An English as a Foreign Language Teaching Method of English Verb Phrase Structure by Government and Binding Theory

บทคัดย่อ

English is very important and essential for everyday use in the 21st century, for example, English is the language of international communication, English allows us to access to an online information and knowledge, English helps us to enter the global workforces as it is the dominant business language. Therefore, to enhance the quality of English as a Foreign language learning management at the tertiary level in Thailand, Government and Binding Theory is applied to study and analyze English verb phrase structures as contents for teaching. The objectives of this research are (1) to analyze English verb phrase structures by Government and Binding Theory, (2) to create the lesson plans with the content of the verb phrase structures analyzed by Government and Binding Theory, (3) to compare students’ achievement before and after learning by the teaching method with the content of the verb phrase structures analyzed by Government and Binding Theory, and (4) to present the students’ satisfaction on the lesson plan. A mixed method research is used by analyzing the content from English text books used in the ENL1001 General English subject of 9 campuses of Rajamangala University of Technology with Government and Binding Theory. Quantitative data are collected from 30 students by random sampling. The research instruments are content-relevant and reliable, including 1) 6 lesson plans with activities and practice exercises of the verb phrase structures analyzed by Government and Binding Theory with content validity (IOC = 1), 2) 20 items of pre-test and post-test with content validity (IOC = 0.78), difficulty index (p = .3000-.7333), discriminant index (r = .223-.643), and Reliability = .836, and 3) 10 questions of a survey of students’ satisfaction on lesson plan (IOC = 1). The results of this research have been found that (1) there are 2 main structures of the verb phrase structures, which are a head verb initial and a modal verb/aspect with a head verb initial. The first structure is more common since 4,879 sentences are found in the data while only 859 sentences are found for the second structure. There are 3 patterns of the first verb phrase structure, which are 1) head verb (V) + noun phrase (NP) e.g. ate Sukiyaki and ice-cream; 2) head verb (V) + infinitival clause (CINF) e.g. want to find a hobby; and 3) head verb (V) + complementizer clause (CP) e.g. thinks that the south of Italy is warmer than the north. For the second verb phrase structure, there are 2 patterns, which are 1) modal verb (MV) + head verb (V) e.g. can shop for hour; 2) aspect (ASP) + head verb (V) e.g. am studying English. Both groups of the verb phrase structures contain the optional internal phrase structures, which are noun phrase (NP), prepositional phrase (PP), adjective phrase (AdjP), and adverb phrase (AdvP), e.g. am an football fan [VP [V am [NP [DET an [N football [N fan]]]]]]; take the subway to school [VP [V take [NP [DET the [N subway]]] [PP [PREP to [NP [N school]]]]]]; is great fun [VP [V is [ADJP [ADV great [ADJ fun]]]]]; and like her very much [VP [V like [NP [N her]] [ADVP [ADV very [ADV much]]]]], respectively. (2) The verb phrase structures that are found in the content analysis are used as both the contents of 6 lesson plans that are created by the framework of Content Base Learning and the 30 multiple choices of the pre-test and the post-test. Those lesson plans are designed to teach 6 hours according to the objectives of each learning topic. After finishing the teaching processes, 3 parts of the survey of students’ satisfaction on lesson plan, which are personal information, opinion on the lesson plan, and suggestion, are conducted to evaluate the teaching. (3) For the result of the post tests, the students have had higher achievement at .05 level of statistical significance, and (4) the students have high level of satisfaction on the lesson plan of this teaching as the result of the satisfaction survey. This dissertation is significant in terms of Linguistics pedagogy for English as a Foreign Language. According to the result of this study, Thai students have the better understanding of English verb phrase structures when analyzed by the Government and Binding Theory. It could be useful for instructors to apply Government and Binding Analysis on the other English structures as the contents of the teaching method for Thai students who study English as a foreign language.