An investigation into using american movies in motivating 11th form english gifted students at lam son gifted high school - Thanh hoa province to understand american culture

ABSTRACT
The importance of American culture is undeniable in English language. Therefore, investigating new ways to motivate students to learn American culture is apparently necessary to gain effective English teaching and learning and using American movies in the process is not exception. 
This minor thesis was carried out with an investigation into using American movies in motivating 11th form English gifted students at Lam Son Gifted High School - Thanh Hoa province to understand American culture. 
The minor thesis is organized in 3 parts:
Part A: presents the rationale, aims and significance of the study, research questions, scope, method and design of the study.
Part B: consists of 4 chapters 
	The first chapter concentrates on the background of the study and the related literature reviews, on which the contents of the study are based.
	The second chapter focuses on developing the research methodology, in which the two questionnaires for 11th form English gifted students and teachers of English at Lam Son Gifted High School are chosen as main instruments.
	The third chapter is to present the data collected from the two questionnaires and to analyze the data. 
	The fourth chapter aims at discussing the findings on how to use American movies in English class as the best solutions in the hope to motivate 11th form English gifted students to understand American culture.
Part C: summaries the study and offers some suggestions for further study.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LSGHS: Lam Son Gifted High School.
AE: Advanced English
BA: Basic English.
ESL: English as a Second Language
EFL: English as a foreign language
LIST OF TABLES
Figure 1: Students’ awareness of having an understanding of American 
Culture	20
Figure 2: Students’ awareness of the importance of American culture	21
Figure 3: Students’ awareness of learning American culture	21
Figure 4: How interesting?	22
Figure 5: How difficult ?	22
Figure 6: Students’ opinions on finding out more about American culture	23
Figure 7: Students’ opinions about the methods of using American movies 	23
Figure 8: Students’ opinions about using American movies in English class	24
Figure 9: Students’ participation in American movies	25
Figure 10: Students’ feeling on American movies	25
TABLE OF CONTENTS
	 Page
ABSTRACT	i
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS	ii
LIST OF TABLES	iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS	iv
PART A: INTRODUCTION	1
1. Rationale	2
2. Aims of the study	2
3. Scope of the study	2
4. Methodology	2
5. Structure of the study	3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT	4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW	4
1.1. Culture and American culture	4
1.2. The role of the culture in language teaching and learning?	5
1.3. The role of movies in teaching and learning culture6
1.4. Previous studies on the use of movies in English teaching process	7
1.5. The use of cultural artifacts in teaching culture: Movies as cultural artifacts	8
1.6. What is motivation?	9
1.7. Relationships between teaching culture and students' motivation	10
1.8. Criteria to choose movies	11
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY	13
2.1. The setting of the study	13
2.1.1. English teaching and learning situation at Lam Son Gifted High School	 13
2.1.2. English teaching staff 	13
2.1.3. English gifted students 	13
2.1.4. The 11th form English gifted students	13
2.2. Research methodology	14
2.2.1. Research questions	14
2.2.2. Research design	14
2.2.3. Participants	14
2.2.3.1. The subjects	14
2.2.3.2. The participants	15
2.3. Data collection instrument	15
2.3.1. Questionnaire 	15
2.3.1.1. Questionnaire for the students	15
2.3.1.2. Questionnaire for the teachers	16
2.3.2. Classroom observations	16
2.4. Data collection procedures	16
2.5. Data analysis	17
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS	18
3.1. Results	18
3.1.1. The 11th form English gifted students' motivation to understand American culture 	18
3.1.1.1. Students’ awareness of learning American culture	18
3.1.1.2. Students’ awareness of the necessity and importance of American culture19
3.1.2. Students’ perception of the use of American movies in English 
lessons	20
3.1.3. Challenges	23
3.2. Conclusion of the chapter 3	25
CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS ON USING AMERICAN MOVIES IN MOTIVATING 11TH ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT LAM SON GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL TO UNDERSTAND AMERICAN CULTURE	27
4.1. Providing students with a full awareness of the importance of American culture	27
4.2. Improving students’ background knowledge of American culture and Cross-cultural Communication	28
4.3. How to use American movies in English lessons	30
4.4. How to motivate 11th English gifted students to understand American culture through American movies	32
4.5. Conclusion of the chapter 4	33
PART C: CONCLUSION	35
3.1. Conclusion	35
3.2. Limitations of the study	36
3.3. Suggestions for further study	36
REFERENCES	37
APPENDICES	I
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Foreign language learning is comprised of several components, including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards one’s own or another culture. For scholars and laymen alike, cultural competence, i.e., the knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country, is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning, and many teachers have seen it as their goal to incorporate the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum. 
 	 In Vietnam, in recent years, English as a foreign language has gained considerable attention. It has become a compulsory subject in the syllabus of many schools, colleges and universities. However, the fact is that the combination of culture and English teaching-learning process has not been effective yet, especially that in gifted high schools like Lam Son Gifted High School- Thanh Hoa province. There are still many English gifted students who have low motivation in learning English and cannot understand English-American culture.
As a teacher of English at Lam Son Gifted High School, the researcher is concerned about the teaching methods to promote her students' motivation in learning English and understanding American culture. She also realizes that movie is the product of a series of modern technology, containing elements of art, language and culture, so movies can be viewed as a useful tool for teaching and learning culture. Language and culture are two factors that cannot be separated. In order to learn a foreign language, we have to learn the culture along with perceiving the language. Among English – speaking countries, American culture is more abundant than other cultures in England, Canada.. Thus, the researcher decided to introduce American culture to 11th form English gifted students through the American movies presented in English class at Lam Son Gifted High School. Also, among different teaching methods, using American movies into the lessons is considered a method that is worth trying and investigating. 
2. Aims of the study
 	 The purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of using American movies in lessons to promote 11th form English gifted students at Lam Son Gifted High School - Thanh Hoa province to learn and understand American culture. 
3. Scope of the study
	Although there are many different ways to motivate students to learn English and to understand American culture, they cannot be fully covered in the scope of a thesis. Due to the word limit and the time frame of the study, the researcher only focused on investigating the use of American movies as a way of motivating 11th form English gifted students to understand American culture at Lam Son Gifted High School. Besides, the target subjects that the study investigated were 40 students from 02 classes of grade 11 at this school.
4. Methodology
	This study was intended to be conducted as an action research study. In this action research, the researcher used some different methods based on study quantitative and qualitative approaches: a survey questionnaire for students, a survey questionnaire for teachers of English and classroom observations.
5. Structure of the thesis
The thesis is divided into three parts: the introduction, the development, and the conclusion
Part A: Introduction – presents the basic information including rationale, aims, significance, research methods, scope, and the structure of the thesis.
Part B: Development – consists of three chapters.
 Chapter 1: Literature Review – provides the literature concerning motivation in second language learning, culture and the role of the culture in language teaching and learning, the relationship between teaching culture and students’ motivation
 Chapter 2: The study – reports the setting, the research hypothesis, participants, instruments, data collection procedure and analysis. The detailed results of the surveys and a critical comprehensive analysis on the data collected are also presented in this chapter.
 Chapter 3: Findings – shows major findings and discussions and offers recommendations for motivating students to understand American culture through using American movies in English lessons.
Chapter 4: Implications on using American movies in motivating 11th English gifted students at Lam Son gifted high school to understand American culture.
Part C: Conclusion – is a summary of the study in which conclusions of the study are presented. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are also presented in this part.
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Culture and American culture	
Why is incorporating culture in an ESL/EFL classroom inevitable? There are at least three fundamental reasons we can put forth to answer this question. First, culture and language are inseparable. Politzer, (as cited in Brooks, 1968) points out: 
As language teachers we must be interested in the study of culture not because we necessarily want to teach the culture of the other country, but because we have to teach it. If we teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning; for unless he is warned, unless he receives cultural instruction, he will associate American concepts or objects with the foreign symbols (p. 85-86).
Concurrent with that, Brown (1994) emphasizes “ a language is a part of culture and a culture is a part of a language. The two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture” (p. 164). Hence, it is natural to talk about culture when we talk about language and language teaching. 
American history began with waves of immigrants, bringing their own cultures and traditions to a vast new country. The trend of American culture is toward multiculturalism, not assimilation because immigrant populations within the United States are not being blended together but rather they are transforming American Society into a truly multicultural mosaic. Today, the American mosaic is one of different cultures and regional identities, each with unique characteristics and flavors. 
1.2. The role of culture in foreign language teaching 
Language is a part of culture, and it plays a very important role in the development of the culture. Some sociologists consider it as the keystone of culture. They believe, without language, culture would not be available. At the same time, language is influenced and shaped by culture, reflecting culture. Therefore, culture plays a very important part in language teaching, which is widely acknowledged by English teaching circle. Since the 1960s, studies of Hammerly (1982) were conducted to demonstrate the close relationship between language learning and the perception of national cultural development that language was born. In summary, the reference literature shows that the language and culture cannot be separated. The learner must learn and induce culture of the language.
Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistics competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that language (Kramsch, 1993; Krasner, 1999). Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
In many regards, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the culture features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied. For example, there are different terms of address, depending on his/her age, gender, and degree of intimacy between the person addressed and the speaker. The usage of the correct term of address is important in Indonesian culture and society. Learning the vocabulary without knowing the cultural background of the usage might bring hiccups in communication.
In addition, students should be aware of the culture differences between their own culture and that of the target culture. Without this knowledge, awkward situations may arise. In Indonesian culture, for example, it seems to be impolite and arrogant if one stands with arms akimbo. Learning the body language and gestures is important to avoid any misunderstanding. Byram (1989) placed ‘cultural studies’ at the core of foreign language learning and proposes a model of four related parts, namely language learning, language awareness, cultural experience, and cultural awareness (p.64). Byram and Morgan (1994) stated that cultural learning has to take place as an integral parts of language learning and vice versa (p.97).
As mentioned above, culture is an integral part of foreign language teaching. Culture plays an important role towards the goal of "communicative competence" for the school. In the process of foreign language teaching, incorporating cultural elements into lessons is very important. Understanding these cultural factors help learners acquire a foreign language and communicate in it effectively. The language learning targets not only knowing what, that is knowing the contents contained in these words, but more importantly, understand the deep meaning of the contents of such information. 
1.3. The role of movies in teaching and learning culture
If students do not have the chance to experience the culture in the target country, one of the ways to teach culture to them is by asking them to watch movies of the target culture. In his book “Movie and Television in Education,” Robert Watson (1990, p.3.) stated, “the culture provided by all the mass media, but particularly by movie and television, represents the most significant environmental factor that teachers have to take into account.” 
Groves (1996, p.18), in his book “Movie in Higher Education and Research”, wrote that movies represent one group in a whole ‘family’ of modern mechanical aids to learning. A movie is a means of expression, a language and an art, based on modern technology. By watching movies, not only are the students’ understandings of the target culture enhanced, but also their interest in other fields of the target culture is nurtured. Groves quoted Thorold (1964, p. 12) on the result of his experiment, “it was only while exploring the extent of cinema that the use of movies to enhance language learning and cultural understanding that we found students discussing the range of interests, historical, philosophical, linguistic, psychological, sociological, geographical, architectural aspects that could be found in one movie.” 
In other words, movie is also an instrument for research. Knowing the advantages of using movies to teach culture, and the entertainment value movies can bring to students’ learning, the researcher believes movies will bring good impact to students’ process of learning. Thus, movies should be incorporated into the language class to motivate students’ interest in learning, to make lessons more interesting and to nurture students’ understanding of the target culture. 
 1.4. Previous studies on the use of movies in English teaching process
	Many scholars have revealed that movies used in EFL classroom can become an important part of the curriculum. They have also found that movies catch the learners’ interest and they can positively affect their motivation to learn (Kusumarasdyati, 2004; Luo, 2004). 
Luo (2004, p. 23) in his study examined the influence of DVD movies on students’ listening comprehension. The final results of the statistical analyses indicated that student’s listening skill “did improve” through the instruction of using DVD movies in a motivating learning environment with “lower level of anxiety” after a whole school year (Luo, 2004, p.43).
	Herron and Seay (1991, p. 62) conducted research on using videos in teaching listening comprehension for EFL students. The study has provided evidence that the experimental group performed significantly better on the final tests of listening comprehension with both the video and the audio than did the control group in which no strategy training occurred.
As a culture educator, the teacher plays a vital role in choosing the appropriate movies and preparing class activities after students have watched the movies. 
1.5. The use of cultural artifacts in teaching culture: Movies as cultural artifacts
The use of aspects of popular culture in the classroom, in a variety of forms, is one way to foster student understanding and long-term memory (Mc William, 2008, p.82). Popular culture artifacts can be used as teaching aids in a variety of forms. As well as movies, other examples of popular culture used as teaching aids are comics, cartoon, music, and television shows (Marshall, 2002, p.77). As an example, clipping a relevant comic strip from the Sunday paper and using it at the start of class is one way to get students’ attention and move into a topic. Movie clips can be used in this way, even if they represent the opposite of what is being taught.
The notion of popular culture artifact usage is nothing new to educational methods. However, as stated by, Petracca and Sorapure (2009, p. 102), popular culture is difficult to define, yet easy to identify, and is something that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. They identified popular culture, also referred to as “common culture”, as a conceptual category representing a commonly used term that though readily used, holds different meanings to different individuals. Such defining points generally depend on the context of use.
Popular culture artifacts, including movies, may be one of the most commanding teaching aids at educators’ disposal (Petracca & Sorapure, 2009, p.14). Movies are part of society’s social fabric. They illustrate, although not always accurately, history, social movements and other facets of culture (Turner, 1999, p.45).
Movies are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Movie is considered to be an important art form, a source popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating. The visual element of cinema gives motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some movies have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue.
1.6. What is motivation? 
Motivation has been differently defined from various perspectives