The expansion in enrolment and the opening of private high schools in Vietnam leads to the fact that large classes have become a common phenomenon for higher education. With regard to teaching efficiency in large classes, it requires of teachers not only good knowledge of the subject matter but also a combination of other skills concerned with students such as managing the classroom, encouraging class participation and students interaction, assessing, motivating students, etc. Therefore, teachers cannot teach effectively or transform students without their participation. Students’ participation, though is viewed as “a threat to teaching” (Barry, 1993), is worth being studied as it play a very important role in teaching efficiency.
Additionally, among the modern language teaching approaches, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) emerges as the latest development because of its superiority. In the view of this approach, the learner is considered the center of the leaning process; the teacher serves as a facilitator, allowing students to be in change of their own learning. Breen, M and C.N. candling (1980) stated the role of learners as follows:
“The role of the learner as negotiator – between the self, the learning process, and the object of leaning – emerges from interacts with the role of joint negotiator within the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which the group undertakes. The implication for the learner is that he should contribute as much as he gains, and there by learn in an interdependent way”.
(Richards, 2001: 116, cited in Breen, 1980)
According to them, learners should be active in group as well as in classroom activities to enhance their interactive learning to be communicatively competent.
They also stated the role of teacher is CLT classroom as one who facilitates the communication process between all participants in the class and the various activities. But who are the participants? There is a fact in most large language classes that not all learners are participants. Most of them only passively sit and take notes, rarely contribute in the lesson and do not ask the teacher question even when they have problems. The reasons can be seen from the students themselves (e.g., different in learning styles, shy, lacking in motivations) and from teachers’ factors (e.g., methods, personalities). Whatever the reasons are, teachers should be totally responsible for their teaching and partly for their students’ learning because no one else except the teachers themselves can motivate students and change their teaching methods. Thus, in order to involve all learners in class activities, it is the teachers business to design and apply techniques to increase students’ participation in class activities and make students active learners.
It should be noted that although large class is the focus of much of research during the last decade, a great deal of them concentrate mostly on the relationship between class size and essential in effective language teaching, but there is inadequate research on this issue. As far this matter is concerned, there has been almost no research work touching upon the issue of increasing students’ participation in large classes in Vietnam, particularly in higher institutions.