(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) Effects of teacher''s feedback on freshmen''s motivation in speaking lessons A survey research at Hanoi University of Business and Technology

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES    TRƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG EFFECTS OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK ON FRESHMEN'S MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS: A SURVEY RESEARCH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

   TRƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG

EFFECTS OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK ON FRESHMEN'S MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS: A SURVEY RESEARCH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND

TECHNOLOGY (Ảnh hưởng từ phản hồi của giáo viên tới động lực học tập của sinh viên năm thứ nhất trong giờ học nói: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại Trường Đại

học Kinh Doanh và Công Nghệ Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2011

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

   TRƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG

EFFECTS OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK ON FRESHMEN'S MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS: A SURVEY RESEARCH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND

TECHNOLOGY (Ảnh hưởng từ phản hồi của giáo viên tới động lực học tập của sinh viên năm thứ nhất trong giờ học nói: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại Trường Đại

học Kinh Doanh và Công Nghệ Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

Supervisor : Phan Thị Vân Quyên, M.A

Hanoi, 2011

Using the survey questionnaires from 286 students and semi-structured interviews with 20 students who are studying the first year in Faculty of Accountancy, HUBT, the findings indicated that among those students extrinsic motivation was far more important than intrinsic motivation, of which studying English to get a good future job was the most important motivating factor The findings also revealed among three kinds of feedback in the study, corrective one was used with the highest level of frequency and was considered the most effective ways to motivate freshmen at Faculty of Accountancy because they wanted to master their English proficiency for their future purpose especially their career future The teacher used the evaluative feedback very frequently; whereas, the freshmen at did not think that it was useful The reason is that when evaluating, their teacher normally criticized their mistakes, which made them lose face, feel discouraged, feel ashamed, or even did want to speak any more In respect of strategic feedback, the teacher exploited it with a low frequency; however, according to students, they claimed that it was effective way to motivate their speaking because this kind of feedback could encourage their self-study with the teacher's advice and suggestion

Table of contents

Declaration……… i

Acknowledgement……… ii

Abstract……….iii

Table of content……….iv

List of abbreviation terms……… vi

List of tables ………… ………\.vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of study 2

3 Research question 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Method of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1Speaking skill 4

1.1.1 Definition of speaking skill 4

1.1.2 Elements of speaking skill 4

1.1.3 Students' difficulties in English speaking lessons 5

1.2 Motivation 6

1.2.1 Definition of motivation 6

1.2.2 Kinds of motivation in the second language classroom 7

1.3 Feedback 8

1.3.1 Definition of feedback 8

1.3.2 Types of the teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 9

1.3.3 Effects of the teacher's feedback on students' motivation in speaking lessons 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13

2.1 Context of the study 13

2.2 Subjects 15

2.3 Data collection instruments 15

2.4 Data collection procedure 17

2.5 Data analysis 17

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21

3.1 Findings 18

3.1.1 Freshmen's motivation in learning English 18

3.1.1.1 Extrinsic motivation 19

3.1.1.2 Intrinsic motivation 21

3.1.2 Types of teacher's feedback and its effectiveness in speaking lessons 22

3.1.2.1 Use of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 23

3.1.2.2 Effectiveness of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 26

3.1.3Freshmen's reaction to teacher's feedback in their speaking lessons 27

3.2 Discussions 30

3.2.1 Freshmen's motivations in learning English 30

3.2.2 Teacher's feedback and its effectiveness on freshmen's motivation in speaking lessons 31

PART C: CONCLUSION 35

1 Summary of the findings and discussion 35

2 Recommendations 35

3 Limitations 37

4 Future Direction. 38

REFERENCES……… ……… 39 Appendix 1: Questionnaire (in English)……… I

Appendix 2: Schmidt et al (1996) questionnaire IV

LIST OF ABBREVIATION TERMS

HUBT Hanoi University of Business and Technology

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: The structure of the students' questionnaire……… 16

Table 2: Freshmen's motivation in learning English……… 18

Table 3: Kinds of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons……… ……… 22

Table 4: Use of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons……… ……… 23

Table 5: Effectiveness of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 25 Table 6: Freshmen's reaction to teacher's feedback in speaking lessons….……… 28

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Speaking is "the most important aspect of learning a second language" (Nunan, 1989)

It plays a vital role because it is the first step to identify who know or does not know a language Pattison (1992) confirms that when people speak of knowing or learning a language, they actually mean that they are able to speak the language It is clear that by mastering the speaking skills, people can carry out the conversation with other people, give the ideas and exchange the information Recognizing its importance, Vietnamese learners try their utmost to master speaking skills with the hope to improve their language competence However, not all students have succeeded in it Many fail because learning a language is considered a complex process, which is often affected by many factors such as attitude, age, intelligence, learning environment, etc Among them, motivation is believed

to have great impact on success or failure of a language learner As a result, motivation has become a key issue in language learning in general and in speaking in particular and has become the subject of many studies for a long time

As the matter of facts, students' motivation in speaking -one of the vital aspects of leaning a foreign language- has been the biggest challenge for Vietnamese students A large number of students after a long time learning speaking English have not been able to speak it skillfully Many researches have been carried out in attempt to find out the reasons, the techniques to enhance students' motivation as well as factors affecting it in speaking class Among many studies, the researcher realizes that although teachers now

no longer play a dominant role in class, their guidance, and supports have always been of beneficial help to students Especially teachers' feedback provision in response to students' performance is significantly important Considered "an integral part of the lesson" (Nguyen

et al., 2003), the teacher's feedback is always in need or according to Fanselow (1987) "to teach is to give feedback" In the current context of teaching and learning English, the teacher's feedback is really necessary, which helps students find the right ways to improve their language competence

At HuBT, English is taught as a compulsory subject for all students of all faculties For freshmen who have not been familiar with the ways of studying at university, attending two or three English classes a week make many students regard English as a burden Even

though they realize that English, especially the speaking skill, is very important and necessary now and in the future, most of them are afraid of speaking or have no habits of speaking in the class Hence, all the teachers of English are master at finding speaking activities with an attempt to motivate students in speaking but few have exploited the importance of their feedback to encourage students more involved in speaking English at least in class The teachers who have tried smoother ways to give the feedback claimed that these students seem to be more active when receiving the teacher's comments

Recently in Vietnam although teacher's feedback has been the subject of many studies, most of them have tackled about the matter of feedback in writing lessons Studies on feedback in speaking lessons are quite small in number At the Department of English- Hanoi University of Business and Technology, there have been no attempts in investigating this issue Therefore, it is greatly important to research the matter intensively

in the context of teaching and learning speaking skill at this university

The reasons above have urged the writer herself, who is the teacher of English at Department of English at HuBT, to explore this matter in an effort to find out how the teacher's feedback affects the freshmen's motivation and how the teacher should comment

on their speaking to encourage them to speak English Hopefully, the researcher would make contribution to complete the insightful understanding about teacher's feedback, enhancing teaching and learning English, which can lay a foundation for subsequent research

- What are the freshmen's motivations in learning English?

- What types of teacher's feedback are currently used in speaking lessons?

- How does the teacher's feedback affect the freshmen's motivation in speaking lessons?

4 Scope of the study

Feedback and motivation are such broad topics that cannot be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper Thus, this minor thesis attempts to investigate one specific and commonly practiced aspect: the effects of teacher's feedback on students' motivation in speaking lessons

The subjects of the study include 286 freshmen at Department of Accountancy at HuBT who are not English major but are learning speaking skills adopting the Communicative language teaching approach Therefore, it cannot be said that the results of this study are general to all Vietnamese non-English majors

5 Method of the study

This study employs a both quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to get

a more detailed and comprehensive picture about what is investigated

A survey questionnaire done on 286 freshmen in the Faculty of Accountancy to collect their opinions on the feedback they received, how types of teacher feedback effect their motivation in speaking, and to gather their recommendations for improving teacher feedback to help them perform successfully

An interview conducted with the participation of 20 freshmen selected from survey population to explore further issues being investigated

6 Design of the study

This study is composed of three following parts:

Part A: Introduction presents the background, aims, research questions, the significance,

the scope, and the design of the study

Part B: Development is organized around three chapters as follows

Chapter 1- Literature review, conceptualizes the framework of the study through the

discussion of issues and ideas on theories of motivation, types of motivation and feedback

Chapter 2 - Methodology, presents the context, the methodology used in this study

including the subject, the data collection instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis

Chapter 3 – Findings and Discussions consists of a comprehensive analysis of the data

and a discussion on the findings of this study

Part C: Conclusion, offers a summary of the findings, recommendations, limitations, and

future directions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Language communication is known to involve some language skills, which consists of four-macro inter-related skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing Of the four skills, speaking plays a vital role because it is the first step to identify who knows or does not know a language Pattison (1992) confirms that when people speak of knowing or learning

a language they actually mean that they are able to speak the language

1.1 Speaking skill

1.1.1 Definition of speaking skill

There are many definitions for the term "speaking" According to Bygate (1987), speaking, in many ways, is an undervalued skill The reason given is that most of us can speak, so we take the skill too much for granted As a result, if teachers consider speaking

as facial, superficial, they will largely focus on the teaching of oral language itself- not in

the relationship with other skills

Bygate (1987) mentions "speaking is a skill which deserves attention every bit as much

as literary skills, in both first and second language." To achieve something in the life such

as social solidarity, social ranking, or professional advance, and things like that, our learners often need to be able to speak Therefore much more attention should be paid to the teaching of speaking

1.1.2 Elements of speaking skill

It now clear that both fluency and accuracy are important goals to pursue in teaching speaking skills

Recognizably, accuracy is one of the most important criteria to measure students' linguistic ability and to shelter language user from communication breakdown According

to Richards (1992), accuracy concerns "the ability to produce grammatically correct sentence." It means that accuracy means grammatical accuracy only However, in Brown (1994), the term "accuracy" covers more than that Accuracy is achieved to some extent by allowing students to focus on the elements of phonology, grammar, and discourse in their spoken output To support this idea, Thornbury (2000) sets the clear scale for assessment

of accuracy First, in grammar, students use correct words order, tenses, tenses agreement,

do not leave out articles, prepositions, or difficult tenses In addition to grammar, to

acquire the accuracy in speaking, students have a range of vocabulary that corresponds to the syllabus year lists and use words that the teacher has taught

Fluency is also used as a criterion to measure one's speaking competence Brown (1994) mentions fluency may in many communicative language courses be an initial goal

in language teaching Speaking fluently means being able to communicate one's ideas without having to stop and think too much about what one is saying Richard (1992) defines fluency "the features which give speech the qualities of being natural and normal." More specifically, Thornbury (1992) points out the criteria to assess the fluency ability Firstly, about the speed of speaking, students speak smoothly, at a natural speech and do not hesitate long and it is easy to follow what they are saying Secondly, about the length, students can put the ideas together to form a message or an argument They can make not only the simplest of sentence patterns but also complex one to complete the task Finally, students must be independent in expressing their ideas in a number of ways, keeping talking and asking questions and keeping the conversation going

1.1.3 Students' difficulties in English speaking lessons

As mentioned in the previous part, speaking come naturally to human However, in fact

it is not as simple as it seems Ur (1996) brings out four potential issues that students have

to face in the English class Firstly, because of being worried about making mistakes, criticism, losing face, or shyness, students are often inhibited in speaking in the English class Secondly, because of limited language, students cannot express their opinions As a result, they keep silent during the lessons Thirdly, since students are of different levels, better students often dominate the time of speaking while worse ones are silent Finally, because English is taught as the foreign language, students prefer the mother tongue to English They find it easy and convenient to communicate with others and feel "exposed"

in their language It is a challenging job for the teachers if they have a less disciplined or motivated class

To share Ur's ideas, Davies (2000) describes some challenges in the English class First, many students do no like speaking in front of group of people just because of worrying about producing utterances with many errors or oddities in them Second, students' strong regional accents make them disadvantageous to pronounce words correctly and be understood Finally, some students cannot follow the speaking lessons because speaking takes place in "real" time, and speakers do not usually have to construct their

utterances carefully They have to do many things all together: understand what the other person is saying, say what they want to when they get the chance to speak, be prepared for unexpected changes of topic

Thus, for an effective speaking lesson, the teacher should be aware of these problems to have appropriate strategies to motivate the students According to Davies (2000), the teacher should try to create a relaxed atmosphere in their class, creating many speaking activities in pairs or in groups so that most students are not frightened of speaking in front

of class Besides, the teacher should balance the activities in class to motivate worse students and to give them chances of speaking It is clear that the most important purpose

is how to enhance students' motivation in the lessons Because of its vital role in speaking lesson, the next part will deal with motivation

1.2 Motivation

1.2.1 Definition of motivation

Since motivation is not only a vital but also a highly complex factor determining more

or less successful language learning, many researchers have tried to study motivation in foreign and second language learning in order to bring out better insights into it

Brown (1994) offers definition of motivation drawn from a number of different sources:

"motivation is the extent to which you make choices about (a) goals pursue and (b) the effort you will devote to that pursuit." There are varying ways to interpret this definition, however, the writer focuses on the theories of motivation in term of two opposing "camps"

In the first camp, the author stresses the importance of rewards and reinforcement as goals that motivate human beings to pursue On the other hand, in the second camp, the author emphasizes unobservable phenomena as keys factors to motivate people To support this idea, Zoltan Dornyei (2001) considers motivation as a determining factor to explain why people decide to do something, how hard they are going to pursue it and how long they are willing to sustain the activities

Motivation is not only an intensive desire for learning and acquiring knowledge of English, but also an inner cause that push students forward in English learning with enthusiasm and willingness According to Yuan Kong (2009), motivation is something like the engine and steering wheel of an automobile that can move students from boredom to interest It is an inner power to drive and preserves students in English learning Garder (1985b) indicates that motivation involves four factors including a goal, effortful behavior,

a desire to attain the goal and favorable attitudes towards the activity in question Students who have strong learning motivation take a correct and positive attitude towards study and make great efforts to master English with clear goal and desire and consequently gain better grade than those who are not motivated and thus, those students usually regard English learning as a heavy and boring burden

1.2.2 Kinds of motivation in the second language classroom

What kinds of motivation do students have? Are they always the same? Brown (2007) clarifies two kinds of motivation namely intrinsic and extrinsic Intrinsic motivation refers

to students who learn for their own desires demands On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is used to talk about ones who learn because of outside factors like prizes or

complements from others

To support Brown's idea, in one hand Edward Deci (1975) defines "intrinsically motivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except the activity itself" Students seem to engage in the activities for their own sake and not because they lead to an extrinsic reward On the other hand, he mentions that extrinsic motivation is fueled by the anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self Typical extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive feedback

Deci and Ryan‟s (1985) theory of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and self-determination

is one of the most influential theories in mainstream motivational psychology (Dornyei,

2001, p.58) The theory distinguishes between two main kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic Intrinsic motivation deals with individual‟s motivation to perform a particular activity for its own sake in order to experience pleasure and satisfaction, such as the joy of doing a particular activity or satisfying one‟s curiosity Extrinsically motivated individual,

on the other hand, perform a specific activity to achieve some instrumental end such as earning a reward (e.g good grades) or avoiding punishment (Dornyei, 2001)

Jeremy (1991) views two types of motivation namely extrinsic and intrinsic motivation from a different perspective Firstly, he considers extrinsic motivation as factors which affect students outside the classroom It means that some students study a language because they have an idea of something that they wish to achieve He also suggests two main types of the extrinsic motivation as integrative and instrumental motivation In the strong form of integrative motivation, students need to be attracted by the culture of the target language community, and they wish to integrate themselves into that culture A

weaker form of integrative motivation would be the desire to know as much as possible about the culture of the target language community For the instrumental motivation, students believe that mastery of the target language will be instrumental in getting them a better job, position or status The language is an instrument in their attainment of such a goal Secondly, he relates intrinsic motivation to what takes place inside the classroom

He says that intrinsic motivation plays a vital part in most students' success or failure as language learners For them what happens in the classroom will be of vital importance in determining their attitude to the language, and in supplying motivation, which we have suggested is a vital component in successful language

A question raised here is that which form of motivation more powerful is Many researchers agree that to be successful in language learning students need intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic one Maslow (1970) claims that intrinsic motivation is clearly superior to extrinsic Motivation is dependent on the satisfaction of fundamental physical necessities It is also true in learning a language Students study hard to satisfy their own desire such as achieving some goals in language learning Jerome Bruner (1996b), praising the "autonomy of self-reward", claimed that one of the most effective ways to help both children and adults think and learn is to free them from the control of rewards and punishments As a result, in language teaching, the teacher should help the students to increase their intrinsic motivation Dorneyei and Csizerv (1998), for example,

in a survey of Hungarian teachers of English, proposed taxonomy of factors by which teachers could motivate their learners They cited factors such as developing relationship with learners, building learners' self-confidence and autonomy, personalizing the learning process, and increasing learners' goal-orientation These all fall into the intrinsic side of motivation

There are many aspects which influence the students ' motivation in learning Among them feedback plays an important part The following part will discuss the teacher's feedback and how it effects students' motivation in speaking lessons

1.3 Feedback

1.3.1 Definition of feedback

In the context of teaching and learning language, there have been various studies to look at the roles of feedback Most of them share the idea that the purpose of providing feedback is to tell the students about their progress and show them their errors to guide

them to areas for improving their English competence According to Ur(1996), feedback is

"information that is given to the learners about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance." To support this idea, Ellis (1985) defines the feedback as "response to efforts by the learners to communicate Feedback can involve such functions as corrections, acknowledgement, requests for clarification, and backchannel cues such as "Mmm"" Written in Ferris (1999), feedback is viewed as "any response a teacher may give his or her students."

Traditionally, Ypsilandis (2002) considers the feedback as the "reaction, a response that

is usually triggered and received by the learners and provided by teacher" and as an

"assistance mechanism, a key factor for successful learning, offering support to the learning process."

Accordingly, from the views of different researchers, there are two matters First, the question of quality feedback comes into considerable concerns Second, there is the distinction between feedback and criticism Robert (2003) proposes "feedback should only ever be used as a basis for improvement It should not be mistaken for negative criticism and vice verse." It is clear that to help student improve their learning, the teacher's feedback should based on the facts given without personal opinion

In short, feedback should be used for more than correction, also be a motivating factor Feedback provision can be among peers or between teachers and students; however, in this study, the research just focus on the notion of teaching-learning between the teacher and students

1.3.2 Types of the teacher's feedback in speaking lessons

From the studies, the writer could find the various ways of classifying the teacher's feedback

Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001) decide feedback into corrective, evaluative and strategic Corrective feedback focuses on helping learners notice and correct errors This type of feedback explains why responses are correct or wrong In learning speaking, corrective feedback will primarily concern with accuracy Evaluative feedback aims to provide a judgment on the students' performance Gattullo (2000) suggests that evaluate feedback is dominant in second and foreign language classroom In giving evaluative feedback, teachers use words and phrases to indicate the extent to which students' performance is good or not Finally, strategic feedback usually aims to offer students

advice on what to do to improve their performance In other word, the teachers try to suggest ways of helping students to overcome their mistakes

Hattie and Timperley (2007) distinguish four levels of feedback: feedback about the task, about the processing of the task, about self-regulation, and about the self as a person Firstly, feedback about the task includes information about errors, about the depth or quality of the work, about a need for more information, or about neatness or format Secondly, Feedback about process gives students information about how they approached the task, information about the relationship between what they did and the quality of their performance, and information about possible alternative strategies that would also be useful Thirdly, self-regulation is the process students use to monitor and control their own learning Self-regulation can lead to students seeking, accepting, and acting on feedback information—or not Finally, feedback about the person is generally not a good idea because it is not formative The feedback about the person can contribute to students' belief that intelligence is fixed This implies that achievement is something beyond the students' control The belief that intelligence is fixed removes the connection between student effort and achievement (Dweck, 2007)

Schachter "(1991) considers corrective feedback, negative feedback and positive feedback three terms used in the field of language teaching, language acquisition and cognitive psychology Corrective feedback is used to correct the students' mistake Positive feedback shows learners that the teacher is interested in what they say and at the same time encourage them Though, negative feedback expresses the teacher's displeasure, frustration

or involves some kinds of punishment towards the students' bad performance

According to Bichener et al (2005), the feedback can be explicit or implicit The explicit feedback includes grammatical explanation or overt error correction The implicit feedback refers to the situation when teachers point out an error without correct form provision containing confirmation checks, repetition, recasts, classification request, silence and even facial expression that express confusion

Personally, among many ways of categorizing teacher feedback in speaking, the researcher is interested in the classification of the feedback into three types as corrective, evaluative and strategic by Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001) because it is considered the most appropriate for the situation of this study Through questionnaire and interview, this

study aims to find out how these types of teacher feedback influence the students‟ motivation in speaking

Thus, the use of appropriate types of feedback can be viewed as a significant in enhancing students learning The following part will mention how the teacher's feedback affects the students motivation in the speaking lessons

1.3.3 Effects of the teacher's feedback on students' motivation in speaking lessons

Within L2/foreign language learning research, there is a tendency to conceive the teacher‟s feedback as positive effects in speaking lessons Specifically, Nugrahenny‟s study (2007) aims to explore students' attitudes towards teacher feedback A total of 100 students participated in filling in the questionnaires and 21 of them were interviewed using

a semi-structured format In addition, there were 20 teachers who completed the questionnaires and 10 of them were interviewed using the same semi-structured format The finding shows that generally teachers and students have a marked preference for teacher feedback Interestingly, student preferences for teacher feedback also stemmed from their awareness that teachers control grades

In correspondence with Nurgrahenny's result (2007), most of the students participating

in Salle (2011) and Chan (2008) recent studies show their preference to the teacher‟s feedback Both Salle (2011) and Chan (2008) share the idea that their students are motivated when being given feedback by the teacher not by peer In addition, students in Terese‟s study (2005) reflect that they are satisfied because their teachers always remember to give feedback during the lessons especially corrective and positive ones Furthermore, they express the satisfaction when receiving positive feedback and their expectation that even when it is not positive one, it should be delivered in positive way Since teachers play a crucial role in teaching and learning process, their behaviors have great influence on students‟ motivation According to Dornyei (2001), almost everything a teacher does in the classroom has a motivational influence on students, which makes teacher behavior a powerful „motivational tool‟ To be more detailed, Stipek (1996) mentions the effect of feedback on the students' motivation In his study, a reward, a positive and extremely evaluative type of feedback has had a great impact on intrinsic motivation Based on the studies reviewed, he summarizes that the effect of rewards is not

straightforward Rewards undermine intrinsic interest to the degree that they are perceived

to be controlling, and the controlling functions can be conveyed in variable and stable ways It means that when the information value of rewards is salient- when rewards are interpreted as conveying positive information about competence- they can actually increase intrinsic motivation

Schunk (1983) conducts an experiment to examine the effects of ability and effort attributional feedback on children The result shows that children who receive ability feedback only had the highest self-efficacy and perform best Actually, this study was particularly focused on one type of positive and evaluative feedback: encouragement It demonstrates the value of attribution theory in understanding the effect of this type of feedback on motivation However, the study is so focused; it does not examine the effects

of other types of feedback, and how the effects of this type of feedback differ from the effects of other types

Hattie and Kimberly (2007) assert in their revision that "the teachers' feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning achievement" Frienmuth (1998) states that the teacher's feedback helps to "improve learners' accuracy and acquisition." To the researcher, the indispensable role of teachers' feedback can be shown in the fact that teacher's feedback reflects to students what and how they perform, showing them their strong points to strengthen as well as the weak points to improve Noticeably, when students have mistakes untreated, the defective language might serve as an input model and acquired by other students in the class In short, students without the teachers' feedback, run a high risk of losing their way Added to this, Moss (2002) proposes that teachers' feedback can speed up the process of language learning by providing information about rules and the limits of language use, which would otherwise take students a long time to deduce their own

In brief, teachers' feedback is considered "a prime requirement for process in learning"

as proposed in Tunstall and Gipps (1996) Therefore, "giving feedback is one of the role key that teachers play in class" (Al Fahdis, 2005) However, not every teacher is successful

in doing this job It demands teachers' flexibility in applying appropriate types of feedback

in the particular situation

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the context and the subject of the study, the data collection instruments, the data collection procedure, and the data analysis procedure will be presented

2.1 Context of the study

This study is conducted at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT), a private university in Hoang Mai District, Hanoi, Vietnam HUBT is rather famous for providing good training in two main fields: business and technology Business involves several different majors such as Banking and Finance, Accounting, Business Administration and Commerce Of all, Accounting is the most chosen majors of HUBT Every year there are approximately 1,000 new students enrolling in Faculty of Accountancy; this faculty hence receives a lot of attention of the university

At HUBT, English is considered an extremely important subject to all students regardless the majors they are learning; the students hence have to study English during three and a half years at HUBT and to complete 72 credits of English (equivalent to 1080 periods) before taking the Graduation examination by the end of the fourth year In addition, HUBT always looks for new ways to improve the quality of teaching and learning English Hence, in the school year 2010-2011, HUBT plans to pilot a new English course called DynEd with the freshmen (K15) DynEd is an English-learning software that allows students to learn English online so that they can practice English more at home, and teachers can easily manage their study records via the Internet With this program, hopefully, by the end of the first year, students can obtain 1.2- 1.5 in the placement test, which is equivalent to 550-650 TOEIC or A2-B1 in the Common European Framework Specifically, students should be able to:

 understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment)

 communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters

 describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need

 understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc

 deal with most situations likely to arise whilst traveling in an area where the language is spoken

 produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest

 describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans

Learning English has still some difficulties in general and in speaking in particular For freshmen, English is taught three lessons per week Each lesson is divided into 2 parts: working with computers in the lab and learning 3 kills namely reading, speaking, writing in the normal classroom To be more detailed, in the lab, the direct interaction between students-students and teacher-students is limited because most of the time students spend time practicing with computers: listen and answer the questions shown in the video, and then shadow and record their own voice to compare with the native speakers As a result, students hardly receive the teacher's feedback except for listening to the instruction and the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar In classroom, the most common activities in speaking lessons are individual and pairs work with the same frame activities for all weeks during the semester Therefore, they feel demotivated because they have to follow the same steps, to perform the same activities and to do the same tasks given in the handouts

What is more, to prepare for students to learn English well, about 20 multi-media classrooms are settled In each of these classrooms, there are computers, projectors, and screens In addition, high quality equipment (e.g CD-players, tape players, and reference books) is also available Each week, students will have one video lesson that focuses on practicing listening skills and pronunciation Moreover, on average, there are about 30 students in each English class, which is a good size for a language class

The assessment is based on two examinations per each semester namely semester exam and Computer-based Multiple-choice Test At the End-of-semester exam, students‟ four English skills, Speaking-Listening-Writing-Reading are assessed After that, students will take Computer-based Multiple-choice test consisting of 120 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes All multiple-choice questions are based on what students have learnt in the course books

End-of-English teachers at HUBT graduated from different universities in Vietnam Moreover, most of them are very young, enthusiastic, and dynamic Nevertheless, some of the

teachers were not trained to be teachers For those teachers classroom management is difficult, especially when some pedagogical situations happen

300 freshmen at Faculty of Accountancy participating in the study are assumed by the researcher as more motivated to learn English and more proficient than those of other disciplines such as Architecture or Electricity because of present academic and future career requirements Therefore, this sample does not necessary present the whole population of the university Because of the scope of the study, the researcher tries to sketch one small aspect of teaching and learning speaking English of the freshmen at this department: effects of the teacher's feedback on their motivation

2.3 Data collection instruments

This study employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to get a more detailed and comprehensive picture about what is investigated

In this study, qualitative data is gained from semi-structured interviews and quantitative data is achieved from self-report questionnaire Self-report questionnaire is used in this study since motivation, as Dornyei (2001) states, is “an abstract term that refers to various internal processes and states It is therefore not subject to direct observation but must be inferred from some indirect indicator, such as the individual‟s self-report accounts” In order to ensure that the participants can understand correctly the content of the questionnaire and the interview, both of them are conducted in Vietnamese

The questionnaire consists of three parts The table 2 displays the structure of the questionnaire

Part I: Motivational Questionnaire The Motivational Questionnaire (Question 1)

includes two compositions: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation consist of 5 items (statements 2,4,6,8,10) and extrinsic motivation includes 5 items (statements 1,3,5,7,9) The Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivational Questionnaire designed

by Schmidt et al (1996) (see Appendix 4) is used as the base for the researcher to develop this questionnaire since Schmidt et al (1996) study focuses on intrinsic-extrinsic motivation of EFL adult learners in Egypt, which seems to be similar to the participants and context of this study However, it is too long to apply all the 20 items of Schmidt et al (1996); hence, the writer only chose 10 items which most obviously indicate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors and also are most appropriate with Vietnamese students

Part II: Feedback questionnaire This part includes three questions (from question 2 to

question 4) Question 2 (10 statements) is about the frequency of using three kinds of the teacher's feedback namely corrective feedback (statement 1,3,5,7), evaluative feedback (statement 6,8,9,10 ),and strategic feedback (statement 2,4 ) Questions 3 focuses on the effectiveness of three kinds of feedback mentioned above Specifically, the effectiveness of corrective feedback is mentioned in 4 statements (1,3,5,7), the effectiveness of evaluative includes 4 items (statement 6,8,9,10), and the effectiveness of strategic consists 2 items (statement 2,4 ) Question 4 is designed to find out the students' reaction to teacher's feedback on their speaking

Table 1: Structure of the students' questionnaire

Statement (S)

Part I Type of motivation

Extrinsic motivation Q1(S2,S4,S6, S8,S10) Intrinsic motivation Q1 (S1,S3, S5, S7,S9)

Part III Teacher's Feedback

Frequency of Corrective feedback Q2 (S1,S3,S5,S7) Frequency of Evaluative feedback Q2 (S6,S8,S9,S10) Frequency of Strategic feedback Q2 (S2,S4)

Effectiveness of Corrective feedback

Q3 (S1,S3,S5,S7)

Effectiveness of evaluative feedback

Q3 (S6,S8,S9,S10)

Effectiveness of strategic feedback

2.4 Data collection procedure

The questionnaire was first piloted to a small sample of 30 students to check its validity and reality The piloted questionnaire then was re-edited, and administered to 300 students four weeks before the end of school- year (2010-2011) Fortunately, 286 out of 300 questionnaires were returned

After the researcher analyzed the questionnaires, 20 student infromants were chosen to

be interviewed, 10 of them were identified as extrinsically motivated learners and the other were intrinsically motivated These interviews were also conducted directly All the content of the interviews were typed into Words for analyzing

2.5 Data analysis

After all the questionnaires were returned, the researcher printed them out to check, sort, and number For each part of the questionnaire, the total number of respondents was counted and compared using the functions DCOUNT, AVERAGE, and SUM

All the content of the interviews with 20 students were typed The writer read each response of each student to sort out the reasons for their English learning, and frequency of the use of their teacher's using feedback as well as its effects on their motivation in speaking lessons

Thus, so far, this chapter has presented in detail the context, the subject, the two sets of instruments, and the procedure of collecting data and analyzing data of the study The following chapter will deal with the findings and discussions

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this chapter, the students’ motivation in learning English in terms of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, as well the teacher's feedback affecting the students’ motivation in speaking English classes, which are reflected through the data of the conducted questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews, will be in focus This comprehensive analysis leads to a better understanding of the type of motivation and the kinds of feedbacks that affect the students' motivation to speak English, in turn, will lay a firm foundation for a discussion and further recommendations in the following part of the study

3.1 Findings

3.1.1 Freshmen's motivation in learning English

The questionnaire items were divided into two different categories, namely Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Motivation The function DCOUNT was used to count the frequency of each answer choice, namely 1-Strongly Disagree (SD), 2-Disagree (D), 3-Undecided (U), 4-Agree (A), and 5-Strongly Agree (SA) of all the respondents to each item (1,2,3,4,etc.) in each category of the questionnaire The functions SUM and AVERAGE were applied to calculate the total number and the average number of participants choosing the choice SD, D, SD and D, U, A, SA, and A and SA Then the total number of SD and D and the total number of A and SA were compared

Table 2: Freshmen's motivations in learning English

5 The main reason I am taking this class is that my

parents/my teachers want me to improve my

English

47.2 21 0 27.3 4.5

7 I need to learn English only to pass the exams at 10.5 16.8 3.5 65.7 3.5