Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
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DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION AS A TEACHING
APPROACH FOR MIXED-ABILITY EFL CLASSES AT
VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITIES
Le Thi Thanh Hue
Thuyloi University, email: lethanhhue@tlu.edu.vn
1. INTRODUCTION
Over the past several decades, English has
consistently developed to become the most
prominent foreign language in Vietnam.
Under the pressure of social and labour
market requirements, English is a
compulsory subject in almost all curricula in
both public and private universities. One
typical difficulty faced by EFL lecturers at
Vietnamese universities is the student’s
mixed levels of English proficiency in a
single class (Nguyen, 2017). This is
particularly true for non-English-major
students, most of whom have to attend
certain compulsory English classes regardless
of their backgrounds and command of the
language. It is quite obvious how the mixed-
ability in EFL classes hinders the teaching
and learning process as the ubiquitous
traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach tends
to deepen the gaps between stronger and
weaker students and demotivate them in
acquiring language knowledge and skills
(Suwastini et al., 2021). While several
teaching methods have been recommended
and applied by EFL teachers to deal with the
problem in Vietnam, including cooperative
learning techniques (Nguyen, 2017), few
have adopted differentiated instruction (DI)
which is also suggested by researchers and
educators around the world for mixed-ability
EFL classes (Suwastini et al., 2021).
This paper aims to find out what DI is and
explore its benefits and challenges as a
teaching approach for mix-level EFL
classrooms, and thereby discussing its
prospective application in the context of
Vietnamese universities.
2. METHODOLOGY
This study is a secondary research, in
which the writer reviews a number of relevant
research papers and summarizes the main
findings to answer the research questions.
3. FINDINGS
3.1. Definition of DI
By definition, differentiated instruction is
a teaching approach in which teachers vary
what and how they teach to meet their
students’ individual learning needs
(Tomlison, 2000, as cited in Lavania & Nor,
2020). Different from the conventional “one-
size-fits-all” approach, teachers who practice
DI “provide each student with corresponding
level of challenge and equip support to help
students achieve their learning goals”
(Valiandes, 2015, as cited in Idrus et al.,
2021, p. 502).
Tomlison (1999, as cited in Idrus et al.,
2021) suggests that there are three
fundamental elements to differentiate in
teaching: the content (the knowledge or skills
the students need to learn), the process (the
activities the students do to acquire the target
content) and the product (the ways the
students can demonstrate their learning
progress). For example, to differentiate
content, teachers can provide a variety of
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different learning materials that might
interest different students or adapt them to be
suitable for the students’ proficiency levels.
DI in process and product can involve tiered
tasks, flexible grouping and various forms of
project presentation (Amrullah et al., 2022;
Idrus et al., 2021).
3.2. Benefits of DI
Differentiated instruction has been proved
to make positive impacts on EFL students in
several ways. First, it can help EFL students
improve all their English receptive and
productive skills as well as motivate them to
broaden vocabulary. A literature review on
DI presents a wide range of various empirical
studies which demonstrate the teaching
approach’s effectiveness in enhancing
participants’ reading and listening
comprehension, fostering speaking and
writing skills, as well as favourably affecting
students’ vocabulary development (Suwastini
et al., 2021). This is because the diverse
contents, tiered assignments and choices of
outputs that most EFL teachers deliberately
provide when applying DI facilitate the
students' learning process, increase their
interest, and thereby bettering their
performance (Idrus et al., 2021).
Not only limited to improving language
competence, differentiated instruction has
also been recognized for its effects on
students’ language attitude and autonomy.
Mohd Said’s (2019) pre-test post-test
experiments resulted in significantly higher
scores in both language attitude and critical
thinking for the student participants who
experienced DI compared to those who did
not. The subsequent interviews with the
study’s participating teachers and students
reveal that the DI approach allows teachers to
conform their teaching materials and lesson
activities to the students’ interests, learning
styles and needs, encourage them to work
independently on their personal goals in a
reasonable pace, and provide each of them
sufficient support. This process significantly
helps increase the students’ autonomy in
thinking and learning English and boost their
confidence in using the language (Mohd
Said, 2019). This benefit of DI is also
mentioned by Tomlinson (2014, as cited by
Suwastini et al., 2021), who claims that DI
increases learners’ self-awareness and pushes
them to take responsibility for individual
learning and growth.
In addition, perhaps, the most important
benefit of differentiated instruction is that it
helps boost students’ self-esteem and self-
efficacy (Mizell, 2010, as cited in Idrus et al.,
2021). The fact that students’ personal
strengths and weaknesses, interests and
motivation are considered in every lesson
with DI offers the students a pleasant
learning experience in which they can enjoy
various extents of success. As a result, the
students will feel better about themselves,
which in turn creates the drive for them to
actively participate and contribute to class
activities when they believe they can succeed
(Lavania & Nor, 2020), and become more
confident learners and language users in the
long run. These characteristics are
particularly important for Vietnamese
students, most of whom are timid and
reluctant when it comes to expressing
themselves in a foreign language.
3.3. Challenges of DI
Despite its benefits, there are some
challenges that might discourage EFL
teachers from applying DI in their
classrooms. Lavania & Nor (2020), Suwastini
et al. (2021) and Amrullah et al. (2022) list a
number of constraints that prevent EFL
teachers from implementing DI, most
significant of which are the time limitations,
heightened workload and teachers’ lack of
training. As DI involves catering instructions
to the different students’ needs, teachers have
to spend a lot of time on the preparation,
instruction and continuing assessment to
make sure all students benefit from the
efforts of DI (Lavania & Nor, 2020). These
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additional activities, combined with more
complex class management, obviously
increase the workload for the teachers,
especially those working with large classes,
which is the common case in Vietnam
(Nguyen, 2017). Moreover, even when they
are willing to do the extra work, many EFL
teachers are not sufficiently trained on how to
properly differentiate their instructions
(Amrullah et al., 2022).
4. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
It is agreed by many researchers and
educators that DI helps students in mixed-
ability EFL classes not only improve their
language competence, and foster their
language attitude, but also boost their self-
confidence and autonomy. Thus, DI has been
generally supported by many researchers and
educators around the world, and even has
been included in the educational policies in a
few countries such as Singapore and Belgium
(Amrullah et al., 2022). In the context of
language teaching at Vietnamese universities,
particularly the non-English-major
classrooms which accommodate a large
number of mix-level students, differentiated
instruction might be an effective teaching
approach which allows teachers to meet their
students' varied learning needs.
However, teachers in Vietnam are likely to
face different challenges when practising DI,
such as time pressure, heavy workload and
insufficient knowledge. In order for DI to
become customary practice in EFL mixed-
ability classes at Vietnamese universities, it is
essential that the teachers receive appropriate
training on DI and institutional, or even
financial, support from the university
administration, which allows them to have
more time and resources to implement DI in
classrooms. It is also advisable that teacher
colleagues cooperate to share the burden of
lesson preparation and exchange experience
on DI practice.
All things considered, it is necessary for
researchers to conduct more empirical studies
in the future to confirm the effects of DI on
EFL mixed-ability classes at different
universities in Vietnam.
5. REFERENCES
[1] Amrullah, M. F. N., Mohammad, W. M. R.
W, Mahamod, Z. & Yamat, H. (2022). A
systematic review on differentiated
instruction in language teaching.
NeuroQuantology, 20(8), 1303-1319.
[2] Idrus, F., Asri, N. A. Z. & Baharom, N. N.
(2021). Has differentiated instruction gone
‘awry’ in online teaching and learning?
Journal of Language Teaching and
Research, 12(3), 501-510.
[3] Lavania, M. & Nor, F. B. M. (2020).
Barriers in differentiated instruction: A
systematic review of the literature. Journal
of Critical Reviews, 7(6), 293-295.
[4] Mohd Said, N. S. (2019) The Effects of
Differentiated Instruction on Students’
Language Attitude and Critical Thinking in
an ESL Context. PhD thesis, University of
Sheffield.
[5] Nguyen, Nhan Trong. (2017). Thirty years
of English language and English education
in Vietnam. English Today, 33(1), 33-35.
[6] Suwastini, N. K. A., Rinawati, N. K. A.,
Jayantini, G. R. S. R., & Dantes, G. R.
(2021). Differentiated instruction across
EFL classrooms: A conceptual review.
TELL-US Journal, 7(1), 14-32.