Vietnamese EFL Learners Research Articles

EFL learners' perceptions of factors influencing learner autonomy development

Together with recent technological advances in a variety of tools (such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube), learners have been provided with freedom and openness to communicate with each other and to become proactive and independent in their learning. It is believed, however, that Asian learners seem to possess reactive autonomy so that while they can organize their resources autonomously to achieve their learning goals, they are unable to take responsibility for their own learning. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to explore the factors that influence Vietnamese EFL learners' support for or resistance to promoting learner autonomy within a 15-week, portfolio-based writing course. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and writing logs in this qualitative research and analyzed through content analysis. The findings showed three major factors (personal, academic, and external) supporting and resisting developing learner autonomy in the portfolio-based writing course.

Factors Affecting Pronoun Resolution by Vietnamese EFL Learners

This study examined the effects of verb semantics, discourse unit and discourse coherence relations pronoun interpretations by Vietnamese EFL learners. Using a sentence continuation test with 32 Vietnamese EFL learners, three significant insights contributed to the existing L2 literature. Firstly, Vietnamese EFL learners were highly sensitive to semantic cues and discourse coherence when resolving pronouns. Secondly, learner preferences for in within-sentence and between-sentence contexts’ pronoun antecedents were mostly indistinguishable, suggesting that discourse unit had a negligible impact on anaphora resolution processes. Finally, verb semantics and coherence relations exhibited a dynamic interaction effect on L2 pronoun resolution Verb types varied sharply when co-occurring with different types of coherence relations.

The effect of task role on Vietnamese EFL learners' collaboration in mixed proficiency dyads

Previous peer interaction research has shown that proficiency not only plays a role in how second language (L2) learners talk about language form, but also influences their pair dynamics. The current study focuses on peer interaction involving mixed-proficiency dyads, specifically whether task role affects the nature of L2 learners' discussions or their pair dynamics. Sixty English L2 learners at a Vietnamese university were assigned to mixed-proficiency dyads to carry out a story retell task. Task role was manipulated by assigning either information holder or information receiver status to the lower-proficiency learner. After retelling the story, the learners worked together to create a story ending and then collaboratively wrote the entire story. Audio-recordings of their interactions were transcribed and analyzed in terms of the amount, type, and resolution of language-related episodes (LREs) and pair dynamics. The results indicated that the learners produced more LREs and engaged in interactions with greater mutuality when the lower-proficiency learner had the task role as information holder. The findings shed light on ways to promote attention to language form and collaborative interactions when L2 learners from different proficiency levels carry out communicative tasks.

Examining second language receptive knowledge of collocation and factors that affect learning

This study investigated Vietnamese EFL learners’ knowledge of verb–noun and adjective–noun collocations at the first three 1,000 word frequency levels, and the extent to which five factors (node word frequency, collocation frequency, mutual information score, congruency, and part of speech) predicted receptive knowledge of collocation. Knowledge of single-word items at the same word frequency levels was also examined. The results indicated that the participants were not close to a level of mastery of collocational knowledge at any word frequency level; knew less than 50% of each type of collocation overall; and that their knowledge of collocation significantly decreased at each level. The analysis also revealed that there were significant large positive correlations between knowledge of collocations and single-word items, and that node word frequency was the strongest predictor of receptive knowledge of collocation.

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge in Predicting Reading Comprehension of Vietnamese EFL Learners

This study explored the predictive power of implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge in explaining the reading comprehension of Vietnamese EFL students and examined how these two types of grammatical knowledge could differently predict for students having dissimilar reading abilities. The participants of the study comprised 51 Vietnamese adult learners of English having different proficiency levels. They completed three English tests including a timed grammatical judgment tests, an untimed grammatical judgment test, and a reading comprehension test. Correlational and regression analyses were conducted, and the results indicated that both implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge significantly correlated with and significantly predicted reading comprehension. However, the two types of grammatical knowledge lost their correlation and predictive power when it came to the more proficient reading group. In the case of the lower level group, explicit grammatical knowledge did not correlate with or contribute to reading, but implicit grammatical knowledge remained as a significant contributor.

The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence

This study investigates the combined effects of input enhancement and recasts on a group of Vietnamese EFL learners' performance of constructive criticism during peer review activities. Particularly, the study attempts to find out whether the instruction works for different aspects of pragmatic learning, including the learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge, as well as their frequency of externally and internally modifying their criticism. Over a course lasting approximately seven instructional hours, the learners received visually enhanced pragmatic input and recasts of their errors of form and meaning. The learners' pre-to-posttest improvement was investigated using three production tasks, namely a discourse completion task, a role play, and an oral peer-feedback task. The findings show there is potential for input enhancement and recast in teaching different aspects of second language pragmatics and are discussed with implications for classroom practices and future research.

The Nature of 'Talk' in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication in a Vietnamese Tertiary EFL Context

This classroom-based research aims to investigate the nature and quality of talk in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) among Vietnamese tertiary EFL learners. Participants included 60 students in their sixth semester of an eight-semester BA in TESOL program in a large university in Central Vietnam. Using a sociocultural lens, the nature of discussion was compared in two modes of exchanges, SCMC versus face-to-face (FTF), through analysis of discussion transcripts supported by questionnaire data, interviews and observations. The first level of analysis, participation, revealed that the online students, collaborating in an academic task for the first time via SCMC, produced fewer words, but spent more time, during the discussion process. More equal contribution was a marked feature of the SCMC mode. For the second level of analysis examining the interactional nature and pattern of discussion, transcripts were analyzed according to socioaffective, organizational and sociocognitive themes, and their emergent subcategories. Clear differences were evident between the two settings regarding group processes, leadership, negotiation and consensus. It is argued that for these tertiary Vietnamese EFL learners, the FTF groups were more product-oriented in the discussion task, while the online groups presented a more process-oriented style of learning.

Matching and Stretching Learners‟ Learning Styles

Creating and sustaining learners’ active involvement in learning requires an understanding of their learning style preferences. Through a questionnaire survey and participant observations, this study sought to explore the extent to which teachers understand their students’ language learning styles as well as teacher-student style mismatches in Vietnamese EFL classrooms, which have brought about students’ dissatisfaction and low performance. The study found Vietnamese EFL learners more intuitive than sensing, more visual than verbal, more active than reflective, and more sequential than global. After matching the distribution of learning styles, this action research applied the multi-style teaching strategies suggested by Kolb (1984) and Felder (1993) to stretch students’ learning style patterns. While guiding students into certain learning styles, teachers had to guid themselves into the teaching styles they are not accustomed to. The benefits of style matching and stretching were confirmed beside the failures in the class where adult learners failed to respond to style stretching strategies and in the class where the teacher failed to respond to students’ learning styles. These failures remind teachers that other learner factors, teacher factors, and learning environment factors always exist beside learning and teaching styles as promoters or hinderers to style matching and stretching strategies.