, p.1) have also

mentioned that:

...language learning is hard work... Effort is required at every moment and

must be maintained over a long period of time. Games help encourage many

learners to sustain their interest and work.

23

Accordingly, games and activities are clearly seen as effective

tools that help teachers create specific context in which the language is

useful and meaningful. Moreover, participating as parts of the activities,

students must, firstly, understand what others are saying or doing and,

secondly, raise their voice in order to express their point of view or give

information (Wright et al., 1984, p.1). Concerning the matter of games

and activities’ benefit, Ersoz (2000) in the Internet TESOL Journal has

emphasized that if games and activities are well-chosen and appropriately

used, “they can give students a break and at the same time allow students

to practice language skills in a highly amusing and motivating way.”

D. Asking questions combined with using texts and dialogues

Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.13) has suggested that:

...teacher also may consider using texts and dialogues to guide students to

respond to the language use and the context of use presented in those texts and

dialogues.

A careful selection of texts and dialogues plays an important role in

providing students with illustrative language samples, basing on which

students can produce ones of their own after studying the model.

Predominantly, the exploitation of authentic texts and dialogues in

language classrooms can bridge the gap between in-class knowledge and

students’ “capacities to participate in real world events” (Wilkins, 1976,

p.79, cited in Guariento & Morley, 2001, p.347).

E. Asking questions combined with using nonverbal language

As mentioned by Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.13),

miming, gestures, facial expression, body language, etc. or nonverbal

24

language, in short, are what teachers have at their disposal to motivate

students’ responses. These nonverbal language tools can be alternated or

used together with other tools to change the class atmosphere and make

students attentive in class. By making use of this technique, teachers can

partly provoke students’ curiosity, attention, and then utter the expected

language items.

4.3. Benefits of using eliciting techniques

Like any other tools of communication, questioning as an eliciting

technique is used for specific purposes. When considering questioning

and answering as parts of the normal human use of language, Sesnan

(2001) has emphasized that questioning can be used to find out what

people do not know or to clarify what is still unclear, and to help the

person who is questioned understand something better or to prompt him

or her to remember something.

In the language teaching context, eliciting is praised as an effective

technique, from which both teachers and students as the center of the

class can benefit. It is described as “a way to improve pupils’ use of

language” (Sesnan, 2001, p.178)

To begin with, eliciting is the tool used to create direct interaction

between teachers and students. Corey (1940, cited in Hargie, et al, 1981,

p.66) has considered teachers’ eliciting as “a fundamental and important

mean” of classroom interaction. This benefit has been proved by Ur

(2000, p.299) when the author has affirmed that elicitation serves several

purposes such as giving opportunities for students to present their ideas,

testing their understanding or checking their knowledge and skills,

engaging them in the lesson, getting them to review and practice pervious

25

learnt contents. This point agrees with Kissock and Iyortsuun’s (1982)

view that it is essential for teachers to realize the importance and impact

of questioning on communication and learning in the classroom in order

to improve the use of questions by both teachers and students.

Secondly, elicitation helps maximize student talking time and at

the same time minimize teacher talking time. In class, if students

respond to most of the questions given by teachers in almost every stage

of the lesson, they undoubtedly speak more than they do if they just listen

to teachers’ explanation. As a consequence, questioning raised in

appropriate time can keep teacher talking time to minimum while

maximizing students’ contribution together with their talking time.

Thirdly, eliciting techniques involve the class by keeping students

alert, drawing their attention as well as making them think. Doff (1988)

has diagnosed the problem that in the presentation stage, it is likely that

the teacher will talk most of the time in order to provide as much

knowledge as possible while students’ main task is listening to the

teacher’s instruction. As a consequence, even the best students can find

their minds wandering occasionally in class. If the teacher can activate

students’ mind and call their attention back by asking them to contribute

to this stage of the lesson, there is a far less chance that distracting factors

can drift into students’ minds. This leads to the fact that students’ logical,

reflective or imaginative thinking will be stimulated by answering

teachers’ questions throughout the lesson.

Doff (1988, p.161) has believed that “eliciting encourages

students to draw on what they already know or partly know”, which

makes up for the fourth benefit of elicitation. By starting with easy

26

questions and working towards more difficult ones, teachers will be able

to boost students answering and realize the limits of students’ knowledge

once their answers start to become incomplete or wrong. Henceforth,

elicitation creates two influences on teachers: (1) teachers know how to

adapt the presentation to the level of the students, and (2) teachers can

mainly spend lesson time on the most important points (Ur, 1996).

Therefore, elicitation is clearly seen as a testing tool that teachers can use

to measure the level of the students. In addition, owing to the teacher’s

tendency to remind students of the old knowledge, students have chance

to scan through their knowledge system and check what they have or

partly have in their minds while attempting to answer the teacher’s

questions. Through strategic questioning, the teacher can assess the

current state of students’ thinking in order to identify not only what

students have known but also their gaps and misconceptions of the target

knowledge.

In addition, eliciting shows its great benefit when providing

weaker students with opportunities to participate in class. Generally

speaking, students of a class are of different levels. The weaker tend to be

shier and more passive in the class than the stronger. As stated by Ur

(1996), appropriate eliciting may engage students actively in the lesson

since it challenges students’ thinking and poses problems for them to

consider, and from this time forth, they will become interested in the

lesson sooner or later. Looking at this point similarly, Doff (1988, p.161)

has concluded that eliciting “is a useful technique for mixed ability

classes or those of different learning background.” Additionally, by

actively sharing knowledge in full view of the whole class, students,

especially those who are usually less dynamic to contribute in the lesson,

can learn much from the others.

27

Last but not least, it is taken for granted that eliciting techniques

may create motivation among students. According to Ur (1996), when

trying to answer the eliciting questions from the teacher, students

immediately work out or at least they may guess the answers. Students

will feel pleased if their answers or guesses are correct. If not, they will

self-realize that they need to study more on the answers and become more

receptive. In other words, the result of this procedure is that students get

less dependent on the teacher’s clues for the questions and then increase

their motivation as well as involvement in learning a new language.

In short, eliciting technique is beneficial for both teachers and

students. There are a great number of purposes for teachers to use

elicitation; as a result, teachers should take every chance when possible in

order to apply appropriate types and forms of elicitation in the language

teaching classroom.

4.4. Drawbacks of using eliciting techniques

Congruent with all benefits above, there still exist certain

limitations of using elicitation in language teaching and learning. In spite

of the strong approval of the use of elicitation in language teaching, Doff

(1988, p.161) has admitted that “eliciting takes much more time

comparing with straightforward presentation of new knowledge.” This

happens because according to the author, teachers have to spend time and

effort not only preparing materials but also restructuring the lesson with

the aim of indirectly presenting knowledge in the way that students can

actively raise their voice and participate in the lesson. Another reason is

that there is a conflict between the limitation of the lesson duration and

28

the acquisition of quality (Chu, 2009). This factor can discourage teachers

from using eliciting techniques in the language classroom.

Gower et al. (1995, cited in Pham, 2006) shares the same concern

mentioned above but from a different angle. They pointed out the

following hindrances of elicitation in the classroom.

First, eliciting technique can impose significant demands on

teachers. Obviously, teachers must be at a certain professional level to be

able to listen to students’ responses and react flexibly and immediately

together with using a combination of other skills at the same time such as

keeping eye contact with students, using postures and gestures and using

students’ names and attention spread. For instance, students may know

more than teachers think, but they do not raise their voice. There can be a

danger that teachers will underestimate these students’ knowledge

because they know but do not utter or they cannot explain themselves

well.

Second, eliciting does not always mean more student talking time,

especially when dealing with complicated or general knowledge. In these

cases, eliciting through guiding questions takes much longer time than

just providing students with the answers directly.

Third, eliciting can become automatic, resulting in students’

boredom because of repetition. If teachers exploit eliciting techniques

with all words, phrases, or many questions but just in the same way,

students will soon start losing interest in the lesson.

In a few words, it is important that teachers and students bear in

mind those above-discussed drawbacks in order to maximize the benefits

29

brought about by exploiting eliciting techniques in the language

classroom.

II. Related studies

1. Review of related studies on elicitation

According to Darn (2008), “eliciting is a powerful diagnostic tool”

for teachers to provide information and knowledge for their students.

Therefore, the subject of elicitation has been discussed through quite a

few studies in various disciplines where elicitation is used.

The remarkable example of these early studies is “Eliciting

spontaneous speech in bilingual students: Methods and techniques” by

Cornejo, Ricardo and Najar (1983). In this study, the three researchers

introduced the traditional techniques to elicit students’ language and then

recommended the use of interviews as an effective technique to elicit

students’ talk. Also, some other innovation techniques of the two

categories, i.e. unstructured and structured techniques, were employed in

order to foster students’ spontaneous conversations. Although the study

provided valuable background theory of elicitation, the author of this

current paper identified two perceivable limitations. First, needless to say,

the study was not conducted in Vietnamese language teaching and

learning context. Secondly, the study aimed at bilingual students.

Obviously, the culture and the teaching and learning condition in classes

for bilingual students are totally different from those of Vietnamese

students.

Additionally, it is noteworthy that many books on language

teaching and learning have been published, such as Ur (1996), Michael

30

(2002), Cross (1991), etc. Unfortunately, elicitation is just paid little

attention to as a small technique in language teaching. This apparently

offers a gap for the researcher to conduct a study in a more

comprehensive way with Vietnamese participants.

In the context of Vietnam, especially at ULIS – VNU, there have

been only three studies by Pham (2006), Tran (2007) and Chu (2009)

touching this issue.

Pham (2006) investigated the use of elicitation in teaching

vocabulary to 11th form students in Hanoi. By conducting the study, the

researcher attempted to elaborate three aspects, namely, the situation of

vocabulary teaching and learning at high schools in Hanoi, the

application of eliciting techniques to teach vocabulary for the mentioned

subjects and the pedagogical recommendations to enhance the use of

elicitation in teaching vocabulary.

In 2007, Tran examined eliciting techniques used to teach speaking

skill to grade 10 students in Hanoi. She put much effort in investigating

the real situation of teachers’ exploitation of elicitation to teach grade 10

students in FLSS. Not only hindrances but also suggested

recommendations for using eliciting were also diagnosed, followed by

pedagogical adjustments.

It is undeniable that these two studies’ results had a significant

contribution to the field of “Teaching the What” and “Teaching the How”

(cited in To etal., 2010); however, there are some limitations that should

be addressed. Firstly, the former study focused only on teaching

vocabulary; therefore, it could not represent the employment of eliciting

techniques in the other two core English language components including

31

grammar and pronunciation. Furthermore, three macro skills, namely

listening, reading and writing, were not covered since only speaking skill

was the spotlight in the latter study.

Most recently, Chu (2009) did a research on “Techniques teachers

use to elicit grade10 students’ talk in upper secondary schools in Hanoi.”

In this research, the identification of the most common eliciting

techniques, the evaluation of their effectiveness, the difficulties when

employing elicitation as well as suggested solutions were fully examined.

Compared with the two previous studies, the researcher investigated the

general employment of elicitation instead of just mentioning one specific

language skill or language component like in the two previous ones.

It can be seen that the above mentioned studies have left gaps for

the present research to continue exploring the use of eliciting techniques.

The two first studies focused on elicitation in lessons of only one English

language skill and language component at high schools whereas the third

one studied eliciting in lessons of all four skills but still in high school

context. None of the studies reached the context of language teaching and

learning at university level. Moreover, the subjects of the above studies

were high school teachers who have had lots of teaching experience while

no studies focused on student-teachers, who are learning to become

teachers and need to practice necessary techniques and skills of teachers.

2. Review of related studies on elicitation in practicum

Teaching practicum is an important stage in any teaching programs

since it provides final-year students with an opportunity to get firsthand

experience in their teaching career. Acknowledging the importance of the

teaching practicum, a great number of studies have been conducted to

32

explore the influences of this teaching practice on student-teachers’

teaching efficiency as well as student-teachers’ concerns during their

practicum. Some of these studies are Kyriacou and Stephen (1999, cited

in Vo, 2009) ; Sue and Christina (2000), and Doug, Helenrose and

Arturo (2007). Nevertheless, none of them has totally focused on how

student-teachers as novice teachers have exploited eliciting techniques in

the classroom as well as their effectiveness, the difficulties student-

teachers have encountered when using these useful techniques.

In conclusion, these listed gaps have intensified the significance of

the current study which aimed at the techniques student-teachers had

employed to elicit their students’ opinions and responses during their

teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS – VNU.

Summary

The theoretical background for the whole paper together with the

careful elaboration on the key concepts: “learner-centered learning”,

“classroom interaction” “teacher talk” and “eliciting techniques” has

been presented in this chapter. Moreover, the review of a number of

related studies in this chapter has revealed the research gaps that the

study can help fill in.

33

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

The literature on the research topic is briefly reviewed in the

previous chapter as the theoretical basis for the whole study. Turning to

this chapter, the methodology employed to answer the research questions

is described in detail. The setting and the participants, the instruments

and the procedure of data collection and analysis are justified in this

chapter.

I. Research setting

ULIS – VNU is one of the biggest providers of English teachers.

There are two types of EFL teacher education programs at ULIS which

are Fast-track program and Mainstream program. In the final year of their

course, both fast-track and mainstream students are required to do their

teaching practicum for six weeks. During this period, mainstream

students are allocated to different high schools in Hanoi and some other

provinces. For the last two years, fast-track students, however, have been

allocated to conduct their teaching practicum at English Division I,

FELTE, ULIS. During the practicum, the mentors are expected to guide

the student-teachers towards effective English language teaching and

classroom management. For the academic year 2010 – 2011, the teaching

practicum took place from 21st February to 1

st April 2011.

Since the study examined the eliciting techniques in the real

classroom settings, both the fourth-year students, i.e. the student-teachers,

and the first-year mainstream students who were learners in different

classes where these student-teachers taught were involved as participants.

34

The following part brings a clearer description of the two groups of

participants.

II. Participants

1. The student-teachers

The first group of participants of this study consisted of 26 fast-

track student-teachers who were allocated to conduct their practicum at

different first-year groups at English Division I, FELTE. The reason for

choosing these participants was that the researcher was also a fast-track

student who was a classmate and did the teaching practicum with the

participants. This helped her develop and maintain good rapport with the

participants. This was very important because when the participants knew

the researcher, they were more likely to be open, thus providing useful

information for the study (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992).

Before participating in the teaching practicum, these students had

finished four courses of English Language Teaching Methodology,

namely ELT I (An introduction to language teaching methods), ELT II

(ESL/EFL classroom techniques and practice), ELT III (Language

Assessment and ELT Materials Development) and ELT IV (Pedagogical

Techniques). Particularly in ELT II, they were equipped with classroom

management skills including eliciting techniques. Moreover, during the

second and fourth ELT courses, they participated in the activity called

Micro-teaching, in which they acted as real teachers delivering lessons to

their classmates. Besides, they took part in the Tutoring Program in

which they themselves created the curriculum, designed Speaking,

Listening and Reading lessons and conducted those lessons to first-year

and second-year mainstream students. To some extent, they had

35

experienced tutoring college students in an academic classroom setting.

Additionally, these students were highly recommended to choose FELTE,

ULIS- VNU freshmen as their target students during the practicum. As a

result, the fourth-year fast-track students of the academic year 2010-2011

could easily bring vivid data to the study.

During the teaching practicum, these students were divided into

nine different groups, and each group was under the supervision of one

mentor who is a teacher of English Division I – FELTE. In total, there

were nine mentors who would guide, observe and evaluate 26 student-

teachers’ performances in six weeks. Also, each group was in charge of

from one to four skills among Pronunciation, Speaking, Listening,

Writing and Reading at several first-year groups. This matter of skill and

class variety originated from the fact that from this year – 2011 – all

mentors were required to maximize the opportunities in which student-

teachers could perform in real classroom settings. However, there was

one teacher of English Division I who was in charge of only one subject

(Pronunciation); consequently, this mentor’s group of two student-

teachers would teach only one subject while eight other groups consisting

of three student-teachers each were allocated to teach from two to four

skills depending on what their mentors taught.

Under the distribution of the English Division I at FELTE, these

student-teachers spent their first week observing all their mentors’ lessons

in class. 26 student-teachers worked with several classes for the next five

weeks and practiced teaching specific skills for at least three periods of

50 minutes and two periods of 100 minutes in total. The mentor who had

previously worked with these specific classes gave evaluation of the

student-teachers’ performance during the teaching session.

36

The allocation of student-teachers in different groups is illustrated

in the following table.

Number of

groups

Number of members

per student-teacher

group

Skill allocation

1 2 Pronunciation

8 3

From three to four skills

among Pronunciation,

Speaking, Listening,

Reading and Writing

Table 2.Student-teacher group allocation in 2011 at English Division I, FELTE,

ULIS - VNU

2. The first-year mainstream students

Although the study mainly focused on the student-teachers’ using

eliciting techniques, the first-year mainstream students played a very

important role as the direct beneficiaries, observers and evaluators of the

effectiveness of these student-teachers’ eliciting techniques. They were

freshmen in nine different groups in which nine chosen student-teachers

delivered their lessons. (The reason for the sampling method is explained

in the next part). Consequently, these students helped the researcher

thoroughly understand the context as well as their evaluation by

completing the questionnaires.

First-year mainstream students at FELTE, who participated in this

study, came from two different programs, namely ELT Program and

Double-major Program. An important difference between the two

37

programs is the content of Speaking and Writing. In these two subjects of

the Double-major Program, the teachers focused on helping students deal

with business situations while ELT program spotlighted the general

knowledge the first-year students could achieve. The table below

describes in detail the existing difference.

ELT program Double-major Program

Course objectives

Speaking

By the end of the second

semester, first-year students’

ability must meet B1 level.

By the end of the second

semester, first-year students’

ability must meet B1 level.

Double-major students should

acquire adequate knowledge

and skills to participate in

familiar business situations.

Writing

Students are required to be

familiar with and conduct free

writing essays belonging to

different genres of writing, i.e.

descriptions, narration,

summary, report, etc. on a range

of familiar subjects and topics.

Students are required to be

familiar with a variety of

business-related matters and

write pieces of business

correspondence, i.e. business

letters, internal company

communication, business

reports or proposals, etc.

Materials

38

Speaking

1. Kay, S., Jones, V. & Kerr, P.

(2002). Inside out - Pre-

Intermediate (Student's

Book). Oxford: Macmillan

Education.

2. Lecturers and tutors in

Division 1, ULIS, VNU

(compiled and edited).

Speaking and pronunciation

focus. Hanoi: VNU Press,

2006.

1. Cotton, D., David, F. &

Kent, S. (2005). Market –

Leader (Pre-intermediate

New Edition) (Student's

Book). Pearson Education

Limited.

2. Mascull, B. (2002). Business

Vocabulary in Use.

Cambridge University Press.

Writing

Lecturers and tutors in Division

1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and

edited). Writing Focus. VNU

Press, 2009.

Barnard R. & Meehan A.

(2005). Writing for the real

world 2, An introduction to

business writing. Oxford

University Press.

Lecturers and tutors in Division

1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and

edited) (2009). Writing Focus.

VNU Press.

Listening Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and

edited). Listening Focus. VNU Press, 2006.

Reading Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and

edited). (2009). Reading Focus. VNU Press.

Table 3.The differences between ELT Program and Double-major Program for

first-year students at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS - VNU (cited from Course

Outline for ELT Program and Course Outline for Double-major Program /

Semester 2 / 2010 - 2011)

39

Another difference between the two programs is that first-year

students of Double-major Program had already learnt Pronunciation

subject in semester 1 while this subject was delivered to students of ELT

Program in semester 2. As studied, the objectives as well as the material

used in this subject were the same for two programs; consequently, the

researcher could just elaborate the eliciting techniques in Pronunciation

classes of semester 2.

III. Sampling method

Due to the time allocation of the whole Faculty, most of the

speaking lessons took place at the same time and so did listening, reading,

writing and pronunciation lessons. As a result, the researcher firstly

decided that all of the 26 student-teachers were invited to answer the

questionnaires. Secondly, nine student-teachers being chosen randomly

as representatives from nine student-teacher groups were invited to take

part in the study to a deeper extent with observations and interviews

being the data collection instruments.

Regarding the first-year students, the researcher chose only nine

classes in which nine selected student-teachers performed most of their

teaching time because of two reasons. Firstly, 26 student-teachers were

divided into nine different groups, which led to the fact that there were at

least three student-teachers teaching alternately in one specific first-year

class during five weeks. Therefore, it would become a burden if the first-

year students were asked to give their evaluation of all three student-

teachers’ performances with three sets of questionnaire in total. That

might discourage them from actively participating in the research.

Secondly, one selected student-teacher had chance to perform at least

40

twice in the class that she worked with most of the time; thus, the first-

year students could evaluate their student-teachers’ performance over a

period of time which brought objective quality assessment for the

research. There were five classes of the Double-major Program and four

classes of the ELT Program were invited to answer the questionnaires.

The table below is the summary of the student-teacher and the first-

year student selection.

Student-teachers

Total number Questionnaire Observations and

Interviews

Male Female 26 9

0 26

First-year students

Total number of classes Number of classes of

Double-major program

Number of classes of

ELT program

9/15 5/9 4/9

Table 4. Summary of the student-teacher and the first-year student selection

IV. Data collection instruments

To collect sufficiently reliable and valid data for the study, three

data collection instruments, namely questionnaires, classroom

observations and interviews, were fully employed.

1. Questionnaires

1.1. Reasons for choosing questionnaires

As defined by Brown (2001), questionnaires are:

41

...any written instruments that present respondents with a series of questions or

statements to which they are to react either by writing out their answers or

selecting from among existing answers (p.6).

The questionnaire was believed to be the preferable instrument for

this research because of the three reasons. First and foremost, compared

to individual interviews, using questionnaire was economical and

practical since questionnaires could collect data from a large group of

participants (Mackey & Gass, 2005). This study involved 26 student-

teachers and nine first-year classes of 189 students in total. Besides, since

one of the aims of the study was to identify and evaluate the effectiveness

of the student-teachers’ elicitation, questionnaires were safe “assurances

of anonymity” (Brown, 2001, p.77) that helped the researcher deal with

sensitive issues as well as get students’ confidential opinions on the asked

issues. Last but not least, questionnaire administration could be in many

ways such as email with a soft-copy or personally with a hardcopy, which

was convenient for the researcher to send the questionnaires to the

participants. In short, thanks to great advantages of the questionnaire, the

researcher decided to use questionnaires to collect data for this study.

1.2. Questionnaire format and content

Two sets of questionnaires were utilized: one for 26 student-

teachers and another for the first-year mainstream students with whom

nine chosen student-teachers spent most of their teaching time (the two

sets of questionnaires are available in the Appendix 1 and 2).

Regarding the content of the questionnaire for the student-teachers,

it began with a brief overview of the research title, the purpose of

conducting the questionnaire and a desire for cooperation from

42

respondents in order to get sincere opinions and objective assessment.

Then, general information about groups and skills that the student-

teachers were assigned to teach during their practicum was required. The

main questions were arranged in two separate sections including

“Eliciting techniques” and “Asking questions in elicitation”. A brief

introduction and concise explanation of the key term used in the

questionnaire namely “eliciting” was given as guidance for the

informants through the first section. The second section focused on

“asking questions in elicitation” because asking questions was the

technique to elicit ideas and response from students (Doff, 1988, cited in

To et al., 2010). As a result, the researcher expected to deeply investigate

this leading technique in elicitation so as to have a thorough

understanding of eliciting techniques used by the student-teachers in their

different assigned groups.

As for the student-teacher questionnaire’s format, eight questions

fell into two types: close-ended questions with multiple choice and rating

scales, and specific open-ended questions to get more information.

Talking about the close-ended questions, besides four multiple choice

questions related to the necessity of elicitation in lessons, the frequency

of eliciting knowledge in class, the type of eliciting technique used and

the purpose of eliciting, two other questions number 4 and 5 were

designed in the form of Likert-scale questions which were “effective for

gathering respondents’ views, opinions about various language-related

issues” (Brown, 2001, p.41). The researcher made use of two types of

scale: one ranged on the basic frequency (i.e. always – usually – seldom –

hardly ever – never), and the other varied on the level of effectiveness

(i.e. totally ineffective – slightly ineffective – moderately effective –

effective – extremely effective). Each level was given a number from 1 to

43

5 for the participants to choose the one that best described their opinions.

The rest two questions 6 and 7 were designed as open-ended questions.

The researcher’s purposes were to recognize the difficulties the student-

teachers encountered when eliciting, their suggested solutions to or

recommendations for each difficulty and cases when the student-teachers

used asking questions as the leading technique of elicitation during their

teaching practicum.

The second questionnaires were distributed to the first-year

students who were taught by the above nine student-teachers during their

practicum. In order to avoid possible confusion over technical terms, a

brief explanation of “eliciting” was carefully translated and paraphrased

as a guideline for these students to do the questionnaire. Moreover, the

questions were kept brief and close-ended so that the students would be

more willing to answer all the questions. In terms of language use,

Vietnamese was employed to avoid possible misunderstandings.

Needless to say, there was a close relation between the question

items and the research questions. To be specific, the combined answers

from question 1, 7 and 8 in the questionnaires for the student-teachers

could give precise answers to the first research question which sought for

the student-teachers’ perceptions of the necessity to employ elicitation

in language teaching. The second and third research questions about the

common eliciting techniques that were used by the student-teachers

during their practicum and the effectiveness of the work they perceived

were answered by four questions from 2 to 5 of “Eliciting techniques”

section in the questionnaires for the student-teachers. The sixth

questionnaire item provided the answers to the last two questions of the

research (the student-teachers’ difficulties and solutions to problems

44

when using eliciting techniques). The fourth research question (What is

the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the learners who are

first-year students at FELTE, ULIS – VNU?) was answered by

analyzing the data from the questionnaires for the first-year students, in

which the students from nine classes gave their evaluation of nine

student-teachers’ employment of eliciting techniques during the teaching

practicum.

1.3. Questionnaire procedure

The questionnaires for 26 student-teachers were distributed in the

final week of the practicum right after they finished their six-week

teaching practicum. The researcher’s purpose was to give a chance for

these participants to realize and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses

when eliciting their students’ responses by referring back to what had

been done during the period of six weeks. The questionnaires were either

sent via each participant’s email or delivered directly to the student-

teachers.

As for the first-year students, the questionnaires were given to

them after the last lesson conducted by the selected student-teacher in

their class. The students gave answers to the questionnaire by referring

back to what the student-teacher brought to the class during not only that

final lesson but also the whole teaching practicum, and then evaluated the

student-teacher’s elicitation in the lessons. Hard copies of these

questionnaires began to be given to students after the fourth week of the

teaching practicum. The researcher’s purpose was to involve the

participants when they had got familiar with the assigned student-teachers

as well as their teaching style.

45

2. Observations

2.1. Reasons for choosing observation

According to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000, p.305, cited in

Chu, 2009, p.31), observation plays an important role in a study as

“observational data are attractive as they afford the researcher the

opportunity to gather “live” data from “live” situations”. Sharing the

same idea, Brown (2001, p.4) has concluded that observations are able to

“involve direct on-the spot examination of language use, learning or

training.” Also, it is undeniable that numerous on-goings and unexpected

problems could happen during the lesson in general and specifically in

the student-teachers’ eliciting process. Therefore, the research instrument

“generating data which involve the researcher immersing [him or

herself] in a research setting, and systematically observing dimensions of

that setting, interactions, relationships, actions, events and so on, with it”

(Mason, 1996, cited in Mackey and Gass, 2005, p.175) was the most

appropriate one to analyze eliciting problems the student-teachers

encountered during their teaching practicum. Besides, Mackey and Gass

(2005, p.96) have claimed that answers to questionnaires might be

inaccurate or incomplete in many cases. This was the reason why “over

time and repeated observation” might help the researcher gain “a deeper

and more multilayered understanding of participants and their content”

(Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.176).

Specifically in this study, the researcher had two aims in using

observation. First, thanks to the observations and videotapes, the

researcher could double-check the information collected from

questionnaires. Second, by comparing what happened during the lesson

46

as observed and videotaped with what the student-teachers and the first-

year students answered in the questionnaires, the researcher gained a

detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of the student-teachers’ elicitation

during their teaching practicum.

2.2. Observation scheme

Since the topic of the research paper was related to a practical

educational issue, classroom observations were employed as an effective

tool to collect data.

In terms of the observation structure, a checklist was designed

comprising two main parts: “class profile” and “observation and

assessment of eliciting techniques”. In the first part, general information

about the lesson was noted down including the student-teacher’s name,

date and duration as well as the assigned skill of the lesson. The second

part sought information about the student-teacher’s use of different

elicitations, consisting of the lesson stages in which eliciting technique

were employed and the purposes of using each eliciting technique

together with the researcher’s comments or notes of transcripts for each

eliciting technique. (See Appendix 3 for the observation checklist)

2.3. Observation procedure

With the purpose of seeking insightful answers to the second, the

third and the fifth research questions, nine of the student-teachers were

invited to take part in the study to a deeper extent. In order to observe the

classes in which these nine student-teachers practice teaching, the

researcher asked for permission from the mentors of each group, the

selected student-teachers and the first-year classes to observe. A detailed

47

schedule for observation was planned and followed to ensure that each

selected student-teacher was observed at least twice. Notes of eliciting

techniques used in these classes were carefully taken as useful evidence

for this research. Besides, the researcher asked and was permitted to

videotape the student-teachers’ performance and students’ reactions in

class to analyze the effectiveness of the eliciting techniques in 50

minutes. In this way, the researcher could watch these videos many times

to gain more insights into the matter of elicitation.

The special feature of the teaching practicum in 2011 was that each

student-teacher had to videotape one lesson of 100 minutes or one period

of 50 minutes to videotape to conclude in the self-observation report. The

researcher made full use of this and asked to borrow these videos to serve

as another observation tool to investigate the student-teachers’ elicitation.

In total, 27 videos of the nine selected student-teachers were watched

with awareness and analyzed using the same observation checklist.

3. Interviews

3.1. Reasons for choosing interviews

In addition to questionnaires and observations, the researcher

decided to use interviews as another data collection tool to obtain in-

depth information due to its noticeable advantages. To begin with,

interviews helped the researcher “elicit additional data if initial answers”

were “vague, incomplete, off-topic or not specific enough” (Mackey &

Gass, 2005, p.173). Moreover, when there would be some phenomena

which could not be identified via questionnaires or interpreted via

observations when studying the effectiveness of elicitation of the student-

teachers, interviews served the ultimate goal of a follow-up insight into

48

the issue. All in all, the student-teachers were intentionally asked to take

part in the interviews in order to provide the full information for the

research.

3.2. Interview format and content

In-depth interviews with the nine above mentioned student-

teachers who agreed to help the researcher were carried out so that the

researcher could enhance the reliability of this research. The participants

had chances to express their own opinions about the effectiveness of

eliciting techniques as well as solutions to problems they encountered

when applying eliciting techniques in their lessons. All interviews were

recorded and main points were taken notes of.

Semi-structured interviews with two main parts were employed in

the research. In correspondence with the questionnaires for the student-

teachers, the first part of the interview, namely “eliciting techniques”

seeking information about eliciting techniques together with the student-

teachers’ use during teaching practicum and the effectiveness as

perceived by the student-teachers themselves. In addition, the

interviewees provided the researcher with their obstacles and solutions to

these problems. The second part asked for information about “asking

questions in elicitation”. It was worth-noticing that all interviews were

done in Vietnamese to avoid possible misunderstandings.

As can be seen, the choice of semi-structured interview with nine

student-teachers played an essential role in giving satisfied answers to the

six research questions.

49

3.3. Interview procedure

The researcher contacted nine chosen student-teachers from the

first week of the practicum to ask for their permission to be interviewed.

After collecting all questionnaires and observations at week six of the

teaching practicum, the researcher studied these student-teachers’

questionnaire carefully and designed a set of guiding questions used in

the interview. Within one week after the practicum, the researcher started

to conduct interviews with nine student-teachers one by one.

Moreover, after studying the student-teachers’ questionnaires, the

researcher invited ten more student-teachers who gave special answers to

the questionnaires to attend the informal interviews in order to clarify

their opinions.

V. Data collection procedure

The data collection procedure consisted of three main phases, each

of which was taken according to a designed timeline. The three phases

are listed as follows:

50

Phase Activities Time

1 Data collection

preparation

Designing questionnaires and

observation schedule 3 weeks

Piloting the questionnaire with one

student-teacher 1 week

2 Data collection

Delivering and getting back

questionnaires for first-year students 2 weeks

Delivering and getting back

questionnaires for the student-teachers 5 days

Observing and videotaping 5 weeks

Preparing for interview questions and

schedule 1 week

3 Final data

gathering

Transcribing observations and videos ½ week

Conducting and transcribing interviews ½ week

Table 5. Data collection procedure

Phase 1: Data collecting preparation

As indicated in the table, it took the researcher three weeks to

prepare for the data collection instruments including one set of

questionnaire for the student-teachers and another for the first-year

students, preparing observation schedule and piloting the first version of

the questionnaire.

Having done with the questionnaire design, the researcher came to

the step of piloting the questionnaire with one student-teacher. Wording,

content as well as question options were carefully checked and revised by

the researcher.

51

Phase 2: Data collection

After the final versions of the questionnaires were made, the

questionnaires were delivered and collected.

The teaching practicum started from March 21st 2011; however,

one among nine selected student-teachers had already finished her

teaching practice after four weeks. Therefore, questionnaires for the first-

year students were delivered to this student-teacher specific group in

week 4 of the practicum. For other eight classes, the questionnaires were

distributed after the last lesson conducted by the selected student-teachers

in these specific groups. In order to gain students’ serious participation, a

brief introduction about the researcher and the study were made before

delivering the questionnaires.

Also, the student-teachers were asked to complete the

questionnaires at the sixth week of the practicum. This version was sent

via email to the student-teachers, and at the end of the same week, these

questionnaires were got back by the researcher.

Furthermore, in this phase, lessons were observed and videotaped

with the permission of the nine mentors, the nine selected student-

teachers and the first-year students in nine groups. Observations took

place during five weeks from week 2 to week 6 of the practicum.

Finally, after collecting the questionnaires and studying the results

of the questionnaires from 26 student-teachers, a set of interview guided

questions as well as the interview schedule were designed. It took the

researcher one week to complete this step of preparation.

52

Phase 3: Final data gathering

Follow-up interviews with nine selected student-teachers and ten

more student-teachers who gave special answers in their questionnaires

were conducted soon after the basic results from questionnaires had been

obtained. The individual interview allowed the researcher to collect

private and guarantee information. As all nine interviewees were in the

same class with the researcher, it was easier for the researcher to collect

quite rich amount of information and relevant details. Besides, to make it

easier for the data analysis procedure afterwards, the researcher recorded

all of the interviews with the permission of the interviewees.

At the same time, interviews’ content and videos were transcribed

to make it more convenient for the analysis and quoting later. Noticeably,

just important points were written down to give clues to the research

questions.

VI. Data analysis procedure

During this data analysis process, content analysis was used as the

key method both to gather and investigate data. After the data had been

collected, they were processed through two phases.

Phase 1: Data classification

Based on the result of 26 returned questionnaires from the student-

teachers and 189 from the first-year students, the researcher began to

classify the data according to six research questions. To be specific, all

data gathered from the student-teachers’ questionnaires gave answers to

research question one (the necessity of using elicitation in teaching as

perceived by the student-teachers), question two (the common used

53

eliciting techniques), question three (the effectiveness of each eliciting

technique perceived by student-teachers), questions five and six

(difficulties student-teachers encountered when exploiting eliciting

techniques and solutions to such obstacles), while the answers to the

third research question (the effectiveness of the applied eliciting

techniques as perceived by the first-year students) depended on data

collected from the first-year student questionnaires.

Phase 2: Data coding and decoding

Mechanical counting was performed to render specific statistics.

These numbers were put in appropriate tables, charts and graphs for better

illustration and explanations. Also in this step, comparisons and contrasts

evaluating the effectiveness of each employed eliciting technique were

put in the same charts and graphs.

Moreover, content analysis became helpful when the researcher

analyzed data from the observations and the interviews. The student-

teachers’ facial expressions and the first-year students’ reaction in class

were also taken into consideration. It was difficult for the researcher to

illustrate this type of information into charts and graphs, instead, the

researcher often quoted and interpreted the participants’ ideas to support

the point. Consequently, results from these two data collection

instruments helped completely give answers to all research questions.

Summary

So far, this chapter has justified the methodology applied in this

paper by elaborating the setting and the two groups of participants

involved in the process of data collection, namely 26 student-teachers

54

and 189 first-year students. Furthermore, the combination of three data

collection instruments was also clarified in the three-phase process of

data collection and the process of data analysis in this chapter. These

justifications of the methodology would help make the way for the

findings and discussion in the next chapter.

55

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND

DISCUSSION

The methodology applied in the study has been clarified with

justifications, descriptions and setting of the choice for the participants,

the sampling method, the instruments, the process of data collection and

analysis. The collected data from three employed instruments, i.e.

questionnaires, observations and interviews were analyzed in order to

give comprehensive answers to the six research questions.

As stated in the first chapter, Introduction, the study aimed at

exploring how the student-teachers exploited eliciting techniques in

teaching first-year students during their practicum at FELTE, ULIS –

VNU. In order to achieve this overall aim successfully, firstly, the

researcher investigated the student-teachers’ perceptions of the necessity

of eliciting techniques in teaching. Secondly, the common eliciting

techniques that these student-teachers employed in their lessons during

their practicum were found out, followed by the effectiveness of these

techniques as perceived by the student-teachers and the first-year

students. Next, the difficulties of using eliciting techniques that these

student-teachers encountered were reported, and then solutions to these

difficulties were suggested by the student-teachers.

The answers to the six research questions take turns to be presented

in this chapter.

56

I. Research question 1: How necessary are eliciting techniques in

language teaching as perceived by the student-teachers?

The first research question aimed at seeking the student-teachers’

perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in language teaching.

The results were shown in the pie chart below.

As can be seen from the chart, all 26 surveyed student-teachers,

accounting for 100%, agreed that elicitation was one important teaching

technique that should be exploited during a lesson.

Figure 2: The necessity of eliciting in teaching (%)

(Reported by the student-teachers)

57

When being asked to explain the reasons why elicitation was

necessary in language teaching, the interviewed student-teachers referred

to the benefits of using elicitation. These benefits are illustrated in the

chart below.

It can be seen from the chart that the biggest number of

student-teachers exploited elicitation because it could help them check

students’ understanding with 92.31%. All nine interviewed student-

teachers shared the same idea and clarified that “students’ understanding”

consisted of students’ ability to get the teacher’s points and students’

level of background knowledge, skills, vocabulary, etc. In their opinion,

elicitation was a compulsory and effective device that could help the

teachers understand students’ level, thus assisting them to prepare for

Figure 3: Benefits of elicitation as perceived by the student-teachers

58

their teaching in class, adapt appropriate materials or target knowledge in

the easiest way for students to access. Therefore, it was necessary for

teachers to employ elicitation in their lessons since it helped teachers

judge what students had already known, making it easier to adapt the

presentation of knowledge to an appropriate level (Doff, 1988).

Catching students’ attention and creating teacher-student

interaction accounted for 88.64% and 80.76% respectively. In the

interview, student-teacher 7 explained that after taking part in an activity,

her students tended to be overexcited and seemed to be out of her control.

At this moment, raising questions to elicit students’ responses after the

activity definitely helped calm students down; therefore, she could catch

their attention back to the lesson. Besides, interviewed student-teacher 8

added that:

Normally, the first session starts at 7a.m. which is quite early in the morning

and students still feel sleepy when coming to university. Also, after two or

three periods learning continuously without a short break, students may get

tired and no longer want to participate in the lesson. By raising questions in

order to elicit students’ responses, teachers can make students think then keep

them alert of being asked, which helps maintain students’ attention during

lesson time.

Regarding elicitation’s benefit of creating interaction between

teacher and students, interviewed student-teachers 2, 5 and 6 agreed that

the communication between the teacher and students was created thanks

to the use of elicitation. Especially, interviewed student-teacher 1

considered elicitation as “the key to interaction during the lesson.” She

emphasized that only by questioning and answering in order to access the

target knowledge could the teaching and learning process become an

59

interactional knowledge acquisition instead of one-way process. Her

explanation reached an agreement with Corey (1940, cited in Hargie et al,

1981, p.66) according to whom eliciting was “the fundamental and

important means” of classroom interaction as stated in the literature

review.

Up to 73.08% surveyed student-teachers realized the necessity of

elicitation in finding new ideas or opinions from students; meanwhile,

61.54% of them believed that elicitation could maximize student talking

time while minimizing teacher talking time. These percentages were not

as high as those of the previous three benefits since the objectives of

using elicitation might vary depending on diverse factors such as the aims

of the lesson, students’ level, etc.

At the bottom end was using elicitation to provide opportunities for

weak students to raise their voice in class with 30.77% of the student-

teachers mentioning this benefit. This meant little attention was paid to

this benefit of using. Interviewed student-teacher 4 claimed that in the

practicum, the student-teachers were required to follow a strict lesson

plan with detailed time allocation for each activity. That was the reason

why they tended to avoid asking weak or silent students to save their time

in class.

In addition to the above benefits of using elicitation in class,

interviewed student-teachers added more benefits to confirm the need of

using elicitation. Interviewed student-teachers 5 and 6 shared the same

opinion when saying that with elicitation, the teacher could activate and

stimulate students’ independence and consciousness to gain knowledge.

60

Also, active and exciting learning atmosphere was created through the

process of questioning and answering in elicitation.

Generally speaking, all of the student-teachers participating in the

study believed in the necessity of using eliciting techniques in the

classroom. However, the benefit of provoking weak students with

opportunities to involve in the lesson needed more attention.

II. Research question 2: What eliciting techniques are most

commonly used by the student-teachers during their practicum?

To answer this research question in the most thorough way, this

part presented two major aspects: firstly, the student-teachers’ frequency

of using elicitation, and secondly, the frequency of each employed

eliciting technique as reported by both the first-year students and the

student-teachers. The specific answer to the research questions was

presented at the end of this part.

1. The student-teachers’ frequency of using elicitation

Figure 4: The student-teachers' frequency of using

elicitation

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First-year students’ opinion

As can be seen from the figure, all of the surveyed first-year

students admitted that the student-teachers who taught their class

“always” and “usually” used elicitation. Specifically, 36.51% of the

surveyed students circled the option “always”, which implied that over

one third of the surveyed students recognized that the student-teachers’

employment of elicitation reached the highest level of frequency. The rest

stated that elicitation was “usually” exploited by the student-teachers,

which was nearly twice as much as the former level of frequency.

Student-teachers’ opinion

The student-teachers seemed to reach an agreement with their

learners regarding the frequency of elicitation use when over two third of

them stated that they “usually” employed eliciting to call for students’

responses. The highest frequency of using this technique (“always”)

accounted for 30.77%. No student-teachers said that they “seldom”,

“hardly ever” or “never” used elicitation. All the three took 0% each

which was exactly the same as that reported by the first-year students.

In short, there was a remarkable unity between the student-teachers

and the first-year students because they all agreed that the student-

teachers “always” and “usually” use eliciting techniques, indicating that

elicitation was exploited at high level of frequency to get students

responses instead of straightforwardly presenting the knowledge for

students.

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2. The frequency of using each eliciting technique

In order to identify which eliciting technique was most commonly

used by the student-teachers in their six-week practicum, the researcher

used the scale from 1 to 5 which indicated the frequency of using from

always, usually, seldom, hardly ever to never.

First-year students’ opinion

Eliciting technique a b c d e

Mean score 1.16 3.50 2.3 3.52 4.39

Table 6: Mean score for the frequency of each employed eliciting technique

(Reported by the first-year students)

The table of mean score shows that in the first-year students’

opinion, asking questions was the most common technique student-

teachers used to elicit their talk, followed by asking questions combined

with games or activities, and then asking questions combined with texts

or dialogues. The way student-teachers raised questions combined with

nonverbal language took the last position as the most rarely used eliciting

technique. The detailed percentages explaining the above order of

frequency were illustrated in the following chart.

a. Asking questions

b. Asking questions combined with pictures

c. Asking questions combined with games/ activities

d. Asking questions combined with texts/ dialogues

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal

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These findings were both similar to and different from what Chu

(2009) found in her research.

First and foremost, despite the differences in each research’s

context and participants, the results of two studies agreed that asking

questions was most frequently used to elicit students’ responses.

However, in Chu (2009), 50.57% students put questioning at the highest

frequency level, and the percentage of those who chose “usually” was

28.78%. Meanwhile, in the current study, the percentage of the surveyed

students who circled “always” was much higher with over 80% of the

first-year students. Another difference was that in Chu’s (2009) study, the

proportion of the surveyed students who thought asking questions was

“seldom”, “hardly ever” and “never” used by their teachers was still high

(13.63%); nonetheless, the total percentage of these three lowest

Figure 5: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (%)

(Reported by the first-year students)

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frequency levels was much lower in this study with only 1.55%. These

two differences were understandable because of the class size in each

context. The number of students per class in high school averagely

doubled that at English Division I, FELTE. As a result, the number of

students who were not questioned by their teachers at high school level

was much more than that at FELTE, explaining why the percentage of

students who chose three lowest levels in the frequency scale in Chu

(2009) was nearly nine times as much as that at FELTE.

Regarding other four eliciting techniques, more than half of the

surveyed students in both Chu’s (2009) and the current study noticed that

asking questions combined with nonverbal language was never exploited

by their teachers or the student-teachers. This number gradually

decreased from “never” to “usually” and vanished at “always”, the

highest level of the frequency scale. The two researchers also reached an

agreement when reporting that asking questions combined with pictures,

games or activities and texts or dialogues were regularly exploited in

lessons as perceived by the students.

In short, being the direct beneficiaries in the teaching and learning

process, the students in nine classes at English Division I stated that

asking questions was most frequently used to elicit students’ responses,

followed by asking questions combined with games or activities, asking

questions combined with pictures, and then asking questions combined

with texts or dialogues. Asking questions combined with nonverbal

language was the least exploited technique.

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Student-teachers’ opinion

Eliciting technique a b c d e

Mean score 1.46 3.58 2.62 3.62 2.96

Table 7: Mean score of the frequency of each employed eliciting technique

(Reported by the student-teachers)

Comparing the mean score of five main eliciting techniques, the

researcher noticed that asking questions, accounting for 1.46 out of 5, was

the most commonly used technique in elicitation, followed by asking

questions combined with games or activities. The use of questions

combined with nonverbal language and pictures took the third and fourth

positions respectively while questioning combined with texts or dialogues

was considered the most rarely used in the teaching practicum. Generally

speaking, the student-teachers mostly agreed with their students on their

frequent use of asking questions to elicit, which remained the most

frequently used technique. This point was clarified by the eighth

interviewed student-teacher:

Other tools such as pictures, games, texts, dialogues, nonverbal language can

be used to support for the leading technique if necessary. Furthermore,

questioning can be conducted both accidentally and intentionally, so it is

obviously the most common technique to be used.

The most remarkable difference between the opinions of the two

groups of participants was that the students ranked asking questions

combined with nonverbal language as the least common used or even it

was believed to be untouched by 50.8% of the students while the student-

teachers admitted a high frequency of exploiting this technique.

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In the following chart, the frequency of the student-teachers’ use of

each eliciting technique was illustrated in detail. The most distinguished

feature was that all eliciting techniques had been employed by the

student-teachers in their lessons, yet the frequency of using each

technique was different from one another.

Figure 6: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (number)

(Reported by the student-teachers)

To begin with, 14 student-teachers circled point 1 to indicate their

highest frequency of using questions, and the number of “usually” level

was 12. According to the first interviewed student-teacher, during the

practicum, the student-teachers were “always in a rush to complete all

planned activities”, so the primary factors that decided which technique

should be employed were its flexibility in use and its ability to get

students’ responses as much as possible. Asking questions could serve

both requirements since it “could be conducted both accidentally and

intentionally” (student-teacher 8).

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With regard to the other four techniques, they were untouched by a

worth-noticing number of the student-teachers. The reasons for their

choices were explained as follows. First, these student-teachers did not

think of using these techniques to get students’ responses because they

were time-consuming. Much time was spent on preparing the materials or

games, not mentioning a great amount of in-class time spent on reading

and digesting the texts (for the students) and giving instructions (for the

student-teachers). Second, two student-teachers blamed the nature of the

subject they were assigned to teach during the practicum. According to

these two student-teachers, listening to model audios or videos then

imitating the sounds, intonations and stresses were what Pronunciation

subject acquired. Therefore, it was useless to employ questioning

combined with other tools in teaching this subject. Also, Pronunciation

was taught in large halls with three or four classes at the same time. The

total number of students was about 60 to 70 students; needless to say,

conducting games or activities turned out to be impossible. Supporting

the different employment of each eliciting technique, interviewed

student-teacher 6 claimed that the use of each technique depended on

“not only the target knowledge but also the teaching skill in each lesson”.

In her opinion, the greatest advantage of asking questions merely was that

it could be exploited at any stage of any lesson. Regarding other

techniques, in reading or writing, students had to read the text or analyze

a model writing sample; therefore, the use of asking questions related to

the text was necessary. On the other hand, asking questions combined

with games or activities could be employed in, for example, speaking and

listening lessons since they helped prepare the language and sometimes

vocabulary. As a result, different eliciting techniques should be used and

altered flexibly in a lesson of any skill.

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One observed listening lesson could prove the answers reported by

the student-teachers. During 50 minutes, a variety of eliciting techniques

were applied, among which asking questions took the dominance. No

texts or dialogues, nonverbal language and games could be seen while a

picture was utilized once at the pre-listening stage to introduce the topic

of the listening recording. The use of asking questions combined with

activities was integrated into other task completing activities. In another

writing session lasting for 50 minutes, asking questions still dominated in

order to elicit students’ responses, and one game which required students

to explain words for their group members was conducted as the warm-up

activity. Additionally, body language was used four times while one

model writing sample was exploited for students to read and analyze its

structure. Another observation of a pronunciation lesson showed that

besides asking questions, the student-teacher made use of two listening

recordings then asked students to imitate the intonation and stresses of the

sentences. No other eliciting tools such as pictures, texts or dialogues,

games or activities, nonverbal language were used during this lesson.

Besides the above eliciting techniques, the student-teachers’

answers revealed that asking questions combined with short stories or

pieces of news, with examples or contexts and with audios or videos were

three more eliciting techniques that the student-teachers used in their

lessons.

All in all, elicitation was reported to be commonly used in the

lessons by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. The two

groups of participants agreed that among different eliciting techniques,

asking questions reached the highest frequency of use, followed by

asking questions combined with games or activities. The technique asking

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questions combined with nonverbal language received opposite rating.

According to the first-year students, this technique was the most rarely

used technique while the student-teachers considered it as the second

commonly exploited technique in elicitation.

III.Research question 3: What is the effectiveness of each technique as

perceived by the student-teachers?

This part presented the effectiveness of each eliciting technique as

reported by the student-teachers who had employed these techniques

during their six-week practicum. The order of presenting data followed

the order of the frequency of using eliciting techniques reported by the

student-teachers.

1. Asking questions

As mentioned earlier, asking questions was the most common

eliciting technique which was “always” used by 14 student-teachers and

“usually” employed by the other 12. Regarding the efficiency of this

leading technique, 26 student-teachers had different opinions illustrated

in the chart below.

Figure 7: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of

eliciting technique: Asking questions

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One striking feature of the pie chart was that only two student-

teachers, accounting for 6.99%, found their questions “extremely

effective” in provoking students’ responses. Being asked to clarify the

reason for their choice, the first student-teacher explained that students

immediately reacted to her questions due to her “use of simple questions

and straightforward to the knowledge.” By applying this way of raising

questions, all of her questions were quickly and correctly answered. On

the other side of the fence, one student-teacher who chose “moderately

effective” and another who selected “effective” claimed that their

questions were not responded after the first or even the second time it was

raised; consequently, they had to repeat or rephrase the questions before

calling students randomly to give answers. Despite different evaluation,

all of the 26 student-teachers who made use of asking questions to elicit

students’ talk agreed that their questions were responded effectively since

they were responded in a short amount of time.

2. Asking questions combined with games or activities

Effectiveness scale totally

ineffective

slightly

ineffective

moderately

effective effective

extremely

effective

Number of student-

teachers 0 0 6 8 10

Table 8: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique:

Asking questions combined with games or activities

It was apparent in the table that no student-teachers of the 24

student-teachers who used questions combined with games or activities

found the second common technique ineffective at any level. Choosing

the highest point to indicate that her elicitation with activities was

“extremely effective”, the fifth interviewed student-teacher explained that

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“the ability to involve all students is the greatest advantage of asking

questions combined with games and activities.” According to another

student-teacher, when participating in the games, all students played the

same role as each other; hence, the motivation and opportunity for

students to raise their voice was shared equally among them. The open

atmosphere in class was naturally created, thus motivating students to

enthusiastically and directly respond to the teacher’s following questions.

3. Asking questions combined with nonverbal language

Standing in the third position of the frequency scale with 20 users,

asking questions combined with nonverbal language received different

evaluation of its effectiveness.

Only the eighth interviewed student-teacher who always took

advantage of asking questions combined with nonverbal language chose

“extremely effective.” She shared that:

Figure 8: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with nonverbal language

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... nonverbal language was the most effective way that helped me catch my

students’ attention. When performing some strange postures, gestures, facial

expressions or eye contact, the students I taught during my teaching practicum

immediately noticed. As soon as they paid attention to my non-verbal actions,

I could easily elicit their talk and responses to my questions later on. I worked

with five classes during the teaching practicum and I saw their quick responses

after my nonverbal language.

She continued to emphasize that in her opinion, “being able to

catch students’ attention is the key to get their responses afterwards.”

On the other hand, the percentage of student-teachers who

underestimated their elicitation using nonverbal language doubled that of

those who overestimated. One student-teacher who delivered lectures on

Pronunciation admitted that “when teaching this subject, most of my non-

verbal was accidentally made with my hands.” According to her

explanation, her nonverbal postures were not well-prepared, making

students confused then not responded to her questions. The other student-

teacher reached an agreement with the previous one and added that:

In the teaching practicum, I had a maximum of three times working with one

class. Maybe they did not have enough time to get familiar with my nonverbal

language; hence, they did not understand what I wanted them to do after my

performing and their responses went in an incorrect direction.

The rest of the student-teachers who chose “moderately effective”

and “effective” realized that students could react to their use of nonverbal

language and be able to give answers to the following questions, but their

replies were not as quick as expected.

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4. Asking questions combined with pictures

In total, there were 19 student-teachers who had experienced

asking questions combined with pictures to elicit their students’ talk

during the teaching practicum. Among them, the fifth interviewed

student-teacher selected “slightly ineffective” as her evaluation of this

employed technique. When being asked for the reason, she immediately

made a comparison between her elicitations by asking questions

combined with pictures and asking questions combined with games in the

same class at two different times. According to her observation, after

participating in her game, students could quickly get back their focus on

her questions; meanwhile, “students seemed to lose their attention and

continued commenting on the pictures’ colors or content instead of

focusing on the target features to find answers to my questions.”

On the contrary, 18 other student-teachers considered their eliciting

with pictures effective, especially, three of them circled “extremely

Figure 9: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with pictures

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effective.” All of these three agreed that pictures were such visible and

vivid tools that they effectively decreased their talking time when

eliciting students’ talk as well as provoked students’ quick reactions to

the questions. For other choices including “effective” and “moderately

effective”, these surveyed student-teachers shared the same opinion that

their students could still reach the target knowledge but the reaction was

quite slow and the questions needed repeating.

5. Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues

In the frequency scale, this eliciting technique was the least

commonly used with 17 student-teachers admitting using it. The

evaluation of its effectiveness was not as optimistic as others, which was

illustrated in the following chart.

As presented in the chart, the extreme level of either “ineffective”

or “effective” was not chosen. In contrast, 16 out of 17 student-teachers,

accounting for 94.12%, decided to circle “moderately effective” and

“effective” to show their evaluation. One of them reported that texts and

dialogues had their own advantage which was helping her students calm

Figure 10: The student-teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting

technique: Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues

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down and focusing their students. Another advantage of this technique

was added by interviewed student-teacher 6, according to whom texts and

dialogues were undoubtedly effective when teaching writing. When

observing her lesson about how to write an email, the researcher noticed

that by analyzing a model email in the written form, the students could

easily recognize the structure of an email thanks to the student-teacher’s

guiding questions.

Standing on the opposite side to the 16 mentioned student-teachers,

one claimed that texts and dialogues were very boring that “distracted

students” from her questions and led to silence; therefore, it became

“slightly ineffective” elicitation.

To sum up, the student-teachers had different opinions when

making evaluation of the effectiveness of each employed eliciting

technique. No matter what technique they had exploited to elicit students’

responses, most of them noticed the positive influences on their students

except for two student-teachers who tried to use “asking questions

combined with nonverbal language”, another one choosing “asking

questions combined with pictures”, and one who applied “asking

questions combined with texts” into her teaching practice.

In comparison with Chu’s (2009) study, the current study followed

a different direction to evaluate the effectiveness of elicitation. Chu

(2009) attempted to investigate the insiders’ perceptions of the

elicitation’s effectiveness in general. Nevertheless, this study focused on

that of each technique as perceived by the student-teachers during their

teaching-practicum. The evaluation of each particular eliciting

technique’s efficiency together with the assessment of elicitation’s

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effectiveness in general in Chu’s (2009) study can provide the readers

with an overview picture of the elicitation’s level of effectiveness.

IV. Research question 4: What is the effectiveness of each technique

as perceived by the learners who are first year students at FELTE,

ULIS - VNU?

Since the first-year students were the direct beneficiaries of the

student-teachers’ elicitation during the teaching practicum, they had their

own evaluation of the effectiveness of such techniques. To answer the

fourth research question, two main aspects were investigated namely the

frequency of students’ responding to student-teachers’ elicitation and

their evaluation of the effectiveness of each eliciting technique.

1. Students’ reactions to the student-teachers’ elicitation

Elicitation has been affirmed as an important and effective tool to

get students’ responses in class. However, when being asked about how

frequent they reacted to their student-teachers’ elicitation, 189 first-year

students gave rather surprising answers as illustrated in the below pie

chart.

Figure 11: The first-year students' frequency of response

to the student-teachers' elicitation

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As can be seen from the chart, the number of students who

“always” actively responded to student-teachers’ eliciting just accounted

for the smallest percentage of 1.59%, followed by 15.34% of the students

who circled “usually”. The biggest area was for the third option in the

frequency scale, which indicated that the majority of the first-year

students “seldom” involved themselves in the student-teachers’

elicitation. Another feature of the chart was that eliciting was exploited

but students were not really activated when there were 19.58% of them

reluctant to respond to the elicitation. Among them, 13.23% of the

students said that they “hardly ever” and 6.35% “never” responded to the

student-teachers’ elicitation unless they were asked to do so. The

students’ reasons for this fact varied, among which the most common

excuses were:

“I’m not confident enough to raise my voice in front of the

class.”

“I’m afraid of giving wrong answers.”

“I don’t want to answer obvious questions from the teacher.”

“I just want to participate in her game, not answering any

questions.”

When observing the lesson, the researcher noticed that the

comprehensibility of the student-teachers’ elicitation had great influence

on the students’ participation in the lessons. Being the direct beneficiaries

and the centered subjects of elicitation, the first-year students made their

evaluation of their student-teachers’ elicitation that helped answer the

fourth research question.

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2. Students’ evaluation of each eliciting technique’s effectiveness

“Eliciting technique” was a difficult issue that required a certain

level of academic competence in order to evaluate its effectiveness.

Moreover, first-year students had not experienced ELT subjects like the

student-teachers; consequently, they might not have a thorough

understanding of the important role of elicitation in the questioning –

responding process in language teaching. Acknowledging this difficulty,

the researcher decided to purely ask for the students’ opinions about the

effectiveness of each eliciting technique in enhancing their responses

without attempting to examine the reasons for their evaluation.

Evaluation of each eliciting technique Total number

of students

who

experienced

each technique

Eliciting

technique

Totally

ineffective

Slightly

ineffective

Moderately

effective Effective

Extremely

effective

a 0 0 72 109 8 189

b 0 0 13 90 36 139

c 0 0 40 59 90 189

d 0 0 39 70 18 127

e 0 0 15 54 24 93

Table 9: The first-year students’ evaluation of the effectiveness of the

student-teachers’ eliciting techniques

For each technique, the first-year students seemed to share the

same idea with the student-teachers that none of the five applied eliciting

techniques was “totally ineffective” to them. Furthermore, the students

from nine different classes agreed that all nine student-teachers’

a. Asking questions

b. Asking questions combined with pictures

c. Asking questions combined with games/ activities

d. Asking questions combined with texts/ dialogues

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal

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exploitation of eliciting techniques had positive influence on them, which

indicated that these student-teachers were able to provoke their students’

thinking then get students’ responses to their elicitation.

In addition, as perceived by the students, the effectiveness of each

eliciting technique in enhancing their responses was dominated by the

level “effective” in the effectiveness scale, except for the technique

“asking questions combined with games or activities” which was

evaluated as “extremely effective” by half of the students. This finding

could reveal that by participating in games or activities, the students

found themselves more willing to response to the student-teachers’

questions after the games or activities.

To conclude, although the students had different evaluations of the

effectiveness of each exploited eliciting techniques, all of them had

reached an agreement that among the five mentioned techniques, asking

questions combined with games or activities was the most effective one

in terms of eliciting their responses in the lesson.

V. Research question 5: What are the difficulties of using eliciting

techniques as reported by the student- teachers?

The fifth research question was dedicated to elaborating on the

student-teachers’ difficulties when eliciting students’ responses during

their teaching practicum. The answers to this question also explained why

some mentioned eliciting techniques were exploited at a quite low level

of frequency. In spite of the fact that there was a noticeable agreement

among the 26 student-teachers on the necessity of using elicitation in

teaching, all of them reported that applying elicitation into their real

lessons encountered undeniable difficulties.

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The below bar chart represents the obstacles to further exploitation

of elicitation on the vertical axis and the number of student-teachers out

of 26 identifying them major difficulties on the horizontal axis. The

student-teachers’ difficulties in using elicitation could be categorized into

three major groups regarding their sources, namely “student-teacher-

related factors” (since they did not know how to form or express clearly

in order to make comprehensible technique applied or could not make

precise evaluation of their students’ ability), “student-related factors”

(i.e. students’ attitudes and behaviors towards the student-teachers’

elicitation.), and “objective factors” (including lesson time limitation,

the teaching and learning conditions and the nature of target knowledge

that needed eliciting).

a. Student-teacher-related factors

b. Students’ behaviors and attitudes

c. Lesson time limitation

d. Teaching and learning conditions

e. The nature of target knowledge

Figure 12: The student-teachers' difficulties of using elicitation

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1. Student-teacher-related factors

First and foremost, 23 out of the 26 student-teachers affirmed that

what made it difficult for them to use elicitation effectively resulted from

themselves. It was apparent from the figure that the majority of the

student-teachers considered themselves as the most important factor that

decided the success of elicitation. After studying the questionnaires from

student-teachers, the research saw that student-teacher-related factors

included their ability to evaluate students’ level in order to employ

appropriate eliciting techniques and their aptitude to provide

comprehensible elicitation.

Concerning the former matter, Kagan (1992, cited in Vo, 2009,

p.41) stated that student-teachers had “inadequate knowledge of pupils”.

One student-teacher agreed when saying that:

Evaluating students’ ability is already a hard work for a teacher who has

experienced teaching for a time. This issue becomes more complicated for an

inexperienced teacher like me. During six weeks of the teaching practicum, I

had chance to work with four classes in each of which I practiced teaching one

of the four skills, namely speaking, reading, listening and writing. It meant I

worked with three classes once only and twice in another class. I found it

really difficult to make concrete evaluation of the students’ nature,

background, skill, vocabulary, etc. in order to apply the most effective

eliciting technique in such a short period of time.

Additionally, by carefully studying the detailed schedule of the

teaching practicum 2011, the researcher realized that each student-teacher

had a maximum of three times to teach in one class. The significant

feature was that no matter how many times a student-teacher practiced

teaching in one class, the work of correctly estimating students’ academic

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competence was still complicated. This idea was clarified by the seventh

interviewed student-teacher, according to whom “from time to time,

making assumption” was what she mainly did “in order to help assess

students’ level.”

Regarding the matter of making elicitation comprehensible, one

student-teacher took the case of the most commonly used technique,

asking questions, to support her argument:

When asking, I sometimes made too general or vague questions such as “What

do you think about this images?” for students to answer, or I started from a

very broad aspect which could easily mislead students. Therefore, they did not

know what and how to reply.

The second interviewed student-teacher added that:

Teachers’ ability to express concrete and sharp questions, or in other words

teachers’ language use, decides up to 80% of the success of elicitation. My

lengthy expressions, complicated wording and abstract content of the

questions sometimes made my students feel confused; consequently, they

stayed in silence as responding to my elicitation.

Nonverbal language was another typical example that should be

put into consideration. The ninth interviewed student-teacher stated that:

I sometimes used body language to elicit the target knowledge. However, it

took my students quite a long time to understand my implication through that

expression. Also, not many words or issues can be expressed with this eliciting

technique within my ability.

The second interviewed one shared the same opinion and added

that “I am afraid of being disrespected or misinterpreted by my students.

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They may have negative attitude towards me and my inappropriate

nonverbal language.”

From these sincere sharings, it could be concluded that the use of

eliciting techniques sometimes could not reach its effectiveness as

expected, which mainly originated from the student-teachers themselves.

2. Student-related factors

The factors related to the other interlocutor in a lesson, the

students, were the second hindrance to the student-teachers’ use of

elicitation, specifically their behaviors and attitudes towards the student-

teachers’ elicitation. This obstacle was elaborated as the students’

uncooperative behaviors. 10 student-teachers (34.46%) agreed that when

raising a question, they sometimes received no response from their

students, which was really irksome to them. According to the fifth

interviewed student-teacher, “the matter was not whether students knew

the answers to my questions or not. It was the way they reacted to my

elicitation. No answer, keeping silent or just a short answer “I don’t

know” were how they did.” Corey (1940, cited in Hargie, et al, 1981,

p.66) has stated that elicitation is a “fundamental and important means of

classroom interaction.” However, in some cases of the teaching

practicum, classroom interaction was not fully built up because of the

students’ silent reaction. Thus, the student-teachers found it really hard to

choose whether to continue eliciting or to present the knowledge

straightforwardly.

The mentioned phenomenon was clearly seen while the researcher

observed a listening lesson. When the teacher asked “In your opinion,

what are some characteristics of an adventurous person?” and repeated

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the question three times, 15 out of the 20 students in the class were

reluctant to give answers, forcing the student-teacher to call some

students randomly.

3. Objective factors

Another major obstacle to the exploitation of elicitation was rooted

from the objective factors including lesson time limitation, the teaching

and learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge.

To begin with, being asked about the difficulties they encountered

when using elicitation, 17 student-teachers (65.38%) made no hesitation

to emphasize that elicitation was very time-consuming especially asking

questions combined with pictures, games or activities and texts or

dialogues. Student-teacher 3 explained that:

Elicitation took me a considerable amount of time to prepare before the lesson

and conduct in class. One time, when I decided to use game to elicit the

knowledge of online shopping, I had to spend much time thinking of a suitable

and motivating means to introduce the language focus, followed by the

method of grouping, etc. not mentioning the job of editing, printing, etc. In

short, a great amount of time was spent on preparing it.

Moreover, since the student-teachers were “always in a rush to

complete all planned activities” (student-teacher 1), they needed time to

explain the rule of the game, and also students needed time to read the

texts or digest the meaning of the given dialogues; consequently,

elicitation combined with these mentioned tools took much time as

reported by the second interviewed student-teacher. As observed, in the

writing lesson about “Discussing travelling plan”, student-teacher 6 spent

5 minutes giving instructions for the game, and in total 12 out of 50

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minutes was spent on this first activity in order to lead in the focus of the

lesson about “relative clauses”. When being interviewed, she admitted

that she “spent too much time on the lead-in activity in order to elicit the

focused grammar while the rest time was not enough for other activities.”

In addition, four student-teachers put a stress on the difficulty

related to teaching and learning conditions which limited the

effectiveness of applied eliciting techniques. According to these student-

teachers, the lack of modern classroom facilities such as the projector and

computer made it difficult for them to show pictures which were big,

colorful and clear enough for the whole class to see if they wanted to

elicit students’ responses using pictures. Moreover, as observed, the

classroom arrangement with two rows of tables prevented the students

from easily moving around. This was the reason why the student-teachers

found it difficult to fully exploit elicitation combining with games or

activities in class.

Last but not least, the nature of the target knowledge which

needed eliciting was reported by three student-teachers as a worth-

noticing problem. In the academic year 2010 – 2011, the student-teachers

were assigned to teach 10 Double-major-Program classes in total;

therefore, they had to deal with economic issues, being unfamiliar with

most of them. The ninth interviewed student-teacher elaborated that:

For some terminologies, the best way to provide knowledge was presenting

straightforwardly because of the student-teachers’ lack of knowledge in the

economic field.

In conclusion, there were three sources of obstacles identified by

the student-teachers during their elicitation. They were factors related to:

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(1) the student-teachers (consisting of the student-teachers’ ability to

evaluate students’ level and their capability to make comprehensible

eliciting technique), (2) the students’ behaviors and attitudes towards the

student-teachers’ elicitation, and (3) objective factors including time

limitation, the teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the

target knowledge.

The mentioned results coincided with points made by scholars of

the same field but differed from those of the previous studies.

In the current study, the biggest difficulty for the intensive use of

elicitation was related to “student-teacher-related factors.” Chu (2009)

mentioned this obstacle, but only 40% of the interviewed teachers

showed great concern over the problem while in this current study, a high

percentage of 84.62% of the student-teachers mentioned this difficulty.

The dissimilarity might originate from the fact that the student-teachers

had a tendency to self-reflect on their performances since it was the

nature of the inexperienced members in the teaching career rather than of

the experienced ones. Moreover, this result agreed with Gower et al.

(1995, cited in Pham, 2006) mentioning that elicitation demands much of

the teacher’ professional ability.

Regarding the “time limitation” problem, Chu (2009), Tran (2007)

and Pham (2006) agreed that this was the biggest problem for teachers

when using elicitation. This difficulty ranked the second position in this

current study. Although each study had its own participants and setting,

the four studies shared the same conclusion that time management was

still a big problem for both experienced and inexperienced teachers. The

finding also agreed with Doff (1988, p.161) when he stated that “eliciting

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takes much more time comparing with straightforward presentation of

new knowledge.”

Finally, in the academic year 2010-2011, the student-teachers

started to deal with the Double-major program, but most of them had no

experience in the economic field. That was the reason why the difficulty

of “the nature of target knowledge” was mentioned as another new

finding of this study. Hardly any previous research put effort in

investigating this difficulty because of the different setting.

To sum up, it could be seen that the major obstacle to employing

elicitation originated from the subjective reasons regarding the student-

teachers who conducted the eliciting techniques. Besides, the students’

behaviors and attitude together with other objective factors could

challenge the student-teachers’ elicitation.

VI. Research question 6: What are the solutions to such problems as

suggested by the student teachers?

In the questionnaires for the student-teachers, the researcher

required the informants to suggest solutions to and recommendations for

each of the difficulties they encountered. As being summarized from the

interviews and questionnaires, each identified difficulty was solved by a

number of corresponding solutions.

1. Improving the comprehensibility of the student-teachers’

elicitation

As mentioned above, the student-teacher-related factors consisted

of the student-teachers’ ability to evaluate students’ level and their

capacity to provide comprehensible elicitation. For the former, no

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solution was suggested by the student-teachers because they had to “work

under the time allocation of English Division I, consequently no extra

teaching practice could be conducted in order to estimate precisely

students’ knowledge and ability”(student-teacher 3).

Mentioning the matter of providing comprehensible elicitation, the

careful preparation was highly appreciated by all interviewed student-

teachers. The ninth interviewee was aware of the fact that she “didn’t

have the habit of planning all possible questions to be raised in class.

This laziness could easily lead to vague or too general questions then

leading to no students’ responses.” Additionally, student-teacher 3 shared

that the preparation of written and answerable questions with simple and

understandable language helped enhance the comprehensibility of

elicitation. In case the student-teachers wanted to conduct games or

activities to elicit students’ responses, the amount of work those games or

activities required, the rules of games or the instructions of activities

should be cautiously organized beforehand. Texts or dialogues used in the

technique of “asking questions combined with texts or dialogues” were

suggested to be short within 3 to 4 sentences and easy to understand due

to few or, more ideally, no new word (student-teacher 1). Moreover, if the

teacher intended to use nonverbal language to support her elicitation of

difficult words or knowledge, she had better practice it at home before

bringing it on stage.

When conducting the elicitation, the language use of the student-

teachers was of great concern among the student-teachers. According to

the majority, the solution to this matter could be to elicit step by step

from simple to complicated questions, then paraphrase or translate the

questions into Vietnamese if necessary. Another student-teacher

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suggested writing key words of the questions on the board so the students

found it easy to follow and give answers.

2. Dealing with the students’ behaviors and attitudes

As shown in the student-teachers’ opinions collected from the

questionnaires, the type of misbehavior reported by the student-teachers

was too-silent students. According to student-teacher 5, these students

could be categorized in two types: (1) students who refused to raise their

voice while they knew the answers, and (2) students who had not found

the answers and did not dare to make a guess. 100% of interviewed and

surveyed student-teachers had no idea about how to manage such

behaviors except for calling students randomly. It was understandable

because the student-teachers were “always in a rush to complete all

planned activities” as reported by student-teacher 1; therefore, they had to

call students randomly in order to save lesson time instead of asking and

waiting until one student raised his or her voice. Furthermore, in fact,

some student-teachers faced the problem of remembering students’

names; that was why interviewed student-teacher 2 suggested making use

of the student list in order to get familiar with them.

3. Conquering time limitation

The result of the fifth research question affirmed that time

management was the second popular obstacle to the student-teachers

applying eliciting techniques. Each surveyed and interviewed student-

teacher recommended their solutions, most of which were careful

preparation before coming on stage and being flexible when exploiting

different eliciting techniques in class.

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The third interviewed student-teacher believed that “preparing the

lesson plan is very important to inexperienced teachers.” She gave

further explanation that when designing the lesson plan, the student-

teachers could carefully consider students’ level, classroom setting, time

limitation and the focused content of the lesson; after that, they could

decide to employ eliciting techniques or straightforward presentation in

order to avoid running out of time for the focused content of the lesson.

Although the student-teachers had already planned for the lesson, a great

number of unexpected incidents could happen during the lesson; as a

result, the student-teachers were advised to be flexible in choosing which

eliciting technique to exploit in class by the third interviewed student-

teacher.

4. Dealing with the unfavorable teaching and learning conditions

As mentioned above, the unequipped classroom was one of the

difficulties that disallowed some student-teachers to exploit elicitation.

To solve this problem, student-teacher 5 suggested that they should be

flexible in making use of the available facilities. For example, regarding

elicitation by asking questions combined with pictures, she said teachers

“had better divide students into small groups and distribute one small

size picture to each instead of printing out one or two big size pictures.”

For the matter of chair arrangement in the classroom, student-

teachers 1 and 3 shared the same idea that group work should be done

within two tables, meaning one group would be formed of two closed

tables in a row. Also, student-teacher 2 admitted that:

When doing Micro-teaching activity in ELT II and IV, my classmates [the

fourth-year students of fast track program, academic year 2010-2011] had a

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tendency to conduct activities that needed moving around because of the

commodious area we are learning in. It turned out to be an opposite story

when teaching the first-year students. The chair arrangement was so

uncomfortable that the teachers should minimize the students’ movement to

avoid messy situations when conducting games or activities.

5. Tackling with the difficult nature of the target knowledge

Regarding the target knowledge’s level of difficulty, seven out of

the nine interviewees said that presenting knowledge straightforwardly

was an ideal way to explain difficult terms, skills or structures. Also,

student-teachers 5, 6 and 8 suggested an eliciting procedure which should

be used flexibly during the lesson. Their ideas were summarized in the

chart below.

Figure 13: Suggested procedure for elicitation

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Especially, student-teacher 5 was willing to “skip the second and

third step in order to save time as well as avoid students’

misunderstanding because of a great number of questions.”

In conclusion, plenty of solutions were suggested by the student-

teachers to resolve the mentioned difficulties of the four main categories,

namely student-teachers’ subjective matters, students’ uncooperative

behaviors and attitude, time limitation, teaching and learning conditions

and the nature of the target knowledge. Some of the solutions were

preparing carefully before the class time, eliciting step by step from

simple to complicated questions, making full use of the student list, being

flexible in exploiting different eliciting techniques, and taking advantages

of available facilities.

Summary

In the fourth chapter, the findings and discussions of the collected

date have been presented in order to provide answers to each research

question. The above findings will be summarized in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION

The previous chapters have presented the introduction, the

literature review, the methodology as well as the findings of the research.

Finally, this chapter will summarize and evaluate the outcomes of the

whole paper by summing up the findings, providing the pedagogical

implications, followed by the contributions of the study, its limitations

and suggestions for further studies.

I. Major findings of the study

On the whole, the study explored the exploitation of eliciting

technique by fourth-year students during their teaching practicum at

FELT, ULIS – VNU. Through the in-depth analysis of the data collected

from two sets of questionnaires, observations and interviews, significant

findings for six research questions are summarized as follows.

First and foremost, all of the student-teachers believed in the

necessity of elicitation since it brought remarkable benefits for them. The

majority of the student-teachers agreed that elicitation helped them check

students’ understanding of the presented points as well as the students’

level of background knowledge, skills, vocabulary, etc, thus assisting the

student-teachers in preparing for appropriate materials and target

knowledge for students to access. Furthermore, the student-teachers

benefited from elicitation because of its ability to catch students’

attention, create teacher-student interaction, find new ideas or opinions

from students, maximize student talking time, and provide opportunities

for weak students to raise their voice.

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Secondly, regarding the frequent employment of each eliciting

technique, all five techniques, namely asking questions, asking questions

combined with pictures, asking questions combined with games or

activities, asking questions combined with texts or dialogues and asking

questions combined with nonverbal language were widely made use of by

26 student-teachers during their teaching practicum at English Division I,

FELTE. Among them, “asking questions” was recognized as the most

frequently used technique to elicit students’ responses, followed by the

technique “asking questions combined with games or activities” as

reported by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. The two

groups of participants disagreed on the use of questioning combined with

nonverbal language. While the students put this technique at the lowest

level of the frequency scale, the student-teachers considered it as the third

commonly used one in elicitation. Besides, asking questions combined

with short stories or pieces of news, with examples or contexts and with

audios or videos were three more eliciting techniques suggested by the

student-teachers.

Thirdly, the effectiveness of each eliciting technique was evaluated

by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. Each group of

participants had their own evaluation, but they reached an agreement that

none of the five exploited eliciting techniques was “totally ineffective” in

order to get students’ responses. Although some student-teachers

underestimated their elicitation techniques, almost all of the students saw

the positive side in all applied techniques. Specifically, “asking questions

combined with games or activities” was reported to be most effective by

all the surveyed students.

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After analyzing the collected data, the researcher concluded that

there were three sources of difficulties preventing the student-teachers

from making full use of these eliciting techniques. The most common

difficulties were from the part of the student-teachers, relating to their

ability to evaluate students’ level in order to employ appropriate eliciting

techniques and their aptitude to make applied techniques comprehensible.

Next, the second common obstacle originated from student-related

factors, identified as students’ behaviors and attitudes towards the

student-teachers’ elicitation. Other objective factors such as time

limitation, teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the target

knowledge were the last sources of problems the student-teachers

encountered when applying eliciting techniques.

Finally, the existing difficulties were solved by a number of

suggested solutions and recommendations. In regard to the student-

teacher-related factors, no recommendation was suggested to deal with

the matter of understanding students’ level; meanwhile, careful

preparation with detailed lesson plans and simple language was believed

to improve the comprehensibility of elicitation. Also, the student-teacher

thought that they should make use of the student list to overcome the

students’ silent behaviors and attitudes. To help conquer time limitation,

the student-teachers suggested carefully planning when and what eliciting

technique should be employed and being flexible in employing different

techniques to elicit students’ responses. Taking advantage of available

facilities and limiting the use of activities that required movement were

suggested solutions to deal with the unequipped classrooms. Last but not

least, the student-teachers stated that they should take straightforward

knowledge presentation into consideration when encountering technical

terms and difficult concepts.

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II. Pedagogical implications

As stated in the aims of the study, one of the reasons for

conducting this study was to help the student-teachers improve their

eliciting techniques. With the support of the above-mentioned findings,

several implications could be drawn.

The first reported finding concluded that asking questions was the

most frequently used technique to elicit students’ responses. As a result,

the student-teachers should pay attention to what, how and when

questions in elicitation should be raised in order to obtain the maximum

effectiveness of this leading technique. According to Brophy (1997, cited

in Nathan, 2007, p.20), no matter what types of questions are raised, 75%

of these questions should elicit “positive and correct responses.”

Therefore, students can find themselves motivated, thus being willing to

respond to the student-teachers’ elicitation since they can answer these

questions correctly most of the time. With regard to what questions

should be raised, Williams, Alley, and Henson (1999, cited in Nathan,

2007, p.21) have found that 95% of teachers’ questions are “classified as

low-level, usually requiring a yes/ no response.” Asking “why” questions

could show the ability to promote students’ higher thinking and

answering. Concerning the matter of how to raise questions, the student-

teachers should have an appropriate attitude towards the students’ correct

or incorrect answers when calling on a variety of students. During the

teaching practicum, most of the student-teachers were under time

pressure to finish all activities they had planned; consequently, calling

students randomly not only helped the student-teachers save lesson time

but also got all students engaged in the lesson. Moreover, since some

student-teachers reported that they were afraid of lacking of time for the

97

main content of the lesson, they sometimes answered their questions

themselves or called one student to respond immediately with little or no

time to prepare. Teachers in general and particularly student-teachers are

highly recommended to provide more wait time for students to complete

“the four mental steps” to answer a question which are hearing the

question, recalling information, considering whether responses would be

accepted and deciding whether responses would be praised or rebuked

(Jones & Jones 2004, cited in Nathan, 2007, p.20).

The research also pointed out that other eliciting techniques,

namely asking questions combined with pictures, asking questions

combined with games or activities, asking questions combined with texts

or dialogues and asking questions combined with nonverbal language

were also exploited by the student-teachers. However, their employment

was still limited because of the time limitation for a lesson. As a result,

carefully designing a lesson plan and being flexible in exploiting various

eliciting techniques might help the student-teachers use the time budget

more effectively since they are not experienced enough.

III. Contributions of the study

Overall, the current study can be considerably helpful for the

student-teachers, the mentors as well as ELT lecturers.

As for the student-teachers, the research helps them recognize their

difficulties in employing eliciting techniques, thus improving and

perfecting their eliciting ability in their future teaching career. Moreover,

the recommendations suggested by the student-teachers themselves can

be good references for those who would do the teaching practicum in

their final year.

98

With regard to the mentors, by understanding the student-teachers’

difficulties during the teaching practicum, they can suggest more

strategies to help the student-teacher perfect their eliciting method. To be

specific, they can give suggestions to deal with students’ behaviors and

attitudes towards the student-teachers’ elicitation and, most importantly,

help the student-teachers correctly estimate the students’ academic

competence as well as background level. Also, the mentors can provide

the student-teachers with some information about the students’ level, their

nature and characteristics in each class so that the student-teachers can be

well-prepared for their lessons.

Last but not least, findings of the paper can be considered a good

source of reference for ELT lectures in order to make amendments to the

course to help the student-teachers use more effective elicitation. To be

specific, strategies to get students involved in the lesson (motivational

strategies) together with recommended types of questions should be

provided for the inexperienced student-teachers to quickly and effectively

elicit students’ responses.

IV. Limitations of the study

To some extent, the paper has depicted an overall picture of the

student-teachers’ use of elicitation and eliciting techniques during their

teaching practicum. Nevertheless, there still exist some limitations.

Limited population is the first shortcoming of this research. The

questionnaires for students were carried out among of 189 students,

studying in nine out of 16 classes in which 26 student-teachers practiced

their teaching. Although the data collected from two sets of

questionnaires, observations and interviews could ensure the sufficiency,

99

reliability and validity of the findings, the researcher expects to involve

more participants. The more participants the study could involve, the

more applicable the findings could be.

The second limitation of this study is that the study could not

involve nine mentors of each group in the teaching practicum. Since all of

them were very busy commenting and observing their student-teachers’

performances, the researcher decided not to disturb their comment

sessions. If these mentors had had chance to participate in the study, the

effectiveness of student-teachers’ elicitation would have been evaluated

by those who had a great amount of experience as well as specialized

knowledge; consequently, the findings would have been more accurate

and comprehensive.

V. Suggestions for further studies

Several significant results were identified in the current study;

however, since there are not many studies investigating elicitation and

eliciting techniques, it has offered other researchers various approaches to

this issue.

They may conduct a study that would investigate the exploitation

of eliciting techniques in a particular teaching component or skill. Also,

how elicitation has been employed in different stages of a lesson can be

another direction of research.

Furthermore, there were only 26 students-teachers conducting their

teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE while the majority of

fourth-year students practiced teaching at different high schools. As a

result, the research can be carried out with mainstream students.

100

Those are some directions future researchers can follow to achieve

further understanding of this issue.

Summary

In a nutshell, the research’s major findings, the pedagogical

implications and the contributions of the research have been discussed in

the final chapter. Also, future researchers can consider the current

study’s limitations and suggestions to implement further investigations

into the issue.

101

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1. Questionnaire for student-teachers

The questionnaire is broken to the next page because of its

landscape format.

1 | P a g e

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENT-TEACHERS

I am Nguyen Thanh Thuy from E1K41. I am doing the research on “The exploitation of eliciting techniques by fourth-year students in

their teaching practicum at FELTE, ULIS – VNU.” I would like to have your opinion on this topic basing on some aspects mentioned below. It

would be great if you can give detailed answers to these questions. Your cooperation is truly appreciated. I would appreciate if you answer all

the questions in RED front to facilitate my collection of the data later.

Thank you very much for your help!

GENERAL INFORMATION

Please fill in the blanks with information related to your six-week practicum.

1. The groups you were assigned to teach during your practicum: ...................................................................................................................

2. The skills you were assigned to teach during your practicum: …....................................................................................................................

ELICITING TECNIQUES

Eliciting techniques are what teachers use to draw out answers and responses from their students, or in other words to “get students

provide information rather than giving it to them.” (In Vietnamese, “eliciting” can be understood as “gợi mở”). Based on this perception, please

answer the following questions.

1. Do you think elicitation is necessary in a lesson? (Choose 1 option only)

a. Yes b. No

2. How often do you elicit knowledge in class? Choose 1 option only.

a. always b. usually c. seldom d. hardly ever e. never

3. What techniques have you used to elicit knowledge from your students? (More than 1 option is acceptable)

a. Asking questions

b. Asking questions combined with pictures

c. Asking questions combined with games or activities

d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language

f. Others (be specific) ....................................................................................................................................................................................

....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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4. How often have you used these eliciting techniques during your lesson? Please circle the appropriate number to indicate your frequency of using

each technique.

1. always 2. usually 3. seldom 4. hardly ever 5. never

a. Asking questions 1 2 3 4 5

b. Asking questions combined with pictures 1 2 3 4 5

c. Asking questions combined with games or activities 1 2 3 4 5

d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues 1 2 3 4 5

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language 1 2 3 4 5

f. Others (be specific) .....................................................................................................................

.....................................................................................................................................................

.....................................................................................................................................................

1 2 3 4 5

5. Based on your students’ responses to each eliciting technique you have used during your lesson, please evaluate the effectiveness of each technique

by circling the appropriate number.

1. totally ineffective 2. slightly ineffective 3. moderately effective 4. effective 5. extremely effective

a. Asking questions 1 2 3 4 5

b. Asking questions combined with pictures 1 2 3 4 5

c. Asking questions combined with games or activities 1 2 3 4 5

d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues 1 2 3 4 5

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language 1 2 3 4 5

f. Others (be specific) .....................................................................................................................

.....................................................................................................................................................

.....................................................................................................................................................

1 2 3 4 5

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6. For each above technique, have you ever encountered any difficulties? If yes, what are they? What have you done or what are your recommendations

for each difficulty? Please fill in each column with appropriate information.

Any difficulties?

Yes (Y) or No (N) Difficulties Solutions or recommendations

a. Asking questions

b. Asking questions combined with

pictures

c. Asking questions combined with

games or activities

d. Asking questions combined with

texts and dialogues

e. Asking questions combined with

non-verbal language

f. Others (be specific)

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ASKING QUESTIONS IN ELICITATION

7. In what cases have you usually raised questions? Please give some examples of questions/ question structures you have used to lead students to the

target language.

For example: Case: teaching new words Example: “Can you guess the meaning basing on the text?”

Cases Example

8. Elicitation is mainly done by asking questions. So what are your purposes of asking these questions? (More than 1 option is acceptable)

a. creating interaction between teacher and students

b. maximizing student talking time

c. calling for students’ attention

d. finding new ideas/ opinions out from students

e. checking and testing understanding, knowledge or skill

f. providing weak students opportunities to raise their voice

g. Others (be specific) ............................................................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

====================================

Thank you for your cooperation!

107

APPENDIX 2. Questionnaire for first-year students

The questionnaire is broken to the next page because of its

landscape format.

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PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA DÀNH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT

Tôi là Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, sinh viên lớp 071.E1. Hiện tôi đang thực hiện nghiên cứu về “Việc sử dụng kỹ thuật gợi mở của sinh viên

năm thứ tư trong kỳ thực tập tại tổ tiếng Anh 1, khoa sư phạm tiếng Anh – ĐHNN – ĐHQGHN.” Rất mong bạn hoàn thành bản điều tra dƣới

đây. Sự hợp tác của bạn sẽ đóng góp rất lớn vào thành công của nghiên cứu này.

Tôi xin chân thành cảm ơn!

THÔNG TIN CƠ BẢN

Hãy hoàn thành 2 câu hỏi dưới đây bằng cách điền vào chỗ trống.

1. Lớp: ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................

2. Giáo sinh bạn đang nghĩ đến khi thực hiện bản điều tra này: ...........................................................................................................................

KỸ THUẬT GỢI MỞ KIẾN THỨC

Kỹ thuật gợi mở là kỹ thuật mà trong đó, giáo viên dẫn dắt sinh viên trả lời từng câu hỏi nhỏ và dần dần tự sinh viên tìm ra câu trả lời cho

mảng kiến thức cần đƣợc cung cấp. Dựa vào quan niệm này, hãy trả lời các câu hỏi dƣới đây.

1. Trong giờ tiếng Anh nói chung, cô giáo bạn có hay đặt câu hỏi để gợi mở kiến thức trong khi dạy không? Hãy chọn 1 đáp án.

a. Luôn luôn b. Thỉnh thoảng c. Hiếm khi d. Hầu nhƣ không e. Không bao giờ

2. Cô giáo thường đặt câu hỏi để gợi mở kiến thức mới/ cũ nhiều nhất vào giai đoạn nào của giờ học?

a. Giai đoạn kiểm tra bài cũ

b. Giai đoạn dẫn dắt vào bài mới

c. Giai đoạn giới thiệu kiến thức mới

d. Giai đoạn bạn thực hành kiến thức mới đƣợc truyền đạt

e. Trả lời khác ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

3. Bạn có thường xung phong trả lời các câu hỏi mà cô giáo đưa ra trong giờ học không?

a. Luôn luôn. Câu hỏi nào cũng phát biểu.

b. Thƣờng xuyên

c. Hiếm khi

d. Hầu nhƣ không

e. Không bao giờ. Trừ khi bị cô giáo gọi.

Lí do cho sự lựa chọn của bạn:

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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4. Các thức cô giáo thường đặt câu hỏi để gợi mở kiến thức trong lớp là ...(có thể chọn nhiều đáp án)

a. Chỉ đặt câu hỏi

b. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với tranh ảnh

c. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với trò chơi/ hoạt động

d. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với đoạn văn/ hội thoại

e. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với ngôn ngữ cử chỉ

f. Trả lời khác ...............................................................................................................................................................................................

5. Bạn hãy đánh giá mức độ sử dụng thường xuyên của từng phương pháp cô giáo đã sử dụng để gợi mở kiến thức

1. Luôn luôn 2. Thỉnh thoảng 3. Hiếm khi 4. Hầu nhƣ không 5. Không bao giờ

6. Bạn hãy đánh giá mức độ hiệu quả của từng phương pháp cô giáo sử dụng để gợi mở trong việc tăng mức độ phản ứng của bạn với các câu hỏi

bằng cách khoanh vào số tương ứng.

====================================

Tôi xin chân thành cảm ơn sự hợp tác của bạn!

a. Chỉ đặt câu hỏi 1 2 3 4 5

b. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với tranh ảnh 1 2 3 4 5

c. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với trò chơi/ hoạt động 1 2 3 4 5

d. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với đoạn văn/ hội thoại 1 2 3 4 5

e. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với ngôn ngữ cử chỉ 1 2 3 4 5

f. Trả lời khác ..................................................................................................................................

......................................................................................................................................................

1 2 3 4 5

a. Chỉ đặt câu hỏi 1 2 3 4 5

b. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với tranh ảnh 1 2 3 4 5

c. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với trò chơi/ hoạt động 1 2 3 4 5

d. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với đoạn văn/ hội thoại 1 2 3 4 5

e. Dùng câu hỏi đi kèm với ngôn ngữ cử chỉ 1 2 3 4 5

f. Trả lời khác .................................................................................................................................

.....................................................................................................................................................

1 2 3 4 5

1. hoàn toàn không hiệu quả 2. phần lớn không hiệu quả 3. trung gian 4. phần lớn hiệu quả 5. rất hiệu quả

108

APPENDIX 3. Observation checklist

The observation checklist is broken to the next page because of

its landscape format.

OBSERVATION CHECKLIST

A. CLASS PROFILE

Name of the student-teacher: ....................................................... Date: .......................................

Assigned class: .............................................................................

Assigned skill/subject: .................................................................

Start time: ............................... End time: ................................ Duration: .................................

B. OBSERVATION AND ASSESSMENT OF ELICITING TECHNIQUES

Eliciting techniques Y N Stage of using

elicitation

Purposes of

elicitation

Comments/Transcript of

used questions

The use of elicting techniques

Asking questions

Asking questions with pictures

Asking questions with games or activities

Asking questions with texts and dialogues

Asking questions with non-verbal language

109

APPENDIX 4. Interview guiding questions

PART 1: ELICITING TECHNIQUES

1. In your opinion, is it necessary to employ elicitation in language

teaching? Can you give explanation for your view point?

2. How can you define an effective elicitation?

3. What are the factors that decide the effectiveness of elicitation?

4. What were your purposes of using elicitation during the practicum?

5. In which occasions did you use elicitation?

6. During six weeks, which eliciting techniques were employed in your

lessons and how often did you exploit those techniques?

7. Why did not you choose other techniques to elicit students’ responses?

8. Can you evaluate the effectiveness of your elicitation based on your

students’ responses to each eliciting technique you have used during

your lesson?

9. What difficulties did you encounter when using eliciting techniques

during the practicum?

10. What did you do or do you suggest overcoming those difficulties I

employing eliciting techniques?

PART 2: ASKING QUESTIONS IN ELICITATION

1. Can you give me some examples for your questions to elicit students’

responses in practicum?

2. Were these questions able to provoke students’ thinking and

responses?

110

APPENDIX 5. Interview transcript (Student-teacher 1)

1. General information

Duration: 40 minutes, from 10:10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

Facility: Skype video call

2. Interview transcript

Interviewer (Q): There are two main parts in this in-depth interview

which are first, elicitation and the use of eliciting techniques during

the teaching practicum and second, asking questions to elicit

students’ responses. Shall we start with the first part?

Interviewee (A): Sure. Go ahead!

Q: In your opinion, is it necessary to employ elicitation in language

teaching? Can you give explanation for your view point?

A: Elicitation is very important since it helps the teacher achieves

numerous benefits at the same time. First, by eliciting students’

responses, the teacher can estimate students’ background as well as their

academic competence. Second, the interaction between teacher and

students is created due to the exploitation of questioning and answering

process. In my humble opinion, elicitation is the key to interaction during

the lesson that can turn the teaching and learning process into an

interactional knowledge acquisition. Third, it helps decrease teacher

talking time and at the same time increase that of students. Finally, by

asking guiding questions, the teacher is able to keep students alert of

being questioned, therefore focus their attention during the lesson.

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Q: How can you define an effective elicitation?

A: Elicitation becomes effective when it can at least keep students

thinking and being aware of the questioned issue. Also, in case students

may not give exact answers, they still attempt to or show their interest in

finding the answers. Most importantly, students are always expected to

fully understand then correctly follow teacher’s guiding questions to the

target knowledge.

Q: What are the factors that decide the effectiveness of elicitation?

A: There are a number of factors that contribute to an effective elicitation

among which teacher is the most important factor. His or her ability to

correctly estimate students’ level together with the capability to make

comprehensible questions decide up to 70% of the eliciting efficiency.

Additionally, students’ attitude is another important factor that should be

taken into consideration. I mean whether they response to their teacher’s

elicitation or not. Last but not least, the effectiveness of elicitation

depends much on time limitation of each lesson, whether teacher has

enough time to conduct an activity or just use questions merely or even

directly presenting the target knowledge.

Q: Did you exploit eliciting techniques during your teaching

practicum?

A: Yes, usually. This is the most frequent technique I used to get

students’ responses.

Q: What were your purposes of using elicitation?

A: As mentioned above, I used elicitation to estimate my students’

understanding, consisting of students’ ability to get my points and their

level of background knowledge, skill, vocabulary, etc. Then I wanted to

create not only opportunities in which students could raise their voice but

also interaction between me and students.

112

Q: In which occasions did you use elicitation?

A: I used elicitation whenever I needed, to introduce a new amount of

knowledge, to pre-teach skill or to explain new words, etc.

Q: During six weeks, which eliciting techniques were employed in

your lessons?

A: Regarding the frequency of use, asking questions was mostly

exploited, followed by asking questions combined with texts or

dialogues. Asking questions combined with activities stood at the third

position while asking questions combined with pictures was untouched.

Besides, when teaching listening, I made use of available recordings in

the text book rather than preparing other activities.

Q: Let’s discuss more about asking questions. A lot of student-

teachers fully exploited this technique since they chose “always” to

indicate their highest fluency of use comparing with direct

presentation of knowledge. Why did you just circle the “usually”

option?

A: In my opinion, teacher should avoid asking questions all time. First, I

did not want my students to feel stressful and alert of being questioned

from the beginning to the end of the lesson. Really uncomfortable!

Moreover, the more I asked, the more they had to raise their voice;

therefore, weak students could easily feel scared and maybe they were

discouraged to get involved in the lesson since they felt they were not as

good as other students.

Q: Why did not you choose asking questions combined with pictures

to elicit students’ responses?

A: Actually, I had thought of this technique before. However, I could

hardly find any unit of knowledge which was suitable to explain via

pictures. Most of the time I taught Double-major degree, so students

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could access technical terms related to economics easily if I gave them

examples, texts or context in which these words were used instead of

giving pictures. Additionally, there was one case I intended to employ

picture, but it took me too much time searching for the appropriate one,

not yet mentioning instructing time in class. Generally speaking, pictures

were time consuming while in teaching practicum, student-teachers were

always in a rush to complete all planned activities. Instead, I wanted to

save time presenting new knowledge and focus on the main content.

Q: According to your answers to my questionnaire, you also

employed asking questions combined with activities, combined with

texts and combined with nonverbal language besides asking

questions merely. Can you evaluate the effectiveness of your

elicitation based on your students’ responses to each eliciting

technique you have used during your lesson?

A: I have to admit that all of my applied eliciting techniques were

effective in terms of getting students’ responses and making them think

of the issues to some extent.

Asking questions showed its great advantage especially when I

gave students a context or an example in which the target knowledge and

vocabulary was used. For example, in speaking lesson, students faced up

to one term related to a manager’s characteristics “open”. Most of them

did not understand what “open” meant. I gave them a clue by asking

“Supposed that you are a manager of a Multi-national cooperation, your

employees come from different countries, regions, races. So what does

“open” here mean? Will you discriminate?” Finally my students could

access to the meaning of this word. As a result, asking questions

gradually or more ideally combined with examples and contexts helped

114

students get to the target knowledge easily throughout my guiding

questions.

Regarding asking questions combined with activities, students had

chances to play and get themselves involved in games so they were eager

to respond to any of my following questions.

Exploited texts in elicitation really helped me calm down my

students and get their attention back to the lesson. As I experienced, there

was a small difference between a text and an example which was the

form of formatting: one was spoken and one was written. Students had

time to read and think before giving answers so they got to my expected

direction.

Nonverbal language brought immediate influence on students

because of its simplicity. For instance, I sat down to illustrate “decline”

and stood up for “rise”. However, this technique was not really

appropriate with complicated terms because students could

misunderstand my intention or not understand at all and I myself was not

able to act out.

Q: Was there any case that you found your elicitation ineffective?

A: When teaching the lesson of “Planning”, I asked students to

brainstorm whatever related to planning, especially marketing planning.

However, my students just discussed planning in general instead of

marketing issue.

Q: Why was it unsuccessful? In other words, what difficulties did you

encounter when using eliciting techniques during the practicum?

A: As I experienced, the biggest difficulty was that I had no idea about

students’ background knowledge, what they had already learnt and what

they had known about the target knowledge. That was the reason why

115

students could not recall knowledge to answer some of my complicated

questions.

Q: Any other difficulties?

A: Time limitation. Eliciting took much time than presenting knowledge

directly, especially when I wanted to use games or texts to introduce new

knowledge for students. I had to spend time not only preparing for what I

intended to conduct in class but also giving them instruction and checking

their understanding of the rules. A very short text also took them 5

minutes to read through and have the most general idea about that text.

Q: Did any difficulties related to classroom facilities, the nature of

the knowledge or students’ behaviors degrade the effectiveness of

your elicitation?

A: Not really. Fortunately, most of the time, students quickly react to my

questions without hesitation. Also, they followed the correct direction to

get to my point since they did not misunderstand my nonverbal language.

Q: So what did you do or what do you recommend to overcome the

obstacles of understanding students’ level and time limitation?

A: To be honest, five weeks working with students was not enough to

correctly estimate their level of academic competence or background

knowledge in order to prepare the appropriate eliciting technique to apply

in class.

Regarding the matter of time, if teachers are lack of time for the

main content of the lesson, directly presenting knowledge is the most

preferable way. In case students react as if they do not understand the

questions, I will paraphrase them or even translate them into Vietnamese

to save time. In the case of “multinational cooperation” above, students

seemed to not understand the meaning of MNC, then I translated into

116

“cong ty da quoc gia” right away and it became much easier to answer

other questions.

With regard to asking questions merely, I think teachers should ask

maximum 2 questions, after which students can draw out the target

knowledge because too many questions can make them confused. Simple

and straightforward language is highly recommended.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for teachers who want to exploit

other eliciting techniques besides asking questions?

A: Asking questions combined with activities or pictures should be used

to explain or introduce simple knowledge only. Otherwise, students will

focus on commenting pictures or playing only.

Reading text using in asking questions combined with texts should

be short with 3 to 4 sentences and easy to understand with few or without

any new word because students are not willing to read such a long text in

speaking or listening lesson.

Nonverbal language should be prepared and practiced at home

before being brought in the class. Or to be safer, I think teachers should

apply other eliciting techniques or direct presentation for difficult

knowledge.

In short, I think teachers and especially student-teachers should try

to work hard on the lesson plan in order to provide comprehensible

elicitation in appropriate amount of time. In case the lesson plan seems

not to work in the class, I think the only solution is to be flexible between

exploiting different techniques and direct presentation of knowledge. It

can help save much time for the main part of the lesson.

Q: Alright, that’s the end of the first part. Let’s move to the second

part about asking questions in elicitation. Can you give me some

117

examples for your questions to elicit students’ responses in

practicum?

A: “Can you relate the strategies to the way we play the game/do the

warm-up?”

“It’s similar to …. Can you guess its meaning?”

“So does anyone know the job of a manager?”

“What does a manager do?”

Point at someone and ask “Can you help me with this question?”

“Can anyone tell me again what we should do now?”

Q: Were these questions able to provoke students’ thinking and

responses?

A: Most of the time, yes. However, some questions were not fully

answered because of various reasons. Students might not understand my

questions because of the complicated or vague wording; the issue in my

questions might be beyond their knowledge or keeping silent was their

habit as response to teachers and student-teachers’ questions.

Q: Thank you so much for sharing valuable opinions. In case there is

anything unclear, I will contact you later, ok?

A: No problem!