(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) An investigation on difficulties encountered by the teachers and the 10th form students at Nam Tien Hai High school in implementing pair work and group work in speaking lessons

BUI THI BICH LIEN AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TEACHERS AND THE 10 TH FORM STUDENTS AT NAM TIEN HAI HIGH SCHOOL IN IMPLEMENTING PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN... Like

BUI THI BICH LIEN

AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TEACHERS AND THE 10 TH FORM STUDENTS AT NAM TIEN HAI HIGH SCHOOL IN IMPLEMENTING PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN

INTRODUCTION 1

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I : LITERATURE REVIEW

2.2 What are the characteristics of speaking 7

3 Pair work and group work

3.1 What is the definition of pair work and group work 8 3.2 What is the organization of pair work and group work 9 3.3 Difficulties in organizing pair work and group work 11

3.6.1 The role of the learners 17

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

1 The questionnaire for the teachers 22

1.1 The teachers’ attitude towards using pair work and group work 22

1.2 The procedure of implementing pair work and group work 23

1.3 The difficulties in implementing pair work and group work 25

2 The questionnaire for the students 29

2.1 The students’ attitude towards working in pair or in group 29

2.2 The students’ preferable ways of implementing pair work and group work 31

2.3 The difficulties encountered by the students in working in pair or in group 33

CONCLUSION 1 Summary of the study 35

2 Recommendations 36

3 Limitations 42

4 Suggestion for further study 42

Nowadays, English is very important in all fields such as trade, tourist, science, technology and etc Therefore, the proficiency in English is not measured based on the knowledge of grammar but on the abilities to communicate in real life Speaking skill, therefore, plays a very important role in the communicative process According to Bygate (1995), “it is this very skill that” language learners “are most frequently judged for their language proficiency” As for its importance, speaking skill, nowadays, counts for a major and separate part in the language curriculum

Realizing the importance of communicative skills in life, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has recently edited new set of English textbooks for high school students with the aim of enabling them to communicate in English In new set of textbook, pair work and group work are designed to be two main kinds of activities used

in teaching and learning speaking skill However, the result of the using these techniques

at Nam Tien Hai high school seems to be still under the expectation

Like other schools in the country, the teachers of English at Nam Tien Hai high school are also applying pair work and group work techniques in teaching English, however, the result of this application is very low Both the teachers and the students here have a lot of difficulties in implementing them The students here often hesitate in taking part in pair work and group work activities Therefore, the teachers usually get embarrassed at designing and applying their lesson plans in speaking lessons As a result, most of speaking lessons turn into writing or reading ones

Being one of the teachers of English at this school, I really want to find out what made the implementation of pair work and group work activities in speaking lessons become so boring and ineffective From the findings, some personal suggestions are hoped to be given to make the situation better That is the reason why I decided to carry out this research entitled “An investigation on difficulties encountered by the teachers and

the 10th form students at Nam Tien Hai high school in implementing pair work and group work in speaking lessons."

2 Aim of the study

This study is carried out with the aim of exploring the reality of implementing pair work and group work in speaking lessons of both the teachers and the learners at Nam Tien Hai high school where the researcher is working In other words, this study attempts

to find out the attitudes of the teachers and the learners towards the implementation of pair work and group work as well as the procedures of organizing these activities in the speaking lessons of the 10th form students Moreover, this study will explore the difficulties that the teachers and students often encounter when dealing with pair work and group work in large classes Finally, the study will offer the solutions from the teachers and give some suggestions based on the literature review to these difficulties so that it can help the students and the teachers in this school find the way to take advantages of pair work and group work techniques in learning and teaching English in general and speaking

in particular

3 The research questions

To get the main purpose, this research will aim at finding the answers to the following questions

a) What are the attitudes of the teachers and students towards using pair work and group work?

b) What are the procedures and activities used in pair work and group work?

c) What hinders using pair work and group work?

4 Scope of the study

Pair work and group work are used in every skill; however, it is not my intention

to cover all of them because of the limitation of time and the length of the study Consequently, the researcher only focuses on finding out the difficulties the teachers and

work by investigating the reality of implementing these techniques at NamTienHai High school

5 Methods of the study

This research will be mainly conducted as a quantitative study by mostly using observation and survey techniques through using two sets of questionnaire (one for students and the other for the teachers at Nam Tien Hai high school) Besides, other instruments such as consulting the supervisor, reading books and other references, discussing with the colleague and observing the classroom environment will be also used for this research

6 Design of the study

The thesis consists of three main parts: Introduction; Development and Conclusion

In the first part, some brief information about the reasons for choosing the topic, the method, the aims, the scope as well as the design of the thesis

The second part is divided into 4 chapters such as literature review, methodology, data analysis and findings In chapter I, Literature review, it deals with the basic theoretical background knowledge from the literature on communicative language teaching (CLT), speaking skill as well as the knowledge involving pair work and group work activities Chapter II presents the methods which are used to carry out the thesis Chapter III describes and analyses the data collected from the questionnaires From the result of the analysis, the difficulties of implementing pair work and group work in teaching and learning Speaking skill at Nam Tien Hai High school are found out

The last part reviews the main content of the entire thesis and gives some suggestions

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Communicative language teaching (CLT)

1.1 What is CLT

Communicative language teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement

to the earlier structural method, called Situational Language Teaching This was partly in response to Chomsky's criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of British functional linguistics, such as Firth and Halliday, as well as American sociolinguists, such as Hymes , Gumperz and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts

Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses The real-life simulations change from day to day Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire

to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics

Margie S Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes

in explaining Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has

a clear relationship with society In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)" (Berns, 1984, p 5)

Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of

second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language It is also referred to as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the “communicative approach”

1.2 Features of CLT

As an extension of the notional-functional syllabus, CLT also places great emphasis on helping students use the target language in a variety of contexts and places great emphasis on learning language functions Unlike the ALM, its primary focus is on helping learners create meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire native-like pronunciation This means that successfully learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how well learners have developed their communicative competence, which can loosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency to communicate

CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices As such, it is most often

defined as a list of general principles or features One of the most recognized of these lists

is David Nunan’s (1991) five features of CLT:

 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language

 The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation

 The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the Learning Management process

 An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning

 An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom

These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that

encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities

1.3 Communicative techniques and activities

A communicative activity, which was defined by Littlewood (1981), is those that provide whole task practice, improve students’ motivation, allow natural learning and create a situation and sets an activity in notion, but it is the learners themselves who are responsible for conducting the interaction to its conclusion (Littlewood, 1981: 18)

In addition, Littlewood divided communicative activities into two main types called "functional communication activities and social interaction activities" The main purpose of the former is that learners should use the language they know in order to get meanings across as effectively as possible Functional communication activities such as: identifying pictures, discovering identical pairs, discovering differences, following directions and so on The later activities are those that emphasize on social as well as functional aspects of communication Learners, therefore, not only convey meanings effectively, but also, pay greater attention to the social context in which the interaction takes place Simulation and role-playing are important techniques for creating a variety of social relationships and situations

However, not all courses that utilize the communicative language approach will restrict their activities solely to these Some courses will have the students take occasional grammar quizzes, or prepare at home using non-communicative drills, for instance

2 Speaking skill 2.1 What is speaking?

Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words According to Bygate (1987: 3), speaking is a skill which deserves attention very bit as much literacy, in both first and second language

2.1 What are the characteristics of speaking?

In most cases, speaking is the interaction between at least two people and in that course of interaction; the listener can give immediate reaction to what is spoken The reaction can be positive or negative attitude toward the content of speaking or can be the revealing of comprehension or incomprehension Bygate M ( 1987; 12) said “ in most of speaking, the person to whom we are talking to is in front of us and able to put us right if

we make mistakes” In speaking, speakers also interact in term of exchanging the turn to speak Listeners often signal verbally or visibly if they want to change the turn to speak and the signals will be recognized by efficient speaker Because of the complexity of spoken interaction, many researchers gave different features of speaking skill The followings are some of them:

o Speaking is spontaneous

This feature is drawn by Nunan, D 1999: 227 when he said that “we all have routines, set of phrases and other expressions that we use to assist us when speaking spontaneously.”

o Speaking is a reciprocal activity

This characteristic means that in speech, in order to “make sure that communication is taking place, the speakers have to adapt their messages according to their listeners’ reaction.” (Bygate, 1987: 12) Therefore, the speaker has an opportunity to make meaning clear through the redundancy of language

o Speaking consists of colloquial language

Colloquialism appears both in monologues and dialogues If learners are only exposed to standard language in textbook, they will find it sometimes very difficult to understand or to produce words, idioms or phrase of colloquial language

o Speaking depends much on language’s stress, rhythm and intonation

This is a very important characteristic of speaking because in speech, different stress or intonation use can convey different messages Moreover, each language has their own pattern of stress, rhythm and intonation, so the learners often find difficult to make familiar with a strange pattern of stress and intonation from their mother tongue

o Speaking is interaction process

This feature is said to be the most difficult one to learners, because in speech, speakers have to be engaged in process of negotiation of meaning with many discourse constraints, so they have to do the complex task of choosing what and how to say in what situation According to Brown, H D ( 1994: 93) “ The greatest difficulties that learners have in learning to speak is not in multiplicity of sounds, words, phrases and discourse forms that characterize any language, but rather in the interactive nature of most communication.”

3 Pair work and Group work

3.1 What is the definition of pair work and group work?

Pair work is a process in which "the teacher divides the whole class in pairs Every student works with his or her partner in pairs, and all the pairs work at the same

as "public" or "open" pair work, with pairs of students speaking in turn in front of the class" (Doff, 1988:137)

There are two main types of pair work: fixed pairs and flexible pairs, given by Byrne (1983: 85) In the former, students work with the same partner to practice the target language In the later, students keep changing their partners they like This may make the activity more interesting but the class noisier

It can be seen that pair work can get students to practice the target language more and increase students' talking time in the class

Doff (1988: 137) also defines group work as a process that "the teacher divides the class into small groups to work together (usually four or five students in each group,

as in pair work, all the groups work at the same time.)

Like pair work, group work also gives students more opportunities to practice the target language in the whole class In addition, students can work independently and freely under the teacher's control without the pressure of the whole class watching what they are doing

3.2 What is the organization of pair work and group work?

To implement the pair work and group work activities successfully, one of the most important facts is that we have to decide how to put individuals into pairs and groups According to Harmer (2001), Adrian Doff (1988: 139) suggested that we can base such decisions on any one of the following principles:

 Friendship

A key consideration when putting students in groups is to make sure that we put friends with friends, rather than risking the possibility of people working with others whom they find difficult or unpleasant Through observation, therefore, we can see which students get on with which of their classmates and make use of this observation later However, our observation may not always accurate and friendship can change from time

to time

We can also ask students to get into pairs or groups with whom they like by using

a socio-gram which is achieved by asking the students to write their name and the students they like best in the class on a piece of paper In this way we can make sure that members

of our class will gravitate towards people they like, admire or want to be liked by

However, letting students choose in this way we can be very chaotic and may exclude less popular students altogether so that they find themselves standing on their own when the pairs or groups are formed

 Streaming: students can be streamed according to their ability

The first suggestion is that pairs and groups should have a mixture of weaker and stronger students Therefore, the more able students can help their less able ones

The second suggestion is that pairs or groups can be formed with the students at the same level This may give us the opportunity to go to groups of weaker students and give them the special help they need The groups of stronger students are given more challenging tasks to perform However, some of the value of cooperative work- all students helping each other regardless of level- may be lost

In addition, we can also decide to stream them on the basis of participation If we see that some students participate less than others, we might make a group of weak participators Besides, we can also make groups of especially talkative students

Streaming is a complex task, since it forces teachers to divide students by level or behavior It demands constant monitoring to make sure that students are not in inappropriate groups, especially since they may change both language level and the nature

of their participation as a course develops

 Chance

We can also group students by chance This is the easiest way of doing things since it demands little pre-planning and stresses the cooperative nature of working together We can form pairs or groups by choosing students sitting next or near to each other but this can rise a problem when students who always sit in the same place since it means that they will always be in the same groups or pairs which could create boredom over a prolonged period Also, students can be put in pairs or groups at random based on their name, birthday, or some similar features such as the color of their clothes, the style

of their hair, etc

Changing groups: the group may change while an activity continues Students can first work in pairs then in groups of four, then groups of eight, or even more

Group size: Group size is one thing we need to consider when getting students to form groups We may consider the question: “Are smaller groups better for learning than larger ones?”

According to Honeyfield (1991: 17), the smaller group is, the more “talking time” there is for each participant If the time available is ten minutes, each member of pair could talk for five minutes, while each member of a group of four could talk for only two and a half minutes (provided that the participants share the talking time equally)

However, Honeyfield (1991: 18) also points out that “the smaller groups are, the more groups there are, so the teacher has more motoring to do and the less practical it is to have groups report back to the class.”

In addition, group size can be determined by types of tasks Moreover, for real world tasks, “it may be necessary to have the same member of learners in a group as would occur in real life” (Honeyfield, 1991: 29) The group size is determined by the nature of the task itself

3.3 Difficulties in organizing pair work or group work and suggested solutions

The idea of group and pair work in language teaching is hardly a new one, but transferring the idea into classroom practice often presents the teacher with practical, logistical, and organizational difficulties, which can be difficult to overcome Many teachers feel daunted by this, and often revert back to the methods they have experienced and trusted According to Andy Hoodith – Saitama University, there are three main difficulties when organizing pair work and group work in large classes

3.3.1 Space

In some situations the arrangement of the furniture is fixed, the teachers and students as well can do nothing to change or have no time to do it Sometimes, the class is too crowded (with more than 50 students), there is no space for them to move if they are asked to change their partner in a pair work For group work it sometimes appears more serious when the teachers want to have groups of students with different abilities The arrangement of classroom furniture can militate against pair or group work

3.3.2 Instructions

It’s essential that every student knows what the teacher wants him or her to do This sounds obvious and easy, but many a good lesson plan has gone pear shaped because

some or all of the students hadn’t known exactly what they had to do Some teachers try to give instructions in students’ target language, and, so funny it sometimes appears that understanding the instructions in target language is much more difficult than doing the exercise

3.3.3 Activity types

Pair and group work are fine in theory, but what type of activity to do with them is

a problem Some group members may sit doing nothing if the teacher asks a group of four

or five to work with a small dialogue With problem solving activities, it seems to be very difficult for pairs when one of them or none of them has no idea about the problem

In order to overcome these difficulties, Andy Hoodith gives some suggested solutions to each as follows:

If the furniture arrangements are fixed and there is no possibility of changing classroom, the teacher must plan more carefully, and attempt to create gaps between the groups and circles of interaction Drawing a plan of the room and visualizing the arrangements will help to achieve this If the teacher has some flexibility in choosing the classroom, then this problem is much more easily solvable To recreate a “Party” style environment, have a party! Seriously, a gymnasium, large room with little or no furniture,

or regular room with the furniture against the walls is quite adequate

In order to solve the difficulties in giving instructions, Andy Hoodith gives a suggestion that teachers should word the instructions carefully even in the students’ mother tongue It is better to be strict, and then ease up, than to allow students too much leeway to use their mother tongue in the first few lessons and then try to stop them overusing it One method is to explain briefly in English, then if necessary supply written instructions in their mother tongue If students are still not clear about what to do, then the written instructions probably weren’t very good! The teacher can then allow a couple of minutes for them to clarify the instructions for each other in mother tongue, and one example can be made to make students completely understand the instructions

As for choosing activities, Andy Hoodith said that teachers should take simple types of activities for pair work which must be less controversial than the ones for group work, but dialogues and speaking activities are more suitable to pair work than group work

3.4 What is the procedure of implementing pair work and group work?

There are different ideas in the order of implementing pair work or group work However, I strongly agree with the way Penny Ur (1996) gave in “A course in language teaching” According to him, there are four main steps for organizing pair work and group work They are presentation, process, ending and feedback

3.4.1 Presentation

According to Penny Ur, presentation plays a leading important role in implementing pair work and group work because the instructions given at the beginning are crucial; if the students do not understand exactly what they have to do, there will be time-washing, confusion and lack of effective practice, possible loss of control

About task selection, he suggests teachers choose the task simple enough to be easily described and it is advisable to give instructions before distributing materials or dividing the class into small groups or pairs A sample activity with the whole class is advised to perform in order to clarify the task

In this step, teachers should try to foresee what language will be needed and have

a preliminary quick review of appropriate grammar or vocabulary

Finally before giving signal to start; tell the class what the arrangements are for stopping If there is a time- limit; or a set signal for stopping, say what it is; if the groups simply stop when they have finished, then tell them what they will have to do next It is wise to have a “reserve” task planned to occupy members of groups who finish earlier than expected

3.4.2 Process

Teacher’s job during the activity is to go from pair to pair, group to group and monitor and either contribute or keep out of the way – whichever is likely to be more helpful If the teacher does decide to intervene, the teacher’s contribution may take the form of

- providing general approval and support;

- helping students who are having difficult;

- keeping the students using the target language; (in many cases the teacher’s mere presence will ensure this.)

- tactfully regulating participation in a discussion where you find some students over- dominant and others silent

3.4.3 Ending

If a time limit is set, this will help the teacher draw the activity to a close at a certain point In order to do the ending well, the teacher should set an appropriate time limit If the time for the activity is too short, students will feel very hard to finish the task

on time and because of that they may loose their interest in the activity In other hand, if the time is too long, students will have time to do other things than the task and that may distract them In principle, try to finish the activity whole the students are still enjoying it and are interested, or only just beginning to flag

3.4.4 Feedback

This is the last step of pair work and group work, this step helps teachers check whether the activity is successful, it meets the target goal set beforehand and, more importantly, it helps teachers to check students’ understanding of the activity A feedback session usually takes place in the context of full-class interaction after the end of the pair and group work Feedback on the task may take many forms: the teacher’s giving the right solution if there

is one; students’ listening to and evaluating suggestions; pooling ideas on the board; display materials the pairs and groups have produced; and so on The teacher’s main objective here is to express appreciation of the effort that has been invested and its results Feedback on language may be integrated into this discussion of the task or provide the

focus of a separate class section later

3.5 What are the good points and bad points of using pair work and group work?

3.5.1 The good points of pair work and group work

According to Adrian Doff (1988: 230) pair work and group work give students a number of advantages as follows:

 Learners get more language practice

The most reason cogent for grouping in a language class is providing maximum opportunity for participants to use the target language by practicing together Thanks to pair work and group work, the amount of language practice is increased because many learners are talking at any one time Thus, pair work and group work give students more chance to speak target language as well as increase interaction

 Learners are more involved

Working in pairs or group encourages learners to be more involved and to concentrate on the task When pair work and group work are organized in a lesson, all of the students in class can take part in speaking activity; differently from the whole class together where it may probably be dominated by a few learners and the other would lose interact

 Learners feel secure

Learners fell less anxiety when they are working “privately” than when they are “on show” in front of the whole class Pair work and group work can help shy learners who would never say anything in a whole – class activity

 Learners can help each other

Pair work and group work encourage learners to share ideas and knowledge In reading activities learners can help each other to explore the meaning of a text; in a discussion activity learners can give each other new ideas

(Adrian Doff, 1988, p 141)

3.5.2 Bad points of pair work and group work

Besides the good points mentioned above, pair work and group work can create some noticeable bad points as follows:

 Noise

This may happen in every oral activity because in this activity most students take part in speaking so noise is inevitable However, that is the good noise which is the purposeful noise because it means that learners are practicing English as well as being engaged in a learning task

 Low participation

When pairs or groups are doing well, we can say that most members in the groups are talking However, there are still some students who lose their participation to groups’ activities because they, in a way, find themselves discarded from the other members They cannot think of any point to contribute to discussions In other cases, there are several students who appear to take prominent parts Subsequently, timid students may not have many chances to join; they sit quietly until the end of the discussions If this situation

remains unchanged for a long time, they will feel less confident in their ability of speaking English

 Mistakes

When a pair or group activity is carried out, the teacher has a harder time managing all the language used Therefore, some mistakes, which are produced during the process of speaking English, may go unnoticed However, the teacher can help students reduce mistakes by doing controlled language practice such as giving enough preparation and checking afterwards in pairs or groups

 The problems of class time

It is clear that teachers of English school have only forty-five minutes for their lesson while they have to deal with many tasks If the teachers are not good at organizing pair work or group work, this activity will take much time and become an ineffective work Thus, the key point here is the suitable arrangement of time as well as suitable choice of the numbers in each group

 The use of mother tongue

Although some students are very self- confident of their ability of speaking English, others are anxious about speaking Some may show anxiety in the form of silence for fear of making mistakes or being laughed at by their friends Others show anxiety in the form of switching back to using their mother tongue when the need for communicating something complex arises Thus, the teacher should encourage their students to use the target language by giving instructions carefully, moving around to make sure that students are speaking English and appointing group leaders to monitor the activities of their own groups

 The problems of class control

It is more difficult for the teacher to control over what students are doing in pair work or group work than in a normal individual task At one time, teachers cannot observe all pairs or groups Therefore, to prevent activities from getting out of control, teacher’s instructions must be clear enough for students to accept the idea of working in pairs or groups and know exactly what to do

3.6 The roles of the teachers and students in pair work and group work?

Nowadays pair work and group work techniques are 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 their roles in the traditional methods

The role of learners

According to Hamm & Adams (1922), a teacher can delegate authority to groups

of students by using pair work and group work Through observations, he presents students’ roles as followed:

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

2 Group members encourage their follow group member to contribute

3 Group members keep each other on task, working towards 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) Each small group points out the leader to assign tasks and roles to every single group member Besides, the group leader is responsible for keeping the whole group stick

to the task without any private talks

The role of teachers

In group work and pair work activities, the teacher’s role seems to be vague on the surface as he is considered to be the facilitator who provides the students with helps only when they need However, in reality, 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 tasks to the students

5 Monitoring group activities and interviewing when necessary

6 Helping students with social skills

7 Evaluating students as individuals (Hamm & Adams, 1992)

Summary

In brief, it has been proved that using pair work and group work as a main technique in teaching and speaking is one of the best choices to develop learners’ communicative competence Nowadays, the traditional teaching method GMT is no longer suitable because learners can not have many chances to develop their speaking ability In the light of CLT, they are given more chance to communicate in the target language as much as possible By working in pairs or in groups every individual can easily acquire the communicative goal thanks to the interaction with their friends However, the success of using pair work and group work in teaching foreign language depends much on the activities designed by teachers, the way they are organized as well

as the students’ English level and the other facilities such as the class size, reference books, language environment, audio equipments, and visual aids etc This proves that although pair work and group work are undeniably good techniques in teaching and learning speaking skill, they can not bring the result as good as expected if the conditions mentioned above are not suitable

In this study, the researcher desires to find out the reasons for the fact that although pair work and group work have been applied to teach speaking skill for the 10thform students at Nam Tien Hai high school, their communicative competence is too poor Another purpose of this study is to find out the activities and the procedures the teachers here often use to implement these techniques With these findings, this study is expected

to benefit the students and teachers in learning and teaching English at Nam Tien Hai high school

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

This chapter addresses the participants of the survey and the research instruments including questionnaires, interviews, class observations In addition, the analysis of the collected research data is carried out to help answer the research questions

1 Teaching context

The study was conducted at Nam Tien Hai high school, a small school with above

1500 students mainly from poor and low- educated families in the south of Tien Hai district, Thai Binh province English is a new subject in this school It has become a compulsory subject recently (8 years ago only Russian was taught as a main foreign language subject) and only until last school year (2008 -2009), Russian was completely replaced by English In addition, the teachers of English at this school are very young With 6 years in teaching English, I have become the most experienced teacher here

At this school, there are ten 10th form groups, one of which focuses much on three main subjects named Literature, Math and English The rest are learning English as one of the compulsory subjects without special focus All the classes here are crowded with more than 50 students and less than 60 ones

The materials used to teach the 10th form students here is the new set of English textbooks published by Education Publish House It consists of 16 units and 6 tests Each unit talks about one theme and focuses on five following parts: Reading; Speaking; Listening; Writing and Language focus in which speaking consists of speaking activities based on language functions and the theme of the unit Most of the activities used in speaking lessons are suggested to do in pairs or in groups, the rest are done individually

2 Methodology 2.1 Participants

The participants of the study were the 10th form students and the teachers of English at Nam Tien Hai high school

All of the chosen students are non-major in English but they have been studying English for four years at secondary schools Although they have experienced in English for a rather long time, their ability of speaking English as well as other language skills was poor It means that there were very few of them who could speak out a meaningful

English sentence The total of the students who took part in the researcher’s survey are two hundred and they were randomly chosen from eight different classes

The six teachers selected to take part in this study were all female and very young None of them were over thirty years old As a result, their teaching experience was little They graduated from different universities all over the country such as Da Nang University, or Hanoi University Some of them were educated in- service or English was only their second degree

In addition, all of the teachers were invited to take part in the follow-up interviews

so that the researcher could get more information about the reality of using and implementing pair work and group work in their speaking lessons

The following is the list of the participants who help the researcher a lot in fulfilling surveying process

Figure 1: Table of the participant list

Names of groups Number of students

2.2 Methods of data collection

In order to get the purposeful aims, the researcher used both quantitative and qualitative methods in this study The quantitative data were collected from two questionnaires while qualitative data were obtained from the interviews

2.3 Research materials

The study employs two questionnaires, one for the teachers and one for the students

2.3.1 The questionnaire for the teachers

This questionnaire was written in English and consisted of 10 questions that helped the researcher investigate the teachers’ frequency in using pair work and group work in speaking lessons (question 1); their estimation in using pair work and group work in the speaking lessons (questions 2; 3); the procedure as well as the kinds of tasks they often use for pair work and group work (4, 5, 6) and the difficulties they have got from using pair work and group work (7) Finally, their methods of solving the difficulties in implementing pair work and group works and some suggestions to students that help them improve English speaking ability were asked in questions 8 and 9, 10

2.3.2 The questionnaires for the students

The questionnaire for the students was written in Vietnamese including 14 questions which focused on three following points:

Part 1(1, 2, 3, 4 and 5): the frequency and students’ attitude towards working in pair or in group

Part 2 (6; 7; 8; 9): The activities as well as the way of organization of pair work and group work the students like in speaking lessons

Part 3 (10; 11 and 12): the difficulties and the suggested solutions to improve them

2 3 3 Interviews

A one-to-one interview was conducted after the administration of teacher questionnaire The interview was carried out in Vietnamese to 6 teachers and 10 students The questions used in the interview were based on those in the questionnaire, but they were extended to get more detailed and thorough information about the result of implementing pair work and group work in their speaking lessons as well as the reasons for the difficulties they were encountering Besides, the researcher also acquires to have some suggestions from the interviewees for improving the students’ speaking ability

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALY SIS AND FINDINGS

This chapter consists of two sections: findings and discussions Through this chapter, three research questions will be answered

1 The questionnaires for the teachers

1.1 The teachers' attitude towards the use of pair work and group work in speaking skill

- The teachers’ estimation of applying pair work and group work in teaching speaking English in general

The data shows that 100% of the teachers at Nam Tien Hai High school agreed that using pair work and group work techniques in teaching speaking at high school is very useful However, they said that in order for these techniques to bring into play their effect, the number of the students in each class must reduce to 20 or 25 ones and these students must have the same English level Besides, the materials used in the classrooms must be suitable to their degree This really proves that the teachers here are really aware

of the good points of these techniques and necessary elements to make them more efficient

- The frequency of using pair work and group work as well as their effect on students’ speaking ability

From the data collected, the researcher finds that although 100% of the teachers here use pair work and group work frequently in speaking lesson, only 66% of them assured that these kinds of techniques could light up their lessons and make the students focus more on the lessons whereas the others told that their classrooms are so crowded that the pair work and group work not only do not get expected results but also create chances for the students to chat with each other in Vietnamese or do other private things

Table 2: The effectiveness of working in pairs or in groups at Nam Tien Hai

very much much Not very

much Not at all

B Practice English 0% 33.3% 50% 15.7%

C Learn from their classmates 0% 66.7% 33.3% 0%

D Feel more interested in the lesson 0% 83.3% 15.7% 0%

The figure in table 2 also shows a surprise that none of the teachers here think that working in pairs or in groups makes their students feel more confident (very) much because, they explain in the interviews, many of their students feel unconfident and shy when they work in pair or in group They explain more that their students only wants to work individually and do not want to share work with the others Even 15.7% of the teachers tell that working in pair or in group even discourages their students because their English level is very low

This tells us that the teachers of English at this school all realize the importance as well as the effectiveness of using pair work and group work in organizing the teaching and learning activities in speaking lessons However, they also admit that these techniques can still not bring into play if there is no really suitable environment

1.2 The procedures of implementing pair work and group work

20 40 60 80 100 120