Assignment 1 - Literature Review

Topic
What are the factors affecting the integration of English grammar into writing
lessons for YLE in private language centers in Hanoi?

Introduction
Focus on young learners in Hanoi, especially who have full access to studying English since a
very early age, this research is to figure out the problems that they are currently having with
their grammar learning, also the methodology that teachers who work at private language
centers have been applied in their classes to teach children how to use grammar correctly in
their writing.

Review of relevant Literature

1. Definitions
Young children, up to the ages of nine or ten, learn differently from older children,
adolescents and adults. They are very responsive, learn from everything around them,
understand not only from what being explained but also through what they see, hear, touch
and interact with. They have limited attention span so individual attention and activities to
help them engage in the lesson are musts. On top of this, they find abstract concepts such as
grammar rules difficult to grasp.
English grammar can be partly seen as a knowledge of what words can go where and what
form these words should take. Studying grammar means knowing how different grammatical
elements can be strung together to make chains of words. With YLE, teaching grammar can
be more difficult since they absorb knowledge differently from other ages do. There are
several ways for teachers for introducing grammar such as showing students grammar
evidence and ask them to work our for themselves how the language is constructed. Engaging
activities is also a requirement in each grammar lesson.
2. Findings of
relevant studies on the factors affecting teaching and learning grammar integrated with
writing skills
a. Learners’
English language proficiency
From the start of a child’s language learning journey, they start to be exposed to English. The
common framework for their levels are Pre A1, A1 and A2. At this stage, they are supposed
to use their everyday written and spoken English and gain confidence and improve their
English.
Learning grammar in this stage is not too focused as much as communicating in English.
Therefore, they are able to learn how to use simple tenses to tell a story or to describe, use
singular/plural nouns or make simple sentences with subject and verb.

b. The way teachers teach English grammar

Teaching grammar explicitly requires the learner to think about language abstractly.
Children learn best by playing, singing, and using language in real situations and for fun, not
by explanation. At this age, it is considered to be difficult for young learners if they learn
English grammar rules in the traditional way such as grammar translation.
A grammar lesson should include as many related activities as possible to engage students in
the lesson and have scaffold meaning in order to facilitate students through stages.
However, teachers who work at educational institutions in Vietnam are not always trained
with enough teaching skills, also affected by the traditional way when they were at school, so
that’s can be how they bring traditional methods into classrooms when teaching grammar,
which may lead to a gap in learning English grammar and other communicative skills. And
sometimes teachers still have to follow the traditional way like giving students grammar
structure and advise them to follow because games and activities do not always work.

c. Social and family factors

One big issue is the current testing system in Vietnam, which are grammar-dominated exams.
Vietnamese schools have focused on English grammar and reading comprehension, so exams
have had to be set this way.

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On the one hand, parents always want their children to pass all the exams at school with high
scores, and most of those tests’ format focus on grammar, but just a little on communicative
English. Even though some children are already capable of communicating effectively in
English, their English scores at school are not perfectly achieved. Thus, parents consider their
English is not that good and they demand English centers to teach their children more
grammar and improve their scores at school. The knowledge acquired, if not being used in an
effective way, will be only useful for these examinations but not for flexible daily
communication in English.
Furthermore, not every parent could spend time and have enough teaching skills to support
their children in learning at home, whereas it’s a compulsory condition if students want to
make further progress in learning English.

Those studies can provide an overall view of teaching grammar for young learners and also
give the theory/methodology in integrating grammar and writing. Furthermore, there are
some examples from those countries where English is being studied as a foreign language,
which are the same as Vietnam, the object country in this study.

Conclusion
There has been not many studies about young learners being taught grammar in some private
English centers in Hanoi nowadays. The methodology still follows the tradition and might not
resolve the existing problems of young learners studying grammar. Apparently, the
methodology has been updating continuously (for example with technology) since teachers
are being trained more thoroughly and the demand for young leaners taking English exams
(which requires writing using correct grammar) is increasing so this study will focus on those
points.

References:
The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer, 2015.
https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/helping-your-child/how-young-children-learn-
english-another-language)
https://opencourses.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/ENL4/Instructional
%20Package/PDF/ELT_methods_Dendrinos_teyl_gramar.pdf

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/editorrachael/how-teach-grammar)
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED527862.pdf)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tesq.148)
https://tuoitrenews.vn/education/8231/english-teaching-in-vietnam-teacher-reeducation