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SVTH: Nguyễn Thị Phương Thanh, Phan Lan Hương, Lê Thanh Hà, Đỗ Thị Thùy Linh GVHD: Nguyễn Phương Anh
SVTH: Nguyễn Thị Phương Thanh, Phan Lan Hương, Lê Thanh Hà, Đỗ Thị Thùy Linh GVHD: Nguyễn Phương Anh
QUAN HỆ QUA LẠI GIỮA GIAI ĐOẠN TẠO LẬP BỐI CẢNH VÀ SỰ
PHẢN HỒI CỦA NGƯỜI HỌC TIẾNG ANH NHƯ NGÔN NGỮ THỨ
HAI
SVTH: Nguyễn Thị Phương Thanh, Phan Lan Hương, Lê Thanh Hà, Đỗ Thị Thùy Linh
GVHD: Nguyễn Phương Anh
Tóm tắt
Tương tác là một phần không thể thiếu của việc học ngoại ngữ hiệu quả. Thông qua sự tương tác,
người học được khuyến khích đặt mình trong trạng thái phát triển tư duy, tập trung và thích học. Để
đạt được những điều này, người học cần được thỏa mãn các nhu cầu cơ bản về tâm lý của họ khi học,
bao gồm ý thức về năng lực, quyền tự chủ và sự liên quan. Cụ thể, họ cần được phát triển dưới sự hỗ
trợ của các bạn học và giáo viên để tự tạo lập niềm tin và tự quyết một cách tích cực. Bài nghiên cứu
này không chỉ bao gồm thông tin toàn diện liên quan đến tương tác, tương tác trong nhiệm vụ mà còn
tập trung nhiều hơn vào các yếu tố góp phần tạo nên “một sự khởi đầu tốt đẹp”: bối cảnh thực hiện
nhiệm vụ. Nghiên cứu này sẽ tổng hợp và phân tích các nghiên cứu trước đây về sự tương tác trong
nhiệm vụ và những mong muốn về mặt tinh thần của người học. Từ đó đưa ra các khuyến nghị tổng
thể về sự tham gia của người học ngôn ngữ để làm sáng tỏ các tiền động lực trong hệ tư tưởng chung
I. Introduction
Student engagement has long been the goal most teachers aim for when it comes to building
an ideal foreign language classroom in which students not only pay attention to teachers’
instructions and lectures but put considerable effort in constructing knowledge with peers and
teachers, preserve in the face of difficulty, self-regulate their behavior and emotions toward
goals and enjoy challenges and learning also (Klem & Connell, 2004; National Research
Council and the Institute of Medicine [NRC and IoM], 2004). Klem & Connell (2004) also
asserts that student engagement has a positive link with desired academic, social and
emotional learning outcomes. However, it is worth mentioning that although there is much
research about the importance of task engagement, little research has been conducted to
investigate the interconnection of incorporating the early stage of task engagement and L2
students’ response. Therefore, this research aims to not only offer an overview of task
engagement but also give an insight into their interaffectivity and propose some
recommendations as to how to construct an effective early stage of task engagement.
“Well begun is half done”, although the pre-stage of task engagement is significantly
important in preparing and predicting for challenging scenarios that may happen during the
engagement stage, there has been a limited number of studies on that case. Being a teacher as
well as a task-engagement organizer, acknowledging the importance of the early stage and
learning various ways to apply in this stage are highly encouraged. This study aims to provide
answers to the following questions:
What does task engagement involve?
How does task-engagement scene setting affect students’ response in task engagement?
What pre-actional factors affect students’ response in task engagement?
How to construct an effective early stage of task engagement?
Therefore, this paper will synthesize and analyze several previous papers about setting an
effective scene of task engagement in order to point out their strengths and weaknesses, then,
bring out some recommendations for further application.
Similarly, in 2003, Ellis lists several definitions of a “task” in his paper, but the majority of
them imply that a language-teaching activity must meet the four following characteristics to be
considered a “task” (Ellis, 2009, p 223):
Although the above definitions are differently worded, they all highlight that a task entails the
use of language where the learners' focus is on meaning or the outcome more than
grammatical form/structures. In other words, the meaningful outcome of a task is the highest
purpose that requires teachers or setters to pay more attention.
From the definitions of the “task” mentioned in the previous part and the above statement, it is
concluded that the main difference that helps distinguish a task from an exercise is: a task is
the activity that focuses more on the meaning and outcome while exercise is an activity that
focuses on linguistic mechanics and frequently employs out-of-context terminology. In the
same line, Ellis (2009) distinguished between “task” and “situational grammar exercise” with
the main point being that exercise is the activity to practice correct language than to monitor
messages seeking meaning and its objective is primarily the need for use of accurate language.
Hence, the term “activity” is much more broad and refers to any type of meaningful practice in
the class that includes students accomplishing anything related to the course's objectives which
will mainly decide whether it is a task or an exercise.
To apprehend the quality of “engagement”, Gao & Xuesong (2019) gave out that it refers to a
“multifaceted” or “multidimensional” construct in which participation is reflected in at least
three components: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. Researchers have different ideas
about what should be included in each component's content; however, a favorable one can be
from Linnenbrink and Pintrich (2003, as cited in Gao & Xuesong 2019) who recommended
that: behavioral engagement include elements like effort, perseverance, and instrumental help
seeking; The cognitive component should comprise strategy utilization, metacognitive
understanding, and self-regulation; The emotional encompasses interest, value, and affect.
With the three interdependence dimensions as mentioned, an engaging language task should
be considered in terms of its behavioral, emotional, and cognitive impacts, about their
relationship and level. Besides, synthesizing from many researchers, Stroud (2017, p 1-2)
provide four engagement dimensions: behavioral-“the amount and type of actual
participation”, cognitive-“how much mental effort learners are willing to make to complete the
task”, social-“how receptive learners are to their interlocutors during performance” and
emotional-“having positive or negative feelings towards the learning and towards others”. The
addition of social dimension here seems to be different from the previous one. However, they
are the same in some ways because Gao and Xuesong stated that social settings are necessary
for students’ engagement in cognition and effective dimension. It is the angles of view and
using purposes that determine whether researchers consider engagement as three or four
dimensions as above.
Engagement is highly valued in various fields which include language learning because of its
potential influence in moderating the learning and teaching process. Philp and Duchesne
(2016) has addressed the nature of learners’ task engagement inside the L2 environment and
emphasized the necessity of comprehending the contextual and social settings of task-
engagement. Similarly, Oga-Baldwin (2019, p 4) stated engagement is “perhaps one of the
most crucial steps in predicting how students succeed at languages in formal education
settings''. From that, the relationship between the task in the classroom and students’
engagement has been highly evaluated. It can be seen that the term task-engagement itself has
highlighted that engagement is task-specific and the task’s procedure and management will be
the key factor that determines learners’ engagement. Egbert (2020), based on a number of
research studies by various writers, stated that task-engagement is important not just since it
can allow learners to be more motivated and achieve their goals, but because when learners
engage in tasks, they will be much less likely to be disrupted by variables outside of the tasks.
Mohamadi (2017) argued “a task engagement” would be present with the tasks and doing
them without being held back by a lack of capacity to communicate meaning due to language-
barriers. Svalberg (2018) exposed a detailed manifestation of learners’ progress to identify
task engagement as verbal signals such as greater fluency, more common use of the target
language and less procedural discourse or para linguistically (better posture, firmer voice
quality) or present as less non-functional behaviors could be used to identify task-engagement.
A brief conclusion is that it is beneficial if the teacher can help students develop the
engagement by creating favorable task conditions.
With regard to preactional factors in task engagement affecting students’ engagement, Merce
(2019) points out a well-known theory that has been used frequently in relation to engagement
named Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Ryan and Deci, 2000). SDT highlights three core
psychological needs that are to promote learners’ willingness and engagement in their first
exposure to any learning opportunities, namely competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan
and Deci, 2000; Jang et al. 2012; Reeve 2012). Reeve & Halusic (2009) as cited in Reeve
(2012) asserts that vitalizing those needs which are considered inner motivational resources
are the key to boosting high-quality learner engagement. Therefore, this part aims to
accentuate features of those factors and indicate the relationship of mentioned factors to three
dimensions of task engagement proposed by Gao & Xuesong (2019), namely cognitive
engagement, emotional engagement and behavioral engagement.
2.1. Competence
The first psychological antecedent in the SDT is the need for competence. Gao (2019) defines
competence as a belief held by learners that through their efforts will have a positive impact
on their learning. “At the heart of the notion of competence lie self-related beliefs, which
include self-related beliefs of efficacy as well as mindset beliefs about the potential of their
abilities to develop further” (Gao, 2019, p649). First is self-efficacy which is a central self-
construct of Bandura (1986)’s framework with an aim to clarify what the sense of self is. Self-
efficacy refers to the belief that an individual holds about whether he/ she has the capacity to
execute actions needed to complete a specific task in a specific context. (Bandura, 1997).
Schunk & Pajares (2005) states that learners who have a high sense of efficacy are more likely
to set learning goals, employ effective learning strategies, evaluate goal progress and construct
conductive learning environments. What is more, Schunk & Pajares (2009) indicates that self-
efficacy has an impact on achievement behaviors such as task choice, effort, persistence, and
use of effective strategies. In other words, when learners have a belief that they can complete
and achieve a goal, they will be more willing to expend effort, persist in the face of challenges
and especially try to employ different strategies to find out ones that suit them best. Thus, it is
undoubted that self efficacy impacts students’ cognitive and behavioral engagement.
Second is mindset beliefs which Mercer and Ryan (2010) define as a set of beliefs held by
learners concerning whether they believe their abilities can be developed through deliberate
effort and hard work (a growth mindset) or whether they believe these are fixed and
unchangeable (a fixed mindset). Learners with growth mindsets are more willing to engage in
challenges and make enormous effort to achieve their goals while those with fixed mindsets
tend to fear and avoid failure or threats and desperately need to validate their sense of self
which they believe is unmalleable (Gao, 2019). As a result, fixed-minded people are prone to
give up easily and see expending effort to complete anything that they believe is beyond their
capabilities as pointless. Mercer (2015) as cited in Gao (2019) points out that learners should
be encouraged to believe that their competence in a foreign language are variables that they
themselves can develop and improve, or else learners may see no point in putting effort and
persistence in learning. Moreover, there exists a relationship between types of goals set by
learners and their mindset beliefs. De Castella and Byrne (2015) asserts that
learners’preference to setting performance goals which involves showing their competence or
avoiding being seen as incompetent is greatly concerned with their fixed mindset, and they
will avoid challenges that deem a threat to their sense of self. Whereas he also adds that
learners who hold a growth mindset are more likely to focus on setting mastery goals in which
their ultimate aim is to achieve something challenging and develop their competences, and
thus they embrace challenges and become engaged and invested in actions related to learning,
not just displaying behaviors. Once learners pursue mastery goal orientation, this will
positively affect all three engagement dimensions. Specifically, in terms of cognitive
engagement, learners with mastery goal orientations will be more engaged in tasks, which is
illustrated by using more deep and broad thoughts and effective learning and self-regulatory
strategies, including monitoring their comprehension and thinking about how current
academic tasks are related to previously learned information (Anderman & Young, 1994;
Wolters, 2004). Regarding emotional engagement, setting mastery goals indicates students’
positive emotions about school and different aspects of motivation such as intrinsic
motivation, positive self-concept, and self-efficacy (Murayama & Elliot, 2009). Concerning
behavioral engagement, Miller, Greene, Montalvo, Ravindran, & Nichols (1996) positive
academic behaviors are displayed when learners follow a mastery orientation. Many of them
are discussing schoolwork with peers (Patrick, Ryan, & Kaplan, 2007), engaging in relevant
activities outside of school (Anderman & Johnston, 1998), and seeking help when needed
(Ryan & Pintrich, 1997). From all above arguments, mindset beliefs can negatively or
positively affect all dimensions of engagement. Therefore, it is essential that teachers do their
best to help develop a growth mindset in their learners and to support their willingness to set
mastery goals in which learners will see challenge as a positive growth opportunity, rather
than a threat.
2.2. Autonomy
The second psychological antecedent mentioned in the SDT is the need for autonomy.
According to Ryan and Deci (2017), learners feel a sense of autonomy when they are given a
chance to be in the control position of what they do and that their actions need to be volitional
and self-inflicted rather than being forced. In order for teachers to promote a more engaging
learning environment, there are two key factors that should be considered to adapt a more
autonomy-supportive teaching style. Firstly, according to Reeve (2006), instructors need to
create tasks that involved students in the choice-making progress, allowing them to make
decisions about their desired working styles and learning outcome; it is also crucial that
teachers create a safe environment for students to share their ideas, boost open communication
between learners and teachers while receiving positive feedback and encouragement from
teachers. Secondly, instructors need to make sure their students are well aware of the
relevancy of given tasks (Assor et al. 2002). This key factor can be explained through the
model of expectancy-value proposed by Eccles and Wigfield (1995, 2002) since it is
comprehensible that in order for learners to commit and put their efforts into doing a task, the
task itself must appear to be achievable while also be some value to the learners. All together,
these two key factors will enhance learners’ task-engagement by limiting their passive
responses and increasing students’ co-construction with learning activities on their own terms
(cognitive and behavioral engagement) while also promote both of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation (Assor, 2010) which ameliorates the percentage of learners’ willingness
(emotional/affective engagement) to engage autonomously, as a result, if the core need of
autonomy is applied in task setting, teachers will effectively interpose learners in all three of
the task engagement dimensions.
2.3. Relatedness
Relatedness and our "need to belong" are the last components of the SDT framework that help
us understand the antecedents of language learner engagement (Baumeister & Leary 1995,
Deci & Ryan, 1991). The term relatedness is described as the need to establish close emotional
bonds and secure attachments with others, the desire of being accepted and connected and
having a shared sense of value between members in the same community. This psychological
factor can be traced back to the influential work of Maslow (1968) in which he proposed a
hierarchy of innate human needs and it appears that the first four level of the hierarchy,
classified as “deficiency needs'', included emotional bonds/sense of belonging which further
emphasize the effect of relatedness on human behavior. In the context of language learning,
having a sense of belonging in classrooms and school as well as positive group dynamics and
supportive friendship groups have been found to increase students motivation, engagement as
well as school performance since language learning is relational by nature, possibly more so
than for other academic subjects. To effectively learn a language, students need to interact,
communicate, collaborate with others, thus how well learners get on with their peers and
teachers is likely to be defining for their willingness to engage with others and the
opportunities for learning that their teachers provide. Furrer and Skinner (2003) affirmed the
hypothesis that “feeling special and important to key social partners is hypothesized to trigger
energized behavior, such as effort, persistence, and participation; to promote positive
emotions, such as interest and enthusiasm; and to dampen negative emotions, such as anxiety
and boredom”.
Teachers play an important role in constructing a positive classroom environment which then
creates a positive classroom community to strengthen learners’ sense of relatedness. A strong
teacher-student relationship has been found to be beneficial for the students persistency,
prosocial behavior, school engagement and academic achievement in numerous prior studies
(Furrer & Skinner, 2003; Hudley & Daoud, 2007; Newmann et al., 1992; Ryan & Patrick,
2001; Roeser et al., 1996). The emotional engagement of students can be established through a
supportive relationship with the teacher where teachers make an effort in showing concern for
students’ welfare and supporting their school efforts, in articulating clear norms and
expectations for students, and in encouraging student autonomy. In this sense, the need for
relatedness not only accords with the emotional dimension of task engagement but also the
behavioral and cognitive dimension since by having the sense of belonging to a community,
learners will self-reflect and self-direct them to act according to the shared value of their social
groups.
Utilizing this method in the process of task engagement will motivate learners to join the task
proactively, especially letting them know what they will benefit at the scene of the task.
Several studies using this strategy have shown that PST has a positive influence on behavioral
engagement for learners in oral activities, such as more engagement of students to elaborate on
their ideas. As a result, the self driving performance rating and monitoring has the potential to
strengthen and sustain learner engagement, however, the particular sources of incentive to
become more involved were not detailedly identified in this study. It is indeed a crucial
finding for teachers who have large class sizes yet lack the time to thoroughly supervise and
guide all of their students within task. Giving learners the chance to strike and track their own
performance on current goals within learning increases the odds that they will engage in tasks
and strive to fix their performance on an ongoing basis. Despite the fact that the scores
students gave them within assignments were not directly supervised by the instructor and
would have been erroneous at some points, participants gained more behaviorally engaged in
the tasks over time. By incorporating PST into the implementation of communicative L2
activities in the language classroom, teachers may create a more behaviorally engaged
classroom. More research is needed to identify relationships between PST, engagement, task
performance, and longer-term effects for learners toward learning in order to progress this area
in the future.
III. Conclusion
To conclude, this study set out to explore the interconnection between factors in pre-active
stage and task engagement of L2 learners by reviewing and synthesizing findings from
numerous prior empirical studies about engagement, motivation, learners’ psychological
factors and performance evaluation. It has also provided a holistic recommendation for
educators to apply these theories in actuality.
Due to time constraints, the study could not investigate the actualization of prestage factors in
task engagement at Hanoi University. herefore, future primary research on this topic is
recommended to gain insight from students to further test out different theories on task
engagement.
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