Research title difficulties affecting the english communication skills in speaking classes of sophomores at hue university of foreign languages

TITLE: DIFFICULTIES AFFECTING ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN SPEAKING CLASSES OF SOPHOMORES AT HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES CHAPTER 1.. Knowing that important meaning, my group c

Đ I H C HU Ạ Ọ Ế

TR ƯỜ NG Đ I H C NGO I NG Ạ Ọ Ạ Ữ

KHOA: TI NG ANH Ế

RESEARCH PROPOSAL Research title: Difficulties affecting the English communication skills in speaking classes of sophomores at Hue University of Foreign Languages

H c ph n : Ph ọ ầ ươ ng pháp nghiên c u khoa h c ứ ọ

Sinh viên th c hi n : ự ệ Đ ng H u Hi u ặ ữ ế Mã sinh viên: 19F7511104

Tr nh H ng Đ c ị ồ ứ Mã sinh viên: 21F7510403

Mã sinh viên: 19F7511372

Nhóm h c ph n : 7 ọ ầ

Gi ng viên ph trách: Nguy ả ụ ễ n Th Nguyên Ái ị

Hu , tháng 6 năm 202 ế 3

RESEARCH TITLE 3

I.CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND TO THE TOPIC, SIGNIFICANCE AND 3

RESEARCH PROBLEM

1.1 Background 3

1.2 Significance 3

1.3 Research problem 4

II CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH AIMS AND QUESTIONS

2.1 Research aims 4 2.2 Research questions 4 III CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 3.1 Introduction 5 3.2 Main body 3.2.1 Studies implemented in ESL learners 5 3.2.2 Studies implemented in EFL learners 5 3.2.3 Summarize gaps 7 3.3 Conclusion 8 IV CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 8 4.1 Participants 8 4.2 Data collection tools 8 4.2.1 The questionnaire 9 4.2.2 The interview 10 V CHAPTER 5: TIMELINE 10 VI CHAPTER 6: EXPECTED OUTCOMES/IMPACTS 11 REFERENCES 12

APPENDIX 13 Appendix 1 (The questionnaire) 13

Appendix 2 (The interview questions)

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TITLE: DIFFICULTIES AFFECTING ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN SPEAKING CLASSES OF SOPHOMORES AT HUE

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

CHAPTER 1 BACKGROUND TO THE TOPIC, SIGNIFICANCE AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS

1.1 Background

In the present context, language is becoming more and more popular for people all over the world Learning a new language is becoming increasingly important and popular, especially in English But not just learning a lot will probably help you communicate well

In universities of foreign languages in general and Hue University of foreign languages in particular, the student’s confidence in communicating English with teachers or foreigners

is limited Therefore, overcoming the lack of confidence in communication is important in developing the communication skills of current students Knowing that important meaning, my group carried out the topic “ Difficulties affecting English communication skills in speaking classes of sophomores at Hue University of Foreign Languages” The main aim of the study is to investigate what communication strategies learners of English use to overcome communication difficulties at speaking classes at Hue University

of Foreign Languages In addition, as the function of communication strategies is to manage problems during the communication, difficulties faced by the learners in classrooms are also worth examining Finally, some suggestions will be made to promote the use of communication strategies in speaking classes, enhancing the effectiveness of communication

1.2 Significance

Our group hopes that the results of this research will help:

● Second-year students choose appropriate learning styles to overcome their fears and confidently speak in front of the classes

● Teachers figure out how to fix and have the right teaching method for students to overcome the difficulties they encounter

● The university adjusts the schedule, helping teachers and students communicate more with each other

1.3 Research problem

Many years ago, there was a lot of research on communication difficulties affecting students, but previous studies were often broad, not too focused, or conducted with a small number of students, so the accuracy of the results is not high Therefore, we are concerned that previous studies have not helped students orient and develop in the best way Because we are all students, we understand that, so our team wanted to do this research to specifically outline the problems students face and help them know what they need to improve on the weaknesses to improve communication skills more and more developed

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH AIMS AND QUESTIONS

2.1 Research aims

● To give appropriate effective solutions to help second-year students overcome obstacles when lacking confidence in English-speaking classes

● To better understand English practice habits as well as the difficulties that second-year students encounter when exercising English speaking practice

● To figure out how often second-year students of Hue University of Foreign Languages practice English to pass their absence of confidence in classes

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2.2 Research questions

Randomly selected 200 second-year students from Hue University of Foreign Languages to participate in the study During the interview and information collection process, our research mainly revolved around three main questions:

1 What are some ways second-year students used to speak English more confidently?

2 What difficulties do second-year students encounter when speaking English?

3 How often do second-year students practice speaking English per day?

CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 Introduction

Language is growing increasingly popular among people all around the world in the current era Learning a new language, particularly English, is becoming highly important and necessary However, not everyone who has learned a lot will be able to communicate well In universities of foreign languages in general and Hue University of foreign languages in particular, the student's confidence in communicating English with teachers or foreigners is limited As a result, overcoming a lack of confidence is critical in enhancing current students' communication abilities Knowing that important meaning, our research carried out the topic

“Difficulties affecting English communication skills in speaking classes of sophomores at Hue University of Foreign Languages” Our study focused on sophomores at HUCFL to find out what interaction strategies they used to tackle communication barriers in speaking classes While conducting research and gathering feedback from volunteers and students, several recommendations will be made to encourage the use of communication skills in speaking classes

3.2 Main body

Lack of confidence and fear when communicating is one of the biggest problems and concerns many people, especially students including ESL and EFL learners in different

universities around the world Below, we figured out six studies and divided them into two different groups:

The first group, studies implemented in ESL learners

The second group, studies implemented in EFL learners

3.2.1 Studies implemented in ESL learners

A large number of studies have been carried out on ESL learners with the aim of surveying the difficulties that students encounter in the process of learning to speak in order to provide reasonable solutions to help students improve We can go through some studies below Yee and Abidin (2014) examined “The use of public speaking in motivating ESL learners to overcome speech anxiety” (pp 127-135) The investigation argued that a serious problem faced by ESL students was a lack of confidence in speaking English in public The purpose of this study is to help learners overcome their lack of confidence and anxiety about their English speaking ability In a similar context, another study on Chinese also investigated this topic Mak (2011) conducted a study on anxiety when speaking English in 5 different ways and then presented the results to help students overcome their fear of speaking English more The participants in this study were 313 Chinese ESL first-year university students in Hong Kong The third topic means ESL students' understanding of communication and their choices for communication activities by researcher Mustapha (2010) Fifty students in their final year

of the BBA program at UiTM Johor were selected to investigate how to improve

communication skills and reduce anxiety when speaking English The three previous studies above are extremely necessary and helpful to overcome the lack of confidence and feeling anxiety about English speaking performance On the basis of documentary evidence, we have provided an overview of ESL students' lack of confidence in communicating in English in classrooms, which is very important, especially in schools Universities use research tied to boosting communication confidence for every university However, previous studies have shown their studies to be either too broad or not too focused Furthermore, two studies by Yee and Abidin (2014) and Mustapha (2010) were conducted with a small number of students, so the accuracy of the results is not high

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3.2.2 Studies implemented in EFL learners

Just like ESL learners, a lot of research has also been done on EFL learners to find out what the learners want to do to improve their confidence Here are some outstanding studies First of all, a study examining English speaking fear and shyness among LMD freshmen

in an ESL English speaking class at the Saad University of Blida, Algeria was studied by Melouah (2013) Thirty students participated in the study through questionnaires and were studied between the ages of 17 and 22 This study helped teachers motivate and create a happy atmosphere to communicate in English without losing confidence Also in this context, another study was conducted by a group of Egyptian people including Diyyab, Aly, Haq, Muhamad, Aly, and Sadeq (2013) This survey selected 30 students at Sadat Faculty of Education, Minufiya University in Egypt These six researchers used a rubric and a test of these students' EFL English fluency The purpose of this study was to evaluate and investigate the effects of using a multimedia-based program to foster the EFL speaking fluency skills of sophomore English major teachers What is more, one study utilized the data obtained from the

questionnaire The research also invited 282 Thai university students to study English as a foreign language (EFL) by researcher Akkakoson (2016) The purpose of this study was to pay attention to the perception of fear when speaking English with people, to show the attitudes and views of Thai students that they were making efforts to overcome their anxiety when speaking

in English Class These are really very useful studies for EFL students who lack confidence and fear when communicating in English in class These studies will provide students with the necessary equipment to learn English, help them be more confident when communicating and

no longer feel shy when speaking in English Besides the advantages that these studies bring to learners, they also have small gaps that need to be overcome The three studies above all used questionnaires for research, but if they combined with some other methods such as interviews, etc It will make the quality of the research better Instead of just using each method of research questions, you will not express all the ideas that learners want to convey to the research, so it is impossible to deeply understand the learners' aspirations and concerns

3.2.3 Summarize gaps

Based on documentary data, studies have provided an overview of ESL and EFL learners' lack of confidence when communicating in English in the classroom Most previous studies have shown that their studies were either overly broad or too narrow Furthermore, some studies were conducted with a small number of students and only used the questionnaire method for research Therefore, the information in their study is incomplete and inaccurate On the other hand, our research will combine questionnaires with interviews to improve research quality as well as deeply understand the aspirations and concerns of the respondents Not only that, we will conduct a survey and interview with a large number of 200 second-year students

of the Hue University of Foreign Language in order to discover accurate and complete data from our targets

3.3 Conclusion

This study was conducted to find suitable strategies to help second-year English majors confidently communicate in speaking classes at Hue University of Foreign Languages Based

on literature data, most previous studies have shown that their studies were too broad or too narrow Furthermore, some studies were conducted with a small number of students and only used the questionnaire method for research Therefore, the information in their study was incomplete and inaccurate Therefore, based on the above research results, we will try to fill in the gaps to complete our research In our research, we will combine questionnaires with interviews to improve research quality as well as deeply understand the respondents' thoughts and aspirations Not stopping there, we will conduct a survey and interview with a large number of 200 second-year students of Hue University of Foreign Languages to find accurate and complete data from our targets As we know, in Vietnam few studies have been focused on hesitation strategies used by Vietnamese when communicating in English, a popular foreign language in the country Hence, this study hopes to arouse the interests of teachers and experts

at HUCFL teaching and learning to conduct in-depth research into the issue for the sake of better communication competence for the sophomores of HUCFL when learning and speaking English

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CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

4.1 Participants

Participants of the present research method are 200 sophomores from different classes of English language classes in the English Department at Hue University College of Foreign Languages They are 20 years old There are about 150 female learners, 50 male learners They will take part on a voluntary basis We will use a convenience strategy (Cohen & Manion; 1985) to choose the students In other words, we select the nearest individual studies that we have been acquainted with by far and study many subjects together and continue the process until the requisite number has been obtained

4.2 Data collection tools

4 2.1 The questionnaire

We will utilize a questionnaire method instead of other methods due to some reasons as follows First of all, this method enables us to choose the data with a wide range of learners effectively and quickly Secondly, the questionnaire offers an easy way

to carry out as well as gather information to investigate that makes the analysis product easier Moreover, we can quickly collect all ideas of responders Last but not least, it helps participants shorten the time The data will be objective, according to Leung (2001) We will send the online link to the participants and they can fill the questionnaire anywhere (school, home, library, etc.) through the smartphone or computer that has connected wifi

The questionnaire is intended to find out the reasons for learners’ having difficulties affecting English communication in speaking classes of HUCFL’s sophomores This survey has three main parts The first part concentrates on the participants’ personal information with three questions that will be filled in the link online of multiple choice Each question includes individual information such as name, gender, major class The second part aims

to give the difficulties when speaking English in class This part has five closed questions

in which students circled the answer A, B, C, D, and learners are forced to choose one of four answers The final part is to open the question There are three questions in which

students gave their opinions All three parts of this questionnaire have 11 questions (See Appendix 1 for the questionnaire)

The questionnaire will be available online Due to a COVID- 19 pandemic that is currently seriously impacted, in a consequence, in order to make sure safety for students,

we will carry out the survey online Participants will be select at random We‘ll make a Google form site, then this online link will be sent to a group “NNA-K16 (2019- 2023)” on Facebook It will take approximately eight minutes for each studier to accomplish the questionnaire What is more, the survey will be conducted in Vietnamese due to we would like to assure the attendants understanding apparently the content of the question, avoiding mistakes, and easy to respond

4.2.2 The interview

The interview will be used in our study because it provides flexibility to the interviewers Simultaneously, during the interview process, the investigators can assess the nonverbal behavior of the respondents From there, we can clearly understand the difficulties that the second-year students face in communicating in English in speaking classes, which the questionnaire cannot achieve McNamara (2009) argues that

interviews are particularly useful for uncovering the story behind a participant’s experiences and pursuing in-depth information around a topic

The structured interview form will be used in the interview process in which each student is asked the same questions in the same order of predetermined questions in order to obtain the correct research parameters and results in the most accurate way and also save the maximum interview time according to Schmidt and Zimmerman (2004) The interview will be conducted with the participation of more than 60 students of Hue University of foreign languages' second-year English department from two classes of Speaking 4 and Scientific Research Methods We have all received approval from teachers

as well as students who participated in the survey Direct questions will be used because

it provides information quickly, accurately and effectively Some open-ended questions will also be utilized to support the interchange and capturing of the interviewees'

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