A study on some major factors affecting English learning of grade 6 ethnic minority students of a mountainous secondary school to help them learn better

me of air in proportion to their body weight than adults do. The purpose of ventilating classrooms and school buildings, at minimum, is to remove or otherwise dilute contaminants that can upside. Apart from that, classroom lighting plays a particularly critical role in students’ performance (Philip 1997) (qtd. in Schneider, M. 2002). Obviously, students cannot learn well unless lighting is adequate and there have many studies showing that appropriate lighting improves test scores, reduces off-task behavior and plays a significant role in students’ achievement. The research liking acoustics to learning is consistent and convincing: good acoustics are fundamental to good academic performance. Higher student achievement is associated with schools that have less external noise. Outside noise causes increased students’ dissatisfaction with their classroom and that excessive noise causes stress in students (Earthman and Lesmasters 1998:18) (qtd. in Schneider, M. 2002). It is also proved that there has a link between levels of classroom and reverberations to reading and listening ability, behavior, attention, concentration and achievement in children (Crandell 1991, and Crandell et al 1995) (qtd. in Schneider, M. 2002). Some other factors such as building quality, school size and class size are also discussed in many studies. They are all shown that newer and better school buildings contribute to higher students’ scores; in small school and small class students have more positive and challenging learning environment. 2.3.7. Social context Because language is primary a social mechanism, it is learnt in social contexts. Even in the learning of a first language where the biological basis is important, there is strong influence from social factors concerned with the special relation of a child and caretaker. Hymes (1972) (qtd. in Spolsky, B. 1998:131) has continually stressed the social nature of language and argues for a wider view of linguistic than one limited to the grammar of sentences. What is needed is a linguistics, which can describe whatever features of speech, proves relevant in the given case, and which can relate linguistics elements to each other in term of relationships of role, status, task, and the like. Such a linguistic requires foundations in social theory and ethnographic practice as well as in practical phonetics and grammar (Hymes, 1985) (qtd. in Spolsky, B. 1998:131). The process of the first language learning can be better understood if the social dimension is included. Social factors have even more importance in the case of second language learning because of the greater complexity of the second language. Learner’s social context and the resulting increase in its ability to cause variability. The process of language learning can be very stressful, and the impact of positive or negative attitudes from the surrounding society can be critical. Community attitudes towards the language being learnt can have a profound impact on SLA where the community has a broadly negative view of the target language and its speakers, or a negative view of its relation to them, learning is typically difficult. Other common social factors include the attitude of parents towards language study and the nature of group dynamics in the language classroom. It is believed that social context influences in SLA in two indirect but essential ways. First, it plays a major role in developing in the learner the set of attitudes towards the language being learnt, its speakers and the language learning situation that are hypothesized to influence motivation directly. Second, it determines the social provision of language learning situation and opportunities (Spolsky, B. 1998:131). 2.4. Summary This chapter has presented relevant literature, which has helped to form the theoretical framework for the study. Different definitions about second language acquisition and different language learning factors have been discussed. Through what have been mentioned in this chapter, it is important to reconfirm that in foreign language teaching process, the teachers should pay attention to many factors affecting students’ learning then solve out their problems to help the students get higher results. In the next chapter, a research will be provided to find out the effects of these mentioned factors on students’ English learning. CHAPTER 3: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 3.1. Introduction This chapter consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the context of the study, in which the description of aims and the participants of the study will be given. The second part is an analysis on the data from the survey questionnaire, class observation and the interview. 3.2. Context of the study 3.2.1. Aiming The main purpose of carrying out this study is to investigate the present situation of teaching and learning English in grade 6 at a remote mountainous secondary school in Sonla. Furthermore, the major factors affecting English learning of grade 6 ethnic minority students will be identified. Basing on the results collected, some suggestions which can be useful to helps the students learn English better will be given. 3.2.2. Participants The participants of my study are the 2 teachers and 50 ethnic minority students (40 Thái, 7 Kháng, 3 Xá) who are teaching and learning English in grade 6 at Phong Lap Secondary School- a school in the specially poor religion- where the newly published English book 6 is the main textbook. 3.3. Data collection 3.3.1. The IQ test The IQ test is designed to simply measure the students’ intelligence. The test, which lasts 10 minutes, has ten questions mainly focus on the linguistic and logical intelligence. 1 mark will be given to each right answer. The students’ intelligence will be measured by the scores. High Intelligent: 9-10 marks Intelligent: 7-8 marks Average: 5-6 marks Not intelligent: 3-4 marks Not intelligent at all: under 3 marks 3.3.2. Survey questionnaire To some extent, using survey questionnaire allows the researcher to collect the data needed in “quantitative form”. Besides, the researcher finds it easy to analyse and report the collected data because all informants answer the same questions. The questionnaire consists of 20 questions which belong to 7 parts. At first, the learning results of grade 6 ethnic minority students will be found in part one (question 1). Part two (question 2) aims at exploring students’ personality characteristics. Next, the social contexts will be made clear in part three (questions 3-8). In part four, by answering four questions from question 9 to 12, the students can express their motivation and attitude towards English. The students learning strategies and styles will be shown in part five (questions 13- 15). Then, students’ subjective reflection to their teachers’ teaching strategies is described in part six (questions 16-18). The final part of the questionnaire is made to find out the students’ comments on their English textbook, which can help the researcher give some suggestions later. 3.3.3. Class observation The author of the study chose classes 6A and 6C to observe. All activities, which the teachers and students were performing in real classroom settings, were watched and recorded. These enable the researcher to elicit reliable data. The observation was carried out two times for the same unit in these classes. For each class, the researcher observed a 45 minute lesson. She has set a checklist for her observation including teachers’ performances, students’ attitudes towards the teachers’ activities, their involvement in the lesson, their interaction with each other and the teacher as well as the description of learning condition and classroom facility. The lesson chosen to be observed belongs to unit 4- Big or Small, Lesson 1- A1, 2. This lesson contains a text which is a description of a school and the possessive “s” form. The content of the lesson is considered not to be very difficult. The researcher would like to observe how the teachers deal with this text and new grammatical item as well as what strategies they use to make the students interested in the lesson. 3.3.4. Teacher interview Each teacher was individually interviewed for 10 minutes by the researcher. The interviewer used a list of questions to prompt the interviewees in an effort to elicit useful information. The interview questions were designed to elicit the teachers’ attitudes towards their job, their daily work at a remote mountainous school, their teaching experiences and their ways of teaching English for minority students. These two teachers (their names shown in this study are conventional) take responsibility for 4 classes in grade 6, Ms. Phuong is in charge for class 6A and 6B, Ms. Lan is in charge for class 6C and 6D. 3.4. Data analysis This part of the thesis is the treatment of all the data collected from the IQ test, the survey questionnaire conducted on 50 grade 6 ethnic minority students, the class observations and the teacher interviews. The analysis of the data is presented in three parts: the first part is the results of the IQ test and questionnaire from students, the second part is the results of the class observations and the last part is the results from the teacher interviews. 3.4.1. Data analysis of the survey questionnaire 3.4.1.1. Students’ most recent result of English learning In secondary school, students’ result of each subject in each semester is measured by the formula below: (T1 + T2) + T3 x 2 + T4 x 2 N = M 3 (M: the result of the subject; T1: the oral test; T2: the 15- minute- test T3: the 45- minute- test; T4: the end- of term test; N: the total number of tests before the end- of- term test) The results scale: Excellent: M ≥ 8.0; Good: 6.5≤ M ≤ 7.9; Average: 5.0 ≤ M ≤ 6.4; Bad: 3.5 ≤ M ≤ 4.9; Too bad: M < 3.5 Table 1: The students’ most recent English learning results Among 50 students participated in this study, there are 32 students get Average result (64%) and 18 out of them get Bad result (36%), none of them get Excellent or Good grade as well as Too bad one. Basing on the data, one can see that the English learning quality among the minority students in this school is not very high. 3.4.1.2. Students’ personality characteristics Question 2 a b c d e f g h Frequency 6 4 9 9 15 12 5 10 % 12 8 18 18 30 24 10 20 Table 2: Students’ personality characteristics (a: open- minded, b: sociable, c: ebullient, d: active, e: self-confident, f: reserved and shy, g: quiet, h: unself-confident) Table 2 shows there is a variety in students’ personality characteristics. Many of them have certain characteristics that are considered to let them learn English better than the others. For example, 15 students are self- confident, 9 out of them are ebullient and active, 6 students are open- minded and 4 out of them are sociable while there are 12 students who are shy, only 5 out of them are quiet and 10 are unself-confident. However, as mentioned in Table 1, the data in the survey do not show the distinguished differences in their learning results. Students who are open- minded, sociable, active and self- confident either get average or bad result, and so do the reserved, shy and quiet ones. 2.4.1.3. The social context Question 3 4 5 6 7 8 Choice F % F % F % F % F % F % a 0 0 0 0 3 6 48 96 5 10 3 6 b 50 100 50 100 6 12 2 4 32 64 6 12 c 0 0 0 0 13 26 13 26 21 42 d 0 0 0 0 28 56 20 40 Total 50 100 50 100 50 100 50 100 50 100 50 100 Table 3: The social context to the students’ English learning Table 3 shows the real social factors which affect students’ English learning. Although 50 students come from three different ethnic minorities ( Thái, Kháng and Xá), all of them use the native language of Thai people to communicate in daily life in their community (questions 3,4). It can be clearly seen in question 6 that 48 students (96%) state that their parents agree to support their going to school while only 2 ones are not supported. However, because of their poor economic status, only 13 students do not have to drop out from school to help their parents to do chores, most of them (64%) have to stay at home helping their family instead of going to school occasionally and even 5 out of 50 students (10%) are usually absent from school because of housework and farm work (question 7). Questions 5 and 8 reflect the students’ parents’ different attitudes towards English and their English learning. A lot of parents encourage their children to learn English as much as they can both at home and at school. Meanwhile, there are 3 out of them do not care what language their children are learning and speaking, 6 out of them (12%) have negative attitude towards English as they think that English is not useful for their children, they need to learn and use Vietnamese fluently rather than a luxurious foreign language. 3.4.1.4. Students’ motivation and attitudes towards English Question 9 10 11 12 Choice F % F % F % F % a 11 22 28 56 10 20 6 12 b 15 30 7 14 23 46 17 34 c 23 46 25 50 16 32 25 50 d 1 2 9 18 1 2 2 4 e 17 34 f 20 40 g 6 12 h 4 8 Total 50 100 50 100 50 100 Table 4: Students’ motivation and attitudes towards English Table 4 shows the students’ motivation and attitudes towards English. Data conducted from question 9 indicate that most students have neutral and positive attitude towards English, 11 students like English very much, other 15 ones like English, and 23 out of them have neutral attitude towards this subject, only 1 student dislikes it. Unfortunately, however, together with 2 students find their English lessons boring, half of them do not find English lessons interesting enough (question 12) hence they are not actively involved in the lessons. Obviously in question 11, only 10 students usually raise their voices in the class while other 23 (46%) and 16 ones (32%) respectively sometimes and rarely voluntarily express their ideas. Through the answers to question 10, the researcher learnt that students participated in the study have both two kinds of motivation in their English learning process: integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. We can see that though they are eleven years old, they have many reasons to learn English. Among 50 students, 28 informants (56%) learn English because of English itself, half of them learn English since they want to get good marks and interestingly 17 students (34%) try to learn this subject as they want to talk to the foreigners while they live in a remote area and 40% learn English because of their English teachers. 3.4.1.5. Students’ learning strategies and styles Question 13 14 15 Choice F % F % F % a 9 18 4 8 36 72 b 30 60 20 40 4 8 c 6 12 22 44 10 20 d 4 8 0 0 0 0 e 1 2 4 8 Total 50 100 50 100 50 100 Table 5: Students’ learning strategies Looking at table 5, it is unsurprising that more than a half of the participants surveyed (60%) only learn English whenever they have English homework, nearly one fifth of them (9 students – 18%) practice their English everyday, and the last 10% of them do not pay much attention to their English practicing (question 13). Question 14 is designed to find out how the students learn their English. 23 students think that they need to learn as much vocabulary as possible since knowing the meaning of the new words makes them understand better. About the same number, 20 students (40%) learn by heart all the things their teacher asked them to take notes. Some choose to learn by heart everything in their textbook (8%) or learn through their friends (8%). Especially, no one choose to learn English through playing games or T.V. programs because they do not have opportunities to do that. In the last column, it can be clearly seen that almost students (72%) in the survey have a typical habit of Vietnamese students in the classroom- looking at the board and pay attention to their teacher’s gestures and postures, the other 10 students try to listen and imitate their teachers and friends and only few students are attracted by the pictures in the textbook. In general, it is evident that the students surveyed have the traditional way of learning English. They just passively acquire English from what they learn in the class then practice by doing homework, and they have not found or applied any active strategies to improve their target language. 3.4.1.6. Teachers’ teaching strategies Question 16 17 18 Choice F % F % F % a 0 0 0 0 20 40 b 0 0 50 100 0 0 c 30 60 0 0 0 0 d 20 40 0 0 30 60 Total 50 100 50 100 50 100 Table 6: Students’ reflection to their teachers’ teaching strategies Through the answers to questions 16-18, students show their comments on their teachers’ ways of teaching. It is pointed out obviously to the researcher in question 17 that all the informants occasionally have chances to take part in group work and pair work during their English lessons. The choices to questions 16 and 18 are divided in two groups because the informants are taught by two different teachers. Ms. Phuong’s students show that although she sometimes speak to them in English in the class, she doesn’t use any other teaching aids except for the textbook and the board to make their English lessons more interesting. In contrast, Ms. Lan’s students indicate that despite her only use of Vietnamese, she makes her teaching more vivid by the use of some pictures and posters in their lessons. 3.4.1.7. Students’ comments on their textbook Question 19 Frequency % a 26 52 b 0 0 c 26 52 d 17 34 Table 7: Students’ comments on their textbook Question 19 is aimed at finding out the students’ comments on their textbook. It is made clear that none of them find the tasks in their textbook easy for them. They express that the new English textbook is difficult for them and they are overwhelmed by the amount of new vocabulary in one unit. In addition, the content of the book is remote from their daily lives and their background and is therefore difficult to comprehend. Question 20 is an open- ended question, to answer this one, students can write whatever they want about their English textbook. Half of them expect a textbook which is more focused on their ethnic daily lives, the other half want their textbook to be easier and less vocabulary. 3.4.1.8. Students’ IQ test scores Score 9-10 7-8 5-6 3-4 <3 Total Frequency 1 19 23 7 0 50 % 2 38 46 14 0 100 Table 8: Students’ IQ test scores As mentioned above, this IQ test was designed to identify whether the students have linguistic intelligence or not. Surprisingly, not many students get low scores (only 7 informants) while it shows that 40% of them are intelligent at language and nearly a half of the students are at average level. Looking at this table the researcher looked forward to a difference in the students’ English learning results; nevertheless, there is no significant difference as expected. As shown in Table 1, students were only evaluated at Average and Bad levels while there IQ test scores range from the High intelligent level to the Not Intelligent one. In general, the facts shown in this part lead to the conclusion that although almost students have support from their parents as well as positive attitudes towards English, for some other factors such as their surrounding language environment, their economic status, their unsuitable learning strategies, their teachers’ not very creative and appropriate ways of teaching, and their textbook, the students’ English learning result is not high enough. This learning result is not only particularly in this school but considered to be common in every secondary school in remote mountainous areas. 3.4.2. Data analysis of the class observation The researcher observed two classes (Class 6A of Ms. Phuong’s and Class 6C of Ms. Lan’s) with the same lesson. The most noticeable things to her were not the teachers’ and students’ activities in the classrooms but the classrooms and the learning condition themselves. It was much more out of the imagination to many people that their old school was not solidly bricked built, all the classrooms were simply made of bamboo with thatched or mental roof. It must be very cold in winter. The furniture was old and not very comfortable. In the classroom, there was no electricity. As a result, there were not any lights as well as modern teaching and learning equipments. In general, the learning condition for the students observed was very poor and not suitable for children to learn any subjects, especially in bad and harsh weather. Turning back to the lessons observed, the first observation was taken from class 6A of Ms. Phuong’s with 27 students. It is a listening lesson but because of the poor learning condition, the teacher adapted it into a reading one. As described above, the lesson is about a simple description of a school with possessive‘s’ form. To start with, the researcher saw her use pelmanism to define relationship of that lesson to the previous ones by asking students to match personal pronouns with their possessive pronouns. After that, she introduced the new words (big, small, in the country, in the city) by giving Vietnamese translation and read the reading text once aloud then asked students to work individually to read the text themselves (Task 1). Task 2 in the textbook was aimed at checking students’ comprehension hence Ms. Phuong raised the questions then asked students to stand up to give the answers. She ended her lesson by asking students to write a short paragraph about their school. During her observation within 45 minutes, the researcher did not see the teacher either present overview or summarize major points of the lesson. What is more, in the text there appeared the possessive‘s’ form; however the teacher neither identified the difference between it and the verb to be – “is” form nor the use of ‘s’ possession. Therefore, the students only imitated their teacher to speak Phong’s school or Thu’s school without understanding. It was also observed that the students’ involvement in the lesson was not much. They just looked at the board, took note what the teacher wrote on the board and answered the questions when required. The interaction between students and the teacher as well as among the students themselves was little. The teacher asked some questions and the students passively responded. To cut it short, from the researcher’s observation, although the teacher’s voice was clearly and she sometimes spoke English, the students were not interested in the teacher’s activities in that lesson very much and the class atmosphere was quite boring because of too much dead time. The second observation tool place in class 6C of Ms. Lan’s. She also used pelmanism as the warm-up activity to start the lessons. Then she showed a picture to introduce the new words, which directly described things in the picture. The students learnt and understood the new words without translation. Then she stated that: “Today, we will learn how to use these words to describe our school” in Vietnamese and asked the students to listen to her reading. After that, she had all the class read after her in chorus once and students had chance to read the text individually. Next, the teacher spent 10 minutes introducing the use of “s” possession with clarity in Vietnamese. Ms. Lan passed the task 2 by asking students to work in pairs to answer the questions in the textbook then call them up to give the answers. While checking up, the researcher saw that she did not pay much attention to the students’ accuracy in pronunciation but only the content of the answers. In the last 15 minutes, the teacher showed another picture about a school in the mountainous area. She introduced “in the mountainous area” and asked students to describe their school. The students were willing to take part in the activities. It was admitted that the students in Ms. Lan’s class were more involved in the lesson than those in Ms. Phuong’s one. Though the learning atmosphere was not very English- like because the teacher only used Vietnamese, it was vivid enough to draw the students’ attention. Overall, the observation helps the researcher confirm the fact that the teachers’ teaching strategies plays an important part in the minority students’ English learning success. It seemed that the teachers here had not found an adequate way to certain type of students in certain condition. Furthermore, the researcher realized that the learning condition put a great impact on the children’s learning. In such a poor learning environment like that, it was difficult for students to acquire a foreign language. 3.4.3. Data analysis of teacher interview After observing the two teachers’ teaching, the researcher had informal discussion with them, during which she used questions to elicit information from Ms. Phuong and Ms. Lan as reported below. First of all, the information proved that these two teachers were very young and not very experienced in their teaching. Ms. Phuong was only 22 with only one- year- teaching experience, Ms. Lan was 26 and she had been teaching English in this school for 4 years. It was the first time Ms. Phuong had taught grade 6 and the second time for Ms. Lan. Due to that limitation, the teachers did not have enough time to try out on many ways of teaching; they need time to find out the most suitable and effective methods and techniques to apply in their teaching for ethnic minority students. Secondly, these teachers showed that although they loved the job as a teacher, they had not really kept their minds on their work because of their hard lives and poor working and living conditions. Ms. Phuong said that she got shock when she first came to that school. Almost teachers there lived in the tenement house with the water source is 1-kilometer afar. Those daily disadvantages sometimes made them have not much enthusiasm for their work. Thirdly, when talking about their daily teaching in the class, both teachers agreed that the main hindrance in their students’ learning English is a triangular language environment. Minority students mainly used their mother tongue to communicate inside their families and communities while at school they have to learn Vietnamese to study and communicate with other people. According to them, their students did not thoroughly comprehend what they said in Vietnamese. In the English lessons, they comprehended by listening and reading, switching into their native language and then translating or changing into Vietnamese and then English again. Therefore, studying English via Vietnamese is very challenging. In addition, minority students found it more difficult to pronounce English because their language was greatly different from it. They always mispronounced /d/ with /l/, /v/ with /b/. It was unable for the teachers to change their pronunciation habit. Furthermore, the teaching methods were also mentioned. The teachers agreed that they did not employ many activities in their lessons; especially pair work and group work because it was difficult for them to manage the class and control the students as whenever they have chance, they talked about their personal problems immediately. They also realized that their students did not get involved very much in their lessons because they were quite passive and reserved. Finally, the textbook has been raised for discussion. The teachers did not like to use new English 6 very much since the contents of the book were not familiar with their students’ daily lives. These teachers faced a lot of difficulties in giving explanations to the new information. The activities suggested in the teacher’s book required modern equipment, which was considered to be luxury in this school. Hence, they wished to have a textbook more focused on ethnic students’ daily lives. In short, through talking with the teachers taking charge to the students participated in the study, the researcher understood more about both their lives and their work. She came to a conclusion that the teaching experience, the living and working conditions as the teachers’ attitudes towards their work and their students took a crucial role in how and what they perform in the class. 3.5. Summary Chapter 2 has presented the aims of the study as well as the participants involved in it. Moreover, the data collected from the survey, the class observation and the interview helped the researcher have an overview of English teaching and learning situation in Phong Lap secondary school which is of low quality. With more details, the affecting factors on students’ English learning have been investigated in different levels of impact. Among them, which have been found out to have most impact on the learners’ unsuccessful results are teachers’ teaching strategies, the textbook, school facilities and their native language use as well as the locals’ low living standard. The students’ motivation and attitudes towards the target language and learning strategies are the following important ones. Finally, the intelligence and personality characteristics are the least affecting factors. Hence, major findings and suggestions for teaching and learning English in remote mountainous areas will be touched upon in Chapter 3. CHAPTER 4: MAJOR FINDINGS AND SUGGESTION FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH IN REMOTE MOUNTAINOUS SCHOOLS This chapter consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the majors findings inferred from the data analysis in Chapter 2. From these findings, some suggestions, which can be useful for teaching and learning English in mountainous areas, will be made in the second part. 4.1. Major findings According to the data analysis of the IQ test, the questionnaire, the class observation together with the teacher interview, some points are drawn out as follows 4.1.1. The teacher recognition of the affecting factors in the students’ learning process From what was conducted in the study, the teachers have not emphasized very much on what affects their students’ English learning. They know that their students have hard lives which cannot enable them to spend much time on learning, they recognize the prevention of their mother tongue to the target language as well. Nevertheless, maybe due to their little teaching experience, they have not found out suitable ways to help their students solve out their problems to make progress in study. 4.1.2. The different affecting degrees of the learning factors studied Foreign language learning is a process that is affected by many factors. In certain specific situations, those factors affect the learning process in different degrees. To children of ethnic minorities in the Northern Vietnam, external factors such as teachers’ teaching strategies, the textbook, social context, learning conditions and school facilities seem to have more impact than the internal ones. First of all, teaching strategies must be taken into account. All the data shown in the study prove that the teachers’ teaching strategies are not interesting enough to draw their students’ attention and interest. The techniques and activities employed in their lessons seem to be monotonous. For example, the teachers keep delivering the new language items orally and by writing on the board most of the time in Vietnamese or little English while students just look at the board and take notes. Also, students are frequently asked to work individually. Pair work and group work are rarely used. The interaction among teachers and students is only realized by the teachers’ few questions and students’ answers. It may be concluded that the teachers simply follow the framework of the textbook and teach what is required in syllabus. Hence, the teaching strategies used by the teachers in certain circumstance are not in relevance and effectiveness. Secondly, the textbook makes disadvantages for both teachers and students. As a result, most of the students and the teachers in the study are not in favored of their textbook. All of them find it too difficult for students to learn and for teachers to design and adapt the tasks. They state that the content of the book is remote from the students’ daily lives. Furthermore, the students are overwhelmed by a large amount of vocabulary. They wish to have a textbook which is somehow easier and less communicative ability required so that both the teachers and the students can accomplish their tasks. Thirdly, social context reveals to be another main hindrance to ethnic minority students’ English learning. Minority students mainly used their mother tongue to communicate inside their families and communities while at school they have to learn Vietnamese to study and communicate with other people. In the English lessons, they comprehended by listening and reading, switching into their native language and then translating or changing into Vietnamese and then English again. In addition, the pronunciation of their native language is much different from that of English and Vietnamese. Therefore, studying English via Vietnamese is very challenging. What is more, though most of the students have parental support to go to school (that is more advantageous than those in some other mountainous areas), their poor living conditions and low economic status still prevent them from spending enough time and concentration on learning all subjects in general and English in particular. The following important affecting factor has been found out is learning condition and school facilities. It is a fact that the school in the study is poorly facilitated. Classrooms for students are simply groups of cottages without doors or windows and electricity supply. The furniture is old and not comfortable for children. Though class size is quite adequate (about 27 to 33 students), the students’ sight is limited due to the lack of light. Besides, all the teaching facilities the teachers have is textbook, chalk, and old board. As well, there are not many books, stories, pictures, CDs or cassette tapes in school library. Computers and internet are luxurious to the teachers and far from imagination of the students. Obviously, in such a poor learning condition, the ethnic children cannot acquire a foreign language as well as those who enjoy much better learning conditions. Interestingly, unlike the results from many studies in other foreign teaching and learning situations, learners’ motivation and attitudes towards the target language reveal to have less important effect than the factors mentioned above in this study. The data collected show that English is fairly welcomed by almost students. Each of them also has his or her own reasons to learn it. Their boredom in English lessons may be the results from their teachers’ inappropriate teaching strategies which cannot motivate and attract their interest to the lessons. Another factor mentioned in the study is the learners’ learning strategies. Because of their low living standard together with poor learning condition at school, the students do not have many choices of what strategies they should follow to improve their English. They just passively acquire it like the way they use with other subjects. The data in the survey have shown that the most frequent learning strategies used are looking at the board, taking notes, and learning whenever they have homework. Apart from that, as only eleven- year- old students in a remote religion (which is far from the center town), they need help from their teacher to show them what exactly they must do to learn English better. Surprisingly, before carrying out this research, such factors as intelligence and personality characteristics were supposed to have much impact on the students’ learning scores. However, the data collected from the IQ test and the survey have turned out to be in contrast. There was no correspondence between the data collected term of intelligence and personality characteristics with the students’ English learning results. In the other words, while the students belonged to many kinds of personality and intelligent levels, no great differences have been distinguished in learners’ English scores. A conclusion can be drawn that among the studied factors, intelligence and personality characteristics just have little effects on the students’ language learning in such situation. In conclusion, the grade 6 ethnic minority students’ English learning are strongly affected by some external factors as previously mentioned above. Among them, it is difficult to point out which has the most effects and which has the least one as each of them take an important role in the student foreign language learning process and they are complexly integrated. It is evident that ethnic students fundamentally lack an environment in which to practice English. Almost the students have no English learning equipment, such as records, CDs, or short stories at home. Even in the class, where they are taught English, they do not have many chances to communicate in English either. Hence, it is difficult for the ethnic students get success in English. 4.2. Suggestions for teaching and learning English in remote mountainous situation From these findings the researcher would like to give some suggestions, to some extent, may help the teachers and learners in their teaching and learning process. 4.2.1. Using relevant and useful teaching techniques to deliver interesting lessons The data collected from the study have shown that in the classroom the students were not highly motivated. Most of them participated in the lessons and teachers’ activities passively. Hence, it is crucial to employ some activities and techniques to help the students be attracted to the lessons. First of all, the easiest way is to give the students more chances to play games, sing songs, take part in plays and competitions in English. For students of eleven- year- old, they are usually active and love to join the games and competition to show their ability. In addition, they are in favor of songs and plays. It is easier for them to learn by heart new words through children songs and plays. When they can sing songs or act as a character in a play, they will be more confident to speak English. Games, songs and plays as well can be used both in normal English lessons and everyweek optional lessons. Hence, teachers should organize games, plays, songs and even a small competition to encourage the children and warm up the classroom atmosphere. After such activities, teachers may give good comments and present the winners or the best ones small gifts which will leave sweet memories in students’ mind. Secondly, in the class, the teachers should try to speak and make their ideas understood in English. It seems not very natural to use only Vietnamese in English lessons. It does not mean that they should not use Vietnamese, as sometimes they have to explain abstract and complex things and make sure students understand well what they need to know. However, it is obvious that teachers should use English to communicate with their students in the class in order to make them familiar with the English pronunciation. It also provides opportunities for teachers to practice and improve their English. What is more, visual aids are welcomed in most of the lessons. Students can learn best when they are happy and excited. Because of their little background knowledge and practical experience, the teachers should present their lessons visually and vividly to draw students’ attention and interest by using colorful pictures, diagrams, or real objectives, etc. Additionally, teachers should make sure that all students speak during lessons. One of the most important steps that a student needs to take in order to learn a new language is to speak it. Speaking lets students have a feeling of being involved in the lessons. Therefore, teachers should give students opportunities and time to practice and raise their voices freely. Students are encouraged to ask questions, give suggestions, share ideas, and tell stories. The open and friendly interactions among teachers and students and among students themselves are highly appreciated. Therefore, pair work and group work should be frequently used. Teachers are also advisable to be gentle and sensitive to their students’ errors and mistakes. Children are always afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at in public; if they are hurt once, they will gradually be reserved and quiet. They may no longer dare to have a word in front of the classmates. Therefore, the teachers should be reliable to students for their mistake correction without making them shy. Furthermore, the teachers need to have sense of humor to make good impressions on their students. Another important thing is that teachers should not disregard ethnic minority students but show honest sympathies with their disadvantages to close the gap between the teachers and students. Finally, I would like to recommend that the teachers should be energetic and enthusiastic to associate with other schools in towns or even in cities to ask them for their students’ old stories, CDs, pictures of places in the world and so on then make them available in school library so that the students can make use of them. Adapting the textbook As far as I know, the new English book 6 was designed so that the teachers and learners can take part in activities which focuses on their communicative interactions. The information given in the book is fresh, up date, and contains many different topics. However, some of them seem not very relevant to the minority students’ background and daily lives. There are things they have never experienced, for example beaches, supermarkets, internet, zoos, circus, etc. The students are not interested in learning about vocation destinations while they can remember very well when learning about agricultural products. Therefore, it is necessary for teacher to adapt the textbook to make it interesting to the children. Depend on certain units and lessons, teachers can adapt the their teaching material by omitting, re-ordering, replacing, combining, or adding tasks. For example, when the topic of the lesson is not relevant to students’ background knowledge, the teachers should discover what students know about it prior to teaching and design the lesson based on that knowledge. However, an important thing to remember when adapting teaching materials is everything presented needs to be made clear and specifically. It is better to start teaching the ethnic students from simple to complex things. By doing that, English can help them to boost their confidence and raise their voice in modern society. Having ethnic minority teachers to teach English for students in their communities As shown in the survey, 50 students participated in the study are all ethnic minority students. They all use their native language to communicate in their families and communities. In a triangular language environment, children face difficulties in both learning English and Vietnamese. If the minority teachers of English are available, these ones can teach minority children more effectively as they can understand students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning a foreign language. Furthermore, it is easier for both teachers and learners to exchange ideas. The teaching and learning process will be more successful when the teachers and learners can make themselves fully understood. Improving learning and teaching conditions In general, improving learning conditions such as school buildings, classroom facilities and learning equipments is an important but sensitive problem. The Vietnamese government have set up a plenty of projects and programs to help people especially students in remote mountainous areas. A lot of money has been investigated and many efforts have been made. However, those somehow have not met the demands of ethnic minority people. There living standard as well as background knowledge are still very low. The schools in those areas are in the same situations. To Phong Lap Secondary School, it would be highly recommended that electricity must be supplied in the classrooms. Furthermore, they need to be gradually solidly built and equipped with modern teaching facilities. Summary In conclusion, to make the English learning process of minority students at grade 6 become worthwhile, it depends on not solely the teachers or students but also everybody in our society. Basing on what have been found out in the study, some suggested solutions are therefore given to the teachers and others concerned such as: using relevant and useful teaching techniques to deliver interesting lessons, adapting the textbook, having ethnic minority teachers to teach English for students in their communities and improving teaching and learning conditions. However, in particular circumstance, the teachers and learners themselves have to make all efforts to over come the difficulties. It is hoped that all these suggestions will be taken into consideration so that students can use their English in grade 6 as their background for further learning in their future grades. CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1. Conclusion Springing from the urgent practical reason that the English learning of ethnic minority students in remote mountainous areas in Northern Vietnam is of low quality, the researcher would like to find out what factors can lead to that situation and how to deal with raised problems. A research has been conducted by theoretical study, doing a survey questionnaire, observing classes and interviewing namely “A study on some major factors affecting English learning of grade 6 ethnic minority students of a mountainous secondary school to help them learn better”. The study has been divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the study. Literature Review is chapter 2, in which definitions of language acquisition and theoretical background of language learning factors have been presented to set up the theoretical framework for the study. Among them, the research has touched upon such factors as intelligence, personality, learning strategies, attitude and motivation, teaching strategies, environment and context of learning and social context. Chapter 3 (Data collection and analysis) consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the context of the study, in which the description of aims, the participants, and data collection of the study has been given. The second part is analysis on the data from the survey questionnaire, IQ test, class observation and the interview. Data from IQ test have used to identify the students’ variety in intelligent level. Those from survey questionnaire have been analyzed to find out the students’ most recent results in English, the social contexts to the students, their personality characteristics, the students’ motivation and attitudes towards English, their learning strategies, the students’ reflection to their teachers’ teaching strategies and their comments on textbook. The class observation has revealed the teachers’ teaching strategies in real classroom setting. Finally, the teacher interview has confirmed the teachers’ ways of teaching as well as their attitudes towards their jobs and their daily work at a mountainous school. Based on the data collected in previous chapter, some major findings and suggestions for teaching and learning English in remote mountainous schools have been stated in chapter 4. The researcher has found out that the teachers participated in the study have not emphasized very much on which affects their students’ learning. The degree of affecting factors to ethnic minority students has also been made clear. Among them, the teaching strategies, the social context, the textbook, the learning condition and school facilities have most impact. The less affecting ones are students’ learning strategies, motivation and attitudes towards the target language. Intelligence and personality characteristics have the least effects. Therefore, four suggested solutions as using relevant and useful teaching techniques to deliver interesting lessons, adapting the textbook, having ethnic minority teachers to teach English for students in their communities and improving teaching and learning conditions have been given in the end of the chapter. Chapter 5 is the conclusion of the study. A conconclusion can be drawn as the study has reached the objectives mentioned in the first chapter. All the problems arise in the study have been solved, which is matched to the hypothesis. A real situation of teaching and learning English in a mountainous school has been made clear, which is shown that some factors such as teaching strategies, the social context, the textbook, the learning condition and school facilities have much impact, while other factors seem not to take much into account in this hard teaching and learning situation. Suggestions for further study In this thesis, some affecting factors to ethnic minority students of grade 6 have been found, but for the scope of the study, there are still some other factors have not been discussed such as: memory, aptitude, gender, age, background knowledge, religion, teacher and learner’s belief, culture and so on. Additionally, it is also needed to study more about teaching strategies needed to teach English effectively for particular ethnic minority students to make their English learning successful.