(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) the use of teamwork activities in the english speaking lessons at international standard program, vietnam national university, hanoi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *********************** NGUYỄN THỊ PHÚC THE USE OF TEAMWORK ACTIVI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

***********************

NGUYỄN THỊ PHÚC

THE USE OF TEAMWORK ACTIVITIES IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS AT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD PROGRAM, VIETNAM NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY, HANOI

(SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHÓM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NHIỆM VỤ CHIẾN LƯỢC, ĐẠI

HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Hanoi, 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

***********************

NGUYỄN THỊ PHÚC

THE USE OF TEAMWORK ACTIVITIES IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS AT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD PROGRAM, VIETNAM NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY, HANOI

(SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHÓM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NHIỆM VỤ CHIẾN LƯỢC, ĐẠI

HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Tô Thị Thu Hương, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2013

DECLARATION

I hereby state that I: Nguyễn Thị Phúc, being a candidate for the Master of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Thesis deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

I hereby declare that all the information in this paper was obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct As required

in the rules, I fully cited all the sources of the results that were not original to this work

Signature

Nguyen Thi Phuc

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not be completed without the help, full support and encouragement of all the people who deserve my deepest gratitude

First and foremost, I would like to send my special thanks to my supervisor,

Dr To Thi Thu Huong, a senior lecturer at HULIS for giving me precious comments and suggestions right from the beginning of my research

Second, I would like to thank my former lecturer, Ms Nguyen Thanh Ha, who has provided me with the useful references for my study

Third, my sincere thanks also go to the students and teachers of English at International Standard Program (ISP), Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their full support in completing the questionnaires for my survey

Last but not least, I wish to thank my friends who have encouraged me to carry out this thesis and shared with me their materials, ideas as well as useful comments on my research

in this study included questionnaires for the students, interviews with 5 teachers, and 3 class observations

The findings of this research revealed that teamwork activities were frequently used in the English speaking classes at ISP The common activities were games, problem-solving, role plays, and discussion among which games and role plays were the students’ favorite activities However, most of them lost interest in discussions In addition, most of ISP teachers grouped the students sitting next to each other into pairs or small groups of 3-4 or by random groupings, they rarely gathered the students with mixed levels Another finding of this study was that the ways to motivate the learners involved using authentic materials, visual aids, and giving compliments, or gifts The teachers also controlled the troublesome noise during the students’ teamwork by punishment

From the main findings of the study, some recommendations were given to the ISP students and teachers for using teamwork activities more effectively

in the English speaking lessons

ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

ELT: English Language Teaching

T(s): Teacher(s)

Ss: Students

ISP: International Standard Program

HULIS: Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies

VNU: Vietnam National University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Abbreviations iv

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Significance of the stdudy 3

Chapter 2 Literature Review 5

1 Teaching English speaking for communication 5

1.1 Activities in English speaking lessons 5

1.2 Requirements of a good English speaking lesson 8

2 Teamwork in English learning and teaching 11

2.1 Definition of teamwork 11

2.2 Organization of a team 15

2.3 An overview of teamwork using 18

2.3.1 Benefits of using teamwork activities 18

2.3.2 Challenges in using teamwork activities 20

2.3.3 Teachers' and students' roles in teamwork activities 22

Chapter 3 Methodology 25

1 Participants 25

2 Data collecting instruments 25

3 Data analysis 27

Chapter 4 Results and discussions 28

1 The use of teamwork activities in speaking lessons at ISP 28

1.1 The frequency 28

1.2 The students' attitude towards different teamwork activities 29

2 Working in teams 32

2.1 Grouping students 34

2.2 The problems in using teamwork activities 36

2.3 Ways to motivate and control the class 39

3 Conclusion 39

Chapter 5 Recommendations 40

1 For the ISP teachers 40

1.1 Choosing appropriate teamwork activities 40

1.2 Grouping students to form a team 44

1.3 Solving the problems in using teamwork 44

1.4 Motivating students 45

2 For the students 47

2.1 Improving English speaking skill 47

2.2 Cooperating in a team 48

3 Summary 50

Chapter 6 Conclusion 51

1 Summary of the study 51

2 Contributions and limitations of the study 52

3 Suggestions for further studies 52

References 55 Appendices I

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on five main parts namely the problem statement and the rationale for the study, the aims and objectives with three research questions, the scope of the study; and the significance of the study

1 Statements of the problems and rationale for the study

There is no doubt that English has played an important role in such fields as aviation, commerce, diplomacy, science and technology, etc This language

is considered to be a means of communication which people use to exchange information as well as to broaden their mind In fact, nowadays more and more learners have attempted to achieve English levels to hunt for a better job Being aware of this tendency, Vietnam’s Ministry of education and training has adopted English as an official subject at secondary schools,

colleges and even in some primary schools since the early 1990s (Thi Nguyen

Anh, English teaching in the new world, 2008)

Although English has been widely taught at colleges for long, the goal of acquiring it for communication has not been emphasized As a matter of fact, the traditional teaching method Grammar Translation Method has been in wide use at colleges, which discourages students from achieving their communicative competence Consequently, a large number of students are really good at doing exercises of grammar, however, they feel confused when communicating in the target language

To avoid the situation above, it is high time that a new approach – Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) should be applied in order to promote students’ ability of using English in real communications One of the techniques used in CLT is group work or teamwork which is regarded as

an effective way to enhance students’ communicative competence

As can be observed, at ISP division of VNU, the students’ communicative competence has been considered to be the core of learning and teaching in this environment and it can be best revealed through their speaking ability In this division, one of the common techniques being used to foster students’ speaking ability is organizing teamwork activities in class In fact, the frequency, organization and effectiveness of these activities have not been clarified Hence, this study focuses on investigating the current situation of using teamwork activities in teaching English speaking at ISP

2 Aims of the study

This study was carried out with three aims Firstly, it was expected to find out different teamwork activities currently being used in English speaking lessons at ISP Secondly, the frequency of these activities and the teachers’ ways to use them were also identified Next, this study aimed to identify students’ attitudes towards each kind of activities in their lessons Last but not least, the problems of using these activities for both the teachers and students in carrying out this technique were carefully analyzed to reveal the findings In a nutshell, all the objectives of this study could be summarized into these three following research questions:

1 What kinds of teamwork activities are currently used in English speaking lessons at ISP?

2 What are the students’ attitudes towards these activities?

3 What are the problems in using these teamwork activities?

3 Scope of the study

As mentioned in the title, this study focused on the use of teamwork activities as a means to improve the students’ oral skill in their English speaking lessons The researcher spent time and effort investigating how they

were organized and used only for English speaking lessons, not in the other English lessons Therefore, in this paper, speaking lessons refer to the ones carried out in English, not in other languages

In terms of participants, the researcher attempted to investigate a certain number of the chosen students at pre-intermediate English level at ISP

In addition, ISP teachers in charge of their speaking lessons were also the important participants in this research

4 Significance of the study

With reference to the significance, this study is supposed to benefit the teachers and students of the surveyed division in particular, and others in the same conditions As for ISP students, it is expected that they will be aware of the benefits of teamwork activities in their speaking lessons, hence, the importance of tight cooperation with their partners to achieve their communicative competence best under their teacher’s directions will be highly noticed As for the teachers, this study is assumed to provide the strategies in designing and carrying out teamwork activities appropriately in English speaking lessons Furthermore, with its findings through thorough analysis, this study is believed to be such a reliable reference for all those who are concerned about this matter

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theories related to speaking lessons and the technique of using teamwork in the light of cooperative learning

1 Teaching English speaking for communication

1.1 Activities in a speaking lesson

It is undeniable that designing and organizing activities for speaking plays a leading role in fostering student’s use of English in real communication With the aim of enhancing the effectiveness of a speaking lesson, Harmer (1991, pp.36-37) suggested these following activities, all of which were organized for small groups of students

Discussions

This activity is followed by a content-based lesson More specifically, students study their reading or listening comprehension in each unit of their textbook under teacher’s control to gain the general knowledge of the topic After that, the whole class will be divided into small teams of four or five to get involved in the discussion Teachers should provide their students with controversial situations so that they can freely express their different ideas, for instance, “Parents should allow their children to play video games Do you agree or disagree? Why?” Teachers should notice that they should master the time excellently so that as many students have a chance to present their teams’ opinions as possible by giving them a limited time to finish their task,

to share their ideas before the class as well as to get comments from their teacher “This activity fosters critical thinking and quick decision making”, Harmer affirmed the strength of discussion in his book In this activity, students also learn how to negotiate with the others by justifying themselves

in a polite way when their idea is different from the other groups Also

according to Harmer, students should always be encouraged to ask questions, support their partners or check for clarification

Problem solving and decision making

Problem solving and decision making help the students to develop their critical thinking and creativity As a matter of fact, to solve the situations or problems given by the teacher, the students cooperate with their partners within a limited period of time to find out the appropriate solutions As for this activity, small teams of 3-4 students should be formed to quickly solve the given problem, especially the challenging ones The team members may have different solutions; however, they will negotiate with one another to find out the best one

Role Plays

In Harmer’s study, he clarified that role-play is a situation in which students pretend they are in "various social contexts" and have a variety of social roles In these activities, teachers provide students with such information as who they are and what they think or feel For example, teachers assign each student a role; “You are a hotel receptionist and you are a

customer ….” It can be seen that students gain much from taking part in this activity Moreover, role play is also a kind of entertainment which makes them feel relaxed and find themselves more creative What is more, they have

an opportunity to practice English speaking, particularly improve their vocabulary and pronunciation Familiar situations could be assigned in class

in the form of teamwork However, for complicated ones, it is better to give the students enough time to do their rehearsal, probably at home to save time

Stimulations

Stimulations are somewhat similar to role-play; however, the realistic environment created in these activities makes stimulations different from role-play In stimulations, students bring their prepared items to class to create their own situation, i.e., a student who is going to act as a singer can bring a microphone and music player, or even put on their make-ups to perform before the whole class It was stated in Harmer’s book that these activities increase the hesitant students’ self-confidence and entertain the whole class

In fact, the more natural the students’ performances are, the more successful the speaking lesson is

Information Gaps

In this activity, it is suggested that students should work in pairs To make it clearer, one student owns the information that the other does not have and two members in each pair will share or exchange their information However, teachers should promote their students to use the target language when they exchange information If so, everyone has the opportunity to talk extensively in English when they try to negotiate with each other

Brainstormings

With the aim of activating students’ critical thinking, teachers give a topic or a situation for small groups of students to produce ideas in a limited

time In this activity, students can freely share their new ideas with one another and then they negotiate to give out the best ideas to present before the class

Storytelling (picture narrating)

Brainstorming fosters students’ critical thinking whereas storytelling helps foster their creative thinking Teachers provide their students with a series of pictures and ask them to invent a story based on the main episodes or details presented in each picture Thanks to this, students can create different interesting and surprising details to make their story fascinating based on their imagination It is recommended that this activity should be organized as a competition in which every group of students tries to win the prize This, with

no doubt, plays such an important role in motivating students as everyone wants to become the champion and to be appreciated by their teacher

Interviews

Students should work in pairs or in teams of three or four to carry out this task In this activity, teachers will provide their students with a list of topics based on the theme and content presented in the textbook Each team will choose one topic to conduct their interview in which one student is the interviewer and the other(s) will be the interviewee(s) They have to prepare questions for the interview and try to answer them in a given period of time After discussing, each group will be asked to present their products to the class This kind of oral activity gives students a chance to practice their speaking skills, hence, develop their competence

each team will be called to present their shared report in front of the whole class Besides, the other members can support their partner during the performance To motivate the students, teachers may allow them to talk about their own experience, which is also called “reporting”

Shared presentations

Presentations and reports are ways of communicating ideas and information to the others However, unlike a report, a presentation carries the speaker’s personality better and allows the immediate interactions among the participants Additionally, a presentation is longer and requires more preparations for the content before it is delivered to the audience In order to make a good presentation, the students need time to prepare and rehearse at home before the class time What is more, the teacher should ask their students to work in teams so that they can support each other in their preparations as well as their performance before the class

Picture describing

In this activity, each team is expected to describe what is in the picture which is given by the teacher After finishing teamwork, some representatives from each will report their shared work to the class It is undoubted that this activity fosters "the creativity and imagination" of the learners as well as their public speaking skills (Harmer, 1991, p.37)

Finding the differences

This activity requires students to work in pairs Each pair is given two pictures which are somehow similar The students themselves are supposed to work together to find out all the differences between their two provided pictures and tell the whole class afterwards

1.2 Requirements of a good English speaking lesson

Researchers have shared the same idea that CLT is the most effective approach to teaching English skills including speaking In the light of CLT,

the student is the center of the lesson and the teacher is the instructor, a facilitator in the classroom The aim of using CLT is to develop students’ communicative competence so that they can communicate in the target language in the real world According to Harmer (2001, p.57), a good speaking lesson depends on both teachers and students In fact, the teacher’s role in designing and organizing the lesson should be much more emphasized

Teachers’ contributions

It is true that the key to a successful lesson depends on teachers’ preparations and organization In fact, a well-prepared lesson can motivate students even though the topic of the lesson is quite strange or difficult to understand or even boring to them In the light of CLT, teachers are the

"facilitators, resources and promoters" (Harmer, 2001, p.57) who instruct their students to successfully complete their tasks and help them to achieve their goals; however, this is not to say that they do not have any responsibility for the lesson As a matter of fact, before the lesson, they have to work so hard to find out the best approach to each lesson as well as techniques to foster students in speaking as much as possible Researchers have recommended that teachers should apply the learners’ cooperative learning in speaking lessons to exploit their tight cooperation and motivate them As mentioned above, Harmer suggested some teamwork activities in speaking lessons which are beneficial to the teachers and students As for the students

of the pre-intermediate level, discussions and role-plays are the most appropriate ones that foster them to use the target language and help teachers control the whole class

Students’ contributions

It is obvious that students’ participation plays the most important role in any speaking lesson as they are the center of the lesson in the light of CLT In interactive and cooperative learning, the success of a lesson depends on the

interaction and cooperation among students, not their individual silent work

or competition In other words, there should be no gaps between team members in any teamwork activity In order to achieve the shared goal, every member has to work hard and seriously on their task and be willing to assist their partners in solving problems or work as negotiators in the near real and real situations

What makes a good English speaking lesson?

In the light of CLT, learners are trained to achieve their communicative competence; thus, the ability of using the target language in the real world is the very first criterion to assess the process of learning and teaching To acquire the goal of CLT, each lesson should create a meaningful and realistic environment, in other words, the topics and situations given to the learners should be connected with their everyday life so that they can communicate easily and naturally Besides, the activities designed for each lesson must involve the whole class in communication so that after the lesson they can use the target language fluently and accurately In fact, it is common that teachers try to use teamwork activities to motivate and involve their students; however,

it does not work if the students use their mother tongue so much during their discussion and presentation before the whole class According to the CLT theory, such the case to exploit teamwork activities is counter-productive To achieve the communicative competence, students are expected to use the target language as much fluently and accurately as possible; hence, teachers should encourage their students to use and practice speaking English any time and anywhere they can, especially in the speaking lessons

2 Teamwork in English learning and teaching

2.1 Definition

In English Teaching Methodology (ELT), the terms "pair work" and

"group work" become so common nowadays among language teachers and learners since it is one of the features of CLT and also proved to contribute to the great effectiveness of a speaking lesson However, this study does not attempt to adopt these terms because working in groups and working in teams are not the same thing According to Harmer (2001, p.116), students working

in pairs or groups can "veer away from the point of an exercise" and spend their time on private talks In fact, the reason for this problem is the lack of responsibility among group members because there seems to be no thread holding them together At this time, pair work and group work are not concerned about members' collaboration

In contrast, teamwork guarantees the optimum contribution of each member to the shared result of the whole team Thus, teamwork-based learning is called Interactive and Cooperative learning which is also familiar

to students and teachers in the light of CLT This research would adopt the theories of David and Rodger Johnson (2001) on cooperative & Interactive learning

Cooperative learning is simply working together to accomplish shared goals In cooperative activities, students reach for the outcomes that are beneficial to themselves and to all other members Using teamwork activities

is the instructional use of small groups in which students cooperate to maximize each other’s learning effectiveness More specifically, cooperative efforts result in participants "striving for mutual benefits", or all the team members gain from each other’s efforts This is the activity in which “we all

sink or swim together here” (David & Johnson Rodger, 2001, p384) It is very

clear to see that one’s performance is mutually caused by oneself and one’s colleagues

In this theory, there is a "positive interdependence" among students’ goal attainments in cooperative learning situations (page 384) The students perceive that when the other students in the learning group also fulfill their goals, it means individuals themselves can achieve their goals In fact, it is

quite essential to distinguish cooperative learning from competitive or

individual learning Competitive learning environment refers to a student who

works against each other to attain his/her own success of being the winner

Therefore, there is a negative interdependence among goal achievements Another learning environment is called individual learning In this type of

learning, students work alone to accomplish the goals regardless of their peers' goals, hence, their achievements are independent

In complete contrast with the two learning situations mentioned above,

cooperative learning brings out the benefits for every learner

Cooperative learning

David and Johnson Rodger (2001) pointed out that cooperation typically results in higher achievement and greater productivity; more caring, supportive, and committed relationships; and greater psychological health, social competence, and self-esteem It is true that the goal achievement in cooperative learning is shared among students, which means that the success

or failure of this member is the others’

Below is the summary of cooperative learning given by David and Johnson Rodger:

Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it

Cooperative learning efforts result in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members:

 Gain from each other’s efforts (Your success benefits me and my success benefits you)

 Recognize that all group members share a common fate (We all sink or swim together here)

 Know that one’s performance is mutually caused by oneself and one’s team members (We cannot do it without you)

 Feel proud and jointly celebrate when a group member is recognized for achievement (We all congratulate you on your accomplishment)

(David & Johnson Rodger, 2001, p.384)

These authors also provided the following elements of cooperative learning to be set as the criteria to achieve a productive cooperative lesson

1 Positive Interdependence

(sink or swim together here)

- Each group member’s efforts are

required and indispensable for group

success

- Each group member has a unique

contribution to make to the joint effort

because of his/her resources and/or role

and task responsibilities

2 Face –to-Face Interaction

(promote each other’s success)

- Orally explaining how to solve the

- Connecting present with past

learning

3 Individual & Group Accountability

(No hitchhiking, no social loafing)

- Keeping the size of the group

small The smaller the size of the

group, the greater the individual

accountability may be

- Giving an individual test to each

student

- Randomly examining students

orally by calling on one student to

present his/her group’s work to the

teacher (in the presence of the group)

or to the entire class

- Observing each group and

recording the frequency with which

each member contributes to the group’s

work

- Assigning one student in each

group with the role of checker The

checker asks other group members to

explain the reasoning and rationale

underlying group answers

- Having students teach what they

learned to someone else

4 Interpersonal & Small-Group

Skills

(Social skills must be taught)

- Group members discuss how well

they are achieving their goals and

maintaining effective working

relationships

- Describe what member actions are

helpful and not helpful

- Make decisions about what

behaviors to continue or change

(Chart summarized by David & Johnson Rodger, 2001, pp 385-389)

In brief, it is proved that cooperative learning environment promotes the learners to develop their communicative competence easily and quickly in the light of CLT

2.2 Organization of a team

 Ways to divide the whole class into small teams

Groupinging students by interests

Teachers can allow those who are interested in the same topic to work together By working in this way, do they easily motivate their students to show their real interest in the chosen topic It is vital that teachers give out a list of different topics related to the lesson so that the students have more

chances to choose and then form a team of the same interest However, the teachers should notice that in some cases, there are so many students sharing the same interest, which makes it difficult to group them To solve this problem, the teachers should ask their students to form small teams of three or four or even five, there can be different ones of the same interest

Grouping students by different abilities

The fact that students can assist each other to achieve their learning goals is the aim of this method A team of different abilities involves excellent students, good ones as well as slow ones In each activity, these students work together to complete their task, hence, students of advanced level will help those of the lower one to improve their English speaking For example, when this one does not know how to express his or her idea in English, the other ones can help him or her and gradually, this one’s ability of using English will

be much developed

Convenient grouping

To save time in class, teachers tend to group the students sitting next to each other to form a team These students know and understand each other much better than those who sit far from them, therefore, they can easily form

a strong team by cooperating tightly with each other to complete the assigned task

Random student groupings

This is the most common way of grouping as it is considered to be fair among students Random student groupings can be done by having students count off, pair up or cast lots There will be no change and no argument when this method is used

 The size of a team

What “team” means is more than one; this is to say ones gather together

to share their ideas or to solve problems According to Jacobs and Hall

(1994), even two people can form a team; however, how many people in a

team should be the best? Also according to Jacobs and Hall, the smaller the team is, the more each member talks and the less chance that someone will be left out Additionally, as for smaller teams, all the members can be easily controlled or they require fewer management skills and decisions can be made faster with a few ideas from the members

Teams of two members

In his action research (1996), William Pellowe affirmed that activities for teams of two members or pair work activities are an integral aspect of many teachers’ approach to language teaching He noted that “pair” refers to teams of 2 or 3 (as for classes of odd numbers of students, there must be a team of three)

Likewise, according to Jaques (2000, pp.52-53), doing a small team

activity is one way to “change the pace” in the classroom The aim of this

division is to generate ideas, increase students’ confidence in their answers, and encourage broad participation in a plenary session By using this strategy,

the students have a chance to “validate” their ideas in pairs before sharing the

ideas with the whole class (Jaques, 2000) Hence, shy students will feel more confident to participate in activities

Teams of three, four or five

When students face a challenging task, it is necessary that they need more help from others In this case, pair work is not a good idea; instead, the size of teams should be bigger with three, four or five members The team leader will be responsible for dividing tasks for each member, at the same

time they will do their tasks and then the leader collects all the results to make the product of the whole team

Larger teams of more than five

In Jacobs’ opinion, larger teams are the best choice for doing big tasks

as they “increase the variety of people” in a team in terms of skills,

personalities, backgrounds and so on Larger ones also reduce the number of teams, which makes it easier for the teacher to monitor

Generally speaking, the size of a team depends on specific situations, the physical features of the classroom, as well as the types of tasks As for oral skill, small teams of two, three or four are the best choice According to

Kagan (1992, p.374), foursomes (teams of four) should be applied in

speaking lessons More specifically, students first work in pairs and then the two pairs of the foursome interact with one another This strategy can make use of the strong points of pair work, besides; the whole team can deal with such puzzling challenges within a short time

2.3 An overview of teamwork using

2.3.1 Benefits of using teamwork activities

It is undeniable that the techniques of using teamwork activities have numerous benefits to both the teachers and the learners

Benefits to the learners

After conducting more than 375 studies on the effect of cooperative, competitive and individualistic efforts on students’ achievements and productivity, Hamm and Adams (1992) found out that student in cooperative learning environments performed much better than students in the other two settings More specifically, learners could support each other to the best and together achieve their goals In fact, it is cooperative learning, therefore, students from different levels or different geographical sites could gather

together and strive for the whole team's work Strong ones could make use of the materials to support the weak ones, therefore, they understand the knowledge thoroughly and memorize them longer Simultaneously, the weak ones could learn these knowledge units in more details

The authors presented the benefits of cooperative learning to the students

 Working in mixed-ability groups doesn’t stifle individual initiative

 Cooperative learning has positive effects on students’ self-esteem, social relations, attitudes toward mainstreamed students, and race relations

 By teaching others, all of the students actually come to understand the material better

 Students’ cooperative behavior skills are shown to transfer to interaction with peers who weren’t members of the same learning teams It also transfers to their behavior in social situations not structured by the teacher

(Hamm & Adams, 1992, p.8)

In general, using teamwork activities is one of the best techniques to foster students’ speaking skills as well as their social skills

Benefits to the teachers

Also according to Hamm & Adams (1992), teachers can benefit from organizing teamwork activities for their students Firstly, instead of controlling the whole class and have to pay attention to all the individuals, teachers can divide the class into small teams of two, three or four By using this strategy, the teachers have only five, six or seven groups to control

instead of paying attention to 25 to 35 or even 40 individuals During the teamwork, all the members will support each other under the leader’s control Secondly, the teacher will feel less stressed because he or she acts as a facilitator in the classroom to provide the students with helps when it is necessary As a result, he/she is freer to move around, work with small teams and interacts in a more personal manner with students (Hamm & Adams,

1992, pp.15-16) Last but not least, the teachers can organize a variety of teamwork activities to make the atmosphere within the class more exciting instead of boring

Besides the above benefits, both teachers and students have to face a lot of problems or challenges in teamwork activities

2.3.2 Challenges in using teamwork activities

For teachers

Using cooperative learning techniques is a great idea in teaching English as a foreign language However, teachers have to face the following challenges presented by Jacobs (1991):

Uncontrollable noise

Working in a team is one of the best ways to create noise (Jacobs, 1991), which challenges the teacher, especially in such a large class with so many students When the noise level is too high, it is much more difficult for him to get the whole class’ attention Jacobs (1991) suggested some ways for the teacher to control the whole class When the noise monitor of each team is assigned (or pointed out by the team members), he/she will help urge the whole team to “collaborate actively yet quietly” Another way to get the class’ attention is to use signals such as clapping hands, ringing a bell, blowing a whistle, slapping the board, etc The teacher can also point out a team checker

who is responsible for watching out for their signals and asks the other members to listen to him/her

Individual assessments

It is not difficult for the teacher to assess the whole team’s product; however, it may be unfair to assess the individuals In fact, all the members share their ideas while cooperating as well as sharing the final product As a result, all the members in the same team get the same mark, which is unfair among them because not all the members cooperate tightly with the others As

a matter of fact, some students depend on their peers so much and they even

do not do anything to contribute to the shared product It is the teacher’s fault

if he/she assesses every individual in the same way To avoid this case, he/she should ask the leader to assess each member in his/her team If anyone does not cooperate or not do their task seriously, then he/she must be criticized and cannot get the same mark as the others Furthermore, the teacher should be responsible for observing and checking the leader’s assessment whether it is fair or not

For learners

Members’ loose cooperation

When working in teams, all the members will feel very stressed and uncomfortable if one or two do not want to work in their team To deal with this situation, Jacobs suggested that group games such as jumbled words, guessing or crosswords may encourage them to look forward to other team learning activities This strategy focuses on students’ psychology that they will not feel stressed or under pressure There is also another recommendation

by Richards that starting with pairs and tasks that require exchange of information can help students cooperate tightly with their partners Besides,

using this strategy will force students to work fairly and they cannot depend

on the other members like in small teams of three or four

Some teams finishing earlier than others

This is a common phenomena happening in teamwork activities It is obvious that in a class, there must be outstanding students who can find the answers or solutions very quickly and if they appear in any team, it is likely that that team will be the fastest one In some cases, some teams have not done their assignment properly but they still show that they are the fastest one That some finish earlier may threaten the other teamps and they feel nervous In his book, Jacobs gives some ways to solve this problem Firstly, the teacher has to check if the students really finish or have done their task appropriately If not, they have to gather again and continue their unfinished task Secondly, he/she can ask the ones that finish early to compare what they have done with that of other early finishing teams Another way is to develop

“sponge” activities which are short activities related to the main task they are doing to “soak up” the extra time between until the last ones finish within the allowed time (Jacobs, 1991)

2.3.3 Teachers’ and students’ roles in teamwork activities

Nowadays cooperative learning technique is no longer unfamiliar to teachers and students as it is recognized as one of the best ways to improve students’ communicative competence in speaking In the environment of cooperative learning, the roles of both teachers and students are much different from the roles in the traditional teaching methods

The role of learners

According to Hamm & Adams (1992), a teacher can delegate authority

to teams of students by using cooperative learning technique Through observations, he presented students’ roles as followed

1 Each group member makes constructive contributions to the group’s efforts

2 Group members encourage their fellow group members to contribute

3 Group members keep each other on task, working toward their shared goal

4 Compromise is required from all cooperative learners

5 Those in a cooperative learning group treat each other with care and respect They do their best to teach and learn from each other They adopt the axioms:

“All for one and one for all,” and “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

(Hamm & Adams, 1992, p.24) Generally speaking, each team member needs to involve himself/herself as well as the other team members in their shared work and contributes to the optimum product of the whole team

The role of teachers

In cooperative learning, the teacher’s role seems to be vague on the surface as he is considered to be a facilitator who provides the students with helps only when they need However, in real life, the teacher has to take more responsibilities as followed

1 Planning the lessons, activities, and evaluation

2 Grouping students

3 Setting physical placement of the students

4 Presenting and explaining the task to the students

5 Monitoring group activities and intervening when necessary

6 Helping students with social skills

7 Evaluating students as individuals

(Hamm & Adams, 1992, p.25)

In the light of CLT with the aim of improving their communicative competence, the learners should be the center of the class (which is called

learner-centered) Although the teacher acts as a facilitator or instructor who only provides helps when necessary, this is not to say that his role is much lighter than the students’ In fact, the teacher should organize the activities in which his students can communicate in the target language as much as possible Therefore, the approach and techniques used by him is also the key

to the success of a lesson

3 Summary

In brief, it has been proved that exploiting teamwork activities as a main technique in teaching speaking could benefit both the teachers and learners In the light of CLT, the learners are given more chances to communicate in the target language as much as they can By working in small teams even within a short time, can every individual easily acquire the communicative goal thanks

to the interaction with their friends The success of a cooperative learning lesson depends much on the kinds of activities designed by teachers as well as the way they are organized, in other words, the approach they use Therefore, irresponsible teachers cannot help foster their students to speak English in class This is to say that although students are considered to be the center of the lesson as stated in the theory of CLT, the teachers’ role is still a focus

In this study, the researcher desired to find out the teamwork activities that were appropriate for ISP students at VNU Obviously, there were various teamwork activities which seemed interesting and effective; however, not all

of them were suitable for students’ level as well as the circumstances Another purpose of this study was to find out the effective ways to organize teamwork to foster the learners’ use of English as much as possible With these findings, this study was expected to benefit the students and teachers in learning and teaching English at ISP

in the last semester In fact, this study focused on the investigation into the second semester with three groups of students at pre-intermediate level namely ISP8, ISP9, and ISP10 with 25 students per class on average In other words, the total number of student participants was 75 These students were required to pass the Key English Test with the overall result of target 5 in the

10 scale The KET speaking test, in particular, was designed in the form of an interview and role-play in accordance with certain situations More clearly, each candidate would be given a card in which their role was assigned and they need to make a conversation with the examiner within 3-4 minutes The speaking mark made up 20% of the overall result

To build up a strong foundation for all the students of this level, the

syllabus stated the required course books namely New English File,

Pre-intermediate by Clive Oxenden and Christina Latham-Koenig and Let's talk 2

by Leo Jones, second edition as well as supplementaries

The survey also included five interviews with 5 teachers being in charge of the speaking lessons as they helped provide detailed information about the use of teamwork in the chosen ISP groups

2 Data collecting instruments

 Questionnaire

The aim of using this instrument is to survey a large number of students within a short time In the designed questionnaires, both closed-ended and open-ended questionnaire items were used (see appendix 1) The data collection included three phases namely piloting, delivering questionnaires, and collecting data

In phase 1, five motivated people were chosen to complete the questionnaire before the real survey so that if any misunderstandings raised, they would be corrected at once In phase 2, 75 printed questionnaires were delivered to ISP students at their break time and finally, after 15 minutes, these items were collected to aid the analysis procedure

Types of questions

In this study, all the questions and instructions were written in simple

English and designed in two types of questions namely closed-ended and

open-ended questions As for the open-ended questions, the participants write

their answers in the space of the questionnaire papers More broadly speaking,

the questionnaire contained three types of questions namely factual,

behavioral and attitudinal The Factual questions covered the information of

the participants’ age, gender, and years of studying English in part 1 at the

beginning of the survey questionnaire The Attitudinal questions focused on

the participants’ opinions or thoughts about cooperative learning and the teamwork activities used in their speaking lessons These questions were

questions three, ten, eleven and fifteen The Behavioral questions were used to

find out the respondents’ experience in their group speaking In this study, the

researcher used a lot of behavioral questions (the other 11 questions were

behavioral questions) to investigate what the respondents did in their

speaking lesson

 Interview

Interviewing helps the researcher directly find out specific information about the current teamwork activities in speaking lessons Five semi-structured interviews were carried out with five chosen teachers of English with the aid of the prepared recorders and notes with their permission During the interviews, Vietnamese was used to avoid misunderstandings and to save time

 Class observation

With the aim of enhancing the reliability and the validity of the study, the researcher fully focused on the class observations Before observing, the researcher created a list of the observation items to help get the answers to the research questions The speaking lessons of three chosen groups were observed with their teachers’ permission Cameras or recorders were not used

to avoid the participants’ distraction Instead, notes were used to “record” the lessons based on the observation scheme or checklist prepared in advance

3 Data analysis

i Data analysis methods

In this study, descriptive statistics was used to describe the basic

features of the collected data by presenting quantitative items in a manageable

form (according to William M.K Trochim, the research methods knowledge

base (2006))

ii Data analysis procedure

Firstly, the researcher created pie and bar charts for analysis In this step, descriptive statistics was exploited to analyze the collected data to find the answers to the research questions Secondly, the answers to closed-ended questions were categorized into groups Lastly, open-ended items as well as the data collected from interviews, and observations were analyzed based on the interpretive framework incorporating the objectives of the study To sum

up, the aim of these steps was to find out the reliable answers to the research questions of this study

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter aims at providing the results and comments on the qualitative and quantitative data collected from questionnaires, interviews, and class observations These data revealed the facts of using teamwork activities in English speaking lessons at ISP, VNU via the pie and bar charts exploited to present the results

1 The use of teamwork activities in Enlgish speaking lessons at ISP,

VNU

1.1 The frequency

Based on the collected data for question 1, teamwork activities were currently used in the English speaking lessons at ISP In fact, these activities were used frequently in the speaking lessons As can be seen from the pie

chart, 87% of the surveyed students chose “frequently” and only 13% of them

reported that this technique was always exploited in their speaking lessons

The interviewed teachers also shared that teamwork activities were regularly used in the speaking lessons every week As a matter of fact, ISP students spent five days a week learning four skills including speaking and working on their worksheets for further practice Specifically, speaking and

listening were integated to be taught twice a week with the aid of Let's Talk 2,

second edition, therefore, it could be interpreted that teamwork activities were used at least once a week This result revealed that this technique was of great importance in teaching and learning English for communication at ISP

1.2 Types of teamwork activities

Figure 2 clearly shows different activities used in the speaking lessons

It can be seen that games, role plays and problem solving were the most common activities in the speaking lessons with 100%; 76% and 81% respectively Besides, discussions account for 45.6%, storytellings account for only 35 % and 1.7% for others

As for the interviewed teachers, all of them affirmed that games such as crosswords, matching, gap fillings and jumbled words were the most interesting ones to motivate the students and they really helped teachers easily lead the students to the topic at the beginning of each lesson It was also a way to encourage them to work in teams in the form of competitions Furthermore, games did not take the teachers too much time to prepare before each lesson In the class observations, the researcher found that the students were supportive and totally concentrated on the tasks given by their teacher Using games helped the teachers draw the students’ full attention to the lesson right from the beginning and promote them to participate actively in the other activities during the lesson With the aim of achieving KET speaking test, the