Applying ASEAN University network quality assurance for assessing the course of English for tourism at Ho Chi Minh city Open University

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HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY

GRADUATION THESIS

MAJOR: BUSINESS ENGLISH

Applying ASEAN University Network￾Quality Assurance for Assessing the Course

of English for Tourism at Ho Chi Minh City

Open University

Intern’s name: Le Tri Thien

Student code: 1457012325

Major: Business English

Instructor: M.Ed. Bui Do Cong Thanh

Ho Chi Minh City – 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I want to use this opportunity to show my deep gratitude for Mr. Bui

Do Cong Thanh for being an inspiring model and an erudite mentor that leaves a remarkable

influence on my thoughts and emotions. Without his constant and thorough guidance, I

would not have the energy and commitment needed to finish this report paper. His role

model has left a long-lasting impact on my learning and studying pattern and working

attitude that has already shown positive prospect.

Furthermore, my genuine appreciations also go to my father, my mother, my little brother,

and my darling for their emotional anchors that keep me straight forward. Were it not their

support and encouragement, it would be impossible for me to tackle the problems arising

while writing the reports.

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to all the academic staff of both the

School of Advanced Study and the Faculty of Foreign Languages for the opportunity and

experience that I have attained while working with such prominent progenitors. Also, the

hospitable and professional working environment at both the faculties will indeed lay a

strong foundation for my future career.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENT PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........................................................................................................................i

COMMENTS OF INSTRUCTOR...............................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.

TABLE OF CONTENTS..............................................................................................................................i

TABLE & FIGURE ....................................................................................................................................iii

ABBREVIATIONS .....................................................................................................................................iv

ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................................v

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE REPORT...............................................................................................1

1.1.1 Current Situation of English ......................................................................................................1

1.1.2 English in Tertiary Education Level in Vietnam......................................................................4

1.2 RATIONALE......................................................................................................................................7

1.3 METHOD DESIGN ...........................................................................................................................7

1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION.............................................................................................................8

1.5 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS......................................................................................................8

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ............................................................................................9

2.1 DEFINITION OF EVALUATION IN EDUCATION ....................................................................9

2.2 INTRODUCTION TO QUALITY ASSURANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION SETTING .....11

2.3 ASEAN UNIVERSITY NETWORK – QUALITY ASSURANCE..............................................12

2.4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................................15

Expected Learning Outcomes...........................................................................................................16

2.5 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................28

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................30

3.1 SETTING..........................................................................................................................................30

3.2 PARTICIPANTS..............................................................................................................................30

3.3 RESEARCH DESIGN .....................................................................................................................31

3.4 INSTRUMENTS ..............................................................................................................................32

3.5 ETHICAL ISSUES...........................................................................................................................36

Chapter 4: RESULTS AND DATA ANALYSIS.....................................................................................37

4.1 FINDINGS ARISING FROM THE SURVEY RESPONSES......................................................37

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4.1.1 Course learning outcomes.........................................................................................................37

4.1.2 Course specification ..................................................................................................................39

4.1.3 Course structure and content...................................................................................................42

4.1.4 The coursebook..........................................................................................................................43

4.1.5 Teaching and Learning Approach...........................................................................................47

4.1.6 Student assessment....................................................................................................................51

4.2 OVERVIEW OF THE RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................52

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................55

5.1 PROBLEMS SIGHTED DURING THE SPAN OF CONDUCTING THE RESEARCH ........55

5.2 CONCLUSIONS ..............................................................................................................................56

5.3 RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................57

REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................................59

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Questionnaire (English & Vietnamese Version)

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TABLE & FIGURE

Figure 3: AUN-QA Models for Higher Education.......................................................................................13

Figure 4: AUN-QA Models for Programme Level ......................................................................................14

Figure 5: Theoretical Framework.................................................................................................................15

Figure 4: Students' average satisfaction towards Course Learning Outcomes.............................................38

Figure 5: Student's average satisfaction towards Course Specification .......................................................40

Figure 6: Students' average satisfaction towards Course structure and Content..........................................42

Figure 7: Students' average satisfaction towards the coursebook and its content........................................43

Figure 8: Students' average satisfaction towards coursebook organisation and structure,

language, and layout.....................................................................................................................................45

Figure 9: Students' average satisfaction towards teaching and learning approach.......................................48

Figure 10: Students' average satisfaction towards the key competences of education.................................50

Figure 11: Students' average satisfaction towards student assessment ........................................................51

Figure 12: Scatter Chart ...............................................................................................................................54

Table 1: FFL Programmes Learning Outcomes...........................................................................................19

Table 2: Course Objectives of English for Tourism.....................................................................................20

Table 3: Course Learning Outcomes of English for Tourism......................................................................22

Table 4: Summary of students' satisfaction towards Course Learning Outcomes .......................................38

Table 5: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards the course specification.............................................40

Table 6: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards the course structure and content................................42

Table 7: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards the content of the coursebook ...................................43

Table 8: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards organisation and structure; language;

and coursebook layout..................................................................................................................................45

Table 9: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards teaching and learning approach.................................48

Table 10: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards the key competences of education...........................50

Table 11: Summary of students’ satisfaction towards student assessment ..................................................52

Table 12: Summary of students’ average satisfaction..................................................................................53

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ABBREVIATIONS

HOU: Ho Chi Minh City Open University

FFL: Faculty of Foreign Languages

ESL: English as a Secondary Language

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

EIL: English as an International Language

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

AUN-QA: ASEAN University Network – Quality Assurance

VSTEP: Vietnamese Standardised Test of English Proficiency

CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

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ABSTRACT

With an unprecedented growth of importance of English sighted in recent years (Galloway

& Rose, 2015), there have been calls for an proper English teaching and learning model

that works beyond the native-speaking one (Sharifian, 2009). Being no outsider to an

upward trend of the world, the English teaching and learning system in Vietnam has been

undergoing drastic changes, especially in the form of programmes using English as medium

of instruction, yet the innovative implementation is not without fault (Hamid, Jahan, &

Islam, 2013; Le D. M., 2012). With this view in mind, many researchers identified problems

within the English teaching and learning in Vietnam (Hoang, 2011; Le D. M., 2012), many

of which refer to the validity of the programme. To ensure the quality of tertiary education

programme, the use of quality assurance, or accreditation has been in practice globally by

governments and recognised bodies (QAA, 2019). One of such bodies that has been

working on the betterment of education in the region, ASEAN University Network

(ASEAN University Network, 2015), has been devising and perfecting a form of quality

assurance concerning various aspects of a higher education institute on the programme

level. These standards have been applied throughout the region and at many local institutes.

In light of this fact, the paper serves as a proposal for a pilot descriptive research utilising

the format of AUN-QA to assess a course of the English Major, in the hope of contributing

to the process of continuous improvement needed for the quality assurance in immediate

future. By employing five factors among that of AUN-QA, the author aims to examine the

effectiveness of the course in the view of lecturers and students following the course.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The following paper investigates the efficiency of the course book Going Places as

perceived by learners and lecturers at HOU. In this chapter, the study background will be

discussed. Then, the problem statement, the research purposes, the significance of the paper

as well as the thesis structure will be addressed.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE REPORT

1.1.1 Current Situation of English

The language of English is spoken in many parts of the world, including Asia, Europe,

Africa, the Americas, Australia, and even in some of the islands drifting amidst the Atlantic,

Indian, and Pacific Oceans. In fact, it is now acknowledged as the lingua franca or a ‘world

language’ (Viney, 2008) with the status of official language in at least 80 nations and

regions around the world as reported in Ethnologue (2019). This fact solidifies the position

of the English language with the number of non-native speakers greatly exceeding that of

native one (Galloway & Rose, 2015). Similarly, (Graddol, 2006) reported that

approximately 74% of global tourism travelling are from non-native speaking nations to

native ones, thus cemented the position of English in intercontinental communication as the

most important bridge language in this ever-changing and mobile modern world. With the

explosion of social network platforms including Facebook and YouTube, the Internet now

serves as a vital medium of the dissemination of the English language as learners

communicate and interact with others via the evolutionary platform. The high status of

English can be summarised as in Michael’s work:

“English has become a world language in both senses, international and global:

international, as a medium of literary and other forms of cultural life…; global as

the co-genitor of the new technology age… It seems that if you want to resist the

exploitative power of English, you have to use English to do it.” (Halliday, 2006, p.

362)

As English spreads further away from its birthplace, the language undergoes drastic

transformation structurally and pragmatically. Even though this transformation can be

traced back to the earlier stages of history with the expansion of the former British Empire

and the rise of the United States, the differences are more remarkable in the modern era.

ESL/EFL users do not just assimilate their native accents into the sounds of English but

also adapt their own cultural influences to English daily usages. Sharifian (2009) reported

the phenomenon of cultural conceptualisations in which non-native speakers would draw

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on their own cultural references in making conversation in English. Notably, bilingual

speakers may use English vocabulary that delivers the polar opposite to what they want to

convey. By the same token, Honna (2000) issued the reality of creating new variants of

English that suits the “international, interethnic communication” among the communities

of Asian non-native English speakers. This occurrence can be observed throughout nations

of East Asia, thus resulted in the formation of different varieties such as Chinese-, Japanese-

, and Korean-influenced English. For example, Sharifian (2009) recorded a substantial

difference in meaning perceived by people from different cultural settings that can cause

misunderstanding on even a common notion such as ‘friendship’. These findings reflect a

phenomenon that can be concluded as a cultural schema that was explicitly defined in a

recent work of Shahghasemi (2017). This theory suggests that people with different cultural

identities will employ classification to comprehend each other, and then further add their

own influence into the previously existing categories. As concluded in Introducing Global

Englishes:

“There has been an explosive growth in the number of English users, thus increased

the usage on a global level has resulted in innovations in its use as it is employed by

speakers from diverse linguistic and cultural background and assumes distinct

functions and forms in different contexts.” (emphasised as in original document.)

Galloway & Rose (2015, p. x)

This phenomenal innovation puts forward suggestions of re-framing the pedagogical and

teaching English methods (Galloway & Rose, 2015). Specifically, the need of a paradigm

shift in teaching English as a global language of communication expanding beyond the NSs

model was issued by Sharifian (2009) and further fuelled the quest of establishing an

appropriate approach toward English as an International Language (hereinafter referred to

as EIL).

With no exception from the movement of the world, the shifting toward the EIL paradigm

is a matter of considerable concern for Vietnam, as the language has already played the role

of a driving force toward Vietnam’s economic, cultural, and socio-political development

ever since the economic reform known as Renovation. English’s status then continued to

receive a further emphasis after Vietnam became a member of many regional and global

associations, including the Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN), the Asia￾Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and most recently, the World Trade Organisation

(WTO). Since the Renovation, Vietnam has gathered considerable attention from Foreign

Direct Investment (FDI), whose interactions require English as the bridge of

communication. According to statistics collected from Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and

Investment, Vietnam has attracted approximately 30,000 projects from foreign investors,

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thus gaining a total registered capital of 415 billion USD (General Statistics Office, 2019).

The biggest investors are the Korean Republic, Japan, and Singapore. Henceforth, more

and more English-speaking foreign businesses have come to invest in projects in Vietnam

and bring the need for teaching English as intercultural communication language to a more

significant level. Experiencing the accelerating speed of development, English remains not

only the most preferred foreign language for learning and teaching but also the gatekeeping

tool in the societal context where English proficiency serves as a golden ticket for education

and career. This results in an unprecedented need for English thus creates a hefty power

surge in terms of the number of teachers and centres of English. Nonetheless, the previous

existing yet unarguably low-standard English teaching in Vietnam is not likely to cope with

the fast process of globalisation and cease to serve the demands being made on. In light of

this alarming situation, Decree No. 14/2001 TC-TTg was issued to call for the Renovation

of Vietnamese General Education Curriculum, thus specifically adjusted the requirements

and the tasks of Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). In the case of English, the

aims of Vietnam’s English language teaching are: providing students with the ability of

using English as a mean of communication; a general knowledge on English phonetics,

grammar and vocabulary; and understanding the native culture as well as promoting

Vietnam’s sociocultural roots.

A further effort to promote the study of English and to improve English learning and

teaching standards to contend with the globalisation and international interdependency

movement has been made with the issue of Decision No. 1400/QD-TTg on Approving the

10-year National Plan for “Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National

Formal Educational System in the Period of 2008 – 2020” (MOET). The three-phase plan

has three distinctive goals: developing and perfecting foreign language curriculum;

introducing 10-year curriculum for all levels of the general education system; and

developing intensive foreign language programmes for other education levels while

perfecting the aforementioned 10-year curriculum. Concerning tertiary education, the Plan

also establishes the 6-level testing system of Vietnamese Standardised Test of English

Proficiency (VSTEP) based on the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages (CEFR) as the standard for assessing language proficiency for students as well

as encourages the creation of bilingual programmes. The current situation of English

language teaching and learning in higher education context of Vietnam will be the primary

concern in the following sections.

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1.1.2 English in Tertiary Education Level in Vietnam

In Vietnamese higher education context, English is introduced as both a major and as a

subject. In the former, students will be trained to get a BA, an MA and even a doctoral

degree in English. Available careers for students in this major are teachers, translators or

interpreters, or researchers (English Linguistics or Language teaching methodology). There

exist many tertiary institutes that offer these courses nationwide, especially those with

foreign languages, pedagogy, social sciences, and humane orientations. Notably, Ho Chi

Minh City Open University is among the very first tertiary institutes to provide doctoral

degrees in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in this metropolitan

city.

In the latter, English receives the status of a compulsory subject applied to the majority of

majors of the higher education system in Vietnam. Research conducted in 2008 revealed

that English was dominant compared to the four other major foreign languages being taught

in the tertiary education system, namely Russian, Chinese, French, and German. (Hoang,

2011). Similarly, teaching and learning English at this level receive a further boost as the

government has encouraged the establishment of courses referred to as ‘advanced

programmes’ which involve English as the medium of instruction. Using English as the

medium of instruction on fundamental science subjects taught in senior years are also

suggested, especially at the two national universities (Hanoi National University and Ho

Chi Minh City National University). Regarding the use of English as a medium of

instruction at higher education institutions in Vietnam, Le (2012) in The Journal of Asia

TEFL considered it a positive movement. However, due to institutional inertia and

complicated mechanism existing for ages, without proper planning and specified strategies

for implementing at micro levels, the project is prone to the risk of total collapse. The reality

of failure was journalised in Hamid (2013) paper, which recorded that implementation is

“fraught with difficulties and challenges” while examining ten of Asian countries.

The seven main problems experienced by instructors in teaching English in Vietnam

context was suggested in Hoang’s (2011) paper, namely:

1. The inadequate human force working in the field of teaching English for the

population

2. Obsolete currently existing learning materials for English curricula in the modern

context

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3. Incompetent English teaching personnel in the context of integration and

globalisation

4. The unrewarding income of English teaching personnel, ill-suited classrooms, out￾of-date equipment, and insufficient learning hours

5. Emphasising reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar structures instead

of promoting communication due to the faults of teaching methodology

6. The differences between testing and teaching in Vietnam compared to the NNSs

model

7. The fear of losing national identity resulting in protest on the early introduction of

English into primary schools in Vietnam

The given problems were previously recognised by Pham (1999) and reported in Hanoi

Partnership & Interaction in Language & Development International Conference with focus

on the lack of flexibility, adaptability and linkage in the curriculum, while Le (1999) in the

same conference, also suggested to culturally attuned the curriculum to make the courses

effective in Vietnam context. Le (2012) agreed with previous views of Kaplan and Baldauf

(1997) that sociolinguistic surveys are much needed to determine the community attitudes

towards language teaching, instructors, the target language, and also curriculum and

materials.

As the main focus of the thesis is higher education context, the fear of early introduction of

English in primary schools is out of concern. Moreover, the need for applying the cultural

preferences of Vietnam into the curriculum also counters the loss of national identity.

Similarly, with the rise of potent English programmes issued in the previous period, the

number of lecturers explodes, and the quality of personnel working in the field is gradually

improved; therefore, these problems are no longer the main concern in a practical setting.

On the other hand, the income of the lecturers, despite being an alarming concern, is

inappropriate to be included concerning assessing the teaching programme, the curriculum,

and the specific course in a broader sense. With this view in mind, the author recognises

the main concern being addressed in this paper is the validation of course and learning

materials.

Therefore, the author suggests a pivotal set of problems that hereafter serves as issue to be

countered in the main approach of this paper:

1. Obsolete currently existing learning materials for English curricula in modern

context