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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES


FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYN THANH THY

THE EXPLOITATION OF ELICITING TECHNIQUES BY FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM AT English division I, Faculty of english language teacher education, University of languages and international studies Vietnam national university

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

Hanoi, May 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI


UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYN THANH THY

THE EXPLOITATION OF ELICITING TECHNIQUES BY FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM AT English division I, Faculty of english language teacher education, University of languages and international studies Vietnam national university
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

SUPERVISOR: LNG QUNH TRANG, M.A.

Hanoi, May 2011

ACCEPTANCE
I hereby state that I: Nguyn Thanh Thy, 071.E1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of 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 for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper. Signature

May 4th 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, on the completion of the study, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Luong Quynh Trang for her immeasurable help, constant guidance and support during all stages of the study and beyond, from whom I have received valuable suggestions and careful critical comments. Besides, I am also obliged to my friends Pham Thi Thuy Linh, Vu Thi Kim Chi, Pho Quynh Anh and Le Quynh Hoa for their precious suggestions, encouragement and technical support to help me overcome the obstacles I have encountered when conducting this research paper. Furthermore, I would like to show my appreciation to the participants, both the student-teachers from class 071.E1 and 189 firstyear mainstream students at English Division I, FELTE for assisting me in collecting data. Also, I would like to express my sincere thanks to nine mentors from English Division I FELTE, namely Mr. Khoa Anh Viet, Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, Ms. Tran Thi Quynh Le, Ms. Tran Thi Thanh Phuc, Ms. Pham Thi Dieu Anh, Ms. Nguyen Kim Hue, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thom Thom, Ms. Luu Ngoc Ly and Ms. Pham Hoang Long Bien, who gave me allowance to conduct observations and videotape the lessons during the teaching practicum. Last but not least, I am grateful to my beloved friends and family for supporting me wholeheartedly during the time I carried out this research paper.

ABSTRACT
In the language teaching context, eliciting is praised as an effective technique, from which both teachers and students can benefit. It is believed to increase student talking time, maintain student attention, draw on what students already know or partly know, provide weaker students with opportunities to participate in class and motivate student to learn (Doff, 1988; Ur, 1996). Therefore, using eliciting techniques effectively is of great importance to teachers in general and to student-teachers in particular. Attempting to investigate the student-teachers exploitation of elicitation during practicum at university level, the current research aimed at investigating how the student-teachers from the Faculty of English Teacher Education (FELTE), University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) used eliciting techniques during their practicum at English Division I, FELTE. Specifically, it explored these studentteachers perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in language teaching together with the frequency of using each technique. Besides, the study discovered the student-teachers and first-year students evaluation of the student-teachers elicitation. Also, it found out the student-teachers difficulties when using these techniques in class and their suggested solutions to such difficulties. Data for the study were collected, firstly, by means of questionnaires with the participation of 26 student-teachers and 189 first-year mainstream students at FELTE. In addition, observing lessons of nine student-teachers and interviewing them helped provided valuable data for the study. The study found out that the student-teachers believed in the necessity of eliciting techniques for many reasons. Moreover, all eliciting techniques, namely asking questions, asking questions combined with pictures, with games or
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activities, with texts or dialogues and with nonverbal language were employed, among which asking questions was the most frequently used technique. Regarding the effectiveness of the techniques, most studentteachers identified positive influences of these techniques on their teaching. Besides, as the direct beneficiary of elicitation, the surveyed first-year students shared this opinion and considered asking questions combined with games or activities the most effective technique. The student-teachers suggested plenty of solutions to deal with their difficulties in exploiting elicitation, which are grouped into three main categories: difficulties related to the student-teachers subjective factors, students uncooperative behaviors and attitude, and objective factors (e.g. time limitation, teaching-learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge). The paper was, therefore, expected to serve as a reference for both student-teachers and experienced teachers in mastering elicitation. .

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TABLE OF CONTENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... i ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ..........................................................................................viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................... ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................... ix CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION..................................................................... 1 I. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study................................ 1 II. Aims and research questions of the study ................................................ 3 III. Scope of the study .................................................................................... 4 IV. Significance of the study .......................................................................... 5 V. Methodology of the study......................................................................... 5 1. Data collection method ....................................................................... 5 2. Data analysis method .......................................................................... 6 VI. Organization of the paper ......................................................................... 6 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................... 8 I. Key concepts ............................................................................................ 8 1. Learner-centered learning and new roles of teachers and students .... 8 1.1. Learner-centered learning ......................................................... 8 1.2. New roles of the teacher and students....................................... 9 2. Classroom interaction ....................................................................... 10 3. Teacher talk ....................................................................................... 11 4. Eliciting techniques........................................................................... 13 4.1. Definition ................................................................................ 13 4.2. Types of eliciting techniques .................................................. 14 4.3. Benefits of using eliciting techniques ..................................... 24 4.4. Drawbacks of using eliciting techniques ................................ 27 II. Related studies ........................................................................................ 29 1. Review of related studies on elicitation ............................................ 29 2. Review of related studies on elicitation in practicum....................... 31 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .............................................................. 33 I. Research setting ...................................................................................... 33 II. Participants ............................................................................................. 34 1. The student-teachers ......................................................................... 34 2. The first-year mainstream students ................................................... 36 III. Sampling method .................................................................................... 39
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IV. Data collection instruments .................................................................... 40 1. Questionnaires .................................................................................. 40 1.1. Reasons for choosing questionnaires ...................................... 40 1.2. Questionnaire format and content ........................................... 41 1.3. Questionnaire procedure ......................................................... 44 2. Observations ..................................................................................... 45 2.1. Reasons for choosing observation .......................................... 45 2.2. Observation scheme ................................................................ 46 2.3. Observation procedure ............................................................ 46 3. Interviews.......................................................................................... 47 3.1. Reasons for choosing interviews ............................................ 47 3.2. Interview format and content .................................................. 48 3.3. Interview procedure ................................................................ 49 V. Data collection procedure ....................................................................... 49 VI. Data analysis procedure.......................................................................... 52 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ......................................... 55 I. Research question 1: How necessary are eliciting techniques in language teaching as perceived by the student-teachers? ........................................... 56 II. Research question 2: What eliciting techniques are most commonly used by the student-teachers during their practicum? .......................................... 60 1. The student-teachers frequency of using elicitation ........................ 60 2. The frequency of using each eliciting technique .............................. 62 III. Research question 3: What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the student-teachers? .............................................................. 69 1. Asking questions ............................................................................... 69 2. Asking questions combined with games or activities ....................... 70 3. Asking questions combined with nonverbal language ..................... 71 4. Asking questions combined with pictures ........................................ 73 5. Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues ........................ 74 IV. Research question 4: What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the learners who are first year students at FELTE, ULIS VNU? ........................................................................................................... 76 1. Students reactions to the student-teachers elicitation .................... 76 2. Students evaluation of each eliciting techniques effectiveness ..... 78 V. Research question 5: What are the difficulties of using eliciting techniques as reported by the student- teachers? ......................................... 79 1. Student-teacher-related factors ......................................................... 81 2. Student-related factors ...................................................................... 83 3. Objective factors ............................................................................... 84
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VI. Research question 6: What are the solutions to such problems as suggested by the student teachers? .............................................................. 87 1. Improving the comprehensibility of the student-teachers elicitation... ............................................................................................. 87 2. Dealing with the students behaviors and attitudes .......................... 89 3. Conquering time limitation ............................................................... 89 4. Dealing with the unfavorable teaching and learning conditions ...... 90 5. Tackling with the difficult nature of the target knowledge .............. 91 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 93 I. Major findings of the study .................................................................... 93 II. Pedagogical implications ........................................................................ 96 III. Contributions of the study ...................................................................... 97 IV. Limitations of the study .......................................................................... 98 V. Suggestions for further studies ............................................................... 99 REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 101 APPENDICES................................................................................................ 106 APPENDIX 1. Questionnaire for student-teachers.................................... 106 APPENDIX 2. Questionnaire for first-year students ................................. 107 APPENDIX 3. Observation checklist ........................................................ 108 APPENDIX 4. Interview guiding questions .............................................. 109 APPENDIX 5. Interview transcript (Student-teacher 1) ........................... 110 1. General information ........................................................................ 110 2. Interview transcript ......................................................................... 110

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page

Figure 1: Question classification by the communicative value ........................ 18 Figure 2: The necessity of eliciting in teaching (%) ........................................ 56 Figure 3: Benefits of elicitation as perceived by the student-teachers ............. 57 Figure 4: The student-teachers' frequency of using elicitation......................... 60 Figure 5: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (%) ..................... 63 Figure 6: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (number) ............ 66 Figure 7: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions .............................................................................. 69 Figure 8: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with nonverbal language .................... 71 Figure 9: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with pictures ....................................... 73 Figure 10: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues ....................... 74 Figure 11: The first-year students' frequency of response ............................... 76 Figure 12: The student-teachers' difficulties of using elicitation ..................... 80 Figure 13: Suggested procedure for elicitation ................................................ 91

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LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
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Table 1: Types of eliciting techniques according to Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12) ..................................................................................... Table 2: Student-teacher group allocation in 2011 at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS VNU ................................................................................... Table 3: The differences between ELT Program and Double-major Program for first-year students at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS VNU (cited from Course Outline for ELT Program and Course Outline for Double-major Program / Semester 2 / 2010 2011 ...................................... 38 Table 4: Summary of the student-teacher and the first-year student 40 50 36

selection ........................................................................................................ Table 5: Data collection procedure .............................................................. Table 6: Mean score for the frequency of each employed eliciting technique (Reported by the first-year students) ........................................... Table 7: Mean score of the frequency of each employed eliciting

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technique (Reported by the student-teachers) ............................................... 65 Table 8: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with games or 70

activities......................................................................................................... Table 9: The first-year students evaluation of the effectiveness of the student-teachers eliciting techniques ...........................................................

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CLT FELTE ULIS VNU EFL ESL L2 FLSS ELT ELT I Communicative Language Teaching Faculty of English Language Teacher Education University of Languages and International Studies Vietnam National University, Hanoi English as Foreign Language English as a Second Language The second language Foreign Language Specialized School English Language Teaching An introduction to language teaching methods (two credits, semester six) ELT II ESL/EFL classroom techniques and practices (four credits, semester six and seven) ELT III Language Assessment & ELT Materials Development (two credits, semester seven) ELT IV Pedagogical Techniques (two credits, semester eight)

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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
This initial chapter outlines the research problem and rationale for the study together with its aims and objectives, the scope and the significance of the paper. Particularly, it is in this chapter that six research questions are identified to serve as guidelines for the whole study. Finally, the chapter concludes with a sketch of the organization of the paper to orientate the readers throughout the paper. I. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as evaluated by Nunan (1991) puts emphasis on learning to communicate through the interaction between the teacher and students and among students themselves in the target language. Students are required to create and develop the habit of getting involved in the lesson. The language classroom now has become more learner-centered. Besides, Harmer (2001, p.56), when discussing learner-centered teaching, has put forward that teaching should make the learners needs and experience central to the educational process. In other words, the teacher no longer keeps the center position in class. Instead, students are encouraged to actively take part in the lesson by interacting with the teacher who uses eliciting techniques to facilitate this involvement. As suggested by Darn (2008), eliciting is a preferable method that helps promote student involvement in the lesson and develop the learner-centered classroom. To be more specific, elicitation offers learners an environment with opportunities to participate; as a result, it increases student talking time and at the same time decreases teacher talking time.

In Vietnam, CLT has been adopted for a long time. However, the adoption of CLT in Vietnam has gained limited outcomes owing to the dominance of the grammar-translation approach, especially in high schools where the teacher plays the role of an expert who transfers his or her knowledge to students (Rudder, 2000). This matter leads to the fact that the majority of Vietnamese high school students appear rather passive in English classrooms and they maintain this inactive learning style up to university. Eliciting techniques are believed to make the students become more active as they increase student talking time, maintain students attention, draw on what students already know or partly know, provide weaker students with opportunities to participate in class and motivate students to learn (Doff, 1988; Ur, 1996). Despite their importance, the exploitation of eliciting techniques in language classroom has scarcely been researched so far, especially in the context of Vietnam and particularly in ULIS VNU. The only three studies that the researcher could find are those by Pham (2006), Tran (2007) and Chu (2009). While Pham (2006) investigated the use of elicitation in teaching vocabulary to 11th form students in Hanoi, Tran (2007) examined eliciting techniques used to teach speaking skill to grade 10 students in Hanoi. Most recently, Chu (2009) did research on the teachers use of techniques to elicit grade 10 students talk. These studies left gaps for the present research to continue exploring the teachers use of eliciting techniques. First, the first two studies focused on elicitation in lessons of only one English language skill and one English language component at high schools whereas the third one studied eliciting in lessons of all four skills but still in the high school context. Besides, the subjects of the above
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mentioned studies were high school teachers with a great amount of teaching experience. Meanwhile, there have not been any studies focusing on student-teachers, who are learning to become teachers and needed to practice necessary techniques and skills of teachers. Therefore, the researcher wanted to fill these gaps by expanding the scale of the present research to the student-teachers in their teaching practicum at university level. The study was entitled The exploitation of eliciting techniques by fourth-year students in their teaching practicum at English Division I, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International studies Vietnam National University. II. Aims and research questions of the study The overall aim of this study was to explore how the fourth-year students (the student-teachers) exploited eliciting techniques in teaching the first-year students during their practicum at FELTE, ULIS VNU. To achieve this overall aim successfully, firstly, the researcher wanted to find out the student-teachers perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in teaching because what teachers believe and think serves as the basis for their classroom behavior and activities (Borg, 2003, pp. 8182). Whether the student-teachers thought eliciting techniques were beneficial or not in teaching could influence the way they used these techniques in the classroom. Secondly, the study aimed to investigate the common eliciting techniques that these student-teachers employed in their lessons during their practicum. Next, the study hoped to find out the effectiveness of these techniques as perceived by the student-teachers and the first-year students. After that, the researcher expected to figure out the difficulties of using eliciting techniques that these student-teachers
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encountered. Suggested solutions to such problems as reported by the student-teachers themselves were also what the researcher aimed at. The aims of the study could be summarized into the six following research questions: i. How necessary are eliciting techniques in language teaching as perceived by the student-teachers? ii. What eliciting techniques are most commonly used by the student-teachers during their practicum? iii. What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the student-teachers? iv. What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the learners who are first-year students at FELTE, ULIS VNU? v. What are the difficulties of using eliciting techniques as reported by the student- teachers? vi. What are the solutions to such problems as suggested by the student-teachers? III. Scope of the study From 21st February to 1st April 2011, 26 student-teachers from FELTE, ULIS VNU were allocated to conduct their teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS VNU. The researcher specifically aimed at investigating the use of eliciting techniques among these 26 student-teachers during their six-week teaching practicum at different first-year mainstream student groups at English Division I, FELTE. The reason was that the researcher was one of these student-teachers; therefore, it was easier for her to access the prospective participants. In
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addition, the use of eliciting techniques was one of the teaching skills assessed by university mentors. IV. Significance of the study Conducting this research, the researcher expected to identify the student-teachers perceptions of the necessity of elicitation in language teaching and the most common eliciting techniques student-teachers tended to employ in their lessons during the teaching practicum. Evaluation of the effectiveness of these techniques as perceived by both the student-teachers and the first-year mainstream students, the difficulties the student-teachers encountered when using these techniques as well as solutions to such problems were also examined in this research. Once completed, the research is hoped to serve as a reference for those who want to have a clearer view of what happens during the teaching practicum in general and of the use of eliciting techniques in particular. Moreover, the findings could help the student-teachers improve their eliciting techniques as well as classroom management when becoming real teachers after graduation. In addition, the findings of the paper could be considered a reference for ELT lecturers when they want to make amendments to the course to help students use more effective elicitation. V. Methodology of the study

1. Data collection method The researcher used both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (observations and interviews) methods to collect data for the research. To be specific, two sets of questionnaires were distributed to 26 student-teachers and 189 first-year mainstream students who studied in
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nine specific classes. In addition, nine student-teachers were asked for the permission to be observed, videotaped and interviewed to get more indepth information for the study. Also, ten more student-teachers were invited to clarify their answers in the questionnaires. In terms of language use, except for the questionnaires for the student-teachers, the questionnaires for first-year students and interviews were in Vietnamese in order that the respondents were at the most confident and comfortable status to express their opinions. 2. Data analysis method The information collected from two sets of questionnaires, observations and interviews was transcribed as the primary source of data for the research. The general approach for data analysis was content analysis (Grbich, 2007). Relevant sections were identified or underlined during the evaluation of each piece of data. The contents were to be sorted into categories based on the six research questions. VI. Organization of the paper The rest of the paper includes the following chapters: Chapter 2 (Literature review) provides the theoretical background of the study, including discussions of the key concepts and related studies. Chapter 3 (Methodology) describes the research setting,

participants, instruments of data collection as well as the procedure employed to carry out data analysis. Chapter 4 (Findings and discussion) presents, analyzes and discusses the results that the researcher found out from the collected data
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according to the six research questions. This chapter contains six smaller parts, equivalent to give answers to the six research questions. Chapter 5 (Conclusion) summarizes the answers to the six research questions, several pedagogical recommendations concerning the research topic, the limitations of the research as well as some suggestions for further studies. Following this chapter are the References and Appendices.

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW


This second chapter sheds light on the literature of the study, specifically the background theory and a number of studies related to the research topic will be provided. To start with, a detailed presentation of research background will be provided with the four key concepts, including learner-centered learning, classroom interaction, teacher talk and eliciting techniques. Finally, a brief review of the related studies will reveal the research gaps and hence lays the concrete foundation for this research paper. I. Key concepts

1. Learner-centered learning and new roles of teachers and students As suggested by Darn (2008), the employment of eliciting techniques in the EFL classroom leads to the shift of the center role in the classroom, i.e. students have now received more attention and become the center of the classroom. Consequently, it is important to have a thorough understanding of learner-centered learning and the new roles of the teacher and students in this context. 1.1. Learner-centered learning According to Cannon, Christine, Margaret and Tim (2000), learner-centered learning is the approach which gives emphasis on learners responsibility for their learning. In other words, learners greater role of managing their own learning is more concerned. Nunan (2003, cited in Chu, 2009) has suggested two ways of achieving learner-centered learning: (i) providing opportunities for learners to decide what to learn,
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how to learn and how to be evaluated; (ii) maximizing students performing time when minimizing that of the teacher. As being seen, more freedom is given to learners but the lessons are still put under the teachers management. As Belchamber (2007) has implied, more learnercentered lessons do not mean they are unstructured. Accordingly, the new roles of the teacher and learners in the classroom should be made clear. 1.2. New roles of the teacher and students Harmer (2001) in his book has focused on learner-centered teaching, in which teaching makes the learners needs and experience central to the educational process (p.56). In other words, the center position in class no longer belongs to the teacher but switches to the students. Therefore, the new form of learning and teaching requires the new roles of both the teacher and students, in which students actively get involved in the lesson. The teachers roles have been clarified by Harmer (2001) when he has stated that the teacher now performs multi-roles at the same time such as a controller, an organizer, a prompter, an assessor, a participant, a tutor, an observer, a resource, a performer and a teaching aid. Also, in the light of learner-centered learning, students have to take into consideration their responsibility for learning since there are many activities encouraging students to solve their own problems on their own (Harmer, 2001, p.56). They no longer play a passive role in class but actively get involved in the lesson. Understanding the new roles of the teacher and students, Rogers, the coordinator for Business Courses at the British Council, Bangkok in the 2002-Thai-TESOL paper has suggested that eliciting information (or elicitation) from students plays an important role as one of the main
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features of learner-centered learning. Since the teacher takes advantage of eliciting students talk, students in turn gain more opportunities to talk in class, thus actively participating in the learning process. 2. Classroom interaction In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistic, interaction refers to the way in which a language is used by interlocutors (Richard, 2006, p.263) who are teachers and students in classroom communication. In the teaching and learning condition, classroom interaction defined by Brown (2001) is the action which is performed by the teacher and learners during instruction, such as exchanging ideas or information, and sharing feelings or experience. Based on the participants involvement in the mentioned communication, classroom interaction falls into three types, namely learner-content, learner-learner and learnerinstructor interaction (Moore, 1989). According to the author on http://www.ajde.com/Contents/vol3_2.htm, learner-content interaction is the interaction between the learner and the content or subject of study. The second type is conceptualized as the interaction between one learner and the other learners, alone or in groups, with or without the real-time presence of the instructor. The last type, learner-instructor interaction, concerns the interaction between learners and the teacher (Moore, 1989). Within the scope of this study, the third aspect of classroom interaction, which is learner-instructor, or in other words, learner-teacher interaction, was focused on.

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In order to create an exchanging process, eliciting students expressions and responses is an important aspect of teacher-student interaction. By various verbal and nonverbal clues, the teacher can stimulate students to talk in the classroom, thus inspiring students to share their ideas and information (Brown, 2001). From the explanation above, it can be concluded that the teacherstudent interaction plays an important role, without which the teachinglearning process cannot exist. Also, the message transmission and interpersonal relationship can be built up between the teacher and students, leading to the increase in students achievement of the target language. 3. Teacher talk Several interpretations of the concept teacher talk have been presented in different studies within the field of language teaching and learning, which result in the immensity of definitions. The term has been widely discussed in ESL literature. Researchers in the field have reached an agreement that teacher talk is one kind of language being used by the teacher in the classroom setting as opposed to their use of language in other settings (at home, at the store, at the doctors office, etc.) In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Richards (1992, p.471) defines the term as the variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are in process of teaching. According to this author, teachers are able to simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk and other simplified styles of speech in order to make use of the target language when communicating with learners.
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As one of the researchers who have interest in this field, Ellis (1985, cited in Xiao, 2006, p.5) has viewed teacher talk as the language that the teachers use when addressing L2 learners in classroom. Standing on this point of view, Ellis has continued commenting that the used language of the teacher in class is treated as a register, with its own specific formal and linguistics properties (Ellis, 1985, cited in Xiao, 2006, p.5). In 1994, Ellis revised and developed his definition of teacher talk. In his opinion, teacher talk is the process through which teachers address classroom language learners differently from the way they address other kinds of classroom learners. They make adjustments to both language form and language function in order to facilitate communication (Ellis, 1994, p.726). Teacher talk is regarded as a special simplified code (Xiao, 2006, p.13) with the formal feature and the functional feature. The former one is concerned with the form of teacher talk, such as the speed, pause, repetition and modifications while the later feature refers to the quality and quantity of teacher talk, the questions the teacher use, the interactional modifications and the teachers feedback (Xiao, 2006). Regarding the feature of the teacher talk language, a great number of arguments about teacher talk quantity (also known as teacher talking time or teacher talk time) have been raised. Following the trend towards more learner-centered teaching, Nunan (1991, p.198) has stated that research shows that teachers need to pay attention to the amount and type of talking they do, and to evaluate its effectiveness in the light of their pedagogical objectives.

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Other researchers have found out that the amount of teacher talk is of about 70 percent of the total talk in a lesson, which means most of the class talking time is allocated for the teacher to perform (Cook, 2000; Legarreta, 1977; Chaudron, 1988; Zhao Xiaohong,1998; cited in Xiao, 2006). In other words, teacher talk dominates the class, thus restricting student talking time and giving limited opportunities for students to raise their voice and develop their language ability. As a result, maximizing student talking quantity together with minimizing that of the teacher has been suggested as a solution to the problem of teacher talk overuse (Zhao Xiaohong, 1998; Zhou Xing and Zhou Yun, 2002;cited in Xiao, 2006). As suggested by Darn (2008), elicitation is a preferable technique that helps develop the learner-centered classroom. To be more specific, elicitation offers learners an environment with opportunities to participate; as a result, it increases student talking time and at the same time decreases teacher talking time. This concept is studied more carefully as the next key term of the research. 4. Eliciting techniques 4.1. Definition The term eliciting hardly has any specific definition in the literature, so the nature of this term can be seen in the light of the verb to elicit. As stated in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, to elicit is to get information or reaction from somebody, often with difficulty (7th edition, p.474). Afterwards, eliciting techniques are various ways people choose to use in order to provoke ideas from others.

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According to Darn (2008), eliciting is the term referring to a range of techniques teachers use to draw out answers and responses from their students and to get students provide information rather than giving it to them. Sharing the same view but to a broader extent, Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics defines elicitation as techniques or procedures used by teachers to help students actively produce speech or writing (Richards et al., 2002, p.176). In other words, eliciting techniques are considered effective tools that teachers should make use of in order to stimulate and get their students to raise their voice in class. Therefore, elicitation can be applied in any activity in a lesson, such as teaching vocabulary or grammar, getting students to brainstorm for ideas, etc. There is no special time for elicitation to occur because it can be used whenever needed. As suggested by Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010), elicitation is mainly done by asking questions merely or asking questions combining with some other tools. 4.2. Types of eliciting techniques Although different authors have various view points about types of eliciting techniques, they share the common belief that eliciting is not just asking What does this or that mean? but to draw out to what extent students know about the target knowledge. In order to fulfill that purpose, eliciting, as in Doffs (1988, cited in To et al., 2010) idea, is mainly carried out by the teacher asking questions or asking questions combined with other tools including pictures, games or activities, texts or dialogues and nonverbal language.

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Asking questions Asking questions combined with using pictures Asking questions combined with using games or activities Asking questions combined with using texts and dialogues Asking questions combined with using nonverbal language
Table 1. Types of eliciting techniques according to Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12)

A. Asking questions Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12) claimed that eliciting can take place at any stage of the lesson and is mainly done by asking questions, which means that asking questions is the leading technique to elicit ideas and responses from students. As acknowledged by Darn (2008), asking questions is not only the natural feature of communication but also one of the most important tools teachers have at their disposal. In the light of this perception, questioning is essential for the way teachers manage the class, engage students in the lesson, encourage participation as well as increase students understanding. Furthermore, according to Darn (2008), asking questions is considered as an art and science with some rules teachers should take into account, including the various types and the appropriate quantity of questions should be raised in a lesson. While an estimation of 300-400 questions per day should be asked by teachers, their quality and value varies over different and specific situations (Darn, 2008).

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Regarding types of questions to elicit, there are numerous ways of classification. This section of the study would introduce the most common systems of question classification according to four different criteria covering four aspects: grammatical form, communicative value, cognitive level and content orientation (Wei Liu, 2005, p.16). However, the dimension of the content-oriented question has long been ignored in questioning study (Wei, 2005, p.18). As a result, this criterion of questioning system will be discussed in another study. A.1. Classification of questions by grammatical form With the purpose that students can give the shortest possible correct and natural answers, Doff (1988), Stevick (1988), Hakansson and Lindberg (1988, cited in Ellis 1994, p.588) and Cross (1991) share the same opinion that questions are grammatically categorized into three types: i) yes/no questions or nexus questions which expect affirmation or negation; ii) or or alternative questions which require students to reply by merely choosing one of two options supplied by the questions; iii) whor information questions which want students to give responses by coming up with some information that is not contained in the question itself. i. Yes/no question: This is the type of questioning which expects the answer to be either yes or no. It helps teachers check students comprehension at any point related to the lesson. Doff (1988, p.23) has emphasized that yes/ no questions are often the easiest questions to answer as they do not require students to produce new language. This is the reason why this type of

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questioning cannot help much in eliciting student talk but is still used in the classroom for certain purposes. ii. or question: This type is also called alternative questions. The raised questions contain two options and require the answerer to select one option among the available ones. With this type of questioning, teachers cannot only check students careful thinking for the right answer but also motivate students to review their knowledge by justifying their choice. Consequently, asking alternative questions is an effective instrument to call for students responses. iii. Wh- question: The third type of question normally begins with what, where, when, which, why, how in order to get specific information, thus forcing students to think, synthesize and understand their existing knowledge as well as the new knowledge. A.2. Classification of questions by communicative value In class, teachers questions play various roles. They can activate the teacher-learner interaction and ensure that all students participate in learning. Classroom questions can fall into two main types as in the following figure.

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Figure 1: Question classification by the communicative value

First, with the aim of supporting classroom management, classroom procedures and routines, teachers raise procedural questions, which are also termed social questions (Barnes, 1969; 1976, cited in Ellis, 1994, p.587), or instruction questions (Wang, 2001, cited in Wei, 2005, p.17). In other words, the main functions of this questioning type are directing, propelling and managing classroom activities. Besides, Wang (2001, cited in Wei, 2005) added that these questions could also serve the functions of developing students pronunciation, intonation, sense of language and the use of language that students can imitate in the real English use. For example, Is everything clear? Any problems? Can you understand? Can you read this or that? Second, the fact that teachers have already known the answers of such questions or not divides the questioning types into two subtypes, including display questions and referential questions.

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i.

Display questions or pseudo questions (Tsui, 2001), or factual questions (Borg et al., 1970, cited in Nunan, 1991), or known-information questions (Allright & Beiley, 1991) are those used to help teachers test students knowledge and understanding while teachers have already known the answers. As a result, display questions are form-oriented or knowninformation-based (Wei, 2005, p.17). Who is the main character? can be taken as an example. These questions are not only easy for students as a number of students answers are available in the texts but also unproblematic for teachers to make and check because they have already known the answers. However, the mere use of this questioning type throughout the lesson may make the lesson boring or less active. In contrast, referential questions encourage authentic language production as they are questions used in real communication (Doff, 1988). The answers have not been known by both teachers and students, which increases teachers interest in hearing students responses. Therefore, referential questions can be called meaning driven as stated in Wei (2005, p.17). Referential questions are able to elicit students talk longer, or in other words, increase the amount of stalk because they require more thoughtful responses. However, they may discourage less-competent students or weaker students who may be put into inactive situations without knowing how or what to answer teachers questions.

ii.

A.3. Classification of questions by cognitive level

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According to Darn (2008), a number of typologies and taxonomies of questions have been discovered so far. Among them Benjamin Blooms (1965, cited in Brown, 1994) taxonomy identified six types of questioning that help develop and test thinking skills. They are ranked from the lower to the higher level of thinking as follows: i. Knowledge questions: ask students to remember or recognize information that is in the textbook or was told by the teacher. Students task at this level is to remember facts, observations, definitions or any kind of knowledge they have learnt. ii. Comprehension questions: ask students to interpret, explain, rephrase or describe the information they want to raise in their own words. iii. Application questions: ask students to explain other related events to solve a problem or speculate about broader causes or issues. iv. Analysis questions: ask students to look at individual parts of the situations, together with the provided information to draw conclusions. Questions at this level require students to involve through three kinds of cognitive process: Identifying the motives, reasons or causes for specific occurrence. Considering and analyzing available information in order to draw a conclusion or generalization basing on this information. Analyzing a conclusion or generalization to find evidences to support or refuse it.
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v.

Synthesis questions: ask students to use their knowledge to create new ideas by combining or restructuring ideas. Specifically, students tasks at this level of thinking are: Producing original communication Making prediction Solving problems

vi.

Evaluation questions: ask students to make judgment or support an idea or opinion.

Regarding the context of language teaching and learning, Bloom (1965, cited in Darn, 2008) has concluded that the major purpose in constructing taxonomy of educational objectives is to facilitate communication, which means that the main goal of language teaching is to put students in real communication. B. Asking questions combined with using pictures Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.12) gives his support for this technique as one of the easiest way to elicit new vocabulary or structure:
The teacher uses pictures to set the scene and asks questions about what they [students] see, why they think it happens, what they think will happen next and how they feel or what they think about it.

By using pictures from students textbook or from any supplementary sources, teachers can fully motivate students by catching their attention as well as stimulating their curiosity, imagination, guessing and desire to present the target language items.

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This picture can serve as an example. The picture is accompanied by a reading text and could be used to get students thinking about the theme of the text before reading it. Furthermore, the teacher can use the same picture to preteach or revise vocabulary necessary for the reading text; consequently, students will clearly and easily understand the words. Teacher (T): Who are these people? Student (S): Swimmers. T: What are they doing? S: They're diving into the swimming pool. T: What are they wearing? S: Bathing caps, goggles and swimming costumes. C. Asking questions combined with using games or activities In the past, there used to be a common conception that in-class learning meant seriousness and formality. Nonetheless, Lee (1995, p.35) has stated that it is possible to learn a language and enjoy itself at the same time. Wright, Betteridge and Bucky (1984, p.1) have also mentioned that:
...language learning is hard work... Effort is required at every moment and must be maintained over a long period of time. Games help encourage many learners to sustain their interest and work. 22

Accordingly, games and activities are clearly seen as effective tools that help teachers create specific context in which the language is useful and meaningful. Moreover, participating as parts of the activities, students must, firstly, understand what others are saying or doing and, secondly, raise their voice in order to express their point of view or give information (Wright et al., 1984, p.1). Concerning the matter of games and activities benefit, Ersoz (2000) in the Internet TESOL Journal has emphasized that if games and activities are well-chosen and appropriately used, they can give students a break and at the same time allow students to practice language skills in a highly amusing and motivating way. D. Asking questions combined with using texts and dialogues Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.13) has suggested that:
...teacher also may consider using texts and dialogues to guide students to respond to the language use and the context of use presented in those texts and dialogues.

A careful selection of texts and dialogues plays an important role in providing students with illustrative language samples, basing on which students can produce ones of their own after studying the model. Predominantly, the exploitation of authentic texts and dialogues in language classrooms can bridge the gap between in-class knowledge and students capacities to participate in real world events (Wilkins, 1976, p.79, cited in Guariento & Morley, 2001, p.347). E. Asking questions combined with using nonverbal language As mentioned by Doff (1988, cited in To et al., 2010, p.13), miming, gestures, facial expression, body language, etc. or nonverbal
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language, in short, are what teachers have at their disposal to motivate students responses. These nonverbal language tools can be alternated or used together with other tools to change the class atmosphere and make students attentive in class. By making use of this technique, teachers can partly provoke students curiosity, attention, and then utter the expected language items. 4.3. Benefits of using eliciting techniques Like any other tools of communication, questioning as an eliciting technique is used for specific purposes. When considering questioning and answering as parts of the normal human use of language, Sesnan (2001) has emphasized that questioning can be used to find out what people do not know or to clarify what is still unclear, and to help the person who is questioned understand something better or to prompt him or her to remember something. In the language teaching context, eliciting is praised as an effective technique, from which both teachers and students as the center of the class can benefit. It is described as a way to improve pupils use of language (Sesnan, 2001, p.178) To begin with, eliciting is the tool used to create direct interaction between teachers and students. Corey (1940, cited in Hargie, et al, 1981, p.66) has considered teachers eliciting as a fundamental and important mean of classroom interaction. This benefit has been proved by Ur (2000, p.299) when the author has affirmed that elicitation serves several purposes such as giving opportunities for students to present their ideas, testing their understanding or checking their knowledge and skills, engaging them in the lesson, getting them to review and practice pervious
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learnt contents. This point agrees with Kissock and Iyortsuuns (1982) view that it is essential for teachers to realize the importance and impact of questioning on communication and learning in the classroom in order to improve the use of questions by both teachers and students. Secondly, elicitation helps maximize student talking time and at the same time minimize teacher talking time. In class, if students respond to most of the questions given by teachers in almost every stage of the lesson, they undoubtedly speak more than they do if they just listen to teachers explanation. As a consequence, questioning raised in appropriate time can keep teacher talking time to minimum while maximizing students contribution together with their talking time. Thirdly, eliciting techniques involve the class by keeping students alert, drawing their attention as well as making them think. Doff (1988) has diagnosed the problem that in the presentation stage, it is likely that the teacher will talk most of the time in order to provide as much knowledge as possible while students main task is listening to the teachers instruction. As a consequence, even the best students can find their minds wandering occasionally in class. If the teacher can activate students mind and call their attention back by asking them to contribute to this stage of the lesson, there is a far less chance that distracting factors can drift into students minds. This leads to the fact that students logical, reflective or imaginative thinking will be stimulated by answering teachers questions throughout the lesson. Doff (1988, p.161) has believed that eliciting encourages students to draw on what they already know or partly know, which makes up for the fourth benefit of elicitation. By starting with easy
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questions and working towards more difficult ones, teachers will be able to boost students answering and realize the limits of students knowledge once their answers start to become incomplete or wrong. Henceforth, elicitation creates two influences on teachers: (1) teachers know how to adapt the presentation to the level of the students, and (2) teachers can mainly spend lesson time on the most important points (Ur, 1996). Therefore, elicitation is clearly seen as a testing tool that teachers can use to measure the level of the students. In addition, owing to the teachers tendency to remind students of the old knowledge, students have chance to scan through their knowledge system and check what they have or partly have in their minds while attempting to answer the teachers questions. Through strategic questioning, the teacher can assess the current state of students thinking in order to identify not only what students have known but also their gaps and misconceptions of the target knowledge. In addition, eliciting shows its great benefit when providing weaker students with opportunities to participate in class. Generally speaking, students of a class are of different levels. The weaker tend to be shier and more passive in the class than the stronger. As stated by Ur (1996), appropriate eliciting may engage students actively in the lesson since it challenges students thinking and poses problems for them to consider, and from this time forth, they will become interested in the lesson sooner or later. Looking at this point similarly, Doff (1988, p.161) has concluded that eliciting is a useful technique for mixed ability classes or those of different learning background. Additionally, by actively sharing knowledge in full view of the whole class, students, especially those who are usually less dynamic to contribute in the lesson, can learn much from the others.
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Last but not least, it is taken for granted that eliciting techniques may create motivation among students. According to Ur (1996), when trying to answer the eliciting questions from the teacher, students immediately work out or at least they may guess the answers. Students will feel pleased if their answers or guesses are correct. If not, they will self-realize that they need to study more on the answers and become more receptive. In other words, the result of this procedure is that students get less dependent on the teachers clues for the questions and then increase their motivation as well as involvement in learning a new language. In short, eliciting technique is beneficial for both teachers and students. There are a great number of purposes for teachers to use elicitation; as a result, teachers should take every chance when possible in order to apply appropriate types and forms of elicitation in the language teaching classroom. 4.4. Drawbacks of using eliciting techniques Congruent with all benefits above, there still exist certain limitations of using elicitation in language teaching and learning. In spite of the strong approval of the use of elicitation in language teaching, Doff (1988, p.161) has admitted that eliciting takes much more time comparing with straightforward presentation of new knowledge. This happens because according to the author, teachers have to spend time and effort not only preparing materials but also restructuring the lesson with the aim of indirectly presenting knowledge in the way that students can actively raise their voice and participate in the lesson. Another reason is that there is a conflict between the limitation of the lesson duration and

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the acquisition of quality (Chu, 2009). This factor can discourage teachers from using eliciting techniques in the language classroom. Gower et al. (1995, cited in Pham, 2006) shares the same concern mentioned above but from a different angle. They pointed out the following hindrances of elicitation in the classroom. First, eliciting technique can impose significant demands on teachers. Obviously, teachers must be at a certain professional level to be able to listen to students responses and react flexibly and immediately together with using a combination of other skills at the same time such as keeping eye contact with students, using postures and gestures and using students names and attention spread. For instance, students may know more than teachers think, but they do not raise their voice. There can be a danger that teachers will underestimate these students knowledge because they know but do not utter or they cannot explain themselves well. Second, eliciting does not always mean more student talking time, especially when dealing with complicated or general knowledge. In these cases, eliciting through guiding questions takes much longer time than just providing students with the answers directly. Third, eliciting can become automatic, resulting in students boredom because of repetition. If teachers exploit eliciting techniques with all words, phrases, or many questions but just in the same way, students will soon start losing interest in the lesson. In a few words, it is important that teachers and students bear in mind those above-discussed drawbacks in order to maximize the benefits
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brought about by exploiting eliciting techniques in the language classroom. II. Related studies

1. Review of related studies on elicitation According to Darn (2008), eliciting is a powerful diagnostic tool for teachers to provide information and knowledge for their students. Therefore, the subject of elicitation has been discussed through quite a few studies in various disciplines where elicitation is used. The remarkable example of these early studies is Eliciting spontaneous speech in bilingual students: Methods and techniques by Cornejo, Ricardo and Najar (1983). In this study, the three researchers introduced the traditional techniques to elicit students language and then recommended the use of interviews as an effective technique to elicit students talk. Also, some other innovation techniques of the two categories, i.e. unstructured and structured techniques, were employed in order to foster students spontaneous conversations. Although the study provided valuable background theory of elicitation, the author of this current paper identified two perceivable limitations. First, needless to say, the study was not conducted in Vietnamese language teaching and learning context. Secondly, the study aimed at bilingual students. Obviously, the culture and the teaching and learning condition in classes for bilingual students are totally different from those of Vietnamese students. Additionally, it is noteworthy that many books on language teaching and learning have been published, such as Ur (1996), Michael
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(2002), Cross (1991), etc. Unfortunately, elicitation is just paid little attention to as a small technique in language teaching. This apparently offers a gap for the researcher to conduct a study in a more comprehensive way with Vietnamese participants. In the context of Vietnam, especially at ULIS VNU, there have been only three studies by Pham (2006), Tran (2007) and Chu (2009) touching this issue. Pham (2006) investigated the use of elicitation in teaching vocabulary to 11th form students in Hanoi. By conducting the study, the researcher attempted to elaborate three aspects, namely, the situation of vocabulary teaching and learning at high schools in Hanoi, the application of eliciting techniques to teach vocabulary for the mentioned subjects and the pedagogical recommendations to enhance the use of elicitation in teaching vocabulary. In 2007, Tran examined eliciting techniques used to teach speaking skill to grade 10 students in Hanoi. She put much effort in investigating the real situation of teachers exploitation of elicitation to teach grade 10 students in FLSS. Not only hindrances but also suggested

recommendations for using eliciting were also diagnosed, followed by pedagogical adjustments. It is undeniable that these two studies results had a significant contribution to the field of Teaching the What and Teaching the How (cited in To etal., 2010); however, there are some limitations that should be addressed. Firstly, the former study focused only on teaching vocabulary; therefore, it could not represent the employment of eliciting techniques in the other two core English language components including
30

grammar and pronunciation. Furthermore, three macro skills, namely listening, reading and writing, were not covered since only speaking skill was the spotlight in the latter study. Most recently, Chu (2009) did a research on Techniques teachers use to elicit grade10 students talk in upper secondary schools in Hanoi. In this research, the identification of the most common eliciting techniques, the evaluation of their effectiveness, the difficulties when employing elicitation as well as suggested solutions were fully examined. Compared with the two previous studies, the researcher investigated the general employment of elicitation instead of just mentioning one specific language skill or language component like in the two previous ones. It can be seen that the above mentioned studies have left gaps for the present research to continue exploring the use of eliciting techniques. The two first studies focused on elicitation in lessons of only one English language skill and language component at high schools whereas the third one studied eliciting in lessons of all four skills but still in high school context. None of the studies reached the context of language teaching and learning at university level. Moreover, the subjects of the above studies were high school teachers who have had lots of teaching experience while no studies focused on student-teachers, who are learning to become teachers and need to practice necessary techniques and skills of teachers. 2. Review of related studies on elicitation in practicum Teaching practicum is an important stage in any teaching programs since it provides final-year students with an opportunity to get firsthand experience in their teaching career. Acknowledging the importance of the teaching practicum, a great number of studies have been conducted to
31

explore the influences of this teaching practice on student-teachers teaching efficiency as well as student-teachers concerns during their practicum. Some of these studies are Kyriacou and Stephen (1999, cited in Vo, 2009) ; Sue and Christina (2000), and Doug, Helenrose and Arturo (2007). Nevertheless, none of them has totally focused on how student-teachers as novice teachers have exploited eliciting techniques in the classroom as well as their effectiveness, the difficulties studentteachers have encountered when using these useful techniques. In conclusion, these listed gaps have intensified the significance of the current study which aimed at the techniques student-teachers had employed to elicit their students opinions and responses during their teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS VNU. Summary The theoretical background for the whole paper together with the careful elaboration on the key concepts: learner-centered learning, classroom interaction teacher talk and eliciting techniques has been presented in this chapter. Moreover, the review of a number of related studies in this chapter has revealed the research gaps that the study can help fill in.

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CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY


The literature on the research topic is briefly reviewed in the previous chapter as the theoretical basis for the whole study. Turning to this chapter, the methodology employed to answer the research questions is described in detail. The setting and the participants, the instruments and the procedure of data collection and analysis are justified in this chapter. I. Research setting ULIS VNU is one of the biggest providers of English teachers. There are two types of EFL teacher education programs at ULIS which are Fast-track program and Mainstream program. In the final year of their course, both fast-track and mainstream students are required to do their teaching practicum for six weeks. During this period, mainstream students are allocated to different high schools in Hanoi and some other provinces. For the last two years, fast-track students, however, have been allocated to conduct their teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS. During the practicum, the mentors are expected to guide the student-teachers towards effective English language teaching and classroom management. For the academic year 2010 2011, the teaching practicum took place from 21st February to 1st April 2011. Since the study examined the eliciting techniques in the real classroom settings, both the fourth-year students, i.e. the student-teachers, and the first-year mainstream students who were learners in different classes where these student-teachers taught were involved as participants.

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The following part brings a clearer description of the two groups of participants. II. Participants

1. The student-teachers The first group of participants of this study consisted of 26 fasttrack student-teachers who were allocated to conduct their practicum at different first-year groups at English Division I, FELTE. The reason for choosing these participants was that the researcher was also a fast-track student who was a classmate and did the teaching practicum with the participants. This helped her develop and maintain good rapport with the participants. This was very important because when the participants knew the researcher, they were more likely to be open, thus providing useful information for the study (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). Before participating in the teaching practicum, these students had finished four courses of English Language Teaching Methodology, namely ELT I (An introduction to language teaching methods), ELT II (ESL/EFL classroom techniques and practice), ELT III (Language Assessment and ELT Materials Development) and ELT IV (Pedagogical Techniques). Particularly in ELT II, they were equipped with classroom management skills including eliciting techniques. Moreover, during the second and fourth ELT courses, they participated in the activity called Micro-teaching, in which they acted as real teachers delivering lessons to their classmates. Besides, they took part in the Tutoring Program in which they themselves created the curriculum, designed Speaking, Listening and Reading lessons and conducted those lessons to first-year and second-year mainstream students. To some extent, they had
34

experienced tutoring college students in an academic classroom setting. Additionally, these students were highly recommended to choose FELTE, ULIS- VNU freshmen as their target students during the practicum. As a result, the fourth-year fast-track students of the academic year 2010-2011 could easily bring vivid data to the study. During the teaching practicum, these students were divided into nine different groups, and each group was under the supervision of one mentor who is a teacher of English Division I FELTE. In total, there were nine mentors who would guide, observe and evaluate 26 studentteachers performances in six weeks. Also, each group was in charge of from one to four skills among Pronunciation, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Reading at several first-year groups. This matter of skill and class variety originated from the fact that from this year 2011 all mentors were required to maximize the opportunities in which studentteachers could perform in real classroom settings. However, there was one teacher of English Division I who was in charge of only one subject (Pronunciation); consequently, this mentors group of two studentteachers would teach only one subject while eight other groups consisting of three student-teachers each were allocated to teach from two to four skills depending on what their mentors taught. Under the distribution of the English Division I at FELTE, these student-teachers spent their first week observing all their mentors lessons in class. 26 student-teachers worked with several classes for the next five weeks and practiced teaching specific skills for at least three periods of 50 minutes and two periods of 100 minutes in total. The mentor who had previously worked with these specific classes gave evaluation of the student-teachers performance during the teaching session.
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The allocation of student-teachers in different groups is illustrated in the following table. Number of members per student-teacher group 2 Pronunciation From three to four skills 8 3 among Pronunciation, Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing
Table 2.Student-teacher group allocation in 2011 at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS - VNU

Number of groups 1

Skill allocation

2. The first-year mainstream students Although the study mainly focused on the student-teachers using eliciting techniques, the first-year mainstream students played a very important role as the direct beneficiaries, observers and evaluators of the effectiveness of these student-teachers eliciting techniques. They were freshmen in nine different groups in which nine chosen student-teachers delivered their lessons. (The reason for the sampling method is explained in the next part). Consequently, these students helped the researcher thoroughly understand the context as well as their evaluation by completing the questionnaires. First-year mainstream students at FELTE, who participated in this study, came from two different programs, namely ELT Program and Double-major Program. An important difference between the two
36

programs is the content of Speaking and Writing. In these two subjects of the Double-major Program, the teachers focused on helping students deal with business situations while ELT program spotlighted the general knowledge the first-year students could achieve. The table below describes in detail the existing difference.
ELT program Course objectives By the end of the second By the end of the second semester, first-year students semester, ability must meet B1 level. Speaking first-year students Double-major Program

ability must meet B1 level. Double-major students should acquire adequate knowledge

and skills to participate in familiar business situations. Students are required to be Students are required to be familiar with and conduct free familiar with a variety of matters of and

writing essays belonging to business-related Writing different genres of writing, i.e. write descriptions, pieces

business

narration, correspondence, i.e. business internal company business

summary, report, etc. on a range letters, of familiar subjects and topics.

communication,

reports or proposals, etc. Materials

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1. Kay, S., Jones, V. & Kerr, P. 1. Cotton, D., David, F. & (2002). Inside out - PreIntermediate (Student's Kent, S. (2005). Market Leader New (Pre-intermediate Edition) (Student's

Book). Oxford: Macmillan Education. Speaking 2. Lecturers and tutors in

Book). Pearson Education Limited.

Division 1, ULIS, VNU 2. Mascull, B. (2002). Business (compiled and edited). Vocabulary in Use.

Speaking and pronunciation focus. Hanoi: VNU Press, 2006.

Cambridge University Press.

Lecturers and tutors in Division Barnard R. & Meehan A. 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and (2005). Writing for the real edited). Writing Focus. VNU world 2, An introduction to Press, 2009. Writing business writing. Oxford

University Press. Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited) (2009). Writing Focus. VNU Press.

Listening

Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited). Listening Focus. VNU Press, 2006. Lecturers and tutors in Division 1, ULIS, VNU (compiled and edited). (2009). Reading Focus. VNU Press.

Reading

Table 3.The differences between ELT Program and Double-major Program for first-year students at English Division I, FELTE, ULIS - VNU (cited from Course Outline for ELT Program and Course Outline for Double-major Program / Semester 2 / 2010 - 2011) 38

Another difference between the two programs is that first-year students of Double-major Program had already learnt Pronunciation subject in semester 1 while this subject was delivered to students of ELT Program in semester 2. As studied, the objectives as well as the material used in this subject were the same for two programs; consequently, the researcher could just elaborate the eliciting techniques in Pronunciation classes of semester 2. III. Sampling method Due to the time allocation of the whole Faculty, most of the speaking lessons took place at the same time and so did listening, reading, writing and pronunciation lessons. As a result, the researcher firstly decided that all of the 26 student-teachers were invited to answer the questionnaires. Secondly, nine student-teachers being chosen randomly as representatives from nine student-teacher groups were invited to take part in the study to a deeper extent with observations and interviews being the data collection instruments. Regarding the first-year students, the researcher chose only nine classes in which nine selected student-teachers performed most of their teaching time because of two reasons. Firstly, 26 student-teachers were divided into nine different groups, which led to the fact that there were at least three student-teachers teaching alternately in one specific first-year class during five weeks. Therefore, it would become a burden if the firstyear students were asked to give their evaluation of all three studentteachers performances with three sets of questionnaire in total. That might discourage them from actively participating in the research. Secondly, one selected student-teacher had chance to perform at least
39

twice in the class that she worked with most of the time; thus, the firstyear students could evaluate their student-teachers performance over a period of time which brought objective quality assessment for the research. There were five classes of the Double-major Program and four classes of the ELT Program were invited to answer the questionnaires. The table below is the summary of the student-teacher and the firstyear student selection.
Student-teachers Total number Male 0 Female 26 Questionnaire Observations and Interviews 9

26 First-year students

Total number of classes 9/15

Number of classes of Double-major program 5/9

Number of classes of ELT program 4/9

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

IV.

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

data

collection

instruments,

namely

questionnaires,

classroom

observations and interviews, were fully employed. 1. Questionnaires 1.1. Reasons for choosing questionnaires As defined by Brown (2001), questionnaires are:
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...any written instruments that present respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are to react either by writing out their answers or selecting from among existing answers (p.6).

The questionnaire was believed to be the preferable instrument for this research because of the three reasons. First and foremost, compared to individual interviews, using questionnaire was economical and practical since questionnaires could collect data from a large group of participants (Mackey & Gass, 2005). This study involved 26 studentteachers and nine first-year classes of 189 students in total. Besides, since one of the aims of the study was to identify and evaluate the effectiveness of the student-teachers elicitation, questionnaires were safe assurances of anonymity (Brown, 2001, p.77) that helped the researcher deal with sensitive issues as well as get students confidential opinions on the asked issues. Last but not least, questionnaire administration could be in many ways such as email with a soft-copy or personally with a hardcopy, which was convenient for the researcher to send the questionnaires to the participants. In short, thanks to great advantages of the questionnaire, the researcher decided to use questionnaires to collect data for this study. 1.2. Questionnaire format and content Two sets of questionnaires were utilized: one for 26 studentteachers and another for the first-year mainstream students with whom nine chosen student-teachers spent most of their teaching time (the two sets of questionnaires are available in the Appendix 1 and 2). Regarding the content of the questionnaire for the student-teachers, it began with a brief overview of the research title, the purpose of conducting the questionnaire and a desire for cooperation from
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respondents in order to get sincere opinions and objective assessment. Then, general information about groups and skills that the studentteachers were assigned to teach during their practicum was required. The main questions were arranged in two separate sections including Eliciting techniques and Asking questions in elicitation. A brief introduction and concise explanation of the key term used in the questionnaire namely eliciting was given as guidance for the informants through the first section. The second section focused on asking questions in elicitation because asking questions was the technique to elicit ideas and response from students (Doff, 1988, cited in To et al., 2010). As a result, the researcher expected to deeply investigate this leading technique in elicitation so as to have a thorough understanding of eliciting techniques used by the student-teachers in their different assigned groups. As for the student-teacher questionnaires format, eight questions fell into two types: close-ended questions with multiple choice and rating scales, and specific open-ended questions to get more information. Talking about the close-ended questions, besides four multiple choice questions related to the necessity of elicitation in lessons, the frequency of eliciting knowledge in class, the type of eliciting technique used and the purpose of eliciting, two other questions number 4 and 5 were designed in the form of Likert-scale questions which were effective for gathering respondents views, opinions about various language-related issues (Brown, 2001, p.41). The researcher made use of two types of scale: one ranged on the basic frequency (i.e. always usually seldom hardly ever never), and the other varied on the level of effectiveness (i.e. totally ineffective slightly ineffective moderately effective effective extremely effective). Each level was given a number from 1 to
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5 for the participants to choose the one that best described their opinions. The rest two questions 6 and 7 were designed as open-ended questions. The researchers purposes were to recognize the difficulties the studentteachers encountered when eliciting, their suggested solutions to or recommendations for each difficulty and cases when the student-teachers used asking questions as the leading technique of elicitation during their teaching practicum. The second questionnaires were distributed to the first-year students who were taught by the above nine student-teachers during their practicum. In order to avoid possible confusion over technical terms, a brief explanation of eliciting was carefully translated and paraphrased as a guideline for these students to do the questionnaire. Moreover, the questions were kept brief and close-ended so that the students would be more willing to answer all the questions. In terms of language use, Vietnamese was employed to avoid possible misunderstandings. Needless to say, there was a close relation between the question items and the research questions. To be specific, the combined answers from question 1, 7 and 8 in the questionnaires for the student-teachers could give precise answers to the first research question which sought for the student-teachers perceptions of the necessity to employ elicitation in language teaching. The second and third research questions about the common eliciting techniques that were used by the student-teachers during their practicum and the effectiveness of the work they perceived were answered by four questions from 2 to 5 of Eliciting techniques section in the questionnaires for the student-teachers. The sixth questionnaire item provided the answers to the last two questions of the research (the student-teachers difficulties and solutions to problems
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when using eliciting techniques). The fourth research question (What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the learners who are first-year students at FELTE, ULIS VNU?) was answered by analyzing the data from the questionnaires for the first-year students, in which the students from nine classes gave their evaluation of nine student-teachers employment of eliciting techniques during the teaching practicum. 1.3. Questionnaire procedure The questionnaires for 26 student-teachers were distributed in the final week of the practicum right after they finished their six-week teaching practicum. The researchers purpose was to give a chance for these participants to realize and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses when eliciting their students responses by referring back to what had been done during the period of six weeks. The questionnaires were either sent via each participants email or delivered directly to the studentteachers. As for the first-year students, the questionnaires were given to them after the last lesson conducted by the selected student-teacher in their class. The students gave answers to the questionnaire by referring back to what the student-teacher brought to the class during not only that final lesson but also the whole teaching practicum, and then evaluated the student-teachers elicitation in the lessons. Hard copies of these questionnaires began to be given to students after the fourth week of the teaching practicum. The researchers purpose was to involve the participants when they had got familiar with the assigned student-teachers as well as their teaching style.
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2. Observations 2.1. Reasons for choosing observation According to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000, p.305, cited in Chu, 2009, p.31), observation plays an important role in a study as observational data are attractive as they afford the researcher the opportunity to gather live data from live situations. Sharing the same idea, Brown (2001, p.4) has concluded that observations are able to involve direct on-the spot examination of language use, learning or training. Also, it is undeniable that numerous on-goings and unexpected problems could happen during the lesson in general and specifically in the student-teachers eliciting process. Therefore, the research instrument generating data which involve the researcher immersing [him or herself] in a research setting, and systematically observing dimensions of that setting, interactions, relationships, actions, events and so on, with it (Mason, 1996, cited in Mackey and Gass, 2005, p.175) was the most appropriate one to analyze eliciting problems the student-teachers encountered during their teaching practicum. Besides, Mackey and Gass (2005, p.96) have claimed that answers to questionnaires might be inaccurate or incomplete in many cases. This was the reason why over time and repeated observation might help the researcher gain a deeper and more multilayered understanding of participants and their content (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.176). Specifically in this study, the researcher had two aims in using observation. First, thanks to the observations and videotapes, the researcher could double-check the information collected from

questionnaires. Second, by comparing what happened during the lesson


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as observed and videotaped with what the student-teachers and the firstyear students answered in the questionnaires, the researcher gained a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of the student-teachers elicitation during their teaching practicum. 2.2. Observation scheme Since the topic of the research paper was related to a practical educational issue, classroom observations were employed as an effective tool to collect data. In terms of the observation structure, a checklist was designed comprising two main parts: class profile and observation and assessment of eliciting techniques. In the first part, general information about the lesson was noted down including the student-teachers name, date and duration as well as the assigned skill of the lesson. The second part sought information about the student-teachers use of different elicitations, consisting of the lesson stages in which eliciting technique were employed and the purposes of using each eliciting technique together with the researchers comments or notes of transcripts for each eliciting technique. (See Appendix 3 for the observation checklist) 2.3. Observation procedure With the purpose of seeking insightful answers to the second, the third and the fifth research questions, nine of the student-teachers were invited to take part in the study to a deeper extent. In order to observe the classes in which these nine student-teachers practice teaching, the researcher asked for permission from the mentors of each group, the selected student-teachers and the first-year classes to observe. A detailed
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schedule for observation was planned and followed to ensure that each selected student-teacher was observed at least twice. Notes of eliciting techniques used in these classes were carefully taken as useful evidence for this research. Besides, the researcher asked and was permitted to videotape the student-teachers performance and students reactions in class to analyze the effectiveness of the eliciting techniques in 50 minutes. In this way, the researcher could watch these videos many times to gain more insights into the matter of elicitation. The special feature of the teaching practicum in 2011 was that each student-teacher had to videotape one lesson of 100 minutes or one period of 50 minutes to videotape to conclude in the self-observation report. The researcher made full use of this and asked to borrow these videos to serve as another observation tool to investigate the student-teachers elicitation. In total, 27 videos of the nine selected student-teachers were watched with awareness and analyzed using the same observation checklist. 3. Interviews 3.1. Reasons for choosing interviews In addition to questionnaires and observations, the researcher decided to use interviews as another data collection tool to obtain indepth information due to its noticeable advantages. To begin with, interviews helped the researcher elicit additional data if initial answers were vague, incomplete, off-topic or not specific enough (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.173). Moreover, when there would be some phenomena which could not be identified via questionnaires or interpreted via observations when studying the effectiveness of elicitation of the studentteachers, interviews served the ultimate goal of a follow-up insight into
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the issue. All in all, the student-teachers were intentionally asked to take part in the interviews in order to provide the full information for the research. 3.2. Interview format and content In-depth interviews with the nine above mentioned studentteachers who agreed to help the researcher were carried out so that the researcher could enhance the reliability of this research. The participants had chances to express their own opinions about the effectiveness of eliciting techniques as well as solutions to problems they encountered when applying eliciting techniques in their lessons. All interviews were recorded and main points were taken notes of. Semi-structured interviews with two main parts were employed in the research. In correspondence with the questionnaires for the studentteachers, the first part of the interview, namely eliciting techniques seeking information about eliciting techniques together with the studentteachers use during teaching practicum and the effectiveness as perceived by the student-teachers themselves. In addition, the interviewees provided the researcher with their obstacles and solutions to these problems. The second part asked for information about asking questions in elicitation. It was worth-noticing that all interviews were done in Vietnamese to avoid possible misunderstandings. As can be seen, the choice of semi-structured interview with nine student-teachers played an essential role in giving satisfied answers to the six research questions.

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3.3. Interview procedure The researcher contacted nine chosen student-teachers from the first week of the practicum to ask for their permission to be interviewed. After collecting all questionnaires and observations at week six of the teaching practicum, the researcher studied these student-teachers questionnaire carefully and designed a set of guiding questions used in the interview. Within one week after the practicum, the researcher started to conduct interviews with nine student-teachers one by one. Moreover, after studying the student-teachers questionnaires, the researcher invited ten more student-teachers who gave special answers to the questionnaires to attend the informal interviews in order to clarify their opinions. V. Data collection procedure The data collection procedure consisted of three main phases, each of which was taken according to a designed timeline. The three phases are listed as follows:

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Phase

Activities
Designing questionnaires and

Time
3 weeks

Data collection preparation

observation schedule Piloting the questionnaire with one student-teacher Delivering and getting back questionnaires for first-year students Delivering and getting back

1 week

2 weeks

Data collection

questionnaires for the student-teachers Observing and videotaping Preparing for interview questions and schedule

5 days 5 weeks 1 week week week

Final data gathering

Transcribing observations and videos Conducting and transcribing interviews Table 5. Data collection procedure

Phase 1: Data collecting preparation As indicated in the table, it took the researcher three weeks to prepare for the data collection instruments including one set of questionnaire for the student-teachers and another for the first-year students, preparing observation schedule and piloting the first version of the questionnaire. Having done with the questionnaire design, the researcher came to the step of piloting the questionnaire with one student-teacher. Wording, content as well as question options were carefully checked and revised by the researcher.

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Phase 2: Data collection After the final versions of the questionnaires were made, the questionnaires were delivered and collected. The teaching practicum started from March 21 st 2011; however, one among nine selected student-teachers had already finished her teaching practice after four weeks. Therefore, questionnaires for the firstyear students were delivered to this student-teacher specific group in week 4 of the practicum. For other eight classes, the questionnaires were distributed after the last lesson conducted by the selected student-teachers in these specific groups. In order to gain students serious participation, a brief introduction about the researcher and the study were made before delivering the questionnaires. Also, the student-teachers were asked to complete the

questionnaires at the sixth week of the practicum. This version was sent via email to the student-teachers, and at the end of the same week, these questionnaires were got back by the researcher. Furthermore, in this phase, lessons were observed and videotaped with the permission of the nine mentors, the nine selected studentteachers and the first-year students in nine groups. Observations took place during five weeks from week 2 to week 6 of the practicum. Finally, after collecting the questionnaires and studying the results of the questionnaires from 26 student-teachers, a set of interview guided questions as well as the interview schedule were designed. It took the researcher one week to complete this step of preparation.

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Phase 3: Final data gathering Follow-up interviews with nine selected student-teachers and ten more student-teachers who gave special answers in their questionnaires were conducted soon after the basic results from questionnaires had been obtained. The individual interview allowed the researcher to collect private and guarantee information. As all nine interviewees were in the same class with the researcher, it was easier for the researcher to collect quite rich amount of information and relevant details. Besides, to make it easier for the data analysis procedure afterwards, the researcher recorded all of the interviews with the permission of the interviewees. At the same time, interviews content and videos were transcribed to make it more convenient for the analysis and quoting later. Noticeably, just important points were written down to give clues to the research questions. VI. Data analysis procedure During this data analysis process, content analysis was used as the key method both to gather and investigate data. After the data had been collected, they were processed through two phases. Phase 1: Data classification Based on the result of 26 returned questionnaires from the studentteachers and 189 from the first-year students, the researcher began to classify the data according to six research questions. To be specific, all data gathered from the student-teachers questionnaires gave answers to research question one (the necessity of using elicitation in teaching as perceived by the student-teachers), question two (the common used
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eliciting techniques), question three (the effectiveness of each eliciting technique perceived by student-teachers), questions five and six (difficulties student-teachers encountered when exploiting eliciting techniques and solutions to such obstacles), while the answers to the third research question (the effectiveness of the applied eliciting techniques as perceived by the first-year students) depended on data collected from the first-year student questionnaires. Phase 2: Data coding and decoding Mechanical counting was performed to render specific statistics. These numbers were put in appropriate tables, charts and graphs for better illustration and explanations. Also in this step, comparisons and contrasts evaluating the effectiveness of each employed eliciting technique were put in the same charts and graphs. Moreover, content analysis became helpful when the researcher analyzed data from the observations and the interviews. The studentteachers facial expressions and the first-year students reaction in class were also taken into consideration. It was difficult for the researcher to illustrate this type of information into charts and graphs, instead, the researcher often quoted and interpreted the participants ideas to support the point. Consequently, results from these two data collection

instruments helped completely give answers to all research questions. Summary So far, this chapter has justified the methodology applied in this paper by elaborating the setting and the two groups of participants involved in the process of data collection, namely 26 student-teachers
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and 189 first-year students. Furthermore, the combination of three data collection instruments was also clarified in the three-phase process of data collection and the process of data analysis in this chapter. These justifications of the methodology would help make the way for the findings and discussion in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION


The methodology applied in the study has been clarified with justifications, descriptions and setting of the choice for the participants, the sampling method, the instruments, the process of data collection and analysis. The collected data from three employed instruments, i.e. questionnaires, observations and interviews were analyzed in order to give comprehensive answers to the six research questions. As stated in the first chapter, Introduction, the study aimed at exploring how the student-teachers exploited eliciting techniques in teaching first-year students during their practicum at FELTE, ULIS VNU. In order to achieve this overall aim successfully, firstly, the researcher investigated the student-teachers perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in teaching. Secondly, the common eliciting techniques that these student-teachers employed in their lessons during their practicum were found out, followed by the effectiveness of these techniques as perceived by the student-teachers and the first-year students. Next, the difficulties of using eliciting techniques that these student-teachers encountered were reported, and then solutions to these difficulties were suggested by the student-teachers. The answers to the six research questions take turns to be presented in this chapter.

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I.

Research question 1: How necessary are eliciting techniques in

language teaching as perceived by the student-teachers? The first research question aimed at seeking the student-teachers perceptions of the necessity of eliciting techniques in language teaching. The results were shown in the pie chart below.
Figure 2: The necessity of eliciting in teaching (%) (Reported by the student-teachers)

As can be seen from the chart, all 26 surveyed student-teachers, accounting for 100%, agreed that elicitation was one important teaching technique that should be exploited during a lesson.

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When being asked to explain the reasons why elicitation was necessary in language teaching, the interviewed student-teachers referred to the benefits of using elicitation. These benefits are illustrated in the chart below.

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

It can be seen from the chart that the biggest number of student-teachers exploited elicitation because it could help them check students understanding with 92.31%. All nine interviewed studentteachers shared the same idea and clarified that students understanding consisted of students ability to get the teachers points and students level of background knowledge, skills, vocabulary, etc. In their opinion, elicitation was a compulsory and effective device that could help the teachers understand students level, thus assisting them to prepare for
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their teaching in class, adapt appropriate materials or target knowledge in the easiest way for students to access. Therefore, it was necessary for teachers to employ elicitation in their lessons since it helped teachers judge what students had already known, making it easier to adapt the presentation of knowledge to an appropriate level (Doff, 1988). Catching students attention and creating teacher-student

interaction accounted for 88.64% and 80.76% respectively. In the interview, student-teacher 7 explained that after taking part in an activity, her students tended to be overexcited and seemed to be out of her control. At this moment, raising questions to elicit students responses after the activity definitely helped calm students down; therefore, she could catch their attention back to the lesson. Besides, interviewed student-teacher 8 added that:
Normally, the first session starts at 7a.m. which is quite early in the morning and students still feel sleepy when coming to university. Also, after two or three periods learning continuously without a short break, students may get tired and no longer want to participate in the lesson. By raising questions in order to elicit students responses, teachers can make students think then keep them alert of being asked, which helps maintain students attention during lesson time.

Regarding elicitations benefit of creating interaction between teacher and students, interviewed student-teachers 2, 5 and 6 agreed that the communication between the teacher and students was created thanks to the use of elicitation. Especially, interviewed student-teacher 1 considered elicitation as the key to interaction during the lesson. She emphasized that only by questioning and answering in order to access the target knowledge could the teaching and learning process become an
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interactional knowledge acquisition instead of one-way process. Her explanation reached an agreement with Corey (1940, cited in Hargie et al, 1981, p.66) according to whom eliciting was the fundamental and important means of classroom interaction as stated in the literature review. Up to 73.08% surveyed student-teachers realized the necessity of elicitation in finding new ideas or opinions from students; meanwhile, 61.54% of them believed that elicitation could maximize student talking time while minimizing teacher talking time. These percentages were not as high as those of the previous three benefits since the objectives of using elicitation might vary depending on diverse factors such as the aims of the lesson, students level, etc. At the bottom end was using elicitation to provide opportunities for weak students to raise their voice in class with 30.77% of the studentteachers mentioning this benefit. This meant little attention was paid to this benefit of using. Interviewed student-teacher 4 claimed that in the practicum, the student-teachers were required to follow a strict lesson plan with detailed time allocation for each activity. That was the reason why they tended to avoid asking weak or silent students to save their time in class. In addition to the above benefits of using elicitation in class, interviewed student-teachers added more benefits to confirm the need of using elicitation. Interviewed student-teachers 5 and 6 shared the same opinion when saying that with elicitation, the teacher could activate and stimulate students independence and consciousness to gain knowledge.

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Also, active and exciting learning atmosphere was created through the process of questioning and answering in elicitation. Generally speaking, all of the student-teachers participating in the study believed in the necessity of using eliciting techniques in the classroom. However, the benefit of provoking weak students with opportunities to involve in the lesson needed more attention. II. Research question 2: What eliciting techniques are most

commonly used by the student-teachers during their practicum? To answer this research question in the most thorough way, this part presented two major aspects: firstly, the student-teachers frequency of using elicitation, and secondly, the frequency of each employed eliciting technique as reported by both the first-year students and the student-teachers. The specific answer to the research questions was presented at the end of this part. 1. The student-teachers frequency of using elicitation
Figure 4: The student-teachers' frequency of using elicitation

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First-year students opinion As can be seen from the figure, all of the surveyed first-year students admitted that the student-teachers who taught their class always and usually used elicitation. Specifically, 36.51% of the surveyed students circled the option always, which implied that over one third of the surveyed students recognized that the student-teachers employment of elicitation reached the highest level of frequency. The rest stated that elicitation was usually exploited by the student-teachers, which was nearly twice as much as the former level of frequency. Student-teachers opinion The student-teachers seemed to reach an agreement with their learners regarding the frequency of elicitation use when over two third of them stated that they usually employed eliciting to call for students responses. The highest frequency of using this technique (always) accounted for 30.77%. No student-teachers said that they seldom, hardly ever or never used elicitation. All the three took 0% each which was exactly the same as that reported by the first-year students. In short, there was a remarkable unity between the student-teachers and the first-year students because they all agreed that the studentteachers always and usually use eliciting techniques, indicating that elicitation was exploited at high level of frequency to get students responses instead of straightforwardly presenting the knowledge for students.

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2. The frequency of using each eliciting technique In order to identify which eliciting technique was most commonly used by the student-teachers in their six-week practicum, the researcher used the scale from 1 to 5 which indicated the frequency of using from always, usually, seldom, hardly ever to never. First-year students opinion
Eliciting technique Mean score a 1.16 b 3.50 c 2.3 d 3.52 e 4.39

a. Asking questions b. Asking questions combined with pictures c. Asking questions combined with games/ activities d. Asking questions combined with texts/ dialogues e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal Table 6: Mean score for the frequency of each employed eliciting technique (Reported by the first-year students)

The table of mean score shows that in the first-year students opinion, asking questions was the most common technique studentteachers used to elicit their talk, followed by asking questions combined with games or activities, and then asking questions combined with texts or dialogues. The way student-teachers raised questions combined with nonverbal language took the last position as the most rarely used eliciting technique. The detailed percentages explaining the above order of frequency were illustrated in the following chart.

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Figure 5: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (%) (Reported by the first-year students)

These findings were both similar to and different from what Chu (2009) found in her research. First and foremost, despite the differences in each researchs context and participants, the results of two studies agreed that asking questions was most frequently used to elicit students responses. However, in Chu (2009), 50.57% students put questioning at the highest frequency level, and the percentage of those who chose usually was 28.78%. Meanwhile, in the current study, the percentage of the surveyed students who circled always was much higher with over 80% of the first-year students. Another difference was that in Chus (2009) study, the proportion of the surveyed students who thought asking questions was seldom, hardly ever and never used by their teachers was still high (13.63%); nonetheless, the total percentage of these three lowest
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frequency levels was much lower in this study with only 1.55%. These two differences were understandable because of the class size in each context. The number of students per class in high school averagely doubled that at English Division I, FELTE. As a result, the number of students who were not questioned by their teachers at high school level was much more than that at FELTE, explaining why the percentage of students who chose three lowest levels in the frequency scale in Chu (2009) was nearly nine times as much as that at FELTE. Regarding other four eliciting techniques, more than half of the surveyed students in both Chus (2009) and the current study noticed that asking questions combined with nonverbal language was never exploited by their teachers or the student-teachers. This number gradually decreased from never to usually and vanished at always, the highest level of the frequency scale. The two researchers also reached an agreement when reporting that asking questions combined with pictures, games or activities and texts or dialogues were regularly exploited in lessons as perceived by the students. In short, being the direct beneficiaries in the teaching and learning process, the students in nine classes at English Division I stated that asking questions was most frequently used to elicit students responses, followed by asking questions combined with games or activities, asking questions combined with pictures, and then asking questions combined with texts or dialogues. Asking questions combined with nonverbal language was the least exploited technique.

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Student-teachers opinion
Eliciting technique Mean score a 1.46 b 3.58 c 2.62 d 3.62 e 2.96

Table 7: Mean score of the frequency of each employed eliciting technique (Reported by the student-teachers)

Comparing the mean score of five main eliciting techniques, the researcher noticed that asking questions, accounting for 1.46 out of 5, was the most commonly used technique in elicitation, followed by asking questions combined with games or activities. The use of questions combined with nonverbal language and pictures took the third and fourth positions respectively while questioning combined with texts or dialogues was considered the most rarely used in the teaching practicum. Generally speaking, the student-teachers mostly agreed with their students on their frequent use of asking questions to elicit, which remained the most frequently used technique. This point was clarified by the eighth interviewed student-teacher:
Other tools such as pictures, games, texts, dialogues, nonverbal language can be used to support for the leading technique if necessary. Furthermore, questioning can be conducted both accidentally and intentionally, so it is obviously the most common technique to be used.

The most remarkable difference between the opinions of the two groups of participants was that the students ranked asking questions combined with nonverbal language as the least common used or even it was believed to be untouched by 50.8% of the students while the studentteachers admitted a high frequency of exploiting this technique.

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In the following chart, the frequency of the student-teachers use of each eliciting technique was illustrated in detail. The most distinguished feature was that all eliciting techniques had been employed by the student-teachers in their lessons, yet the frequency of using each technique was different from one another.
Figure 6: The frequency of the student-teachers' elicitation (number) (Reported by the student-teachers)

To begin with, 14 student-teachers circled point 1 to indicate their highest frequency of using questions, and the number of usually level was 12. According to the first interviewed student-teacher, during the practicum, the student-teachers were always in a rush to complete all planned activities, so the primary factors that decided which technique should be employed were its flexibility in use and its ability to get students responses as much as possible. Asking questions could serve both requirements since it could be conducted both accidentally and intentionally (student-teacher 8).
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With regard to the other four techniques, they were untouched by a worth-noticing number of the student-teachers. The reasons for their choices were explained as follows. First, these student-teachers did not think of using these techniques to get students responses because they were time-consuming. Much time was spent on preparing the materials or games, not mentioning a great amount of in-class time spent on reading and digesting the texts (for the students) and giving instructions (for the student-teachers). Second, two student-teachers blamed the nature of the subject they were assigned to teach during the practicum. According to these two student-teachers, listening to model audios or videos then imitating the sounds, intonations and stresses were what Pronunciation subject acquired. Therefore, it was useless to employ questioning combined with other tools in teaching this subject. Also, Pronunciation was taught in large halls with three or four classes at the same time. The total number of students was about 60 to 70 students; needless to say, conducting games or activities turned out to be impossible. Supporting the different employment of each eliciting technique, interviewed student-teacher 6 claimed that the use of each technique depended on not only the target knowledge but also the teaching skill in each lesson. In her opinion, the greatest advantage of asking questions merely was that it could be exploited at any stage of any lesson. Regarding other techniques, in reading or writing, students had to read the text or analyze a model writing sample; therefore, the use of asking questions related to the text was necessary. On the other hand, asking questions combined with games or activities could be employed in, for example, speaking and listening lessons since they helped prepare the language and sometimes vocabulary. As a result, different eliciting techniques should be used and altered flexibly in a lesson of any skill.
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One observed listening lesson could prove the answers reported by the student-teachers. During 50 minutes, a variety of eliciting techniques were applied, among which asking questions took the dominance. No texts or dialogues, nonverbal language and games could be seen while a picture was utilized once at the pre-listening stage to introduce the topic of the listening recording. The use of asking questions combined with activities was integrated into other task completing activities. In another writing session lasting for 50 minutes, asking questions still dominated in order to elicit students responses, and one game which required students to explain words for their group members was conducted as the warm-up activity. Additionally, body language was used four times while one model writing sample was exploited for students to read and analyze its structure. Another observation of a pronunciation lesson showed that besides asking questions, the student-teacher made use of two listening recordings then asked students to imitate the intonation and stresses of the sentences. No other eliciting tools such as pictures, texts or dialogues, games or activities, nonverbal language were used during this lesson. Besides the above eliciting techniques, the student-teachers answers revealed that asking questions combined with short stories or pieces of news, with examples or contexts and with audios or videos were three more eliciting techniques that the student-teachers used in their lessons. All in all, elicitation was reported to be commonly used in the lessons by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. The two groups of participants agreed that among different eliciting techniques, asking questions reached the highest frequency of use, followed by asking questions combined with games or activities. The technique asking
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questions combined with nonverbal language received opposite rating. According to the first-year students, this technique was the most rarely used technique while the student-teachers considered it as the second commonly exploited technique in elicitation. III.Research question 3: What is the effectiveness of each technique as perceived by the student-teachers? This part presented the effectiveness of each eliciting technique as reported by the student-teachers who had employed these techniques during their six-week practicum. The order of presenting data followed the order of the frequency of using eliciting techniques reported by the student-teachers. 1. Asking questions As mentioned earlier, asking questions was the most common eliciting technique which was always used by 14 student-teachers and usually employed by the other 12. Regarding the efficiency of this leading technique, 26 student-teachers had different opinions illustrated in the chart below.
Figure 7: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions

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One striking feature of the pie chart was that only two studentteachers, accounting for 6.99%, found their questions extremely effective in provoking students responses. Being asked to clarify the reason for their choice, the first student-teacher explained that students immediately reacted to her questions due to her use of simple questions and straightforward to the knowledge. By applying this way of raising questions, all of her questions were quickly and correctly answered. On the other side of the fence, one student-teacher who chose moderately effective and another who selected effective claimed that their questions were not responded after the first or even the second time it was raised; consequently, they had to repeat or rephrase the questions before calling students randomly to give answers. Despite different evaluation, all of the 26 student-teachers who made use of asking questions to elicit students talk agreed that their questions were responded effectively since they were responded in a short amount of time. 2. Asking questions combined with games or activities
totally ineffective 0 slightly ineffective 0 moderately effective 6 extremely effective 10

Effectiveness scale Number of studentteachers

effective

Table 8: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with games or activities

It was apparent in the table that no student-teachers of the 24 student-teachers who used questions combined with games or activities found the second common technique ineffective at any level. Choosing the highest point to indicate that her elicitation with activities was extremely effective, the fifth interviewed student-teacher explained that
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the ability to involve all students is the greatest advantage of asking questions combined with games and activities. According to another student-teacher, when participating in the games, all students played the same role as each other; hence, the motivation and opportunity for students to raise their voice was shared equally among them. The open atmosphere in class was naturally created, thus motivating students to enthusiastically and directly respond to the teachers following questions. 3. Asking questions combined with nonverbal language Standing in the third position of the frequency scale with 20 users, asking questions combined with nonverbal language received different evaluation of its effectiveness.
Figure 8: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with nonverbal language

Only the eighth interviewed student-teacher who always took advantage of asking questions combined with nonverbal language chose extremely effective. She shared that:

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... nonverbal language was the most effective way that helped me catch my students attention. When performing some strange postures, gestures, facial expressions or eye contact, the students I taught during my teaching practicum immediately noticed. As soon as they paid attention to my non-verbal actions, I could easily elicit their talk and responses to my questions later on. I worked with five classes during the teaching practicum and I saw their quick responses after my nonverbal language.

She continued to emphasize that in her opinion, being able to catch students attention is the key to get their responses afterwards. On the other hand, the percentage of student-teachers who underestimated their elicitation using nonverbal language doubled that of those who overestimated. One student-teacher who delivered lectures on Pronunciation admitted that when teaching this subject, most of my nonverbal was accidentally made with my hands. According to her explanation, her nonverbal postures were not well-prepared, making students confused then not responded to her questions. The other studentteacher reached an agreement with the previous one and added that:
In the teaching practicum, I had a maximum of three times working with one class. Maybe they did not have enough time to get familiar with my nonverbal language; hence, they did not understand what I wanted them to do after my performing and their responses went in an incorrect direction.

The rest of the student-teachers who chose moderately effective and effective realized that students could react to their use of nonverbal language and be able to give answers to the following questions, but their replies were not as quick as expected.

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4. Asking questions combined with pictures

Figure 9: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with pictures

In total, there were 19 student-teachers who had experienced asking questions combined with pictures to elicit their students talk during the teaching practicum. Among them, the fifth interviewed student-teacher selected slightly ineffective as her evaluation of this employed technique. When being asked for the reason, she immediately made a comparison between her elicitations by asking questions combined with pictures and asking questions combined with games in the same class at two different times. According to her observation, after participating in her game, students could quickly get back their focus on her questions; meanwhile, students seemed to lose their attention and continued commenting on the pictures colors or content instead of focusing on the target features to find answers to my questions. On the contrary, 18 other student-teachers considered their eliciting with pictures effective, especially, three of them circled extremely
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effective. All of these three agreed that pictures were such visible and vivid tools that they effectively decreased their talking time when eliciting students talk as well as provoked students quick reactions to the questions. For other choices including effective and moderately effective, these surveyed student-teachers shared the same opinion that their students could still reach the target knowledge but the reaction was quite slow and the questions needed repeating. 5. Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues In the frequency scale, this eliciting technique was the least commonly used with 17 student-teachers admitting using it. The evaluation of its effectiveness was not as optimistic as others, which was illustrated in the following chart.
Figure 10: The student-teachers evaluation of the effectiveness of eliciting technique: Asking questions combined with texts or dialogues

As presented in the chart, the extreme level of either ineffective or effective was not chosen. In contrast, 16 out of 17 student-teachers, accounting for 94.12%, decided to circle moderately effective and effective to show their evaluation. One of them reported that texts and dialogues had their own advantage which was helping her students calm
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down and focusing their students. Another advantage of this technique was added by interviewed student-teacher 6, according to whom texts and dialogues were undoubtedly effective when teaching writing. When observing her lesson about how to write an email, the researcher noticed that by analyzing a model email in the written form, the students could easily recognize the structure of an email thanks to the student-teachers guiding questions. Standing on the opposite side to the 16 mentioned student-teachers, one claimed that texts and dialogues were very boring that distracted students from her questions and led to silence; therefore, it became slightly ineffective elicitation. To sum up, the student-teachers had different opinions when making evaluation of the effectiveness of each employed eliciting technique. No matter what technique they had exploited to elicit students responses, most of them noticed the positive influences on their students except for two student-teachers who tried to use asking questions combined with nonverbal language, another one choosing asking questions combined with pictures, and one who applied asking questions combined with texts into her teaching practice. In comparison with Chus (2009) study, the current study followed a different direction to evaluate the effectiveness of elicitation. Chu (2009) attempted to investigate the insiders perceptions of the elicitations effectiveness in general. Nevertheless, this study focused on that of each technique as perceived by the student-teachers during their teaching-practicum. The evaluation of each particular eliciting techniques efficiency together with the assessment of elicitations
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effectiveness in general in Chus (2009) study can provide the readers with an overview picture of the elicitations level of effectiveness. IV. Research question 4: What is the effectiveness of each technique

as perceived by the learners who are first year students at FELTE, ULIS - VNU? Since the first-year students were the direct beneficiaries of the student-teachers elicitation during the teaching practicum, they had their own evaluation of the effectiveness of such techniques. To answer the fourth research question, two main aspects were investigated namely the frequency of students responding to student-teachers elicitation and their evaluation of the effectiveness of each eliciting technique. 1. Students reactions to the student-teachers elicitation Elicitation has been affirmed as an important and effective tool to get students responses in class. However, when being asked about how frequent they reacted to their student-teachers elicitation, 189 first-year students gave rather surprising answers as illustrated in the below pie chart.
Figure 11: The first-year students' frequency of response to the student-teachers' elicitation

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As can be seen from the chart, the number of students who always actively responded to student-teachers eliciting just accounted for the smallest percentage of 1.59%, followed by 15.34% of the students who circled usually. The biggest area was for the third option in the frequency scale, which indicated that the majority of the first-year students seldom involved themselves in the student-teachers elicitation. Another feature of the chart was that eliciting was exploited but students were not really activated when there were 19.58% of them reluctant to respond to the elicitation. Among them, 13.23% of the students said that they hardly ever and 6.35% never responded to the student-teachers elicitation unless they were asked to do so. The students reasons for this fact varied, among which the most common excuses were: Im not confident enough to raise my voice in front of the class. Im afraid of giving wrong answers. I dont want to answer obvious questions from the teacher. I just want to participate in her game, not answering any questions. When observing the lesson, the researcher noticed that the comprehensibility of the student-teachers elicitation had great influence on the students participation in the lessons. Being the direct beneficiaries and the centered subjects of elicitation, the first-year students made their evaluation of their student-teachers elicitation that helped answer the fourth research question.

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2. Students evaluation of each eliciting techniques effectiveness Eliciting technique was a difficult issue that required a certain level of academic competence in order to evaluate its effectiveness. Moreover, first-year students had not experienced ELT subjects like the student-teachers; consequently, they might not have a thorough understanding of the important role of elicitation in the questioning responding process in language teaching. Acknowledging this difficulty, the researcher decided to purely ask for the students opinions about the effectiveness of each eliciting technique in enhancing their responses without attempting to examine the reasons for their evaluation.
Evaluation of each eliciting technique Eliciting technique a b c d e Totally Slightly ineffective ineffective 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Moderately Extremely Effective effective effective 72 13 40 39 15 109 90 59 70 54 8 36 90 18 24 Total number of students who experienced each technique 189 139 189 127 93

a. Asking questions b. Asking questions combined with pictures c. Asking questions combined with games/ activities d. Asking questions combined with texts/ dialogues e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal Table 9: The first-year students evaluation of the effectiveness of the student-teachers eliciting techniques

For each technique, the first-year students seemed to share the same idea with the student-teachers that none of the five applied eliciting techniques was totally ineffective to them. Furthermore, the students from nine different classes agreed that all nine student-teachers
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exploitation of eliciting techniques had positive influence on them, which indicated that these student-teachers were able to provoke their students thinking then get students responses to their elicitation. In addition, as perceived by the students, the effectiveness of each eliciting technique in enhancing their responses was dominated by the level effective in the effectiveness scale, except for the technique asking questions combined with games or activities which was evaluated as extremely effective by half of the students. This finding could reveal that by participating in games or activities, the students found themselves more willing to response to the student-teachers questions after the games or activities. To conclude, although the students had different evaluations of the effectiveness of each exploited eliciting techniques, all of them had reached an agreement that among the five mentioned techniques, asking questions combined with games or activities was the most effective one in terms of eliciting their responses in the lesson. V. Research question 5: What are the difficulties of using eliciting

techniques as reported by the student- teachers? The fifth research question was dedicated to elaborating on the student-teachers difficulties when eliciting students responses during their teaching practicum. The answers to this question also explained why some mentioned eliciting techniques were exploited at a quite low level of frequency. In spite of the fact that there was a noticeable agreement among the 26 student-teachers on the necessity of using elicitation in teaching, all of them reported that applying elicitation into their real lessons encountered undeniable difficulties.
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The below bar chart represents the obstacles to further exploitation of elicitation on the vertical axis and the number of student-teachers out of 26 identifying them major difficulties on the horizontal axis. The student-teachers difficulties in using elicitation could be categorized into three major groups regarding their sources, namely student-teacherrelated factors (since they did not know how to form or express clearly in order to make comprehensible technique applied or could not make precise evaluation of their students ability), student-related factors (i.e. students attitudes and behaviors towards the student-teachers elicitation.), and objective factors (including lesson time limitation, the teaching and learning conditions and the nature of target knowledge that needed eliciting).
Figure 12: The student-teachers' difficulties of using elicitation a. Student-teacher-related factors b. Students behaviors and attitudes c. Lesson time limitation d. Teaching and learning conditions e. The nature of target knowledge

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1. Student-teacher-related factors First and foremost, 23 out of the 26 student-teachers affirmed that what made it difficult for them to use elicitation effectively resulted from themselves. It was apparent from the figure that the majority of the student-teachers considered themselves as the most important factor that decided the success of elicitation. After studying the questionnaires from student-teachers, the research saw that student-teacher-related factors included their ability to evaluate students level in order to employ appropriate eliciting techniques and their aptitude to provide

comprehensible elicitation. Concerning the former matter, Kagan (1992, cited in Vo, 2009, p.41) stated that student-teachers had inadequate knowledge of pupils. One student-teacher agreed when saying that:
Evaluating students ability is already a hard work for a teacher who has experienced teaching for a time. This issue becomes more complicated for an inexperienced teacher like me. During six weeks of the teaching practicum, I had chance to work with four classes in each of which I practiced teaching one of the four skills, namely speaking, reading, listening and writing. It meant I worked with three classes once only and twice in another class. I found it really difficult to make concrete evaluation of the students nature, background, skill, vocabulary, etc. in order to apply the most effective eliciting technique in such a short period of time.

Additionally, by carefully studying the detailed schedule of the teaching practicum 2011, the researcher realized that each student-teacher had a maximum of three times to teach in one class. The significant feature was that no matter how many times a student-teacher practiced teaching in one class, the work of correctly estimating students academic
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competence was still complicated. This idea was clarified by the seventh interviewed student-teacher, according to whom from time to time, making assumption was what she mainly did in order to help assess students level. Regarding the matter of making elicitation comprehensible, one student-teacher took the case of the most commonly used technique, asking questions, to support her argument:
When asking, I sometimes made too general or vague questions such as What do you think about this images? for students to answer, or I started from a very broad aspect which could easily mislead students. Therefore, they did not know what and how to reply.

The second interviewed student-teacher added that:


Teachers ability to express concrete and sharp questions, or in other words teachers language use, decides up to 80% of the success of elicitation. My lengthy expressions, complicated wording and abstract content of the questions sometimes made my students feel confused; consequently, they stayed in silence as responding to my elicitation.

Nonverbal language was another typical example that should be put into consideration. The ninth interviewed student-teacher stated that:
I sometimes used body language to elicit the target knowledge. However, it took my students quite a long time to understand my implication through that expression. Also, not many words or issues can be expressed with this eliciting technique within my ability.

The second interviewed one shared the same opinion and added that I am afraid of being disrespected or misinterpreted by my students.

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They may have negative attitude towards me and my inappropriate nonverbal language. From these sincere sharings, it could be concluded that the use of eliciting techniques sometimes could not reach its effectiveness as expected, which mainly originated from the student-teachers themselves. 2. Student-related factors The factors related to the other interlocutor in a lesson, the students, were the second hindrance to the student-teachers use of elicitation, specifically their behaviors and attitudes towards the studentteachers elicitation. This obstacle was elaborated as the students uncooperative behaviors. 10 student-teachers (34.46%) agreed that when raising a question, they sometimes received no response from their students, which was really irksome to them. According to the fifth interviewed student-teacher, the matter was not whether students knew the answers to my questions or not. It was the way they reacted to my elicitation. No answer, keeping silent or just a short answer I dont know were how they did. Corey (1940, cited in Hargie, et al, 1981, p.66) has stated that elicitation is a fundamental and important means of classroom interaction. However, in some cases of the teaching practicum, classroom interaction was not fully built up because of the students silent reaction. Thus, the student-teachers found it really hard to choose whether to continue eliciting or to present the knowledge straightforwardly. The mentioned phenomenon was clearly seen while the researcher observed a listening lesson. When the teacher asked In your opinion, what are some characteristics of an adventurous person? and repeated
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the question three times, 15 out of the 20 students in the class were reluctant to give answers, forcing the student-teacher to call some students randomly. 3. Objective factors Another major obstacle to the exploitation of elicitation was rooted from the objective factors including lesson time limitation, the teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge. To begin with, being asked about the difficulties they encountered when using elicitation, 17 student-teachers (65.38%) made no hesitation to emphasize that elicitation was very time-consuming especially asking questions combined with pictures, games or activities and texts or dialogues. Student-teacher 3 explained that:
Elicitation took me a considerable amount of time to prepare before the lesson and conduct in class. One time, when I decided to use game to elicit the knowledge of online shopping, I had to spend much time thinking of a suitable and motivating means to introduce the language focus, followed by the method of grouping, etc. not mentioning the job of editing, printing, etc. In short, a great amount of time was spent on preparing it.

Moreover, since the student-teachers were always in a rush to complete all planned activities (student-teacher 1), they needed time to explain the rule of the game, and also students needed time to read the texts or digest the meaning of the given dialogues; consequently, elicitation combined with these mentioned tools took much time as reported by the second interviewed student-teacher. As observed, in the writing lesson about Discussing travelling plan, student-teacher 6 spent 5 minutes giving instructions for the game, and in total 12 out of 50
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minutes was spent on this first activity in order to lead in the focus of the lesson about relative clauses. When being interviewed, she admitted that she spent too much time on the lead-in activity in order to elicit the focused grammar while the rest time was not enough for other activities. In addition, four student-teachers put a stress on the difficulty related to teaching and learning conditions which limited the effectiveness of applied eliciting techniques. According to these studentteachers, the lack of modern classroom facilities such as the projector and computer made it difficult for them to show pictures which were big, colorful and clear enough for the whole class to see if they wanted to elicit students responses using pictures. Moreover, as observed, the classroom arrangement with two rows of tables prevented the students from easily moving around. This was the reason why the student-teachers found it difficult to fully exploit elicitation combining with games or activities in class. Last but not least, the nature of the target knowledge which needed eliciting was reported by three student-teachers as a worthnoticing problem. In the academic year 2010 2011, the student-teachers were assigned to teach 10 Double-major-Program classes in total; therefore, they had to deal with economic issues, being unfamiliar with most of them. The ninth interviewed student-teacher elaborated that:
For some terminologies, the best way to provide knowledge was presenting straightforwardly because of the student-teachers lack of knowledge in the economic field.

In conclusion, there were three sources of obstacles identified by the student-teachers during their elicitation. They were factors related to:
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(1) the student-teachers (consisting of the student-teachers ability to evaluate students level and their capability to make comprehensible eliciting technique), (2) the students behaviors and attitudes towards the student-teachers elicitation, and (3) objective factors including time limitation, the teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge. The mentioned results coincided with points made by scholars of the same field but differed from those of the previous studies. In the current study, the biggest difficulty for the intensive use of elicitation was related to student-teacher-related factors. Chu (2009) mentioned this obstacle, but only 40% of the interviewed teachers showed great concern over the problem while in this current study, a high percentage of 84.62% of the student-teachers mentioned this difficulty. The dissimilarity might originate from the fact that the student-teachers had a tendency to self-reflect on their performances since it was the nature of the inexperienced members in the teaching career rather than of the experienced ones. Moreover, this result agreed with Gower et al. (1995, cited in Pham, 2006) mentioning that elicitation demands much of the teacher professional ability. Regarding the time limitation problem, Chu (2009), Tran (2007) and Pham (2006) agreed that this was the biggest problem for teachers when using elicitation. This difficulty ranked the second position in this current study. Although each study had its own participants and setting, the four studies shared the same conclusion that time management was still a big problem for both experienced and inexperienced teachers. The finding also agreed with Doff (1988, p.161) when he stated that eliciting
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takes much more time comparing with straightforward presentation of new knowledge. Finally, in the academic year 2010-2011, the student-teachers started to deal with the Double-major program, but most of them had no experience in the economic field. That was the reason why the difficulty of the nature of target knowledge was mentioned as another new finding of this study. Hardly any previous research put effort in investigating this difficulty because of the different setting. To sum up, it could be seen that the major obstacle to employing elicitation originated from the subjective reasons regarding the studentteachers who conducted the eliciting techniques. Besides, the students behaviors and attitude together with other objective factors could challenge the student-teachers elicitation. VI. Research question 6: What are the solutions to such problems as

suggested by the student teachers? In the questionnaires for the student-teachers, the researcher required the informants to suggest solutions to and recommendations for each of the difficulties they encountered. As being summarized from the interviews and questionnaires, each identified difficulty was solved by a number of corresponding solutions. 1. Improving elicitation As mentioned above, the student-teacher-related factors consisted of the student-teachers ability to evaluate students level and their capacity to provide comprehensible elicitation. For the former, no
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the

comprehensibility

of

the

student-teachers

solution was suggested by the student-teachers because they had to work under the time allocation of English Division I, consequently no extra teaching practice could be conducted in order to estimate precisely students knowledge and ability(student-teacher 3). Mentioning the matter of providing comprehensible elicitation, the careful preparation was highly appreciated by all interviewed studentteachers. The ninth interviewee was aware of the fact that she didnt have the habit of planning all possible questions to be raised in class. This laziness could easily lead to vague or too general questions then leading to no students responses. Additionally, student-teacher 3 shared that the preparation of written and answerable questions with simple and understandable language helped enhance the comprehensibility of elicitation. In case the student-teachers wanted to conduct games or activities to elicit students responses, the amount of work those games or activities required, the rules of games or the instructions of activities should be cautiously organized beforehand. Texts or dialogues used in the technique of asking questions combined with texts or dialogues were suggested to be short within 3 to 4 sentences and easy to understand due to few or, more ideally, no new word (student-teacher 1). Moreover, if the teacher intended to use nonverbal language to support her elicitation of difficult words or knowledge, she had better practice it at home before bringing it on stage. When conducting the elicitation, the language use of the studentteachers was of great concern among the student-teachers. According to the majority, the solution to this matter could be to elicit step by step from simple to complicated questions, then paraphrase or translate the questions into Vietnamese if necessary. Another student-teacher
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suggested writing key words of the questions on the board so the students found it easy to follow and give answers. 2. Dealing with the students behaviors and attitudes As shown in the student-teachers opinions collected from the questionnaires, the type of misbehavior reported by the student-teachers was too-silent students. According to student-teacher 5, these students could be categorized in two types: (1) students who refused to raise their voice while they knew the answers, and (2) students who had not found the answers and did not dare to make a guess. 100% of interviewed and surveyed student-teachers had no idea about how to manage such behaviors except for calling students randomly. It was understandable because the student-teachers were always in a rush to complete all planned activities as reported by student-teacher 1; therefore, they had to call students randomly in order to save lesson time instead of asking and waiting until one student raised his or her voice. Furthermore, in fact, some student-teachers faced the problem of remembering students names; that was why interviewed student-teacher 2 suggested making use of the student list in order to get familiar with them. 3. Conquering time limitation The result of the fifth research question affirmed that time management was the second popular obstacle to the student-teachers applying eliciting techniques. Each surveyed and interviewed studentteacher recommended their solutions, most of which were careful preparation before coming on stage and being flexible when exploiting different eliciting techniques in class.
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The third interviewed student-teacher believed that preparing the lesson plan is very important to inexperienced teachers. She gave further explanation that when designing the lesson plan, the studentteachers could carefully consider students level, classroom setting, time limitation and the focused content of the lesson; after that, they could decide to employ eliciting techniques or straightforward presentation in order to avoid running out of time for the focused content of the lesson. Although the student-teachers had already planned for the lesson, a great number of unexpected incidents could happen during the lesson; as a result, the student-teachers were advised to be flexible in choosing which eliciting technique to exploit in class by the third interviewed studentteacher. 4. Dealing with the unfavorable teaching and learning conditions As mentioned above, the unequipped classroom was one of the difficulties that disallowed some student-teachers to exploit elicitation. To solve this problem, student-teacher 5 suggested that they should be flexible in making use of the available facilities. For example, regarding elicitation by asking questions combined with pictures, she said teachers had better divide students into small groups and distribute one small size picture to each instead of printing out one or two big size pictures. For the matter of chair arrangement in the classroom, studentteachers 1 and 3 shared the same idea that group work should be done within two tables, meaning one group would be formed of two closed tables in a row. Also, student-teacher 2 admitted that:
When doing Micro-teaching activity in ELT II and IV, my classmates [the fourth-year students of fast track program, academic year 2010-2011] had a 90

tendency to conduct activities that needed moving around because of the commodious area we are learning in. It turned out to be an opposite story when teaching the first-year students. The chair arrangement was so uncomfortable that the teachers should minimize the students movement to avoid messy situations when conducting games or activities.

5. Tackling with the difficult nature of the target knowledge Regarding the target knowledges level of difficulty, seven out of the nine interviewees said that presenting knowledge straightforwardly was an ideal way to explain difficult terms, skills or structures. Also, student-teachers 5, 6 and 8 suggested an eliciting procedure which should be used flexibly during the lesson. Their ideas were summarized in the chart below.

Figure 13: Suggested procedure for elicitation

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Especially, student-teacher 5 was willing to skip the second and third step in order to save time as well as avoid students misunderstanding because of a great number of questions. In conclusion, plenty of solutions were suggested by the studentteachers to resolve the mentioned difficulties of the four main categories, namely student-teachers subjective matters, students uncooperative behaviors and attitude, time limitation, teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge. Some of the solutions were preparing carefully before the class time, eliciting step by step from simple to complicated questions, making full use of the student list, being flexible in exploiting different eliciting techniques, and taking advantages of available facilities. Summary In the fourth chapter, the findings and discussions of the collected date have been presented in order to provide answers to each research question. The above findings will be summarized in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION
The previous chapters have presented the introduction, the literature review, the methodology as well as the findings of the research. Finally, this chapter will summarize and evaluate the outcomes of the whole paper by summing up the findings, providing the pedagogical implications, followed by the contributions of the study, its limitations and suggestions for further studies. I. Major findings of the study On the whole, the study explored the exploitation of eliciting technique by fourth-year students during their teaching practicum at FELT, ULIS VNU. Through the in-depth analysis of the data collected from two sets of questionnaires, observations and interviews, significant findings for six research questions are summarized as follows. First and foremost, all of the student-teachers believed in the necessity of elicitation since it brought remarkable benefits for them. The majority of the student-teachers agreed that elicitation helped them check students understanding of the presented points as well as the students level of background knowledge, skills, vocabulary, etc, thus assisting the student-teachers in preparing for appropriate materials and target knowledge for students to access. Furthermore, the student-teachers benefited from elicitation because of its ability to catch students attention, create teacher-student interaction, find new ideas or opinions from students, maximize student talking time, and provide opportunities for weak students to raise their voice.

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Secondly, regarding the frequent employment of each eliciting technique, all five techniques, namely asking questions, asking questions combined with pictures, asking questions combined with games or activities, asking questions combined with texts or dialogues and asking questions combined with nonverbal language were widely made use of by 26 student-teachers during their teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE. Among them, asking questions was recognized as the most frequently used technique to elicit students responses, followed by the technique asking questions combined with games or activities as reported by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. The two groups of participants disagreed on the use of questioning combined with nonverbal language. While the students put this technique at the lowest level of the frequency scale, the student-teachers considered it as the third commonly used one in elicitation. Besides, asking questions combined with short stories or pieces of news, with examples or contexts and with audios or videos were three more eliciting techniques suggested by the student-teachers. Thirdly, the effectiveness of each eliciting technique was evaluated by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. Each group of participants had their own evaluation, but they reached an agreement that none of the five exploited eliciting techniques was totally ineffective in order to get students responses. Although some student-teachers underestimated their elicitation techniques, almost all of the students saw the positive side in all applied techniques. Specifically, asking questions combined with games or activities was reported to be most effective by all the surveyed students.

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After analyzing the collected data, the researcher concluded that there were three sources of difficulties preventing the student-teachers from making full use of these eliciting techniques. The most common difficulties were from the part of the student-teachers, relating to their ability to evaluate students level in order to employ appropriate eliciting techniques and their aptitude to make applied techniques comprehensible. Next, the second common obstacle originated from student-related factors, identified as students behaviors and attitudes towards the student-teachers elicitation. Other objective factors such as time limitation, teaching and learning conditions and the nature of the target knowledge were the last sources of problems the student-teachers encountered when applying eliciting techniques. Finally, the existing difficulties were solved by a number of suggested solutions and recommendations. In regard to the studentteacher-related factors, no recommendation was suggested to deal with the matter of understanding students level; meanwhile, careful preparation with detailed lesson plans and simple language was believed to improve the comprehensibility of elicitation. Also, the student-teacher thought that they should make use of the student list to overcome the students silent behaviors and attitudes. To help conquer time limitation, the student-teachers suggested carefully planning when and what eliciting technique should be employed and being flexible in employing different techniques to elicit students responses. Taking advantage of available facilities and limiting the use of activities that required movement were suggested solutions to deal with the unequipped classrooms. Last but not least, the student-teachers stated that they should take straightforward knowledge presentation into consideration when encountering technical terms and difficult concepts.
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II.

Pedagogical implications As stated in the aims of the study, one of the reasons for

conducting this study was to help the student-teachers improve their eliciting techniques. With the support of the above-mentioned findings, several implications could be drawn. The first reported finding concluded that asking questions was the most frequently used technique to elicit students responses. As a result, the student-teachers should pay attention to what, how and when questions in elicitation should be raised in order to obtain the maximum effectiveness of this leading technique. According to Brophy (1997, cited in Nathan, 2007, p.20), no matter what types of questions are raised, 75% of these questions should elicit positive and correct responses. Therefore, students can find themselves motivated, thus being willing to respond to the student-teachers elicitation since they can answer these questions correctly most of the time. With regard to what questions should be raised, Williams, Alley, and Henson (1999, cited in Nathan, 2007, p.21) have found that 95% of teachers questions are classified as low-level, usually requiring a yes/ no response. Asking why questions could show the ability to promote students higher thinking and answering. Concerning the matter of how to raise questions, the studentteachers should have an appropriate attitude towards the students correct or incorrect answers when calling on a variety of students. During the teaching practicum, most of the student-teachers were under time pressure to finish all activities they had planned; consequently, calling students randomly not only helped the student-teachers save lesson time but also got all students engaged in the lesson. Moreover, since some student-teachers reported that they were afraid of lacking of time for the
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main content of the lesson, they sometimes answered their questions themselves or called one student to respond immediately with little or no time to prepare. Teachers in general and particularly student-teachers are highly recommended to provide more wait time for students to complete the four mental steps to answer a question which are hearing the question, recalling information, considering whether responses would be accepted and deciding whether responses would be praised or rebuked (Jones & Jones 2004, cited in Nathan, 2007, p.20). The research also pointed out that other eliciting techniques, namely asking questions combined with pictures, asking questions combined with games or activities, asking questions combined with texts or dialogues and asking questions combined with nonverbal language were also exploited by the student-teachers. However, their employment was still limited because of the time limitation for a lesson. As a result, carefully designing a lesson plan and being flexible in exploiting various eliciting techniques might help the student-teachers use the time budget more effectively since they are not experienced enough. III. Contributions of the study Overall, the current study can be considerably helpful for the student-teachers, the mentors as well as ELT lecturers. As for the student-teachers, the research helps them recognize their difficulties in employing eliciting techniques, thus improving and perfecting their eliciting ability in their future teaching career. Moreover, the recommendations suggested by the student-teachers themselves can be good references for those who would do the teaching practicum in their final year.
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With regard to the mentors, by understanding the student-teachers difficulties during the teaching practicum, they can suggest more strategies to help the student-teacher perfect their eliciting method. To be specific, they can give suggestions to deal with students behaviors and attitudes towards the student-teachers elicitation and, most importantly, help the student-teachers correctly estimate the students academic competence as well as background level. Also, the mentors can provide the student-teachers with some information about the students level, their nature and characteristics in each class so that the student-teachers can be well-prepared for their lessons. Last but not least, findings of the paper can be considered a good source of reference for ELT lectures in order to make amendments to the course to help the student-teachers use more effective elicitation. To be specific, strategies to get students involved in the lesson (motivational strategies) together with recommended types of questions should be provided for the inexperienced student-teachers to quickly and effectively elicit students responses. IV. Limitations of the study To some extent, the paper has depicted an overall picture of the student-teachers use of elicitation and eliciting techniques during their teaching practicum. Nevertheless, there still exist some limitations. Limited population is the first shortcoming of this research. The questionnaires for students were carried out among of 189 students, studying in nine out of 16 classes in which 26 student-teachers practiced their teaching. Although the data collected from two sets of questionnaires, observations and interviews could ensure the sufficiency,
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reliability and validity of the findings, the researcher expects to involve more participants. The more participants the study could involve, the more applicable the findings could be. The second limitation of this study is that the study could not involve nine mentors of each group in the teaching practicum. Since all of them were very busy commenting and observing their student-teachers performances, the researcher decided not to disturb their comment sessions. If these mentors had had chance to participate in the study, the effectiveness of student-teachers elicitation would have been evaluated by those who had a great amount of experience as well as specialized knowledge; consequently, the findings would have been more accurate and comprehensive. V. Suggestions for further studies Several significant results were identified in the current study; however, since there are not many studies investigating elicitation and eliciting techniques, it has offered other researchers various approaches to this issue. They may conduct a study that would investigate the exploitation of eliciting techniques in a particular teaching component or skill. Also, how elicitation has been employed in different stages of a lesson can be another direction of research. Furthermore, there were only 26 students-teachers conducting their teaching practicum at English Division I, FELTE while the majority of fourth-year students practiced teaching at different high schools. As a result, the research can be carried out with mainstream students.
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Those are some directions future researchers can follow to achieve further understanding of this issue. Summary In a nutshell, the researchs major findings, the pedagogical implications and the contributions of the research have been discussed in the final chapter. Also, future researchers can consider the current studys limitations and suggestions to implement further investigations into the issue.

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REFERENCES
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http://iteslj.org/Articles/Belchamber-CLT.html Borg, S. (2003). Review article: Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81 - 109. Brown, J.D. (2001). Using survey in Language Programs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, H.D. (1994). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Regents. Cannon, R., Christine, I., Margaret, K., and Tim, R. (2000). Guide to support the implementation of the Learning and Teaching Plan Year 2000. ACUE, The University of Adelaide. Retrieved on April 5th, 2011 from

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/resources/leap/leapinto/StudentCe ntredLearning.pdf Chu, T.H.M. (2009). Techniques teachers use to elicit grade-10 students talk in upper secondary schools in Hanoi, Unpublished BA thesis, Hanoi: English Department, CFL, VNU. Cross, David. (1991). Chapter 6 Oral work: Elicitation techniques. In A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching. London: Cassell.

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Darn, S. (2008). Eliciting. The BBC and British Council. Retrieved on December 10th, 2010 from

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/eliciting Darn, S. (2008). Asking question. The BBC and British Council. Retrieved on December 10th, 2010 from

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/asking-questions Doff, A. (1988). Teaching English: A training course for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doug, H., Helenrose, F. & Arturo. O. (2007). Efficacy and Pedagogical Interaction in Cooperating and Student Teacher Dyads. The Journal of Classroom Interaction; 2007; 41/42, 2/1; ProQuest Education Journals. p. 55. Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. English Division 1. (2010). Course outline (for Double-major program). Hanoi: English Division 1, FELTE, VNU. English Division 1. (2010). Course outline (for ELT program). Hanoi: English Division 1, FELTE, VNU. Ersoz, A. (2000). Six games for EFT/ESL classroom. The Internet TESL Journal (V6). Retrieved on December 15th, 2010 from

http://www.teflgames.com/why.html. Glesne, C. & Peshkin, A. (1992). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. White Plains, NY: Longman. Grbich, C. (2007). Qualitative data analysis: An introduction. London: Sage Publications, Inc. Guariento, W. & Morley, J. 2001. Text and Task authenticity in EFL classroom. ELT Journal Volume 55/4. October 2001. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Hargie, O., Saunders, C & Dickson, D. (Eds). (1981). Social skills in Interpersonal Communication. London & Camberry: Croom Helm. Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman ELT. Kissock, C., & Lyortsuun, P. (1982). A guide to questioning: classroom procedures for teachers. New York: MacMillan. Lee, K. (1995). From creative games for the language class. Forum, 33(1). Retrieved on December 14th 2010 from

http://eca.state.gov/forum/vols/vol33/no1/P35.htm Mackey, A. & Gass, S.M. (2005). Second language research: Methodology and design. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Moore, M.G. (1989). Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3, (2). Retrieved on March 28th, 2011 from http://www.ajde.com/Contents/vol3_2.htm Nathan, B. (2007). 12 questioning strategies that minimize classroom management problems. Kappa Delta Pi Record, Fall 2007. Retrieved on April 15th 2011 from

http://www.kdp.org/teachingresources/pdf/classrmmgmt/12_Questi ons_that_minimize_classrm_mgmt_problemsRecord_F07_Bond.p df Nunan, D. (1991). Communicative tasks and the language curriculum. TEOSL Quarterly. 25(2), 279-295. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. (2008). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pham, T.H. (2006). Using eliciting techniques to teach Vocabulary to 11th form students in Hanoi, Unpublished BA thesis, Hanoi: English Department, CFL, VNU.
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Richards, J., Schmidt, R., Platt, H. & Schmidt, M. (2002). Longman Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. London: Longman. Roger, G. (2002). Student-centered learning: A practical guide for teachers. Bangkok: The British Council. Retrieved on March 28th, 2011 from http://www.imt.liu.se/.../download-

SCL%20for%20Thai%20TESOL%20paper.doc Rudder, M. (2000). Eliciting student-talk. English Teaching Forum, 37 (2). Retrieved on December 14th 2010 from

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/9937-2-j.pdf Stevick, E. W. (1988). Teaching and Learning Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sue, G. & Christina, T. (2000). Connecting classrooms in pre-service education: Conversations for learning. Asia - Pacific Journal of Teacher Education; Nov 2000; 28, 3; ProQuest Education Journals. p. 235. Susana, M. (2002). Giving Oral Instructions to EFL students. Retrieved on April 1st, 2011 from:

http://www.encuentrojournal.org/textos/13.13.pdf To, T. H. Nguyen, T.M. & Nguyen, T.T. (2008). ELT Methodology I Course Book. Hanoi: ULIS-VNUH. To, T.H., Nguyen, M.H., Nguyen, T.M., Nguyen, H.M. & Luong, Q.T. (2010). ELT Methodology II Course book. Hanoi: ULIS-VNUH. Tran, H. (2007). Eliciting technique to teach speaking skill to grade-10 students at Hanoi Foreign Language Specializing School, Unpublished BA thesis, Hanoi: English Department, CFL, VNU.

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Tsui, Amy B. M. (2001). Class Interaction. In Carter, Ronald & David Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wei Liu, W. (2005). Design of text-based questions from the study of typology of questions. Zhangjiajie City: Jishou University. Wright, A. Betteridge, M and Bucky, M. (1984). Games for language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Xiao, Y. (2006). Teacher talk and EFL in university classrooms. Retrieved on April 1st, 2011 from: http://www.asian-efl-

journal.com/thesis_Ma_Xiaou.pdf Vo, T.T. (2009). Classroom management skills among fourth year students (English Department, HULIS - VNU) during their teaching practice, Unpublished BA thesis, Hanoi: English Department, CFL, VNU.

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APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1. Questionnaire for student-teachers The questionnaire is broken to the next page because of its landscape format.

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QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENT-TEACHERS


I am Nguyen Thanh Thuy from E1K41. I am doing the research on The exploitation of eliciting techniques by fourth-year students in their teaching practicum at FELTE, ULIS VNU. I would like to have your opinion on this topic basing on some aspects mentioned below. It would be great if you can give detailed answers to these questions. Your cooperation is truly appreciated. I would appreciate if you answer all the questions in RED front to facilitate my collection of the data later. Thank you very much for your help! GENERAL INFORMATION
Please fill in the blanks with information related to your six-week practicum.

1. The groups you were assigned to teach during your practicum: ................................................................................................................... 2. The skills you were assigned to teach during your practicum: .................................................................................................................... ELICITING TECNIQUES Eliciting techniques are what teachers use to draw out answers and responses from their students, or in other words to get students provide information rather than giving it to them. (In Vietnamese, eliciting can be understood as gi m). Based on this perception, please answer the following questions.
1. Do you think elicitation is necessary in a lesson? (Choose 1 option only) a. Yes 2. How often do you elicit knowledge in class? Choose 1 option only. a. always b. usually c. seldom b. No d. hardly ever e. never

3. What techniques have you used to elicit knowledge from your students? (More than 1 option is acceptable) a. Asking questions b. Asking questions combined with pictures c. Asking questions combined with games or activities d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language f. Others (be specific) .................................................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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4. How often have you used these eliciting techniques during your lesson? Please circle the appropriate number to indicate your frequency of using each technique. 1. always 2. usually 3. seldom 4. hardly ever 5. never a. Asking questions b. Asking questions combined with pictures c. Asking questions combined with games or activities d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language f. Others (be specific) ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... 5. Based on your students responses to each eliciting technique you have used during your lesson, please evaluate the effectiveness of each technique by circling the appropriate number. 1. totally ineffective 2. slightly ineffective 3. moderately effective 4. effective 5. extremely effective a. Asking questions b. Asking questions combined with pictures c. Asking questions combined with games or activities d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language f. Others (be specific) ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5

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6. For each above technique, have you ever encountered any difficulties? If yes, what are they? What have you done or what are your recommendations for each difficulty? Please fill in each column with appropriate information. Any difficulties? Yes (Y) or No (N) a. Asking questions

Difficulties

Solutions or recommendations

b. Asking questions combined with pictures

c. Asking questions combined with games or activities

d. Asking questions combined with texts and dialogues

e. Asking questions combined with non-verbal language

f.

Others (be specific)

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ASKING QUESTIONS IN ELICITATION


7. In what cases have you usually raised questions? Please give some examples of questions/ question structures you have used to lead students to the target language. For example: Case: teaching new words Example: Can you guess the meaning basing on the text? Cases Example

8. Elicitation is mainly done by asking questions. So what are your purposes of asking these questions? (More than 1 option is acceptable) a. creating interaction between teacher and students b. maximizing student talking time c. calling for students attention d. finding new ideas/ opinions out from students e. checking and testing understanding, knowledge or skill f. providing weak students opportunities to raise their voice g. Others (be specific) ............................................................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

====================================

Thank you for your cooperation!

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APPENDIX 2. Questionnaire for first-year students The questionnaire is broken to the next page because of its landscape format.

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PHIU IU TRA DNH CHO SINH VIN NM TH NHT


Ti l Nguyn Thanh Thy, sinh vin lp 071.E1. Hin ti ang thc hin nghin cu v Vic s dng k thut gi m ca sinh vin nm th t trong k thc tp ti t ting Anh 1, khoa s phm ting Anh HNN HQGHN. Rt mong bn hon thnh bn iu tra di y. S hp tc ca bn s ng gp rt ln vo thnh cng ca nghin cu ny. Ti xin chn thnh cm n! THNG TIN C BN
Hy hon thnh 2 cu hi di y bng cch in vo ch trng.

1. Lp: ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2. Gio sinh bn ang ngh n khi thc hin bn iu tra ny: ........................................................................................................................... K THUT GI M KIN THC K thut gi m l k thut m trong , gio vin dn dt sinh vin tr li tng cu hi nh v dn dn t sinh vin tm ra cu tr li cho mng kin thc cn c cung cp. Da vo quan nim ny, hy tr li cc cu hi di y.
1. Trong gi ting Anh ni chung, c gio bn c hay t cu hi gi m kin thc trong khi dy khng? Hy chn 1 p n. a. Lun lun b. Thnh thong c. Him khi d. Hu nh khng e. Khng bao gi 2. C gio thng t cu hi gi m kin thc mi/ c nhiu nht vo giai on no ca gi hc? a. Giai on kim tra bi c b. Giai on dn dt vo bi mi c. Giai on gii thiu kin thc mi d. Giai on bn thc hnh kin thc mi c truyn t e. Tr li khc .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3. Bn c thng xung phong tr li cc cu hi m c gio a ra trong gi hc khng? a. Lun lun. Cu hi no cng pht biu. b. Thng xuyn c. Him khi d. Hu nh khng e. Khng bao gi. Tr khi b c gio gi. L do cho s la chn ca bn: ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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4. Cc thc c gio thng t cu hi gi m kin thc trong lp l ...(c th chn nhiu p n) a. Ch t cu hi b. Dng cu hi i km vi tranh nh c. Dng cu hi i km vi tr chi/ hot ng d. Dng cu hi i km vi on vn/ hi thoi e. Dng cu hi i km vi ngn ng c ch f. Tr li khc ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 5. Bn hy nh gi mc s dng thng xuyn ca tng phng php c gio s dng gi m kin thc 1. Lun lun 2. Thnh thong 3. Him khi 4. Hu nh khng 5. Khng bao gi a. b. c. d. e. f. Ch t cu hi Dng cu hi i km vi tranh nh Dng cu hi i km vi tr chi/ hot ng Dng cu hi i km vi on vn/ hi thoi Dng cu hi i km vi ngn ng c ch Tr li khc .................................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5

6. Bn hy nh gi mc hiu qu ca tng phng php c gio s dng gi m trong vic tng mc phn ng ca bn vi cc cu hi bng cch khoanh vo s tng ng. 1. hon ton khng hiu qu a. b. c. d. e. f. 2. phn ln khng hiu qu 3. trung gian 4. phn ln hiu qu 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 5. rt hiu qu 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5

Ch t cu hi Dng cu hi i km vi tranh nh Dng cu hi i km vi tr chi/ hot ng Dng cu hi i km vi on vn/ hi thoi Dng cu hi i km vi ngn ng c ch Tr li khc ................................................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................................................................... ====================================

Ti xin chn thnh cm n s hp tc ca bn!

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APPENDIX 3. Observation checklist The observation checklist is broken to the next page because of its landscape format.

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OBSERVATION CHECKLIST
A. CLASS PROFILE
Name of the student-teacher: ....................................................... Assigned class: ............................................................................. Assigned skill/subject: ................................................................. Start time: ............................... End time: ................................ Duration: ................................. Date: .......................................

B. OBSERVATION AND ASSESSMENT OF ELICITING TECHNIQUES Eliciting techniques Y N Stage of using elicitation Purposes of elicitation Comments/Transcript of used questions

The use of elicting techniques Asking questions Asking questions with pictures

Asking questions with games or activities

Asking questions with texts and dialogues

Asking questions with non-verbal language

APPENDIX 4. Interview guiding questions PART 1: ELICITING TECHNIQUES 1. In your opinion, is it necessary to employ elicitation in language teaching? Can you give explanation for your view point? 2. How can you define an effective elicitation? 3. What are the factors that decide the effectiveness of elicitation? 4. What were your purposes of using elicitation during the practicum? 5. In which occasions did you use elicitation? 6. During six weeks, which eliciting techniques were employed in your lessons and how often did you exploit those techniques? 7. Why did not you choose other techniques to elicit students responses? 8. Can you evaluate the effectiveness of your elicitation based on your students responses to each eliciting technique you have used during your lesson? 9. What difficulties did you encounter when using eliciting techniques during the practicum? 10.What did you do or do you suggest overcoming those difficulties I employing eliciting techniques? PART 2: ASKING QUESTIONS IN ELICITATION 1. Can you give me some examples for your questions to elicit students responses in practicum? 2. Were these questions able to provoke students thinking and responses?

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APPENDIX 5. Interview transcript (Student-teacher 1) 1. General information Duration: 40 minutes, from 10:10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. Facility: Skype video call 2. Interview transcript Interviewer (Q): There are two main parts in this in-depth interview which are first, elicitation and the use of eliciting techniques during the teaching practicum and second, asking questions to elicit students responses. Shall we start with the first part? Interviewee (A): Sure. Go ahead! Q: In your opinion, is it necessary to employ elicitation in language teaching? Can you give explanation for your view point? A: Elicitation is very important since it helps the teacher achieves numerous benefits at the same time. First, by eliciting students responses, the teacher can estimate students background as well as their academic competence. Second, the interaction between teacher and students is created due to the exploitation of questioning and answering process. In my humble opinion, elicitation is the key to interaction during the lesson that can turn the teaching and learning process into an interactional knowledge acquisition. Third, it helps decrease teacher

talking time and at the same time increase that of students. Finally, by asking guiding questions, the teacher is able to keep students alert of being questioned, therefore focus their attention during the lesson.

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Q: How can you define an effective elicitation? A: Elicitation becomes effective when it can at least keep students thinking and being aware of the questioned issue. Also, in case students may not give exact answers, they still attempt to or show their interest in finding the answers. Most importantly, students are always expected to fully understand then correctly follow teachers guiding questions to the target knowledge. Q: What are the factors that decide the effectiveness of elicitation? A: There are a number of factors that contribute to an effective elicitation among which teacher is the most important factor. His or her ability to correctly estimate students level together with the capability to make comprehensible questions decide up to 70% of the eliciting efficiency. Additionally, students attitude is another important factor that should be taken into consideration. I mean whether they response to their teachers elicitation or not. Last but not least, the effectiveness of elicitation depends much on time limitation of each lesson, whether teacher has enough time to conduct an activity or just use questions merely or even directly presenting the target knowledge. Q: Did you exploit eliciting techniques during your teaching practicum? A: Yes, usually. This is the most frequent technique I used to get students responses. Q: What were your purposes of using elicitation? A: As mentioned above, I used elicitation to estimate my students understanding, consisting of students ability to get my points and their level of background knowledge, skill, vocabulary, etc. Then I wanted to create not only opportunities in which students could raise their voice but also interaction between me and students.
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Q: In which occasions did you use elicitation? A: I used elicitation whenever I needed, to introduce a new amount of knowledge, to pre-teach skill or to explain new words, etc. Q: During six weeks, which eliciting techniques were employed in your lessons? A: Regarding the frequency of use, asking questions was mostly exploited, followed by asking questions combined with texts or dialogues. Asking questions combined with activities stood at the third position while asking questions combined with pictures was untouched. Besides, when teaching listening, I made use of available recordings in the text book rather than preparing other activities. Q: Lets discuss more about asking questions. A lot of studentteachers fully exploited this technique since they chose always to indicate their highest fluency of use comparing with direct presentation of knowledge. Why did you just circle the usually option? A: In my opinion, teacher should avoid asking questions all time. First, I did not want my students to feel stressful and alert of being questioned from the beginning to the end of the lesson. Really uncomfortable! Moreover, the more I asked, the more they had to raise their voice; therefore, weak students could easily feel scared and maybe they were discouraged to get involved in the lesson since they felt they were not as good as other students. Q: Why did not you choose asking questions combined with pictures to elicit students responses? A: Actually, I had thought of this technique before. However, I could hardly find any unit of knowledge which was suitable to explain via pictures. Most of the time I taught Double-major degree, so students
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could access technical terms related to economics easily if I gave them examples, texts or context in which these words were used instead of giving pictures. Additionally, there was one case I intended to employ picture, but it took me too much time searching for the appropriate one, not yet mentioning instructing time in class. Generally speaking, pictures were time consuming while in teaching practicum, student-teachers were always in a rush to complete all planned activities. Instead, I wanted to save time presenting new knowledge and focus on the main content. Q: According to your answers to my questionnaire, you also employed asking questions combined with activities, combined with texts and combined with nonverbal language besides asking questions merely. Can you evaluate the effectiveness of your elicitation based on your students responses to each eliciting technique you have used during your lesson? A: I have to admit that all of my applied eliciting techniques were effective in terms of getting students responses and making them think of the issues to some extent. Asking questions showed its great advantage especially when I gave students a context or an example in which the target knowledge and vocabulary was used. For example, in speaking lesson, students faced up to one term related to a managers characteristics open. Most of them did not understand what open meant. I gave them a clue by asking Supposed that you are a manager of a Multi-national cooperation, your employees come from different countries, regions, races. So what does open here mean? Will you discriminate? Finally my students could access to the meaning of this word. As a result, asking questions gradually or more ideally combined with examples and contexts helped

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students get to the target knowledge easily throughout my guiding questions. Regarding asking questions combined with activities, students had chances to play and get themselves involved in games so they were eager to respond to any of my following questions. Exploited texts in elicitation really helped me calm down my students and get their attention back to the lesson. As I experienced, there was a small difference between a text and an example which was the form of formatting: one was spoken and one was written. Students had time to read and think before giving answers so they got to my expected direction. Nonverbal language brought immediate influence on students because of its simplicity. For instance, I sat down to illustrate decline and stood up for rise. However, this technique was not really appropriate with complicated terms because students could

misunderstand my intention or not understand at all and I myself was not able to act out. Q: Was there any case that you found your elicitation ineffective? A: When teaching the lesson of Planning, I asked students to brainstorm whatever related to planning, especially marketing planning. However, my students just discussed planning in general instead of marketing issue. Q: Why was it unsuccessful? In other words, what difficulties did you encounter when using eliciting techniques during the practicum? A: As I experienced, the biggest difficulty was that I had no idea about students background knowledge, what they had already learnt and what they had known about the target knowledge. That was the reason why

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students could not recall knowledge to answer some of my complicated questions. Q: Any other difficulties? A: Time limitation. Eliciting took much time than presenting knowledge directly, especially when I wanted to use games or texts to introduce new knowledge for students. I had to spend time not only preparing for what I intended to conduct in class but also giving them instruction and checking their understanding of the rules. A very short text also took them 5 minutes to read through and have the most general idea about that text. Q: Did any difficulties related to classroom facilities, the nature of the knowledge or students behaviors degrade the effectiveness of your elicitation? A: Not really. Fortunately, most of the time, students quickly react to my questions without hesitation. Also, they followed the correct direction to get to my point since they did not misunderstand my nonverbal language. Q: So what did you do or what do you recommend to overcome the obstacles of understanding students level and time limitation? A: To be honest, five weeks working with students was not enough to correctly estimate their level of academic competence or background knowledge in order to prepare the appropriate eliciting technique to apply in class. Regarding the matter of time, if teachers are lack of time for the main content of the lesson, directly presenting knowledge is the most preferable way. In case students react as if they do not understand the questions, I will paraphrase them or even translate them into Vietnamese to save time. In the case of multinational cooperation above, students seemed to not understand the meaning of MNC, then I translated into

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cong ty da quoc gia right away and it became much easier to answer other questions. With regard to asking questions merely, I think teachers should ask maximum 2 questions, after which students can draw out the target knowledge because too many questions can make them confused. Simple and straightforward language is highly recommended. Q: Do you have any suggestions for teachers who want to exploit other eliciting techniques besides asking questions? A: Asking questions combined with activities or pictures should be used to explain or introduce simple knowledge only. Otherwise, students will focus on commenting pictures or playing only. Reading text using in asking questions combined with texts should be short with 3 to 4 sentences and easy to understand with few or without any new word because students are not willing to read such a long text in speaking or listening lesson. Nonverbal language should be prepared and practiced at home before being brought in the class. Or to be safer, I think teachers should apply other eliciting techniques or direct presentation for difficult knowledge. In short, I think teachers and especially student-teachers should try to work hard on the lesson plan in order to provide comprehensible elicitation in appropriate amount of time. In case the lesson plan seems not to work in the class, I think the only solution is to be flexible between exploiting different techniques and direct presentation of knowledge. It can help save much time for the main part of the lesson. Q: Alright, thats the end of the first part. Lets move to the second part about asking questions in elicitation. Can you give me some

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examples for your questions to elicit students responses in practicum? A: Can you relate the strategies to the way we play the game/do the warm-up? Its similar to . Can you guess its meaning? So does anyone know the job of a manager? What does a manager do? Point at someone and ask Can you help me with this question? Can anyone tell me again what we should do now? Q: Were these questions able to provoke students thinking and responses? A: Most of the time, yes. However, some questions were not fully answered because of various reasons. Students might not understand my questions because of the complicated or vague wording; the issue in my questions might be beyond their knowledge or keeping silent was their habit as response to teachers and student-teachers questions. Q: Thank you so much for sharing valuable opinions. In case there is anything unclear, I will contact you later, ok? A: No problem!

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