THE AFFORDANCES OF THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM APPROACH IN EFL TEACHING

1. VIRTUAL PRESENTATION THE AFFORDANCES OF THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM APPROACH IN EFL TEACHING NGUYEN HUU ANH VUONG August2019

2. INTRODUCTION • Recently, Viet Nam has been striving to boost the English language education for increasing EFL proficiency among Vietnamese people. • EFL teachers are encouraged to employ new and innovative pedagogical methods and ICT to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

3. CURRENT ISSUES OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION IN VIETNAM • Grammar teaching focuses more on language knowledge than language use. • Teachers often work as controllers and knowledge providers whereas students act passively without participating in communicative activities in pairs or in groups. • Students often feel bored with the traditional grammar lessons. • Other issues includes insufficient time, large-sized classes, grammar-based examinations, etc.

4. FLIPPED CLASSROOM The Flipped Classroom Model Source: Baker (2000)

5. FLIPPED CLASSROOM • Flipped classroom approach has received much attention from teachers of different subjects around the world. In the area of language education, flipped classroom demonstrates its promising success although not many studies on its implementation in the field have been found. • This new pedagogical model has been reported to be a potential method in the area of EFL teaching. • In Viet Nam, flipped classroom is still relatively new but started to be mentioned and discussed by some researchers a few years ago.

6. CHARACTERISTICS (1) the educational process transforms students from passive to active learners; (2) technology facilitates the approach; (3) class time and traditional homework time are inverted so that homework is done first; (4) content is given in real-world context; (5) class activities engage students in higher order of critical thinking and problem solving or help them grasp particularly challenging concepts.

7. BENEFITS • Improve students’ learning outcomes • Give more class time for active learning activities • Change teacher-centered to student-centered learning environment • Increase teacher-student and student-student interactions • Develop generic skills • Enable students to learn at their own pace, to personalize and individualize their learning, to enhance their engagement and learning ownership, to develop reflective abilities, etc.

8. AIM OF THE STUDY • Identify the affordances of the flipped classroom in order to help language teachers harness the teaching approach to enhance their students’ learning.

9. RESEARCH QUESTION • What are the affordances perceived by the students when learning English grammar in a flipped classroom?

10. RESEARCH DESIGN • A qualitative case study design was employed using semi-structured interviews to collect the research data.

11. RESEARCH SITE • The University of Foreign Language Studies (UFLS) – The University of Da Nang • An institutional member of the University of Da Nang (UD), one of the five leading national and regional universities in Viet Nam • UFLS hosts over 6,000 students in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

12. PARTICIPANTS • 34 university EFL students of University of Foreign Language Studies – UD in Viet Nam • Second-year students of the Department of English who were pursuing their four-year BA program in English language • They were completely new to the flipped classroom teaching approach.

13. INSTRUMENT Semi-structured interviews -> Explore the affordances of the flipped classroom teaching approach in the English grammar course. The interviews enabled the students to express their opinions, reflect and expand on the responses and “elaborate on the issues raised in an exploratory manner” (Dornyei, 2007, p. 136) The interview schedule was prepared during Week 14 and 15. Ten participants were randomly selected from the experiment group to join the interviews. In average, 30 minutes was spent on each.

14. RESEARCH PROCEDURE • In Week 1: • give a brief introduction about the research project • deliver the consent form • In Week 2: • give a brief introduction about the flipped classroom approach • instruct how to use the online platform • From Week 3 through Week 12 • deliver the course’s grammar section to the students • In Week 13 & 14: • conduct semi-structured interviews

15. DATA ANALYSIS • Thematic analysis was done to the transcripts of the semi-structured interviews. • Follow six phases of thematic analysis (Marshall and Rossman, 1999): • organise the data • generate categories or themes • code the data • test emergent understandings of the data • search for alternative explanations of the data • write-up the data analysis

16. ACTIVITY THEORY as A GUIDING FRAMEWORK for DATA ANALYSIS Figure 1: Activity Triangle Model of the English Grammar Flipped Classroom

17. FINDINGS Figure 2: Summary of Affordances Perceived by the Students

18. DISCUSSIONS Five themes about the affordances emerged under the mediator of mediating artefacts. • Being self-paced in learning -> consistent with similar findings in the literature (Başal, 2015; Davies et al., 2013; Riendeau, 2012); especially useful and beneficial for slow students who can re-visit the digital lectures to fully acquire the learning content (Mok, 2014; Musib, 2014). • Studying the course content flexibly -> satisfy the needs of “digital native” students who are used to computers, tablets or smartphones (Goodwin & Miller, 2013); benefit the absent students who cannot attend the face-to-face class (Halili & Zainuddin, 2015; Herreid & Schiller, 2013). • Mastering grammatical rules beforehand to be well-prepared for in-class communicative activities -> offer a good learning environment for students to learn grammatical rules in advance so that they can practice what have been learned in communicative activities during class time (Thaichay & Sitthitikul, 2016). • Offering opportunities to voice opinions in learning -> learn from each other to advance English grammar. • Helping address the issue of large sized classes -> particularly suitable and beneficial for the Vietnamese context; address the issue of big class size which is fairly common in English classes in Vietnam.

19. DISCUSSIONS Under the category of rules, four themes about the affordances were pinpointed. • Reinforcing and deepening grammar knowledge -> Similar findings by Riendeau (2012) revealed that the students were given more chance to clarify and deepen what they have learned. • Saving time for in-class communicative activities -> a favorable condition for teaching English grammar communicatively. Similar results (Al-Harbi & Alshumaimeri, 2016; Hung, 2015; Kang, 2015) indicated that the flipped English classroom offers more class time for active learning activities. • Facilitating learning English grammar communicatively -> this approach provides an excellent learning environment for communicative grammar instruction; help address different challenges which may hinder the successful implementation of CLT in English grammar instruction (Hong Th Nguyen et al., 2014). • Fostering learning autonomy -> This finding corresponds with positive findings by Driscoll & Petty (2014) and Han (2015).

20. DISCUSSIONS In relation to the community in the flipped classroom, the students stated that the approach facilitated mutual learning. • Facilitating mutual learning -> The students have more chance to discuss and share ideas related to the lesson content with their peers and their instructor. Therefore, they can learn from each other to achieve a higher level of understanding of the grammar knowledge.

21. DISCUSSIONS The final affordances of the flipped classroom as perceived by the students in terms of labor division include the increase of their activeness in learning and the promotion of student-centered learning environment. • Increasing students’ activeness in learning -> The finding of this study supports the view by Saulnier (2008) when he stated that the students would become more active in their learning process in the flipped classroom. • Promoting student-centered learning environment -> The students will then become more independent learners and better at taking advantage of ICT technology and Internet in learning. What’s more, they will develop their learning autonomy when they are put more responsibility for their learning path. As a result, the students will be well-prepared for becoming life-long learners with 21st century skills. 

22. IMPLICATION Figure 3: A framework for teaching English grammar communicatively using flipped classroom

23. CONCLUSION The structure of the flipped classroom has brought about numerous affordances as perceived by the students and contributed to its effectiveness in increasing their learning outcomes and motivation. Greater understanding of the affordances of the flipped teaching model may lead to more control and accountability for the successful implementation of the pedagogical approach in English grammar instruction.

24. REFERENCE Al-Harbi, S. S., & Alshumaimeri, Y. A. (2016). The flipped classroom impact in grammar class on EFL Saudi secondary school students’ performances and attitudes. English Language Teaching, 9(10), 60–80. Başal, A. (2015). The implementation of a flipped classroom in foreign language teaching. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 16(4), 28–37. Davies, R. S., Dean, D. L., & Ball, N. (2013). Flipping the classroom and instructional technology integration in a college-level information systems spreadsheet course. Educational Technology Research and Development, 61(4), 563–580. Driscoll, T., & Petty, K. (2014). Student-driven education with flipped learning & 20-time. In L. Kyei-Blankson & E. Ntuli (Eds.), Practical applications & experiences in K-20 blended learning environments (pp. 120–136). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Goodwin, B., & Miller, K. (2013). Research says evidence on flipped classrooms is still coming in. Educational Leadership, 70(6), 78–80. Halili, S., & Zainuddin, Z. (2015). Flipping the classroom: What we know & what we don’t. The Online Journal of Distance Education & E-Learning, 3(1), 15–22. Han, Y. J. (2015). Successfully flipping the ESL classroom for learner autonomy. NYS TESOL Journal, 2(1), 98–109. Herreid, F., & Schiller, N. (2013). Case studies and the flipped classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 62–66.

25. REFERENCE Hung, H.-T. (2015). Flipping the classroom for English language learners to foster active learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 28(1), 81–96. Kang, N. (2015). The comparison between regular and flipped classrooms for EFL Korean adult learners. Multimedia-Assisted Language Learnin, 18(3), 41–72. Mok, H. N. (2014). Teaching tips: The flipped classroom. Journal of Information Systems Education, 25(1), 7–11. Musib, M. K. (2014). Student perceptions of the impact of using the flipped classroom approach for an introductory-level multidisciplinary module. CDTL Brief, 17(2), 15–20. Riendeau, D. (2012). Flipping the Classroom. The Physics Teacher, 50(8), 507–507. Saulnier, B. M. (2008). From “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” revisited: (Un)covering the content in the learner-centered information systems course. Information Systems Education Journal, 25(1–9). Thaichay, T., & Sitthitikul, P. (2016). Effects of the flipped classroom instruction on language accuracy and learning environment: A case study of Thai EFL Upper-secondary school students. Rangsit Journal of Educational Studies, 3(2), 35–64.

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