VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

University of Languages and international Studies

faculty of English language teacher education

INH TH H PHNG

GIVING AND CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS SKILLS AMONG FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS DURING THEIR PRACTICUM

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of bachelor of arts (TEFL)

Hanoi, May 2011

I hereby state that I: inh Th H Phng, E1K41, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelors 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 or the care, loan or reproduction of the paper. Signature

inh Th H Phng Date

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT On the completion of this work, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Tran Lan Anh, who gave me the benefit of her wisdom, advice and patience, who made valuable suggestions and careful critical comments that helped me to carry out this study. Besides, I want to express my gratefulness to 25 students of E1K41 who participated enthusiastically in my research as the direct participants. I am also indebted to the supervising teachers of English Division 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for agreeing to participate in my paper. Finally, I want to express my love and gratitude to my beloved friends and family for supporting me wholeheartedly.

ABSTRACT As one of the first attempts to investigate giving and checking instructions skills among fourth-year students during their practicum at college levels, the paper aims at exploring teacher trainees perception of effective instructions and the level of effectiveness with respect to time, speech modification and techniques. To fulfill this primary aim, both qualitative and quantitative methods with three research instruments including observations, questionnaires and interviews were adopted. The participants of the study were 25 fourth-year students of Fast-Track Program and nine supervising teachers from English Division I, at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University. The most significant finding of the research was that the language for instructions was the most problematic issue among the trainee teachers. Other difficulties included time and techniques for giving instructions as well as checking students understanding. The paper, therefore, would serve as a good reference for both pre-service and in-service teachers who desire to have a closer look at this issue or to improve their giving and checking instructions skills.

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 The importance of giving and checking instructions as perceived by trainee teachers Figure 2 The difficulty level of giving and checking instructions Figure 3 First rank factors that influence the effectiveness of instructions Figure 4 Effective speech forms for instructions Figure 5 Necessity for the use of full sentence when giving instructions Figure 6 Most effective techniques for giving instructions Figure 7 The appropriate amount of time spent on giving and checking instructions Figure 8 Student teachers self-evaluation of their instructions

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements Abstract List of figures CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1.2. Aims and objectives of the study 1.3. Scope of the study 1.4. Expected outcomes and significance of the study 1.5. Overview of the rest of the paper CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Key concepts 5 5 7 10 13 14 15 15 18 3 2 3 3 1 i ii iii

2.1.1. Teaching practice 2.1.2. Classroom management 2.1.3. Teacher talk 2.1.4. Giving and checking instructions a. Speech form of instructions b. Types of instructions c. Effective instructions d. Techniques for giving and checking instructions 2.2. Related studies

20 20 21

2.2.1. Related studies on teaching practice 2.2.2. Related studies on giving and checking instructions in teaching practice a. In the world
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b.

In Vietnam

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1. Participants and setting 24 24 25 26 27 29 31 33

3.1.1. Participants 3.1.2. Setting 3.2. Data collection instruments

3.2.1. Observations 3.2.2. Questionnaires 3.2.3. Interviews 3.3. Data collection procedure and analysis

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1. Student teachers perception of giving and checking instructions 4.1.1. The importance of giving and checking instructions 4.1.2. The level of difficulty of giving and checking instructions 4.1.3. Factors that influence the effectiveness of giving and checking instructions 4.1.4. Language for instructions 4.1.5. The most effective techniques for giving instructions 4.1.6. The appropriate amount of time for instructions 4.2. The effectiveness of student teachers giving and checking instructions skills 4.2.1. Time for giving instructions 4.2.2. Speech modification 44 48 44 43 40 42 39 37 36 35

4.2.3. Techniques for instructions 4.2.4. Planning instructions 4.2.5. Checking instructions 4.2.6. Self-evaluation CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1. Major findings of the study 5.2. Contributions of the study 5.3. Limitations of the study 5.4. Suggestions for further studies REFERENCES APPENDICES

56 64 67 70

71 72 73 73

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The first chapter discusses the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope as well as the significance of the study together with a brief overview of the research. The three research questions, in particular, are clearly identified to work as the guidelines for the whole paper. 1.1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Wright (2005) in the introduction of his book titled Classroom management in Language Education states that Classroom management is the central element of every teachers daily professional experience, but it is a neglected topic in debates on language education. He also puts much emphasis on the significance of classroom management for both teachers and students in language learning which far outweighs its relative importance in Applied Linguistics Literature. Classroom management, hence, could be considered an essential skill that should be practiced by TELF students who wish to pursue the language teaching career. Books on effective classroom management were not few. Some of them that could be named are Classroom management that works by Mazano (2003), Winning strategies for Class management by Cummings (2000). Previously, two research paper of Vo (2009) and Nguyen (2010) have been carried out at VNU to investigate the classroom management skill of TELF students in their practicum. However, since most of the literature on this field often discuss classroom management as a whole, few attempts have been made to investigate giving and checking instructions skill, a key component which decides the success of classroom management among those trainee teachers in details.
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Moreover, prior to this, through classroom observations in a study on micro-teaching, the researcher realized that giving and checking instructions skills was a problematic matter among pre-service teachers that caused them many difficulties in controlling the class. However, the skills of giving and checking instructions were not paid much attention by both the trainee teachers and the teacher trainers and became a big gap in previous studies on teaching practice and classroom management as a whole. All of these have become the motivations that stimulate the researcher to conduct a research on Giving and checking instructions skills among 4th year students during their practicum. 1.2. Aims and objectives First, the research paper is aimed to examine trainee teachers perceptions of giving and checking instructions skills. Moreover, the study is also to find out the common techniques of giving and checking instructions used by 4th year students in their practicum. Afterwards, the effectiveness of those strategies is also examined so that it can figure out the possible difficulties that pre-service teacher students may encounter when giving instructions in class, and pave the ways to improve their ability of giving and checking instructions. In short, the objective of the study is to answer the three following questions: 1. What makes effective instructions with respect to the timing, speed, speech modification, techniques as perceived by the teacher trainees? 2. How effective are the techniques of giving and checking instructions used by the teacher trainees during their practicum as evaluated by themselves and their supervisors?

3. What are the suggestions for better classroom instructions proposed by both the trainee teachers and the supervisors? 1.3. Scope of the study The study is aimed to investigate the techniques of giving and checking instructions among 25 fourth-year students who have their teaching practicum at college degree. Those students are allocated to teach different groups of first year students at English Division 1, FELTE, ULIS, VNU in a six-week teaching practicum. 1.4. Expected outcomes and significance of the study By conducting this research, the researcher expects to find out the most commonly used instructing techniques among those students and evaluate the effectiveness of those techniques. Once finished, the paper could serve as a good reference for those who wish to have a closer view into the techniques of giving and checking instructions used by the trainee teachers in their practicum. The trainee teachers themselves could also refer to the findings of the study so that they could draw their own lesson of how to give and check instructions more effectively. 1.5. An overview of the entire paper The rest of the paper includes the following chapters: Chapter II Literature Review provides the background of the study.

Chapter III Methodology describes in details the participants, instruments of the study as well as the procedure which the research follows. Chapter IV Findings and discussion analyzes data found out and discusses the outcomes of the study. Chapter V Conclusion summarizes the main issue of the paper, the limitations of the research and gives some suggestions for further studies. The References and Appendices includes a list of references that the researcher used for the research, samples of questionnaire, observation checklist, guided questions for interview, teachers

instructions transcript and interview transcript.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter embraces two main sections including Key concepts and Related studies. In the former section, definitions as well as distinctive features of classroom instructions are examined. These include Teaching Practice, Classroom management, Teacher talk, Giving and checking instructions as a part of Teacher talk, common forms, key features and techniques of effective instructions. The latter part, on the other hand, gives a brief overview of previous studies related to researching on Teaching practice and Classroom management 2.1. Key concepts 2.1.1. Teaching Practice Discussing the process of professional education and training, Wallace (1991) highlights the importance of practice in developing any professional expertise including teachers education. In his book titled Training Foreign Language Teachers, Wallace proposes three major models of professional education namely the craft model, the applied science model and the reflective model. However, practice is always considered the central element for every pre-service teacher training program regardless which model is applied. When defining the term Teaching practice, Gower, Phillips and Walkers (1995, p.6) writes: A teaching practice (TP) session can range from informal practice of a particular technique, perhaps with other trainees acting as students, to a formally assessed lesson. Teaching practice can take place in an English speaking country or in a country where first language is not English. The trainees can be native or non-native

speakers of English and the classes may be monolingual or multilingual. Teaching, like many other skills, needs to be practiced. The critical role of teaching practicum, in particular, has been widely accepted by many researchers and educators (Wallace, 1991; Yilmaz & Cavas, 2007; Lind, 2001.) According to Purdy and Gibson (2008 as cited in Ong, 2009), by offering exposure to practical classroom experiences, teaching practicum plays an important role in education which is similar to internship or field attachment in other professions. Discussing the issue, Ishihara (2005) highlights that teaching practicum is often a required core course in any language teacher education program. Although in different teacher training institutions the duration of the teaching practicum may vary, the practicum usually takes place during the last semester before graduation. Prior to the teaching practicum, trainee teachers are expected to be well equipped with theory of teaching methodology. Moreover, they also acquire certain teaching experience through some kinds of training activities including microteaching, a training context in which a teaching situation has been reduced in scope and/or simplified in some systematic way which aims at familiarizing student teachers with teaching job (Wallace, 1991, p.92). In the teaching practicum, trainee teachers are assigned to a supervising teacher and required to observe and teach in language class for a certain number of hours (Ishihara, 2005). As Ishihara (2005) points out, teaching practicum is of great importance since it is the central or the sole course that assures extensive sense-making opportunities in actual teaching context. This view is supported by Johnson (1996 as
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cited in Ong, 2009) who claims that for most pre-service teachers, teaching practicum can be regarded as the most important learning experience in learning to teach through reasoning their practices and being supported by their educators. According to Gower, Phillips and Walkers (1995), teaching practicum provides student teachers with opportunities to get first-hand experience, mainly focuses on the teaching skills and techniques of directing the learning activities. They also claims that the objectives of teaching practicum is to provide trainee teachers with an opportunity to try out those techniques and one of the main emphasis of teaching practice is put on classroom management skills of trainee teachers. What trainee teachers are expected to get after the practicum is the ability to be in control of basic classroom management skills (Gower & Walters, 1983, p.3) 2.1.2. Classroom management According to Kratochwill (n.d.), classroom management, or in his own words classroom discipline has been considered a priority for teachers and classroom management and instructional skills are always identified by teachers as their top need. The importance of effective classroom management is highlighted by Oliver & Reschly (2007, p.1) since it is critical to achieve positive educational outcomes. Although the crucial role of classroom management is widely recognized by most of the educators and teachers, there is almost no fixed definition of this term (Vo, 2009). According to Sasson (2007, as cited in Nguyen, 2010), classroom management is the actions to create and maintain order in classroom that enable instruction to take place.
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Rodriguez (n.d.), however, believes that classroom management is commonly referred to issues of supervision, refereeing, facilitating and even academic discipline. Although there is no agreed-upon definition of classroom management, the definition put forward in Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics is widely accepted. As stated in the Longman dictionary, classroom management is the ways in which students behavior, movement, interaction, etc., during a class is organized and controlled by the teacher to enable teaching to take place most effectively (p.74). According to Evertson and Weinstein (2006, p.4) classroom management initially plays two important roles which are to establish and sustain an orderly environment so that students can engage in meaningful academic learning and to enhance student social and moral growth. Evertson and Weinstein (2006) also categorize classroom management into five sub-skills which are: a. Develop caring, supportive relationships with and among students b. Organize and implement instruction in ways that optimize students access to learning c. Use group management methods that encourage student engagement with academic tasks d. Promote the development of student social skills and selfregulation e. Use appropriate interventions to assist students who have behavior problems. According to McLeod, Fisher and Hoover (2003, as cited in Nguyen, 2010), classroom management involves planning the curriculum,
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organizing routine procedures, gathering resources, arranging the environment to maximize efficiency, monitoring students behavior, and anticipating, preventing and handling problems arising. Although aspects of classroom management may vary according to different ways of categorizing, most of the researchers all agree upon three key elements of classroom management including: a. Managing time and classroom space b. Managing students behavior c. Managing instructional strategies Under the light of this perception, To, Nguyen, Nguyen, Nguyen & Luong (2010) propose a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of classroom management which composes of various components of classroom management skills: a. Managing time b. Managing classroom space c. Giving and checking instructions d. Checking understanding e. Monitoring f. Dealing with disruptive students

g. Giving feedback h. Motivating students As mentioned by Clivechung (n.d.), a series of classroom research studies by Kounin and his colleagues (1970) identified the key concepts that contribute to effective management of which the central attention was put on instructions affecting the flow of activities. According to

Plevin (n.d.), effective classroom management means that teachers have to get students to follow their instructions. Therefore, direction or instruction given to students is a crucial tool of classroom management. In fact, giving and checking instructions was considered the most important sub-skills of classroom management which decide the success of a lesson. 2.1.3. Teacher talk When discussing about teacher talk and its advantages, Gower, Phillips and Walkers (1995, p.33) point out that Teacher talk is needed for good classroom management [] to give clear instructions. They also state that in language classroom, teachers tend to speak more when setting up activities or giving instructions. Therefore, giving and checking instructions, other than a part of classroom management skills, can also be regarded as part of teacher talk in class. Thus, there is a need to get an insight look into this term to examine its characteristics so that the main focus of the study, giving and checking instructions, can be thoroughly understood. The term teacher talk is defined in Longman dictionary of Language teaching and applied language as that variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are in the process of teaching. In order to communicate with learners, teacher often simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk and other simplified styles of speech addressed to language learners (p.543). Another accepted definition proposed by Ellis (1985 as cited in Xiao, 2006) is that "Teacher talk is the language that the teachers use when addressing L2 learners in classroom. There is systematic simplification of the formal
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properties of the teacher's language..." According to Susana (2002), teacher talk may be regarded as the central in language class since it is the means for controlling students behavior and the key element which determines the success of classroom organization and affects "the process of acquisition" of students. Numan (1991, p.190) argues that in language classrooms teacher talk is a vital element in providing the learners with the only substantial live target language input that they are most likely to receive. Because of being "one special variety of the English language" (Xiao, 2006), teacher's talk in English language classroom has it own register which differs from other natural discourse. It refers to a "pedagogic discourse" which is often modified and has "a well-defined structure" (Coulthard, 1977 as cited in Susana, 2002). The main features of teacher's talk are: a. non-linguistic support for comprehension including visibility, facial expression, body language, reference to real objects, use of visual aids. b. regular checks c. regular pauses d. familiar words e. familiar topics f. immediate repetition or paraphrase g. slower, clearer talk h. exaggerated intonation and stress i. structurally simplified language j. familiar routine k. clarity of discourse markers l. tolerance of "interpreter language"
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(Longman, 2006) The reason for teachers to modify their talk is to make their speech "more comprehensible, and therefore, potentially more valuable for acquisition" (Numan, 1991, p. 191). In his Speech Accommodation Theory, Gile (cited in Susana, 2002) also claims that adjustments to the speech made by the speakers are due to their attitude towards the interlocutor. In the case of language classroom, teachers' modification of their speech is aimed at making it more comprehensible to learners, resembling "caregiver talk" (Longman, 2006). According to Chaudron (1988, cited in Numan, 1991), the common modifications of teacher talk may include: a. Rates of speech appear to be slower. b. Pauses, which may be evidence of the speaker planning more, are possibly more frequent and longer. c. Pronunciation tends to be exaggerated and simplified. d. Vocabulary use is more basic. e. More declaratives and statements are used than questions. f. Teachers may self-repeat more frequent. This kind of simplified input language, according to Numan (1991, p.191) is to reduce the cognitive and linguistics load on learners. Concerning the distribution of teacher's talk, Hughes (1981) points out a list of various language functions related to classroom management including: - Organization: Giving instructions, Sequencing, Supervision - Interrogation: Asking questions, Replying to questions.
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- Explanation: Metalanguage, Reference - Interaction: Affective attitudes, Social ritual. 2.1.4. Giving and checking instruction As mentioned above, instruction is also considered one of the functional allocations of teacher's talk. For that reason, along with its particular functions, instruction in language classroom shares certain features with teacher's talk. According to Huiit, (2003), instructions in class can be defined as "the purposeful direction of the learning process" and it could be considered one of the major teachers class activities (along with planning and management). Sharing the same view, Ur (1996, p.16) also claims that instructions are the directions that are given to introduce learning task which entails some measure of independent student activity. For that reason, giving instructions could be regarded as the key element which decides the success of every activity in class carried out by teachers. Johnson (2007) points out that effective classroom

management is about getting pupils to follow your instruction every time. According to Millis (n.d.), clear instructions can eliminate barriers to students in their learning process. In contrast, vague instructions may result in misunderstanding among students leading to disorganized and ineffective activities in class. To avoid frustration among students, it is essential for giving precise instructions and checking whether the students have fully understood what they are supposed to do. The importance of giving and checking instructions, hence, should be well aware by teachers.

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a. Speech forms of instructions According to Holmes (cited in Susana, 2002), speech forms of instructions or directives in language classrooms can be divided into three main categories as in the table below: Speech function: Directives Form Imperatives Base form of verb You + imp. Example Speak louder You go on with the work Pres. Part. Verb ellipsis Imp + modifier Let + 1st pers. pro. Interrogatives Modals Looking at me Hands up Turn around, please Let's try Will you read this page for me? Non-modals People at the back, are you listening? Declaratives Embedded agent I want you to draw a picture Hints Sally, you are not

saying much

Of all the forms stated, imperatives are claimed to be most commonly used by teachers since they are often "explicit enough" to avoid misunderstanding among students (Holmes, 1983 cited in Susana, 2002)
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b. Types of instructions According to Brashaw (n.d.), there are two main types of instructions in classroom, which are: Instructions between activities Instructions to organize an activity The first type of instructions, which are used to guide the students behaviors between the main activities in classroom, forms a part in daily use of teacher language. These instructions are often simple and easy to be understood by the students through the context in which they are given. According to Brashaw (n.d.), this type of instruction rarely causes misunderstanding among students. The second type of instructions, instructions to organize an activity is often problematic because of the quantity and over-complexity of the language used. Those instructions are used to set up or prepare students to carry out a specific activity. For each activity, instructions may include explanation and time limit of the task, instruction to group the students (if needed), checking students understanding of the task and signal for beginning the task. c. Effective instructions Walker & Walker (1991) suggest teachers a research-based guideline for more forceful commands. According to them, effective teacher instructions: are brief are delivered one at a time

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use specific language so that the student clearly understands the request avoid an authoritative, Do it my way or else! tone of voice avoid strong negative emotion or sarcasm are stated as directives rather than as questions avoid long explanations or justifications (and present any explanation before the command rather than after it). allow the student a short but reasonable amount of time to comply without additional teacher comments or directives (Cited in Wright, 2005) In her book titled A course in Language Teaching, Ur (1996) presents a guideline on giving effective instructions. Firstly, she puts much emphasis on teachers preparation before giving instructions in class. According to Ur, teachers explanations are often not as clear to their students as they are to themselves(p.16). For this reason, preparation is worth noticing and this calls for a need of thinking about the words to use, the illustration to provide for every complicated instructions. She also advises teachers to draw the classs full attention before giving instruction. Moreover, it is necessary not to divide students into groups or delivering materials while giving instructions. Ur (1996) also highlights the need of repetition when giving instructions. She states the importance of presenting the information more than once to provide the students with a second chance to understand thoroughly what they have to do since learners attention wanders occasionally. She advises teachers to re-present the instructions in different mode, either re-stating or writing it up.
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Furthermore, being brief is another criterion of effective instructions. Ur points out that since learners have only a limited attention span, instructions need to be brief and compatible with clarity. This is absolutely importance in case the instructions consist of a string of directives. It is also suggested that a dry run, an actual illustration, is often of great help. Lastly, Ur remarks the need for getting feedback from students after giving instructions. She believes that merely asking the students if they understand the instructions is not enough. Students may say that they do even if in fact they do not. Instead, requesting students either to paraphrase the instructions or do illustrations of their own is a better choice for checking instructions. Meanwhile, Scrivener (2005) proposes five steps towards better instructions which are highly recommended for pre-service teachers. 1. Teachers should become aware of their own instruction-giving. In order to do that, teachers should record themselves, listen to themselves and ask others to watch and give feedbacks. 2. It is necessary for newly-qualified teachers to pre-plan the instructions by analyzing them and including only the essential information in a sensible order and simple language. Things which are visible and obvious or not necessary for students to know at the present moment should be omitted. 3. Teachers need to make sure that students are paying full attention while they are giving instructions. Scrivener insisted on clearly separating instructions from other chit-chat, tellingoff, joking in class. This can be achieved by creating a silence

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beforehand and making eye contact with as many students as possible. 4. A demonstration is often better than explanation. Thus, when giving instructions, teachers should demonstrate wherever and whenever possible. 5. It is also important to check whether students have understood what to do and not to assume that they will automatically comprehend what was delivered. Teachers should get concrete evidence from the students that they know what is required. A very simple way to do this is to call one or two to tell what they have to do. Beside the five proposed steps, Scrivener also puts much emphasis on the use of gestures as good companion of instructions in class. He believes that by developing a range of gestures, teachers could save their time repeating basic instructions. Although different authors hold different views on how to give and check instructions effectively, they share the common beliefs that instructions are only delivered effectively when teachers can draw students full attention to them. Then, instructions should be short, precise and in simple language. In addition, demonstrating the tasks is often better than just describing them. More importantly, checking if students understand the given instructions is essential before getting started. d. Techniques for giving and checking instructions Following are some techniques to give and check instructions proposed by Nguyen et al. (2003, cited in ELT Methodology II):
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Step-by-step or feed-in approach: The teacher gives the students one instruction at a time, not a list of instructions all together. Breaking down instructions into small, separate steps to help students to understand them completely, especially when there is a lot of information in instructions and the teacher wants students to understand every word. Demonstrate it, model it or Show-dont-tell: The teacher does not tell what the students must to do: instead he/she shows them what to do by giving a demonstration. A demonstration is easier to understand than an explanation and reduces teacher talking time. Say Do Check: The teacher follows 3 steps for each instruction. First he/ she says the instructions, then he/ she gets the students to do it, then he/ she checks that theyve done it correctly before going to the next instruction. Using Say-Do-Check the teacher can tell straight away if students have not understood something and can take action to make sure that they understand it. Student Recall: After giving instructions in English, the teacher checks that the students understand everything by saying, Telling me what you have to do in Vietnamese or Say it again in Vietnamese. Asking students to recall what they will do in Vietnamese is helpful in lower levels as they may not fully understand the instructions. It makes them remember what they have to do and allows the teacher to check that they understand what to do.

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2.2. Related studies 2.2.1 Related studies on Teaching practice The importance of teaching practice in teacher training is widely accepted. Previously, there have been many researchers interested in carrying out studies on teaching practice. For example, in 2008 Hudson and Nguyen conducted a case study to investigate pre-service teachers perception on learning and teaching writing before their teaching practicum. The major findings of the case study revealed challenges facing pre-service teachers in teaching writing skills. Meanwhile, student teachers concerns during their teaching practice including not being regarded as a real teacher, dealing with students disruptive behavior, becoming a disciplinarian, coping with workload, having little preparatory teaching practice and being assessed were examined in a paper by Kyriacou and Stephen (1999). Although there are a number of studies on teaching practice, the majority of them mostly focused on either trainee teachers perceptions of teaching practice (Lind, 2005; Quick & Sieborger, 2005) or the relation between mentors and mentees and the effects of teaching practice on the development of teaching expertise (So, Cheng & Tsang, 1996; Tong, 2005; Yilmaz & Cavas, 2007; Yunus, Hashim, Ishak, & Mahamod, 2010, Hamid, Rajuddin & Saud, n.d.) There were also studies to investigate the difficulties that preservice teachers face during their practicum. However, most of the studies on this issue focus more on managing students behavior and maintaining classroom discipline (Bhagava, 2009; Sawar & Hussain, 2010) than on giving and checking instructions skills.

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2.2.2 Related studies on Giving and checking instructions in Teaching practice a. In the world Previously, a study was conducted by Susana (2002) to investigate difficulties encountered by student-teachers when giving oral classroom instructions to EFL young learners during their practicum. The study was carried out at Faculty of Languages, National University of Argentina. The findings from the paper revealed an imbalance between the language competence of the trainee teachers and the language competence needed to address the learners. In other words, the main problem of the studied trainee teachers lied in speech modification. Since the trainee teachers shared the same mother tongue with the students and they themselves have not been exposed to pedagogical English in reality, the expressions they used to instruct students in class much resembled their mother tongue, Spanish. Another problem which was also highlighted by the study is that instructions given by the trainee teachers were not often backed up by physical demonstration or modeling. b. In Vietnam The issue of giving and checking instructions in language classroom was examined in two graduation papers for Bachelor of Art in English Language Teaching conducted by Vo (2009) and Nguyen (2010). Given that giving and checking instructions was only concerned as one element of classroom management skills in these two papers, certain contributions were made by pointing out the difficulties trainee-teachers often had when delivering instructions in their practicum.

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Conducted in 2009, the study of Vo aimed at finding out the difficulties in classroom management during their six-week practicum. The subjects of the paper were 16 fourth year students who carried out their teaching practice at Luong Van Tuy gifted high school Ninh Binh. Giving and checking instructions skill was perceived as the easiest one among seven sub-skills of classroom management by the student teachers. Two major problems discovered in the study were: students misunderstanding of the instructions and too much time for giving instructions. The causes of ineffective instructions, according to the study, both came from the trainee teachers and the students. The trainees tended to use lengthy and unclear instructions in complicated language and their voice was either too fast or too soft. Besides, students lack of attention was another reason that makes them misunderstand the teachers instructions. The suggestions for better instructions proposed by the study were using simple language, visualizing the instructions, modeling the task and using signal words. Besides, much attention was paid to teachers voice since it could help to grasp students notice. Lastly, the paper highly recommended pre-service teachers to plan their instructions beforehand to have clear instructions and save their time in class. Focusing on the same subject of classroom management but being carried out on another group of population, the research of Nguyen (2010) studied classroom management skill among 20 fourth year students when having their practicum at college level. The study showed a high percentage (87.5%) of trainee teachers encountering difficulties in giving and checking instructions. Regarding the problems and the sources of problems in giving and checking instructions, the study showed the result which is almost similar to that of Vo (2009). Lengthy and unclear instructions and too much time explaining tasks were the main problems.
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Particularly, when discussing the possible solutions to more effective instructions, Nguyen insisted on teachers having a detailed script of instructions before coming to class.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY This chapter aims at describing in details the participants and setting of the study, the major research instruments used for collecting data as well as the procedure of data collection and analysis. 3.1. Participants and setting 3.1.1. Participants a. Trainee teachers The target population of the research is 25 fourth-year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNU. These students are all from group E1K41 of Fast-track program, who are then allocated to have their practicum at nine first year groups. These students are required to conduct their teaching practicum in the second term of their fourth year at university. Prior to the practicum, they all took six courses in English Language Skills, one more in Advance English and other four courses in English Language Teaching. Thus, they are supposed to acquire certain knowledge and skills in English Language Teaching after finishing four courses of English Language Teaching Methodology (ELTM). Particularly, in ELTM II and III, they have been provided with needed classroom management skills including strategies of giving and checking instructions in language classroom. Moreover, they experienced micro-teaching sessions in which they had to play the role of real teachers when conducting English lessons and teaching their own classmates. In addition, in semester seven, these 25 students all took part in a program namely Tutoring Program to help their junior second year
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students improve their performance in class with Speaking, Reading and Listening skills. The tutors worked together to developed a complete 10 weeks curriculum and designed their own lessons. Generally, they have familiarized themselves to teaching work in academic classroom setting at college level. a. Supervising teachers In addition to the trainee teachers themselves, their supervising teachers were also invited to participate in the research in order to increase the validity of the study. Nine supervising teachers were all lecturers in English Division I, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education and had experience working at the faculty at least 4 years. Their duties in the practicum were to observe the trainee teachers in their lessons and give feedbacks for improving the quality of the novice teachers teaching. By giving comments on each trainee teachers performance including giving and checking instructions skills right after the class, those experienced teachers were considered as the indirect but valuable participants of the research. 3.1.2. Setting During the six-week teaching practicum, these 25 trainee teachers were divided into eight groups of three and one groups of two to be in charge of nine first year groups. These groups include students from different majors: teacher training, interpreter training and double major training. The trainee teachers were assigned to teach the first year students Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing and Pronunciation or all the skills. They were required to conduct three teaching periods of 50 minutes each and two teaching periods of 100 minutes each. This means
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that each trainee teachers had to teach at least five times and had seven periods of teaching in total. For the 50-minute teaching periods, the teacher students may conduct the lesson in pairs. For the 100-minute teaching periods, they had to build up completed lessons on their own. Under the allocation of English Division 1 at FELTE, ULIS, VNU, these trainee teachers worked under the supervision of experienced teachers from English Division 1. The supervisors observed and evaluated the performance of the trainee teachers basing on a given checklist which is specifically designed for the teaching practicum. In the first week of the practicum, the trainee teachers observed model lesson given by their own supervisor. In the following five weeks, they took turn to conduct their own lessons and observed their peers teaching performance. Due to the overlapped schedule, the research could not take part in every lesson conducted by 25 trainee teachers and observe them. Therefore, the researcher chose to attend 32 lessons conducted by 20 student teachers during the five weeks of the practicum. All of these lessons were recorded so that it could provide the observer with a reliable source for further data analysis. 3.2. Data collection instruments In order to get thorough understanding of the issue, the paper is conducted in both qualitative and quantitative approach. By using observations along with interviews and questionnaires, the researcher attempted to increase the validity of the study.

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3.2.1. Observation a. Justification for the use of observation and videotapes Since giving and checking instructions skill among student teachers can only be observed in classrooms, there is a need for using a research instrument which can provide the researcher with the opportunity to collect large amounts of rich data on the participants behaviors and actions within a particular context ( Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.175). Simply defined by Mason (1996, cited in Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.175) as methods of 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, within it, observation serves well as a useful tool for researchers of second language research to get insight into the issue and gather in-depth information. In the light of this methodology, observations were employed to provide the researcher with a closer look at giving and checking instructions skill among the trainee teachers during their practicum. b. Observation scheme Due to the nature of a complex second language classroom in which what happens is always hard to predict and unexpected problems occur all the time (Nguyen, 2010, p.59), structured observation was chosen to enable the researcher to compare behaviors across research contexts in a principled manner (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.175). During the observation, a checklist of different aspects of giving and checking instructions including speech modification, techniques and teachers

27

manner was utilized so that the researcher could take notes of related data for further study. c. Observation procedure To lessen any impact of the observation on lesson planning and implementation (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.188), eight supervising teachers from English Division 1 and 20 trainee teachers were all asked for official permission beforehand so that the researcher could attend the teaching sessions conducted by the student teachers. In order to make sure that the presence of the observer does not have any significant influence on the classroom setting and avoid the risk of being an obtrusive observer" (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.187), the researcher attended classes as a non-participant and tried to minimized her presence by sitting in the back of the classes. The lessons were videotaped to assist the researcher for further analysis. The recordings of the lessons were made in the high-tech approach (Wallace, 1991, p.101) which involved the use of a portable camera to film the lessons in ordinary classrooms. To avoid the pressure videotape would put on the trainee teachers that might make them uncomfortable, at the beginning of each lesson the student teachers were asked for permission for their lessons to be recorded and used as the data for the study. The camera was set in the back of the class in a position that would not attract much attention from both the trainee and the students. The value of this tool was highly recognized by Wallace (1991). In his words, undoubted convenience of electronic playback (p.101) would be definitely effective as a source of reference for observers.

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Moreover, observations were also carried out during the feedback sessions in which supervising teachers gave comments on the trainees performance in class. For these observations, field notes were used to help the researcher take notes of supervising teachers comments on giving and checking instructions skills of the trainee teachers. The data collected from observations is used to answer the two sub-questions of the study: - How effective are instructions given by trainee teachers as evaluated by supervising teachers? - What are the suggestions for better classroom instructions proposed the supervisors? 3.2.2 Questionnaire a. Justification for the use of questionnaire According to Brown (2001, as cited in Nguyen, 2010, p.16), questionnaire can be defined as any written instruments that present respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are to react by either writing down their answers or selecting from among existing answers. Mackey and Gass (2005) once regarded the use of questionnaires in second language research as perfect research instruments for their economical and practical advantages in revealing data on attitudes and opinions from a large group of participant. These valuable features of questionnaires match the aim of the researcher in investigating the trainee teachers perception of effective instructions as well as their perceived

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problems in giving and checking instructions during their practicum. For that reason, questionnaires were employed into the study. b. Questionnaire design The questionnaire was designed to yield two main types of data about the respondents including attitudinal and behavioral information. The questionnaire was divided into two main parts with fifteen questions in total. The first section of the questionnaire comprised seven questions which were all aimed at finding out the trainee teachers perception of effective instructions with respect to speech modification, time and techniques. In the latter part of the questionnaire, the trainee teachers were asked about their experience of giving and checking instructions during the six-week practicum. Most of the questions were designed in the form of closed-item questions that focus in on important concepts and involve a greater uniformity of measurement and therefore greater reliability (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.93). There were also some open-ended questions which provided the respondents with a chance to write down their own answers in any manner they see fit (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.93) and evaluate the effectiveness of their giving and checking instructions skills. The data collected from questionnaires is used to answer two research questions: 1. What makes effective instructions with respect to the timing, speed, speech modification, techniques as perceived by the teacher trainees? 2. How do the trainee teachers self-evaluate their giving and checking instructions skills?
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c. Questionnaire procedure The questionnaires were delivered to 25 trainee teachers after they had finished their practicum so that the participants could thoroughly understand what effective instructions are and understand their strengths and weaknesses in giving and checking instructions. The questionnaires were printed out and delivered directly to the student teachers. 3.2.3 Interview a. Justification for the use of interview Although observations and questionnaires are widely accepted to be effective tools for a qualitative research, there still exists a need for the researcher to ask for further explanation of the participants in cases data collected from these methods are not reliable enough. Mackey and Gass (2005, p.173) points out that because interviews are interactive, researchers can elicit additional data if initial answers are vague, incomplete, off topic or not specific enough. Therefore, along with observations and questionnaires, interview was the third research instrument chosen to enable the researcher to investigate phenomena that are not directly observable (Mackey and Gass, 2005, p.173). In the case of the study, the under investigated phenomena include the trainee teachers perception of effective instructions and their self-reflection on their giving and checking instructions skills during the practicum b. Interview design All the interviews were in semi-structured form in which the interviewer used a list of guided questions to elicit answers and/or explanations from the participants. By conducting semi-structured
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interviews in Vietnamese, the researcher hoped to take full advantage of the flexibility of this type of interview as well as provide the interviewees a degree of power and control over the course of the interview (Nguyen, 2010, p.52). Moreover, all the interviews were carried out orally and face-to-face. Recordings of all the interviews, in addition, were made for later investigation. The guided questions for interviews mostly based on the questions in the questionnaires so that they could enable the researcher to collect more in-depth data. These questions were divided into two main parts which in turn cover questions about trainee teachers perception of effective instructions, their experience of giving and checking instructions during their practicum and their self-evaluation of the effectiveness of their instructions. Due to the busy time table of the supervisor teachers in English Division I, interviews could not be carried out with them. Therefore, in the interviews with these six trainee teachers, the researcher also included some questions to ask about their supervisors comments on their giving and checking instructions skills in class. The interviews were conducted after the trainee teachers had finished their practicum. This was the best time for them to self-evaluate their giving and checking instructions skills by realizing their strength and weaknesses. c. Interview procedure After the trainee teachers had finished their practicum and completed the questionnaires, six of them were contacted and asked for permission to enter individual interview sessions. These student teachers
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were chosen randomly from 6 groups of trainee teachers so that they could help to reflect their supervising teachers comments on this issue. The data collected from the interviews help answer the research questions number one and three, and the sub-question for research question number two: 1. What makes effective instructions with respect to the timing, speed, speech modification, techniques as perceived by the teacher trainees? 2. How do the trainee teachers self-reflect their giving and checking instructions skills 3. What are the suggestions for better classroom instructions proposed by both the trainee teachers and the supervisors? 3.3. Data collection and analysis procedure The data collection and analysis procedure has two phases. Phase 1: The researcher designed observation checklist and questionnaires and guided questions for interview. Observations were carried out in lessons of 20 trainee teachers during the six-week period. The questionnaires, then, were delivered at the end of the practicum so that the trainee teachers had time to evaluate the effectiveness of their techniques for giving and checking instructions. Interviews were then carried out individually. Phase 2: Received data from questionnaires, observations and interviews were processed afterwards. The answers of the respondents in the questionnaires and the data collected from recorded interviews were coded and converted into charts
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and graphs. The answers of the trainee teachers in the interviews were synthesized to help clarify their perceptions of effective instructions with regard to speech modification, time and techniques. The aspects of giving and checking instruction skills that student teachers perceived as problematic were also calculated. Meanwhile, the researchers field notes taken from observations were analyzed to figure out the most noticeable problems that the trainee teachers often encountered. Furthermore, these notes were assisted by transcriptions from videotaped lessons so that the researcher could have an insight look into the issue. Finally, the gathered data was classified to answer the three research questions.

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This chapter presents findings and discussion of the findings in response to the research questions. The chapter embraces two main parts. In the first section of the chapter, the student teachers perception of giving and checking instructions is clearly depicted. The latter part is about the experience of the trainee teachers during their practicum, the evaluation of their supervising teachers on their giving and checking instructions skills, their self-reflection as well as suggestions for better classroom directions. 4.1. Student teachers perception of giving and checking instructions This part presents data collected mainly from questionnaires and interviews to answer the first research question of the study. In this section, the student teachers perception of giving and checking instructions is revealed, which include their views on the importance, the difficulty level, the influential factors, the language, the techniques and the time for giving and checking instructions.

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4.1.1. Importance of giving and checking instructions

60

50 40
30 20 10 0 Not important Mildly important Moderately important Very important Extremely important

Percentage

Figure 1 The importance of giving and checking instructions as perceived by trainee teachers As can be seen from the chart, the majority of the trainee students agreed that giving and checking instructions are very or extremely important. When being asked, Student 2 argued that giving and checking instructions is extremely important for teachers in general and trainee teachers in particular. She put forwards the argument that instruction is the key element which decides the success of the lesson. She believed that once teachers fail to give effective instructions, the lesson could not be run smoothly. This view was supported by Student 5 who claimed that giving and checking instructions play the central role in deciding if the lesson is successful or not. She argued that in a lesson even when the teachers carefully chose materials and planned activities beforehand, the lesson goals could still fail to be reached if the teachers could not give effective directions for the students to follow and do the tasks. Sharing the same point of view, Student 4 said that giving and checking
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instructions were overall important and this was even more essential since the targeted learners were first-year students whose English competence was limited, hence, they definitely needed clear instructions to follow and fulfill their tasks easily. When being interviewed, Student 3 raised an extremely interesting point regarding the importance of giving and checking instructions. She pointed out that in the communicative teaching approach, the teacher plays the role of a facilitator and an instructor who guides the students to do the communicative language task rather than a lecturer who gives lecture on language knowledge. Under the light of this teaching approach, giving and checking instructions, therefore, become more important than ever before since it can be considered the main task of teachers, now regarded as instructors. 4.1.2. The level of difficulty of giving and checking instructions
80 70 60 Percentage 50 40 30 20 10 0 Not difficult Mildly difficult Moderately difficult Very difficult Extremely difficult

Figure 2 - The difficulty level of giving and checking instructions

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The graph reveals the opinions of trainee teachers of the difficulty level of giving and checking instructions skills. Most of the trainees (72%) regarded giving and checking skills as fairly difficult. In an interview, Student 3 pointed out that giving and checking instructions are only problematic with pre-service teachers or novice teachers due to a lack of experience. Nevertheless, this trainee believed that this skill, among many other sub-skills of classroom management, is one of the easiest ones to improve through regular practice. She also supported the idea that once the pre-service teachers get familiar with their teaching, giving and checking instructions would not be a tough task. Student 8 added that in case she failed to make the instructions clear in English, she could use Vietnamese instead, thereby she felt quite comfortable. Giving instructions, therefore, was not a major problem for her. However, quite a number of trainees (24%) thought that giving and checking instructions are very difficult. When being asked to clarify this idea, Student 4 considered this one of the most challenging skills beside choosing materials or designing in-class activities. She argued that although teachers could definitely prepare instructions in advance, whether instructions are delivered effectively depends much on the psychological conditions and the language competence of students.

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4.1.3. Factors that influence effectiveness of instructions

12

Number of student teachers

10 8 6 4 2 0 Use simple language Speak loudly, stress on key points Speak at an appropriate speed Break instructions into steps Maintain eye contact, use gestures to support instructions Engage students' attention

Figure 3 First rank factors that influence the effectiveness of instructions The bar chart reveals how the six factors influence the effectiveness of instructions. As perceived by most of the trainees (11 out of 25), engaging students attention was the most crucial factor that determines if instructions given really work or not. The importance of captivating students attention before delivering any instructions was once highlighted by many researchers in literature (Ur, 1996; Bradshaw, n.d.; Huit, 2003.) as the very first stage of giving instructions. Besides, using simple language, speaking loudly with stress on key points and breaking instructions into steps were also chosen to be the first rank influential factors by many students, namely 10, 9 and 10 respectively. On the contrary, only a small number of students regarded the speed of speaking and teachers manner as the most significant factors. Generally,

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most of the student teachers paid more attention to techniques and language for giving and checking instructions rather than other aspects. 4.1.4. Language for instruction
45 40 35 30 Percentage 25 20 15 10 5 0 Interrogatives Imperatives Polite requests Declaratives

Figure 4 Effective speech forms for instructions As the chart shows, imperatives were perceived to be the most effective forms for giving instructions by the trainee teachers. Declaratives, however, were also preferred by almost one in every four student while giving instructions in forms of questioning was not in favor at all. The use of questions for giving instructions, in particular, was criticized by Student 5 who claimed that if teachers use questions for giving instructions, then students are expected to answer the questions. In activities which teachers ask students to do a task by using questions, then students have the right to refuse to do. In this situation, teacher not only wastes time for instructing but also fails to get the students to do what she wants.

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On contrary to the literature, using polite request was claimed to be a useful way for giving instructions by quite a large number of trainees (32%) although nearly half of the student teachers (48%) claimed that it is not necessary for teachers to show politeness when giving and checking instructions. Data collected from observation revealed that trainee teachers tended to use polite requests such as I would like you to or I want you to when giving directions for students to do a task, especially when introducing an activity. However, Student 3 opposed to the use of polite requests since she believed that it is quite lengthy and time-wasting. This view fits the literature in which teachers are supposed to have their own power in managing classroom; hence, there might be no need for teachers to show their politeness in classroom, especially when guiding students to do something.

16%

Yes

No

84%

Figure 5- Necessity for the use of full sentence when giving instructions Concerning the use of full sentence when giving instructions, only 16% of the trainee teachers thought that it is necessary to do so. Meanwhile, a far higher percentage of student teachers (84%) opposed to
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giving instructions in forms of full sentences. When being asked, most of the interviewed trainees said that in order to get students follow the instructions easily, it is necessary for the teachers to use key words for instructions only. Therefore, the use of full sentence may become redundant. 4.1.5. The most effective technique for giving instructions
12 10

Number of student teachers

8 6 4 2 0 Step-by-step Say-do-check Modeling Using mother tongue

Figure 6 The most effective technique for giving instructions As can be seen from the chart, Step-by-step and Say-do-check were claimed to be equally most effective techniques that should be used for giving instructions. Talking about the most effective technique, Student 4 supported the use of Step-by-step since she believed that the use of this technique, along with using signal words like First, second, next, etc. to indicate the different stages of an activity would help make the instructions clear for the students. Student 8, on the other hand, preferred using Say-do-check because she argued that this technique represents all the needed steps of effective instructions which include giving
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instructions, doing some trial and checking whether students do it correctly. Modeling, however, was considered the most useful technique by only one fifth of the trainees because there were some kinds of activities in which students could not have chance to try out. Thus, this technique was not always applicable. Using mother tongue or Vietnamese was preferred by only one out of twenty-five trainees. When discussing the use of mother tongue in giving and checking instructions, Student 5 acknowledged the effectiveness of using Vietnamese in helping students understand the instructions immediately. However, in order to provide students with the chance to get themselves exposed to real English use and practice listening comprehension skills, using Vietnamese when giving instructions was not recommended. 4.1.6. The appropriate amount of time for instructions
60 50 40

Percentage

30 20 10 0 <10% 10%-20% 20%

Figure 7 The appropriate amount of time spent on giving and checking instructions
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The chart shows that the majority of the trainee teachers all agreed that the time spent for giving instructions should not be over one fifth of the lesson. By stating that, it means that in a 50-minute lesson, teachers should not spend more than 10 minutes for giving instruction otherwise the teacher talking time would be too much. 4.2. The effectiveness of student teachers giving and checking instructions skills This part of the chapter is the reflection of the trainee teachers on their giving and checking instructions skills during their practicum, their supervising teachers feedbacks on the effectiveness of the instructions as well as suggestions for better classroom instructions proposed by both of the trainee teachers and the mentors. In short, findings presented in this part of the chapter aimed to answer the two last questions of the research. In order to provide an insight look into giving and checking instructions skills, this section is aimed at discussing the issue in details by covering all the key aspects of giving and checking instructions. They are: time for giving instructions, speech modification (language for instructions, speed and voice when giving instructions), techniques for instructions, planning instructions and checking instructions. 4.2.1. Time for giving instructions As the observations revealed, many trainees gave instructions after forming groups, delivering handouts or when students were working in groups. In a speaking lesson conducted by Student 23, the teacher did not finish the instructions before delivering materials and forming groups. The instructions were:

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Before studying the concept of art, I would like to bring here one activity and I hope that its very interesting and really fun. So I hope that you will cooperate well with me. OK? In this task, you will, your task is uhm OK class! I would like you to work in pairs. SO how many people are there today? <Count the number of student> 24. OK. So it means that we will have 12 pairs. OK. In this task I would like you to work in pairs. For example <Deliver handouts> OK class. May I have your attention please? 10 differences for 5 minutes. OK? As the teacher delivered handouts before finishing the instructions, the students did not know what they have to do. It was not until they received handouts from the teacher and spent time reading the instructions written in the handouts did they know exactly what to do. The requirements of the task were that in pairs the students have to describe their pictures to their partners to see the differences without showing their pictures to each other. However, as observed, students compared and discussed the differences of the two pictures in pairs. In this case, the teacher failed to give effective instructions. In another filmed speaking section, the trainee teacher gave instructions when students were focusing on reading the handouts: I would like you to look through some useful phrases that you can use when you have speech. Which phrase you will use for the beginning, for the development and at the end. <Deliver handouts, Students receive handouts and start reading>. The first is the beginning, when you stay here you can say Hello, Hi everybody, Good morning everybody and then say Im going to tell about , My topic today is or I would like to tell you
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about something and if your content of your topic have many main points, you can use Firstly, Secondly, Next or Firstly, I would like to talk about and then you move to another main point. You say Yes, Secondly or Next or And to end you can say Lastly or Finally. And after you end all of the main points and you want to end your speech say Thats all what I want to share with you today and thank you for your listening. Remember to say thank you and come back to your seat. You have three more minutes to revise, to read the useful phrases and we will continue to practice with topic card and I would like you to practice these phrases with topic cards. At first, the teacher required the students to read the handouts, right after that she explained the phrases or the usage of the phrases in the handouts by herself. This made students confuse since they did not know whether to listen to the teacher or read the phrases in the handouts on their own. In fact, when observing this lesson, the researcher noticed that when the teachers was explaining how to use the phrases in the handouts, only a few students listened to her while the majority was focusing on reading on themselves. According to Ur (1996), once students are in groups, their attention will be directed to their group rather than to the teachers. In addition, Ur also states that if students have written or pictorial materials in their hands then the temptation to look at the handouts will absolutely distract the students from listening to what the teacher is talking. Lewis and Hill (1985, p.43) share the same view and they advise teachers to keep their language to a minimum when students are doing something. However, when discussing this problem, Student 6 put forward the argument that there is nothing wrong with dividing groups before giving
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instructions. According to her, even when students are in groups, the risk that students pay attention more to each other is rather low since instructions are not delivered and students do not know what they have to do. Therefore, even when being grouped already, students still have to pay attention to their teachers instructions. This is a valid view point. However, it is still advisable that in order to save time and effort in calling for students attention a second time, class should not be divided in groups (for group-work task) before instructions are fully explained. Moreover, when being asked, 60 percent of the student teachers confessed that they occasionally forgot parts of their instructions and added when students were working or doing their tasks. Normally, the forgotten parts of the instructions were the time limit for the tasks. The student teacher often forgot noting the time limit for the task in the instructions. Not until the teachers finished their instructions, the students were divided into groups and working with their partners did the teachers remember to remind the students of the time limit. According to Supervising Teacher D, it is necessary for teachers to include the time limit for the task in the instructions. This is especially important for group work activities because it makes students be more alert of their work and concentrate better to fulfill their task in the time given. Discussing the best time for delivering instructions, Student 2 mentioned the concept of falling point in students attention proposed by her mentor, Supervising teacher A. According to her, it is vital for the teacher to ensure that they have captivated students attention before giving instructions. However, it is not necessary for teachers to wait until all the students keep silent since this is hard to achieve. She argued that by calling for attention, giving some time for students to settle down and raising voice when giving instructions, teachers can be certain that they
47

are delivering instruction at the right time. In the words of Student 2, attentiveness is more important than silence. In short, all the needed instructions for a task including the time limit should be given to students when they are paying full attention and before the task is started. 4.2.2. Speech modification a. Language for instructions One of the major problems that student teachers often encountered is the use of lengthy language in forms of full sentence which is contradicted to their perception no need to use full sentence. When giving instructions for a warm-up activity in a listening lesson, Student 10 said: Each group will send a representative come here and she or he will receive a sentence from me. Her task is to read and remember this sentence and then she comes back to her group, repeat... whisper it to her or his friends and then that friend whisper again to another friend and continue whispering to the last member of the group... then the last member come here to write down the sentence. Okay? And which group is the fastest one and have the most correct answer will be the winner. Are you clear? What do we have to do now? Send a... okay representative... read the... sentence... remember and then...whisper to your friends. Just whisper, don't speak out loud okay? Now each group send a representative come here.

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When commenting on Student 10s performance in this lesson, Supervising Teacher A pointed out that using full sentences, in fact, is one of the weaknesses of many trainee teachers and even lecturers at college levels in general. Instead of using commands to help students catch the key points of the instructions and show the authority of the teachers, the trainees tend to use lengthy language. Even when the teachers use simple or familiar words when giving instructions, a direction in form of full sentence is absolutely not as powerful as a short and sharp command. Imperatives, in fact, are proved by Holmes (1983 cited in Susana, 2002) to be the most effective speech form for giving instructions. On the contrary, using imperatives too frequently may set bad sample of classroom language because students might tend to use imperatives in communication. Therefore, it is preferable for teacher to consider the suitable type of speech forms to use for instructions balance between the two. Giving feedback on a speaking session conducted by Student 6, Supervising Teacher E also disapproved of this trainees use of long sentences which then resulted in unnecessary Vietnamese translations. Following is the transcription of instructions for the activity given by Student 6 in that lesson. Now you have chosen who is your Mr. Right. Imagine that you get married to him already. Ci ri. Then you will choose a place to go to honey moon. By gi ci ri th mnh s phi i honey moon ng khng? So tell me in your opinion, what is the perfect place for honey moon? <Ss talking> Listen to me. In your opinion, what is the perfect place for honey moon? Perfect place th n phi nh th no? Beautiful, romantic, peaceful ... I heard that somebody want to goto Libi. <Ss laughing> C bn ni l perfect place cho
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honey moon th phi beautiful, romantic, peaceful, anything else? How about private for just two people?... Or activities? Do you want to take part in the activity when you go for honeymoon? Ok. The class will be divided into 2 groups and each group will I will give you 5 places for you to choose the honey moon you want to go. Okay. So group 1, Which place do you want to go? Mnh s t chn 3 a im Vit Nam, 3 a im nc ngoi nh. Think about 3 places in Vietnam first. Lt, Nha Trang, Sapa.<Brainstorming names of the places> I want you to work in pairs and imagine that you are a couple and choose among 5, 6 places we have just brainstormed in five minutes and then I will call some of the couples present in front of class why do you choose that places place. By gi cc bn lm vic theo nhm 2 nh v chn cho mnh a im m cc bn mun i honeymoon v imagine that you are a couple. Clear class? <Ss: Yes> Good. Five minutes for you to work in your pairs. Another aspect of language use for giving instructions is the frequent use of polite request and questions rather than commands. In a reading lesson carried out by Student 18, instructions for the warm-up were mostly polite requests. For examples: - First, I would like you to play a small warm-up game to remind you or to recall your knowledge of breaking news or news reports on TV. - So I would like you to play in groups. - I would like you to have five words and five numbers.... - I would like you to put the numbers on the circle here ... - First, I want you to face it down - I would like you to exchange to check your friends' answers.
50

- I would like you to come to the board and write your answers... - Can you please write down the last number here As Supervising Teacher D pointed out, there was no need to use polite requests so often. Even when the trainee teacher is new to the students, she has her own authority in directing the class activities. Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995, p.40) pointed out that firm directive manner is crucial to in order to make language practice run efficiently and to avoid confusion or uncertainty among students. They also advised teachers not to use ten words when one will do (Gower, Phillips & Walters, 1995, p.34). Complicated language structures, polite requests in particular, plays little role and even slows down the lesson. This appeared to be true when Student 18 gave out the instructions as follows: Time's up. Now I would like you to talk to your friends even though you haven't finished... maybe your friends have finished so now I want you to stop doing all the exercises. I would like you to start discussing.<Ss stay still, do not discuss> I would like you to start discussing. Okey .. Start discussing, sharing the answers <Come to each table> If you haven't found out the answer, talk with your friends to find out the answer. Since this student teacher used polite requests instead of using short imperatives or commands to guide the students from the beginning, she wasted a great amount of time repeating the instructions. Eventually, she then had to turn to use commands and came each group of students to remind them of the instructions when realizing that her polite requests did not work.

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Added to this, more than 80% of the trainee teachers admitted that they often stated instructions in not-very-precise words. These unclear instructions usually contain obvious information that should be omitted. Take a writing lesson which was conducted by Student 1 for example. The instructions for an activity at the beginning of this lesson went as follows: Each of you will receive a piece of paper and its just one part of the paper, of course, each of you will have this paper and you task is to move around to find your partner and two of you will complete the whole sentence. Are you clear about that? And you will have two minutes to find your partner. OK? <Distribute paper> Cha lm vi nh. OK start two minutes Another example is in a recorded reading session carried out by Student 18: First, I would like you to play a small warm-up game to remind you or to recall your knowledge of breaking news or news reports on TV. So I would like you to play in groups. There are five words here <Refers to the handouts in her hand>... five things or people related to breaking news or news on TV. Okay? The process of produce news ... producing news on TV. I would like you to have five words and five numbers.... I would like you to put the numbers on the circle here ... Okay? To name the things or the people in the picture. Clear? The common feature of these instructions is that the teachers kept repeating the redundant information by themselves quite frequently. Although it is claimed by Ur (1996) that a repetition or paraphrase is
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necessary when delivering instructions, what the trainees repeated in these cases served no purpose of giving students more chance to understand what they have to do or enforcing the instructions but showed the panic of the teachers and not-well-organized directions. In order to avoid unhelpful Teacher Talking Time, Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995) suggest teachers not to repeat themselves unless they have to. Moreover, Supervising Teacher E stated that the use of lengthy language when giving instructions also implies failure in using gestures to assist instructions when necessary. She highlighted the fact that trainee teachers are likely to use more words than needed, especially when forming groups of students in group-work activities. For examples, instead of directing the students by saying: You are going to work in groups of 4. Two first tables 1 group, the next two tables 1 group, then next two 1 and the rest you are 1 group, the teacher can use proper gesture and mime to indicate which group the students belong to. According to Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995), using gesture is a useful tool for managing class. This is supported by Scrivener (2005) who claims that developing a range of gestures can help teachers save time repeating basic instructions and this also helps to minimize unnecessary teacher talk. Regarding the use of the mother tongue when giving instructions, the majority (70%) did not prefer using Vietnamese for instructions because they thought that their instructions for classroom activity were quite simple and should be in English. 60% of the trainees expressed that they used Vietnamese for instructions only to make it easier for students to follow complicated activities. More than half of the trainees instructed in Vietnamese due to the fear that students are at low level and cannot fully understand the instructions in English. Another 16% of the student
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teachers used Vietnamese to make sure that every student understands the instructions. One in every four trainee teachers strongly opposed to the use of Vietnamese in class, including giving and checking instructions. Even when they failed to get the students follow the instructions after the first time of delivering, they preferred trying a second or even a third time explaining the instructions in more simple language rather than using mother tongue immediately. Discussing the use of mother tongue in language classroom, Willis (1982) argues that first language could still be used but should be minimized and employed occasionally only. He also suggests that English should be used when organizing language activities and listening and following instructions in English for playing a game can be a meaningful and useful exercise for students (Willis, 1982, p.131). According to him, the mother tongue should be preferable to use at times including checking students understanding after the presentation stage. b. Speed and voice inflection when giving instructions When being asked how often they slowed down when giving instructions, more than half of the trainees (16 out of 25) admitted that sometimes when delivering instructions, they forgot to slow down but kept their normal speed which was claimed to be either too fast or to difficult for the students to catch up with. In the interview, Student 2 said that it is her nature to speak fast. However, this put her at a disadvantage when teaching first year students who are not familiar with listening in English. It even became more problematic when she kept her normal speed to give instructions in English as her students could not keep pace with her. Student 3 and Student 9 experienced the same problems. They all claimed that because they delivered instructions without slowing down, they wasted time repeating instructions for the students.

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Another problem is related to voice inflection. In her first writing lesson during the practicum, Student 5 received overall positive comments from her Supervising Teacher D. However, her mentor noted that although her volume of speaking was adequate to be heard by all of the students, she lacked stress on key points when delivering instructions. Therefore, when being interviewed, this student ranked speaking loudly with stress on key point as the most important factor that influences the effectiveness of instructions. She argued that if the teacher uses simple words and applies a good technique for giving instructions but forgets to stress on the key information that students need to remember, the instructions cannot work well. This valid argument is supported by the previous literature on the issue. Willis (1982, p.1) states that tone of voice are at first more important than the actual words or phrases used to tell students what to do and how to do it. Also, Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995, p.16) point out that if the teachers speak too quietly or slowly, or too monotonously, without varying the pitch of the voice, then students attention can easily be lost. At this stage, it is vital for teachers to hold students attention with a sufficient range of voice (Gower, Phillips & Walters, 1995, p.17). In addition, Lewis and Hill (1985) add that varied voice could help make it much easier for students to follow teachers instructions. In their words, even students whose levels of English is not high can be taught in English providing that the teacher does not use unnecessary language and providing the stream of speech is broken up by pauses and changes of voice (Lewis & Hill, 1985, p.43).

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4.2.3. Techniques for instructions a. Modeling Although modeling was mostly used by only one fifth of the trainee teachers, they managed to do it well. In a wrap-up activity in a listening lesson, Student 3 gave the instructions like this: Now I would like you to join a game. Two tables make one team <grouping by using gestures>... and each team will come over here <pointing at the position she is standing> and show us a kind of exhibition. For example, yeap if you still have these kinds of tiny things here <Hold a small piece of clay> you can put it like uhm... here come the exhibition of pottery or of pop art and one of the member in your team will present about your exhibition... <Wait>... You get the idea? Phng <Call one of the trainee teachers>, can I ask you to come here to ... just to illustrate something with me... <The other trainee teacher came to the board and pretended to be a statue>... Hi lady and gentlemen, welcome to sculpture exhibition. Here is a sculpture from the sixteenth century... designed by Picasso for example... I don't know... she represents the beauty of Venus and the Sun and all the things like that ... Okey... Thank you Phuong <The other trainee teacher came back to her seat> At first the teacher explained the rules of the games for the students. However, as soon as she realized that the students seemed not to get what they had to do, she did a demonstration by herself with the help of her friend. This appeared to be very effective as after watching their teacher doing, the student knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
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Although Student 3 was quite flexible in referring to modeling techniques to make her instructions clear for the students, in fact her modeling appeared to be rather an impromptu speaking than planned instructions. The weaknesses of her unplanned or unorganized instructions could be seen in the rest of the instructions, right after her modeling: ... basically, your job is to create an exhibition so that mean that if your team <Refer to first two tables> choose a sculpture gallery then five members of your group will portrait as some kinds of pose, statue, posture and one member will present about your gallery... Okay... So there are many kinds of art, it can be sculpture, it can be painting... it can be pottery.... what else it can be... types of art Class! Pay attention... Now this is time for us ... first of all to brainstorm what kinds of art can you think of <Ss: sculpture> painting, pottery, it can be science museum Some of you can portrait as an airplane ... or some kinds of ... yeah... Okay so now you all get the general idea of what you are going to do now... Right? Class! Are you clear what you have to do now? <Ss: Yes>. Sure? Okay so now get in your group, decide the form of art will you portrait over there and then choose one person.... <Ss discussing> A good modeling can be seen in videotaped listening session conducted by Student 17. In this lesson, the teacher began by telling her own experience without wasting time instructing students. After finishing her story and analyzing it, she required the students to do the same as what she had done. The instructions for the activity went as follow:

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So I wanna share with you a personal experience of mine. Before the Tet holiday I went shopping at a local store and I bought a huge pile of new T-shirts. Because there was a big sale off at that store. Because that was the winter and they wanted to get rid of the summer clothes. So there was a sale off. I bought a lot of sleeveless T-shirts during the very very cold winter days and now Im still longing for the summer so that I can finally put on my T-shirts, my new T-shirts. So that was when I bought the product. My product was? T-shirts. And the piece that influenced my decision to buy was? The price. Yeap. Because of the sale off, 50% off. Ok. So now I want you guys, in pairs, discuss similar personal experience about the products that youve just bought recently and the piece that influence your decisions to buy. OK? In pairs. According to Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995), giving a demonstration or example is a good idea for giving instructions. They claim that showing what to do is always more effective than telling what to do. Nevertheless, there were still cases in which student teachers did not succeed in giving a good modeling. It was in a review lesson in which Student 11 gave out the instructions for the warm-up as the following: So here I have a box with first of all we have a list of sentences. OK. We have a list of sentences and we also have the purpose of those sentences and your task is to match the sentences with the purpose. For example Can you choose one of the paper?<Let one student at the first table choose one piece of paper in the box> OK, if you have the she has the paper: Promising to do something. So the sentence she has to find is: I promise I will for example. OK? Are you clear? We have Here we have promising to do something. Its the purpose of the sentence. So she
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has to find another one who has the sentence like: I promise I will for example. OK? Another example, we have <Pick another piece of paper in the box>: Arranging a meeting arranging a meeting So the sentence that we want to find is: Shall we meet at Tuesday morning for example. OK? Clear? Do you have any idea of what we have to do? Ok? I will explain it again. We have Each of you will receive a piece of paper. It is the sentence or the purpose of the sentence. So you will have to find the sentence with match with the purpose of the sentence. OK? Depends on the content of the sentence. OK? Clear? As the Supervising teacher A commented after this lesson, modeling does not mean giving and explaining the examples. If the teacher gives out an example and explains it, she in fact is giving the instructions a second time. According to this supervising teacher, modeling is showing the students what they have to do either by the teacher doing demonstration herself or letting some students have firsthand experience of what the activity would be like. b. Step-by-step Another problem of the trainee teachers during their practicum is giving too many instructions at a time. In her speaking lesson, Student 9 spent almost ten minutes giving instructions for a task which had many requirements like this: Today, I will provide you a chance to become the organizer of that program. I would like you to think of a new program on the radio. Imagine that in group, you are a team, and you will design a music program. [] And in your group, I would like you you
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will have a questionnaire paper. Each of you will have three questionnaire papers and you go around the class and interview three other people to find out peoples taste about music. [] You have to interview three people and after you have interviewed three people you will come back to your group and draw a pie chart [] In the next step, you have to decide the songs which will be on air on the first episode. [] So you have to choose the song but the songs have to suit peoples taste, it means that you have to draw a pie chart to see which kind of music people like most and like the least, at leastRight? And then you decide the name of the song to be broadcasted. [] (See Appendix 5 for the detailed transcript) According to Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995, p.41), for the activity that requires a series of steps and each has its own requirements, it is better to break the instructions down, give simple instructions in segments rather than giving out all the instructions in one go. Basically, in this case the requirement for the activity is rather complicated. However, it can be broken into 3 separated phases and it would be definitely better if the teacher guide the students to do step by step. The three phases may include: Phase 1: Interview/ Deliver questionnaires individually Phase 2: Draw pie chart and choose the songs in groups Phase 3: Present ideas in front of the class in pairs According to Supervising teacher A, staging the instruction is extremely important to help students know exactly the steps they may need to follow to fulfill their tasks. As mentioned above, breaking

instructions into steps was perceived by 40% of the trainees to be the

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most influential factor when giving instructions. However, it seems that this perception was not put into practice well. Supervising teacher A pointed out that most of the trainee teachers tend to give out a chain of instructions rather than breaking the instructions into smaller steps. She recommended the trainee teachers to use signal words such as Firstly, Secondly, Next to indicate the steps that students should remember. Lewis and Hill (1985, p.42) add that it is preferable for teachers to uses pauses to punctuate what they say. According to them, it is absolutely worthwhile for using pauses as the spoken punctuation so that teachers could make it clear before each step of instructions. Moreover, at some point the requirement was rather confusing and inconsistent. It was when the teacher first asked the students to use the questionnaire they had to interview the other students in the class. However, when confirming the instructions she asked the students to deliver the questionnaire only. According to Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995, p.40), being consistent when giving instructions is especially important with low-level classes. The problem of giving inconsistent instructions was once raised by Student 2 in the interview. She strongly disapproved of the fact that teachers are not clear about the steps of the activity that they are holding and keep changing the rules when giving and checking instructions. In this case, only planned instructions could help solve the problem of unclear in-class instructions. c. Using visual aids to support instructions Apart from modeling, it is also advisable for teachers to use visual aids or any kinds of written clues which may include board writing or handouts to support their instructions. However, sometimes trainee teachers wasted time giving instructions without visual aids.
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For example, in a speaking lesson, Student 3 instructed her students to discuss in groups as follows: Now I want you stay in your tables and discuss the questions for me. First, what are the difficulties in working in a different culture from your own?... and coming with that what are the extra quality that a good manager needs to deal with people coming from different background of different cultures.... Okay so now I give you five minutes stay in your table... discuss and give me the answers later... So you understand what you are doing now? So can you tell me again the questions to discuss... you please <Refers to one student in the back of the class, the student answers the question>... Okay so the manager can help? Not really the question... Anyone can repeat me the two questions that I give you? The girl in yellow please <The student repeating>.. Right. So you have to do two things. First, point out the difficulties or the problems when you work in a different culture from your own and second one, how to deal with this... as a good manager... Okay... the quality of a good manager to deal with the difficulties. Now work in your table. After the lesson had finished, her Supervising teacher, Supervising Teacher B commented that the student teacher had failed to use written clues to support her instructions. According to this mentor, in this situation writing the two questions for group discussion on the board would help to make clear of the instructions to the students as well as save time of the teachers in checking students understanding. In another listening lesson, Student 3 also met difficulties in using visual aids to support her instructions. In this lesson, after the students had finished the main task, the teacher wanted to exploit the recordings by asking students
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to gather in groups and discussing eight extra questions. However, instead of having the questions printed in small piece of paper beforehand and delivering the set of questions to each group of the students, Student teacher 3 wasted time writing all the eight questions on board. Since the number of questions was quite big, in this case, having the questions written or printed in advance is a wiser choice. Student 18, on the other hand, was a good example of effective using written clues to support instructions. In the warm-up for a speaking lesson, her instructions went as follow: OK. So today we will have activity number 1 name Who is Mr. Right? I want you to work in groups of four. OK. Work in groups of four. Four of you four of you four of you<Move around class and use gesture to indicate the groups>. Imagine that you are one family. One will be father <Write 1 father on board>. One will be mother <Write 1 mother on board>. One daughter <Write 1 daughter on board>. And one or two is up to you. You may be another daughter or son or grandparent if you like. OK. The daughter wants to marry one man but her parents want another man. And you have to discuss among yourselves to choose one Mr.Right for the daughter. Clear? OK. And I will give you the image of the three men you will choose among. OK. Do you like Korean and entertainment?<Ss: Yes>. OK. One will be Korean singer <Write 1 Korean singer on board> OK. How about Thai businessman <Write 1 Thai businessman>. And should we have one Vietnamese. Sure. One will be Vietnamese lecturer <Write 1Vietnamese lecturer on board>.

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Regarding the question when to use visual aid, yet, there still exist cases in which the trainee teachers wrote instructions legibly on board but at an inappropriate time. It was when the teacher wrote the key information of instructions on board after they had finished giving instructions and students worked in groups already. Take a videotaped writing lesson which was carried out by Student 7 for example: About defining and non-defining relative clauses....Now you should work in pairs and try to make a brief table and compare the two kinds of clauses. OK. and the two criteria you should use to compare and contrast them are usage and use of comma. You know what comma means? Yes. Now work in pairs and you have 2 minutes <Ss start working, T writes a sample table to compare and contrast on board> According to Supervising Teacher E, because the purpose of writing instructions on board is to help make clear of the instructions, there is almost no point in writing instructions on the board after finishing giving instructions. Trainee 7, therefore, made a fault. 4.2.4. Planning instructions As data collected from questionnaire reveals, almost 90% of the trainee teachers planned the instructions before coming to class either by carefully writing down the instructions in their lesson plan or simply thinking of what to say to instruct students. The other 10% supposed that it was not necessary to plan the instructions in advance since most of the activities were pretty simple. According to Nguyen (2010), the underlying cause of the problems that trainee teachers encountered when giving and checking instructions lies in their lack of preparation. Data
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collected from all of the triangular research instruments support this view quite well. As discussed above, most of the problems student teachers encountered in language for instructions or their techniques for giving and checking instructions namely unplanned modeling, poor staging or inadequate visual aids use can all be traced back to their poor planning. Nguyen (2010, p.77) suggests that one solution for the problem is to have a detailed script of what the teacher should say to instruct students. However, more than half of the surveyed student teachers (56%) believed that there was no need to write down every word for instructions in the lesson plan beforehand. Student 2 and Student 6 both argued that it was the detailed transcription of instructions written down in their lesson plans that make them forget a part or parts of the instructions. They believed that if the teachers write down every word or the whole sentences for instructions beforehand, they tend to stick to that. Once they fail to use the exact words or phrases they prepared, they will easily forget what to say next. To handle this dilemma, Student 3 suggested that teachers should prepare instructions in advance but should write the key information that need to be included in the instructions in bullet points and no proper wording is needed. Orally practicing giving instructions, in addition, was another good way to prepare proposed by Student 8 in the interview. However, the matter of planning instructions does not limit to the preparation before class. Unplanned instructions can also be seen in class. Take the following instructions which were given by Student 7 in her Writing lesson for example: To start our lesson today, lets start with a small game. So Ill divide you into 2 groups. Group 1 and group 2. <Use gestures to
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indicate group>. And each group send me a representative to the board and these are the names of some cities and some countries all over the world. And the representative will pick up randomly pick up one piece of paper and then she will try to describe that place to other members of the team. Understand? OK. And within 2 minutes you will have to guess what which city or which country she is trying to describe. Meanwhile you will have to use .she will have to use the structure Please, does anyone has the <Use gestures to indicate the chalk > chalk?<T:wait, Ss: ask each other about the chalk, one student comes to erase the board> OK. Thank you. So we will have to use the structure: This city Any piece of chalk? No. maybe. Anyone can go and get a piece of chalk for me, please?<Wait> Okay. Wheres the monitor? Ok Vice monitor? <The vice monitor goes out to get chalk>. OK. Basically, you use the structure: This city or country is a place where dot dot dot. OK?For example, if I pick up the paper that has the word: Hanoi, I will try to describe like this: This is the city where there is a place called Temple of Literature. What do you think? Understand? OK. The problem with the instructions was that the teacher did not get herself well-prepared before giving instructions. As can be noticed, she wasted a great amount of time asking for chalk and waiting for students to get some. Discussing this, Gower, Phillips & Walters (1995) suggest teachers to get everything ready before starting giving instructions. This may include prepare students for listening as well as the needed equipment to support instructions.

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4.2.5. Checking instructions After giving instructions, it is a must to check whether instructions are well understood (Gower & Walters, 1983, p.38). Nevertheless, nearly 50% of the trainees admitted that they occasionally forgot to check students understanding of the instructions. Student 12 stated that she seldom forgot this stage, but for simple instructions, to save time she tended to ignore to check if students understand them or not. However, Scrivener (2005) emphasizes that teachers should not assume that every student can understand what they have to do. He insisted on getting concrete evidence (p.98) from students to check whether they thoroughly understand the instructions. As the data gathered from all three kinds of research instruments show, the most common technique used by the majority of trainee teachers for checking students understanding of instructions is to ask questions. The type of questions that was frequently employed was mostly Yes/No Questions. For example: - Do you understand? - Clear? - Understand? - Are you clear about what you have to do? - Got it? - Do you know what you have to do now? However, this is, in fact, not the best way to check instructions. As Ur (1996, p.17) states, it is not enough just to ask Do you understand? He pointed out that students tend to say that they do understand automatically even if they, in fact, do not. This was acknowledged by
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Student 17 who experienced many cases in which her students pretended to understand the instructions due to their unwillingness to lose face with their peers. Talking about this issue, Supervising teacher A suggested a number of ways so that teachers can check students understanding effectively and, at the same time, help to keep face for the students. Firstly, she advised the trainee teachers to use another type of questions for checking. For examples: For activity in which students are asked to whisper the words to their friends, teacher may ask: - Can I speak out the words? For activity in which students have to keep their part from their partners, teacher may ask: - Can you show you picture to your friends? For a role play, after assigning roles, teacher may ask: - Interviewers, where are you? - Interviewees, where are you? Moreover, it is also preferable for teachers to ask students to repeat instructions in their own words. This way of checking was quite popular among 56% of the student teachers. Student 8 supported this view and she also added that teachers should not let one student repeat all the instructions but ask her or him to repeat one part of the instructions only. Then, teachers may ask another student to continue thereby making student attentive as well as checking understanding of the whole class. Student 2 made use of the proposed techniques for checking instructions in her Writing lesson:
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 I will divide you into 4 groups. Two tables, two of you, two and the rest <Use gesture to indicate groups> I want you to analyze the mistakes here. No need to correct. Just analyze the mistakes. Analyze and point out which types it belongs to. OK. Analyze and categorize. Are you clear about what you have to do now? Receive the paper. You work in?<Ss: Groups>. OK. Groups. Remember that because we have 23 sentences here. Quite a lot. So I want you to work in groups. And what you have to do? First? <Ss: Analyze> Analyze the mistakes. Second one?<Wait> categorize OK to know what kinds of mistakes it may belong to. OK very good In addition, Lewis and Hill (1985) also advise teachers to check understanding while delivering instructions by using eye contact. According to them, looking at students eyes is the easiest way to check whether they are with you and whether they understand what you have said. In their own words, any incomprehension or confusion will show in their eyes long before they tell you that there is a problem (p.41).

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4.2.6. Self-evaluation
80 70 60

Percentage

50 40 30

20
10 0 1 2 3 4 5

Not effective

Very effective

Figure 8 - Student teachers self-evaluation of their instructions When being asked to self-evaluate the effectiveness of their instructions, the majority of the trainees agreed that their giving and checking instructions skills was effective. In particular, 68% of the trainees gave a score of 4 out of 5 for their instructions which is closely to the very effective rank. Most of the mentors also agreed that despite some shortcomings, in general giving and checking instructions skills of the trainee teachers were effective enough to make the lessons run quite smoothly without many serious problems. So far the chapter has discussed the student teachers perception of giving and checking instructions and how their perception was put into practice in their teaching practicum. In addition, the major problems of the student teachers relating to time, speech modification, techniques, planning and checking instructions along with suggestions for better instructions proposed by both trainee teachers and supervising teachers were also revealed.

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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION This chapter will summarize the major findings of the research, point out the possible contribution and limitation of the study as well as give suggestions for further study on the issue. 5.1. Major findings of the study

Generally, the paper has provided a thorough investigation into giving and checking instructions skills among fourth-year students during their practicum at English Division I, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education. Through in-depth analysis and discussion of data gathered from observations, questionnaires and interview, the outcomes relating to student teachers perception and the effectiveness of their giving and checking instructions skills were as the following: First, as perceived by the majority of the trainee teachers, giving and checking instructions are of great importance. They all agreed that it is not difficult to master the skill of giving and checking instructions and self-evaluated their instructions as effective. However, data collected from observations and feedbacks from supervising teachers revealed that despite a certain level of effectiveness, the trainee teachers did encounter certain problems when giving and checking directions in class. These problems include language for instructions, time to give instructions, techniques to instruct students and checking instructions with the most problematic being lengthy and complicated language use. Contradicted to their perception, student teachers tended to use full sentences or complicated polite request rather
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than short commands to instruct classroom activities. The trainee teachers also met difficulties in giving instruction at inappropriate time when students were not fully attentive. Lastly, the student teachers did not have effective checking techniques to see whether their instructions were fully understood or not. To handle these problems, it is suggested that student teachers should use commands rather than lengthy sentences when giving instructions. Added to this, teachers should only give instructions when students are attentive and should make use of the techniques including modeling, step-by-step and using visual aids to support the instructions. After delivering instructions, there is a need to check for students understanding by employing techniques to get concrete evidence from students like asking students to repeat or using alternative questions other than simple Yes/No questions. 5.2. Contributions of the study The study provides language teachers in general and trainee teachers in particular with an insight into giving and checking instructions skills. By examining their perceptions of effective instructions and pointing out the common problems that the student teachers have, the paper aims at reminding them of the key aspects of the issue namely time, speech modification and techniques. Understanding thoroughly these factors may help to remind the student teachers of the needed elements for effectively giving and checking instructions and put them into practice. Evaluations and recommendations from supervising teachers, in addition, help the trainees to better their skills. Besides, the outcomes of the study can also be a good source of reference for teacher trainers who

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want to make amendments to English Language Teaching Methodology Course to benefits the student teachers. 5.3. Limitations of the study To some extent, the paper is a thorough investigation into giving and checking instructions skills of fourth-year students in their practicum at college level. However, there still exist certain limitations. First, because the paper was carried out among a limited population and observations were not carried out in every lesson conducted, the findings cannot fully depict the problems encountered by all the trainee teachers. Another drawback of the study is that it could not involve first-year students who were taught by the trainee teachers during the six-week practicum. Therefore, students evaluations of the effectiveness of their teachers instructions were not included. 5.4. Suggestions for further studies Since the study was carried out on a limited number of participants and focused on giving and checking instruction, a single element of classroom management, further studies can still be done in different approaches. Other researchers who are interested in the subject may conduct another study on giving and checking instructions but on a different target group of participants. Those fourth-year students of FELTE who have their practicum at high schools or secondary schools may become potential population for further study on this issue. Another approach is to concentrate on other elements of classroom management such as students behavior that may directly affect the effectiveness of teachers giving and checking instructions.

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REFERENCES Arens, R. I. (1991), Learning to teach. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Bhagava, A. (2009). Teaching Practice for Student Teachers of B. ED Programme. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. Bradshaw, C. (n.d.). Giving great instructions. Retrieved March 20th 2011, from: www.scribd.com/doc/3177832/Giving-great--

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Hamid, M. Z. A. , Rajuddin, M. R. & Saud, M. S (n.d.). Learning to Teach in Teaching Practicum. The Experiences of five Student Teachers. Retrieved April 27th 2011, from: http://www.voctech.org.bn/conference/papers/%5BMY%5D%20 Mohd%20Zolkifli%20Rashid%20Sukri.pdf Hudson, P. & Nguyen, H. T. M (2008). Pre-service EFL Teachers Attitudes, Needs and Experiences about Teaching Writing and Learning Teaching Writing before their Practicum: A case study in Vietnam. Asian EFL Journal Quarterly June 2010, 12, 43-67. Retrieved 27th April from: http://www.aare.edu.au/08pap/hud08144.pdf Hughes, G. S. (1981), A Handbook of Classroom English. Oxford University Press. Huiit, W. (2003), Classroom Instruction. Educational Psychology Interactive. Retrieved March 21st 2011, from: http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/instruct/instruct.html Ishihara, N. (2005). Intercultural challenges and cultural scaffolding: The experience of a nonnative english-speaking student teacher in a us practicum in second language teaching. Creating teacher community: Selected papers from the third international conference on language teacher education (pp. 153-173). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

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To, T. H., Nguyen, M. H., Nguyen, T. M., Nguyen, H. M., & Luong, Q. T. (2010). ELT Methodology II Course Book. Hanoi. Tong, H. H. (2005). Teaching practicum and learning. Developing the competent learner A case study. Jurnal Akademik. Retrieved April 27th 2011, from: http://ipgmktar.edu.my/index.php?option=com_docman&task=d oc_download&gid=70&Itemid=120&lang=bm Ur, P. (1996), A course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge University Press. Vo, T. T. (2009). Classroom Management Skills among fourth year students (English Department, HULIS - VNU) during Teaching Practice. Hanoi Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge University Press. Walkers, H. M. & Walkers, J. E. (1991). Coping with non-compliance in the classroom: A positive approach for teachers. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Willis, J. (1982). Teaching English through English: A Course in Classroom Language and Techniques. Longman Singapore Publishers Pte Ltd. Wright, T. (2005). Classroom management in Language Education. Palgrave Macmillan. Xiao, Y. (2006), Teacher Talk and EFL in University classrooms. Retrieved February 27th 2011, from: http://www.asian-efl journal.com/thesis_Ma_Xiaou.pdf

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APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE
I am Dinh Thi Ha Phuong from group E1K41. I am conducting a research paper on Giving and checking instructions skills among 4th year students during their practicum. Your assistance in responding to the following questions is highly appreciated. The contents of your answers in this questionnaire are absolutely confidential and information identifying the respondents will not be disclosed under any circumstances. Thank you very much for your kind cooperation! ================================== GENERAL INFORMATION Please fill in the blank with appropriate information. Your name: The group you are assigned to teach during your practicum: .. The skill(s) that you are assigned to teach: . GIVING AND CHECKING INSTRUCTIONS: Instructions are the directions that are given to introduce learning task which entails some measure of independent student activity. Please put a tick or write a number into the box next to the option(s) which is true for you. A. Your perception of effective instructions 1. How important do giving and checking instructions appear to you? Not at all Mildly Moderately Very Extremely 2. How difficult are giving and checking instructions? Not at all Mildly Moderately Very Extremely 3. Rank the factors that influence the effectiveness of giving and checking instructions in the order of importance i.e. 1 being most important. Using simple language Speaking loudly, stress on key points Speaking at an appropriate speed Breaking instructions into steps Maintaining eye contact, use gestures to assist instructions Engaging students attention Others: (please specify)

4. Regarding language of instructions, which of the following sentences is the most effective? Interrogatives (Can you discuss in groups of 3?) Imperatives (Discuss in groups of 3) Polite request (I would like you to discuss in groups of 3) Declaratives (Now you will discuss in groups of 3) 5. When giving instructions, is it necessary for teacher to show their politeness by using polite request like: I would like you to discuss in groups of 3? Yes No Other opinion (please specify): 6. When giving instructions, is it necessary to use full sentence. Yes No Other opinion (please specify): 7. Which of the following techniques is the most effective? Step-by-step Say-do-check Modeling Using mother tongue Others (please specify): . 8. What is the appropriate amount of time that should be spent on giving and checking instructions? % of a lesson B. Your giving and checking instructions skills during the practicum During your practicum, did you . Never/ Seldom 0%-25% Occasionally 26%-50% Frequently 51%-75% Most of/ All the time 75%-100%

ensure that you have students full attention before giving instructions state instructions in clear, precise, specific terms that are easy to understand slow down when giving instructions use Vietnamese for giving instructions repeat yourself when giving instructions note time limit for activities performed in groups (e.g.: discussion) give students time to comply instructions before asking them to start the activity

How often did you encounter the following problems? Forgetting parts of the instructions Using lengthy language for instructions Spending too much time explaining a task Giving too many instructions at a time Giving instructions at an inappropriate time when Students do not fully pay attention Students are working in groups Students are reading handouts/ doing exercises Others: . Forgetting to check students understanding

Never/ Seldom 0%-25%

Occasionally 26%-50%

Frequently 51%-75%

Most of/ All the time 75%-100%

9. Do you plan the instructions before coming to class? No since they are all pretty simple Yes, I often think of what to say to instruct students in advance Yes, I often write down instructions for each activity in the lesson plan Others (please specify): .. 10. Have there been any cases in which the students did not understand your instructions? Never Rarely Sometimes Often Usually If Yes, please specify the reasons why: 11. What did you do when you realize that some students do not understand the instructions? Repeat the instructions to those students Repeat the instructions in simple words to the whole class Translate instructions into Vietnamese Ask a student to repeat Write the instructions legibly on board Others (please specify):

12. If you had used Vietnamese for giving instructions, what were the reasons? To make it easier for students to follow complicated activity Students are at low level and cannot fully understand instructions in English To make sure that every student understand the instructions You feel more comfortable/confident when using Vietnamese Others (please specify): 13. What do you often do to check if students understand your instructions or not? Ask: Are you clear?/ Do you understand what you have to do? Ask a student to repeat the instructions Ask a student to translate the instructions into Vietnamese Call some students to do a demonstration Concept checking: pick an example of concept to check whether students understand Others (please specify): 14. In your opinion, how effective your instructions were? (Please circle a number in the following scale)

1 Not effective

5 Very effective

15. If you meet any difficulties in giving and checking instructions during your practicum, please specify them in the blank provided?

==================================== Thank you for your cooperation!

APPENDIX 2: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION CHECKLIST

Teachers name: Supervisors name: Date: Group:

Lesson: .. Notes

Y/N Before giving instructions Engaging students attention Speech modification While giving instructions Use simple, precise language Speak loudly, stress on key points

Techniques for giving instructions

Step-by-step Say-do-check Modeling Using mother tongue Immediate repeating/ paraphrasing Using visual aids to support instructions

Teachers manner

Check students understanding of the instructions Students recall Other notes

Maintain eye contact with students Use gestures to support instructions After giving instructions Ask questions

APPENDIX 3: FIELD NOTE FOR OBSERVATION IN FEEDBACK SESSION

Teachers name: Supervisors name: Date: Group:

Lesson: ..

Aspects of giving and checking instructions

Comments from supervising teacher

Language

Speed/Volume

Techniques

Giving instructions

Checking instructions

Teachers manner

General comments

APPENDIX 4: GUIDED QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEW

Interviewees name: Date:

A. Quan nim v hng dn hiu qu

Y/N Notes

1. Theo bn k nng hng dn hc sinh trong lp hc c quan trng khng? V sao? 2. Bn thy k nng hng dn hc sinh trong gi hc c kh ko? Nu c th v sao? 3. Theo bn nh th no l hng dn hiu qu (xt v phng din ngn ng s dng, ging ni, v.v.) Nhng yu t no quyt nh tnh hiu qu ca hng dn? 4. V ngn ng, theo bn cch s dng cu nh th no l hiu qu nht trong khi hng dn hc sinh (cu trn thut, cu hi, cu mnh lnh)? Theo bn c cn thit s dng cu cu khin trang trng kiu I would like you to 5. Bn c th cho mnh bit th no l: Say-do-check Step-by-step Modelling

6. V cch thc , theo bn th thut no hiu qu nht trong vic hng dn hc sinh (Step-bystep, Say-do-Check, using mother tongue, Modelling)
7. Theo bn th thi lng hng dn hc sinh chim bao nhiu phn trm ca mt gi hc l ph hp?

8. Theo bn c cch no kim tra xem sinh vin thc s hiu hng dn mt cch hiu qu nht?

B. Nhng tri nghim ca gio sinh trong k thc tp 1. Bn c chun b k hng dn cho cc hot ng trn lp trc khi ln lp khng? V d nh vit ra nhng g bn s ni hng dn hc sinh vo gio n, tp ni trc khi ln lp? 2. C trng hp no sinh vin khng hiu hng dn ca bn khng?

3. Bn c thng s dng cc th thut nh k trn hng dn hc sinh khng hay l bn thng a ra hng dn cng 1 lc?

4. Bn c bao gi s dng ting Vit trong khi hng dn hc sinh khng? Nu c th v l do g? 5. C trng hp no bn a ra hng dn khng ng thi im khng? Thi im thch hp nht a ra hng dn l khi no? C trng hp no bn qun hng dn v thm vo khi hc sinh ang lm vic? 6. Bn thng lm g kim tra xem hc sinh c thc s hiu cu hi ca bn? 7. Nu nh bn t cu hi th bn thng hi nh th no? Cu hi Y/N hay WhBn c th cho mt vi v d cu hi m bn thng dng kim tra xem hc sinh thc s hiu hng dn? 8. Khi nhn xt v bi ging ca bn trong k thc tp, gio vin hng dn ca bn c ch nhn xt v k nng hng dn hc sinh ca bn khng? Gio vin ca bn nhn xt nhng g?

APPENDIX 5: TEACHERS INSTRUCTIONS TRANSCRIPT

Teacher: Student 9 Lesson: Speaking Date: 9/3/2011

Have you ever thought that you will join that group? I mean you will be the host, the organizer of that program? Today, I will provide you a chance to become the organizer of that program. I would like you to think of a new program on the radio. Imagine that in group, you are a team, and you will design a music program. So I have first a new program <Write A new program on board>. And in your group, I would like you you will have a questionnaire paper. Each of you will have three questionnaire papers and you go around the class and interview three other people to find out peoples taste about music. First, you have a questionnaire <Write: Questionnaire on board>. I have 2 questions here <Show the questionnaire to Ss> and when you receive, you go to this person and you ask Which kind of music do you like or listen to both? and they will choose one of the options here one or two or whatever and Name some of your favorite songs? and you can ask your friends about that. Do you understand? You have to interview three people and after you have interviewed three people you will come back to your group and draw a pie chart <Write pie chart on board>. Why do you Do you know pie chart <Draw a pie chart on board>. Why, why do you have to draw a pie chart? In the next step, you have to decide the songs which will be on air on the first episode. It means that maybe next week you will have the first episode of this new program and you have to choose songs to be on air, to be broadcasted in that programRight? So you have to choose the song but the songs have to suit peoples taste, it means that you have to draw a pie chart to see which kind of music people like most and like the least, at leastRight? And then you decide the name of the song to be broadcasted. You understand? You understand what you have to do? Yes or No? Ok. I will ask you. In your group what you have to do now? Ok Vietnamese <Come to one student> u tin l mnh s pht questionnaire cho ba ngi. V d em pht cho 1 bn, 2 bn, 3 bn ba nhm cn li ng khng. Th hai, sau y, sau khi m mnh kt

hp c ht ri th mnh s quay v ci group ca mnh v mnh s v ci biu ny <Point at the pie chat on the board> xem xem loi nhc no m ngi ta yu thch nht ny, loi nhc no t yu thch nht. Nh th th mnh mi chn c bi ht no m trng hp vi ci dng nhc y. V d nh mnh thy l c 50% ngi thch nhc Vit ny ri 20% ngi thch nhc Hn ny, vy th mnh phi chn bi ht no? Chn bi ht Vit pht ng khng ti v nhiu ngi yu thch hn th mnh phi chn bi ht Vit. Vy th ci vic v ca pie chart ny phc v cho vic l mnh s chn bi ht no pht vo ci chng trnh u tin, the first episode hiu khng? <Write the words episode on board>. Th pht trong ci chng trnh u tin ny. Cc bn c hiu khng? hiu nhng g m mnh phi lm cha? <Ss: Ri> V sau th s c hai ngi . Th nht l bn s a ci pie chart ca cc bn v ln y v phi gii thch l y l trong thng qua ci pie chart ny, bao nhiu ngi thch ci nhc ny, bao nhiu ngi thch ci nhc kia ng khng? V chnh v nh th m chng ti chn bi ht nh th no? OK? You understand what you have to do? Yes. Ok. So you will have five minutes to deliver questionnaires, five minutes to deliver questionnaires and then fifteen minutes to discuss in your group to draw pie chart and decide songs, the name of the song. Cc bn s c nm pht i pht questionnaire cho tt c mi ngi. Sau y sau nm pht, come back v discuss trong nhm trong vng mi lm pht. OK? Mi ngi s ly ba bn nh <Deliver handouts>. Nh l khng c t interview mnh m phi i interview cc bn y

APPENDIX 6: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Interviewee: Student 2 Date: 30/3/2011

Interviewer: Good morning! My name is inh Th H Phng from group E1K41. I am carrying a study on giving and checking instructions skills among 4th year students during their practicum. Would you mind giving me some minutes so that I can ask you some questions about your this issue? Interviewee: OK. I agree. Interviewer: Ok. Thank you every much. Now in the first part of the interview I will ask you some questions to know more about your perceptions of effective instructions. OK? Now first of all, do you think that giving and checking instructions are important to student teachers? Interviewee: Yes. It is extremely important, I suppose. Interviewer: Why do you think so? Interviewee: In my opinion, it is a vital factor that decides the success of a lesson. If you cannot instruct the students effectively then it is certain that they cannot fulfill the task that you have planned. This means that your lesson will fail. Interviewer: Ok. So do you think that giving and checking instructions are difficult skills? Interviewee: I think that besides other skills like choosing materials and designing class activities, it is one of the most challenging tasks to every teacher because you cannot plan it beforehand. I mean, you can plan your instructions in advance but when you perform them in class there are many factors that can influence it. Interviewer: I see. You mean that . So in your opinion, what are the factors that influence the effectiveness of giving and checking instructions?

Interviewee: I think the most important thing to be concern is language for instructions. When instructing students, it is necessary for teachers to use simple sentence structures like command or request because it helps students get the point more quickly and follow the requirements more easily. There is no need to use lengthy sentence like I would like to Secondly, speed of speaking is another important factor. To be honest, I have problem with this one. I know that it is absolutely necessary for teachers to slow down when talking in class, especially when giving instructions However, because it is my nature to speak fast, I often tend to keep my normal speed when giving instructions. I know that many other teachers have the same problem with me. They often stick to their normal speed when talking in class without caring if their students can catch up with them or not. Lastly, it is also important for teachers to clear about what they want their students do Interviewer: You mean the purpose of the activity? Interviewee: Yes the purpose as well as the steps needed for the students to carry out the activity. For example, a teacher instructs her students to do the activity in a way for the first time and then for the second time of instructing she tells students to perform the task in another way. After some times, she herself changes the rules in the instructions. This means that the teacher herself is not clear about the rules, then how could she effectively instruct the student to fulfill the task? And I also think that checking students understanding is important too. Interviewer: OK. I see. The next question for you. You have learnt about the techniques to give instructions in ELT II Right? So can you tell me what is Step-by-step, Say- do- check and Modeling? Interviewee: Step-by-step is giving instructions in steps, I mean breaking instructions into smaller steps. Modeling and Say-do-check are somehow similar. Say-do-check is after giving instructions, teachers let students do the activity and check whether they do it correct or not. Meanwhile, Modeling is

more flexible. The person doing the demonstration can be either teacher or students. Interviewer: Thank you. So in your opinions, of all the techniques mentioned above, which one is the most effective for giving and checking instructions? Interviewee: I prefer using Ste-by-step because it is easier for student to follow the instruction if the instruction is break into steps. Interviewer: Regarding time for instructions, what do you think is the appropriate amount of time should be spent on a lesson? Interviewee: It depends on the number of activities in each lesson but I think teachers should not spend more than one fifth of a lesson on giving instructions otherwise teacher talk will be too much. Interviewer: OK. In the second part of the interview, I will ask you some questions about your experience of giving and checking instructions during your practicum. Did you plan you instructions carefully before coming to class such as writing the instructions in the lesson plan or practice them orally at home? Interviewee: For some of my first lessons, I often wrote carefully the instructions for each activity in the lesson plan say the detailed transcripts for them. However, later I only write some key points of instructions in bullet points only. I think preparation is needed for effective instructions in class but there is no need writing detailed transcript for instructions. Interviewer: OK. So is there any cases you gave instructions at an inappropriate time? Interviewee: Yes. It was when I was in a rush and I gave instructions when students were still discussing about the previous activity. It was when they were not settled down yet. And then I wasted time repeating the instructions a second time.

Interviewer: So in your opinion, what is the most appropriate time to give instructions? Interviewee: The most appropriate time to give instructions is the falling point in students attention when students are all attentive. Interviewer: Falling point? Can you make it clearer? Interviewee: Yeah. Actually it is my supervising teachers word. She pointed out that this is the time when students are ready to listen to instructions given by teachers. In fact, it is very difficult or even impossible to wait for all the students to keep silent. Some students may keep talking or discussing. However, given that the teacher calls for students attention, gives them some time to settle down and raises her voice when giving instructions, it is fine. Interviewer: Ok. I see. Thats an interesting point. So have there been any cases in which you forgot some parts of instructions and added when students were working? Interviewee: Yes, I did meet this problem in the practicum. That was in the first lessons when I tented to stick to the too detailed transcript for the instructions I wrote in the lesson plan. Since I wrote every word I would use then when I forget some not-very-important words or failed to use the exact words that I had prepared, I could not remember all the needed information in the instructions. However, when forgetting parts of the instructions I often avoided adding them when students were working. The reason was because I knew that there is no point in adding instructions because students were working already and they would not pay attention to what I was saying. Interviewer: So what did you do if you forget parts of the instructions? Interviewee: I waited until the students finished the task and then continued to instruct them to do the next. Forgotten parts of instructions are now considered as new directions for the next steps of the task. In cases that forgotten parts of the instructions were not really important, I ignored them.

Interviewer: Have there been any cases in which students did not understand your instructions? Interviewee: I think it is quite rare since most of the words I use for instructing my students were pretty simple and easy to understand. However, sometimes students may find it difficult to follow me because I spoke too fast. Interviewer: Have you ever used Vietnamese when giving and checking instructions? Interviewee: I do not prefer using Vietnamese in class. Therefore, when giving instructions I used English by choosing simple words. Even when I failed to get the students understand the instructions for the first time, I would try another time explaining the instructions in more simple language rather than using Vietnamese. I only referred to mother tongue occasionally when checking students understanding. Interviewer: What did you often do to check whether students understand your instructions? Interviewee: I asked a student to repeat the instructions or call some students to do a demonstration because I think asking questions like Are you clear? is not effective enough. Interviewer: OK. Thats the end of the interview. Thank you very much for your cooperation.