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THESIS DEFENSE

Topic: Representation of the theme “Future" in new English textbooks for Vietnamese high school students

METHODOLOGY

​INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE REVIEW

​CONCLUSION

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION

Student: Chu Thành Đạt

Class: QH2018.F.1.E2.SP.CLC

English language:

- Compulsory in the formal education system in Vietnam

- Increasing number of universities accept twelfth-graders with internationally recognized English certificates

English language textbooks:

- Sheldon (1988): “the visible heart of ELT program"

- Language teachers' perspectives:

  • Stern & Roseman (2004): “topics and ideas taught in classrooms" & the manner of knowledge transmission

- Language learners' perspectives:

  • Nguyen (2007): Students without textbooks lose focus & dependent on teachers

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

Interpersonal

meaning

Ideational

meaning

Textual

meaning

(processes, participants, circumstances)

=> Textbook developers' opinions, viewpoints, attitudes

4 main themes in the high school level:

  • OUR LIFE

  • OUR SOCIETY

  • OUR ENVIRONMENT

  • OUR FUTURE

Dispatch No. 32/2018/TT-BGDĐT by the Ministry of Education & Training

Representation of familiar themes (gender, culture, family): Jati (2016); Moecharam & Syifa (2017); Cahyati (2019); Maya (2020), etc

Research aim:

Investigating the linguistic representation of the theme “Future" in the series of new English textbooks for Vietnamese high school students from the SFL perspective, specifically through the lens of transitivity system

Research question:

How is the theme “Future” linguistically represented through the transitivity system of new English textbooks for Vietnamese high school students?

Scope of the study

Framework

Data corpus

All the texts that fall into units belonging to the theme “Future” in six new English textbooks

+ Transitivity system (representing experiential meaning)

+ Logical meaning was not addressed

Significance of the study

Practice

Theory

Existing body of literature on the analysis of textbooks

+ Curriculum developers/designers of English textbooks

+ English language teachers at high schools in Vietnam

Literature Review

SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS (SFL)

- Developed by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s

- investigates the relationship between grammatical structures and its communicative functions in different social situations

Textual meaning (Mode) - sees clause as a message

Interpersonal meaning (Tenor) - sees clause as an exchange

Ideational meaning (Field) - sees clause as a representation

EXPERIENTIAL MEANING

- Convey our thoughts, ideas, experiences about what is currently occurring in the world

- Realized through the transitivity system consisting of three basic elements (namely process, participant, and circumstance);

Material - physical actions happening outside human beings

Mental - actions happening within the internal human minds

Relational - the state of being (or having); the targeted participant is given a particular identity or description

Verbal - the internal minds through physical actions

Behavioral - human physiological and psychological behaviors

Existential - the presence, the existence of something in the real world.

EXPERIENTIAL MEANING

- The number and classification of participants in the transitivity system are determined by the process of that clause

- Halliday and Matthiessen (2014): No matter what type of clause is, it should include at least one participant

EXPERIENTIAL MEANING

Extent: how far, how long, how many times

Location: where, when

Manner: how, what like, how much

Cause: what for, who for, why

Contingency: why

Accompaniment: who with, what with

Role: what as, what into

Matter: what about

Angle: according to what/whom

ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS IN VIETNAM

​English textbooks

​English textbooks for Vietnamese

Vu and Thuy (2020): Textbooks are written under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and Training

The replacement of old 7-year series of English textbooks with new 10-year series of English textbooks.

Similarities and differences are detected between the series for secondary students and that for high school ones regarding the organization within the structure of one

unit.

Cunningsworth (1995): an effective resource for self-directed learning, an effective source of presentation of materials, a source of ideas and activities”

Bhatia (1998): an effective written means to make “accessible established knowledge in a

particular discipline to those readers who are being initiated into a specific disciplinary culture"

General: a set of formal instructional materials presenting knowledge in a systematic manner serving for a variety of educational purposes

REVIEW OF PREVIOUS RELATED STUDIES

A variety of textbook types:

- Vietnamese science textbooks: Van Van Hoang (2018)

- English textbooks: A variety of reading text types:

  • Recount texts: Rahayu, S. H. & Efransyah (2020)

  • Descriptive texts: Rohmat, N., Nurhaeni & Anggraeni, A. (2018)

  • Narrative texts: Marhamah, A. & Mukhaiyar (2018); Mulyanti, W. & Wati, S. (2022)

Theme representation: “Gender" emerges as one of the most extensively researched theme

  • Rais & Amir (2017): A Transitivity Analysis of Gender Representation in the Narrative Texts in English Textbooks for Junior High School.
  • Siregar, F. L., Henni & Comara, S. (2021): The representation of gender in a textbook entitled “When English Rings A Bell”

Data description

Data description

Overview:

+ Products of National Foreign Languages Project

+ Including six textbooks (starting from English 10 to English 12)

+ Each textbook: five units

+ Each unit: Five main parts (Getting Started, Language, Skill, Communication and Culture, Looking Back & Project)

Presenting data

Data collection

PROCEDURES

Listing the topics related to the theme “Future”

Skimming through the content of all targeted textbooks

Choosing the relevant units

Categorizing the units into main sub-themes under the overall theme “Future"

CHOSEN UNITS

English 11 – Unit 7 (Further Education)

English 11 – Unit 9 (Cities of the Future)

English 11 – Unit 10 (Healthy & Longevity)

English 12 – Unit 7 (Artificial Intelligence)

English 12 – Unit 8 (The world of work)

English 12 – Unit 9 (Choosing a career)

English 12 – Unit 10 (Lifelong learning)

CHOSEN UNITS

The majority of units were quite easily recognized to be related to the target theme

Exceptional cases:

  • English 12 – Unit 7 (Artificial Intelligence) deals with how future technological advancements in the field of science may affect human’s lives in a comprehensive manner

  • English 12 – Unit 10 (Lifelong Learning) revolves around various ways people can still benefit from getting proper education and training in the future no matter how old they are and what jobs they do.

SELECTING TEXTS

Picking language texts from all the sections within one unit, but just the ones whose content revolves around the chosen theme.

Data analysis

RESEARCH DESIGN

Qualitative approach: detect types of processes, participants and circumstances

Quantitative approach: calculate the distribution of each element in every unit, as well as in the whole theme

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Halliday (1985)’s framework of systemic functional linguistics

PROCEDURES

Identify clauses and clauses complexes in the targeted language texts;

Select clauses to analyze its transitivity system

Analyze clauses concerning the processes, participants and circumstances.

Count how many times each type of processes, participants and circumstances appears overall, as well as in sub-themes;

Conclude about the general trends of using processes, participants and circumstances concerning the theme “Future"

Draw out the textbook developers' implications for the representation of the theme

Overall findings

5 main sub-themes

  • Education in the future
  • Cities in the future
  • Health & Longevity
  • Science in the future
  • Career in the future

Overall findings (Processes)

- Material & Relational: the two most common processes

- Behavioral: the least popular process (the only process that lacks the presence of all six process types in the transitivity system)

- Clauses are most commonly distributed in three sections: Getting Started, Listening, Communication

Overall findings (Circumstances)

- Location: the most commonly found type of circumstance (found most in Communication, Listening, Getting Started, Reading)

- Manner & Cause: the second & third prevalent

- Matter & Angle: the least commonly identified (only found in one section)

Sub-theme 1: Education in the future

Processes:

- Material: the most dominant

- Relational & Mental: the second most popular (with the dominance of attributive & cognitive clauses)

- Behavioral: the least commonly found

Participants:

- Material: Actor & Goal are two most popular types (Actor > Goal), low frequency of Range, Beneficiary, Recipient

- Verbal: Low frequency of Receiver & Target (besides the basic elements)

Sub-theme 1: Education in the future

Representation of the sub-theme:

- The dominance of Material process => High school and university students’ observable daily activities

- The high percentage of the participant “Actor” and Active Voice => Students are depicted as active participants in academic settings

- The utilization of positive adjectives & Factitive participants => The further education for Vietnamese high school students is expected to be futuristic

- The great number of cognitive mental clauses => Vietnamese high school students should contemplate before making their critical decisions

Sub-theme 2: Cities in the future

Processes:

- Material: the most dominant

- Relational & Mental: the second most popular (with the dominance of attributive & cognitive clauses)

- Behavioral: the least commonly found

Participants:

- Material: Actor & Goal are two most popular types (Goal > Actor), low frequency of Range & Beneficiary

- Behavioral: Behaver (the main one) & Range (the optional one)

Sub-theme 2: Cities in the future

Representation of the sub-theme:

- The outnumbering of Goal when compared with Actor => Changes and developments to the cities are the central concerns

- The appearance of Goal in various life aspects => Transformations to the cities in the future exert considerable influences on various critical life aspects

- The outnumbering of positive adjectives when compared with less positive ones => A positive futuristic scene of cities in the future rather than investigating the negative sides of developments.

Sub-theme 3: Health & Longevity

Processes:

- Material: the most dominant

- Relational: the second most popular (with the dominance of attributive clauses)

- Mental: the third most prevalent (the number of four sub-types is nearly equal)

- Existential & Behavioral: the least commonly found

Participants:

- Material: Actor & Goal are two most popular types (Actor > Goal), low frequency of Range & Beneficiary

- Verbal: Occasional presence of Receiver (besides Sayer and Verbiage)

Sub-theme 3: Health & Longevity

Representation of the sub-theme:

- The dominance of Material process (around frequent habits of eating, drinking, exercising) => People, especially students, should pay attention to physical and detectable changes to our bodies rather than complex transformations that happen within the internal organs

- The equal distribution of four sub-types of mental process => What we think or believe about changes to our bodies, and how we sense and react to rising demands for adjusting unhealthy behaviors are both crucially important

- The pretty high frequency of certain verbs (advise, suggest) in Verbal process => Useful advice on a healthy lifestyle

Sub-theme 4: Science in the future

Processes:

- Material: the most dominant

- Relational: the second most popular (with the dominance of attributive clauses)

- Mental: the third most prevalent (3 out of 4 sub-types are detected with the highest number belonging to cognitive clauses)

- Verbal & Behavioral: the least commonly found

Participants:

- Material: Actor & Goal are two most popular types (Actor = Goal), low frequency of Range, Receiver & Beneficiary

- Hardly any supplementary participants are identified in other processes

Sub-theme 4: Science in the future

Representation of the sub-theme:

- The dominance of Material process => Scientific changes are generally external ones, and therefore, observable.

- The almost equal number of Actor & Goal, a large number of Actor referring to the world of developing science => An overwhelming development that it can gradually replace the role of humans

- The prevalent use of Circumstances of Location & certain circumstances of manner (globally, automatically, widely) => A high likelihood of people being gradually replaced by technological advances comprehensively

Sub-theme 5: Career in the future

Processes:

- Material: the most dominant

- Relational & Mental: the second most popular (with the dominance of attributive & cognitive clauses)

- Verbal & Behavioral: the least commonly found

Participants:

- Material: Actor & Goal are two most popular types (Actor > Goal), significant frequency of Range, frequent presence of Factitive

- Verbal: Sayer, Receiver & Verbiage

- Behavioral: Behaver & Range

Sub-theme 5: Career in the future

Representation of the sub-theme:

- The dominance of Material process & the use of certain factitives (“a good CV and a covering letter”, “work experience", "long reports", etc) => The journey to an ideal job in the future is not always easy

- The use of certain verbs (advise, tell, wish) in Verbal process => Mental support by their beloved parents and friends

- The outnumbering of positive adjectives when compared with negative ones & the mixture of both types within the theme => Irrespective of great difficulties, they still stand high chances of landing their most ideal jobs

OVERALL: The theme "Future"

Material process is always the most widely employed process

=> Similar to that of Moecharam and Syifa (2017), Rhayu and Efransyah (2020) and Mulyanti and Wati (2022)

=> Message: The future will undergo several transformations, most of which are perceived as physical and visible to humans

“Actor” is also significantly more popular than other sub-types

=> Message: Humans (especially students) play a key role in shaping the future of ourselves rather than getting controlled or overwhelmed by futuristic changes.

OVERALL: The theme "Future"

A significant difference in the number of Relational and Mental processes

=> Contradict the findings made by Jati (2016), Marhamah and Mukhaiyar (2018):

  • Mental and Relational processes regularly exchanged the second and third rank with each other;

  • The discrepancy was often not so great.

=> Message: Textbook writers prioritize the act of portraying the characteristics of humans and futuristic changes (so as to contrast the nature of changes with humans’ capabilities) over digging deeper into humans’ thoughts and perceptions.

OVERALL: The theme "Future"

OVERALL: Humans in general (and high school students in particular) are considered to be active future shapers in almost every aspect of their lives.

EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE: Vietnamese high school students, portrayed as competent and ready for the global trend of education, have been actively preparing for undergraduate and graduate studies.

CITIES IN THE FUTURE: Transformations of cities in the future subject of the seem to exert more positive impacts than harmful ones on people’s lives.

HEALTH & LONGEVITY: High school students should acknowledge the importance of a healthy lifestyle (either by themselves or be made to be fully aware by others) from which “unhealthy” daily routines are encouraged to adjust.

SCIENCE IN THE FUTURE: The advanced developments of science in the future are regarded as imminent threats to the existing human roles in a comprehensive manner.

CAREER IN THE FUTURE: Vietnamese high school students are perceived as active and passionate job seekers in the world of jobs in the future.

DRAWBACKS & SUGGESTIONS

Focusing on main clauses and ignoring hypotactic and embedded ones => Investigating all types of clauses

Examining the linguistic mode of the textbook without analyzing the visual one => Incorporating the investigation of multimodal modes of information

The possibility of minor mistakes despite careful analysis (not altering the overall outstanding trends or findings)

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