Teaching ESL conversation through using lexical phrases = Việc áp dụng các cụm từ vựng trong việc dạy giao tiếp Tiếng Anh như ngôn ngữ thứ hai.PDF

PART ONE INTRODUCTION This study examines the importance of lexical phrases in the teaching and learning of spoken English.. Besides, Widdowson 1979 stated that “students, especially stu

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality i

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract iv

Table of contents v

List of tables vii

List of figures viii

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aim of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope and limitations of the study 3

5 Significance of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART TWO: THE STUDY 5

Chapter 1 Literature review 5

1.1 Lexical phrases 5

1.1.1 Review of lexical phrases 5

1.1.2 Definition of lexical phrases 5

1.1.3 Kinds of lexical phrases 6

1.2 What is communication? 7

1.2.1 Definitions and roles of communication 7

1.2.2 Characteristics of conversation 8

1.2.2.1 Conversation is lexis-centered not grammar-centered 8

1.2.2.2 Intonation phrases are very popular in spoken English 10

1.2.2.3 Language of conversation is vague 10

1.2.3 Spoken English: fluency or accuracy? 11

1.2.4 The “I- centric” in communication 12

1.3 Lexical phrases and communication 12

1.3.1 Lexical phrases and communicative competence 12

1.3.2 Lexical phrases and conversation 15

1.3.3 Lexical phrases and oral fluency 17

1.4 Summary 19

Chapter 2 Methodology 20

2.1 Research questions 20

2.2 Subjects and data collection instruments 20

2.2.1 Subjects 20

2.2.2 Data collection instruments 22

2.2.2.1 Questionnaire for the students 23

2.2.2.2 Questionnaire for the teachers 24

2.3 Data collection procedures 24

2.4 Research method 25

2.5 Summary 25

Chapter 3 Data analysis and findings 26

3.1 Learners’ responses to the questionnaires 26

3.2 Teachers’ responses to the questionnaires 36

3.3 Major findings and discussions 42

3.4 Summary 42

PART THREE CONCLUSIONS 43

1 Conclusions 43

2 Implications 43

3 Suggestions for further study 43

BIBLIOGRAPHY 45 APPENDIX 1: STUDENTS’ QUESTIONANNAIRE (in Vietnamese) I APPENDIX 2: STUDENTS’ QUESTIONANNAIRE (in English) IV APPENDIX 3: TEACHERS’ QUESTIONANNAIRE (in Vietnamese) VII APPENDIX 4: TEACHERS’ QUESTIONANNAIRE (in English) IX

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Summary of students’ characteristics 21

Table 3.2 Teachers’ personal information 22

Table 4.1: Learners’ frequency of communicating with speakers of English 26

Table 4.2 Students’ self-assessment of speaking ability 27

Table 4.3: What do students usually learn to speak English well? 28

Table 4.4: Students’ opinion on grammatical rules and individual words 28

Table 4.5: Students’ frequency of learning words with functions 29

Table 4.6: Student’s frequency of pronunciation of words separately 29

Table 4.7 : Fluency and accuracy 30

Table 4.8 : Motivation in speaking English 31

Table 4.9: What makes students’ speaking less fluent? 31

Table 4.10: The frequency of using intonation phrases 32

Table 4.11: Students’ opinion on intonation phrases in spoken English 32

Table 4.12: Frequency of translating Vietnamese sentences into English ones 33

Table 4.13: Students’ frequency of creating sentences with grammatical rules and individual words 33

Table 4 14: Frequency of vague language usage 34

Table 4.15: What enhances English speaking? 35

Table 4.16: What teachers usually pay attention to when teaching speaking skill? 36

Table 4.17: Teachers’ opinions about fluency and accuracy in speaking English 37

Table 4.18: Teacher’s opinions on grammatical rules and individual words in creating sentences 37

Table 4.19: Criteria to evaluate a good speaker 38

Table 4.20: Teachers’ opinion of pronunciation of every single word 39

Table 4 21: Teachers and lexical phrases 39

Table 4 22: Frequency of teaching intonation phrases …40

Table 4.23: Intonation phrases are popular in spoken English ….41

Table 4.24: Lexical phrases can enhance oral fluency and naturalness … 41

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1: Frequency of speakers’ communicative opportunities with speakers of English

26

Figure 4.2: Students’ self-assessment of speaking ability 27

Figure 4.3: Students’ opinion on grammatical rules and individual words 28

Figure 4.4: Student’s frequency of pronunciation of words separately instead of in intonation phrases 30

Figure 4.5: Fluency and accuracy 30

Figure 4.6: Frequency of translating Vietnamese sentences into English ones 33

Figure 4.7: Student’s frequency of creating sentences with grammatical rules and individual words 34

Figure 4.8: Frequency of vague language usage 35

Figure 4.9: What enhances English speaking? 36

Figure 4.10: Teacher’s opinions on grammatical rules and individual words in creating sentences 38

Figure 4.11: Criteria to evaluate a good speaker 39

Figure 4.12: Frequency of teaching intonation phrases 40

Figure 4 13: Lexical phrases can enhance oral fluency and naturalness 41

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

This study examines the importance of lexical phrases in the teaching and learning of spoken English This chapter presents the rationale of the study In addition, the aim, the research questions, the significance and the design of the study will be presented along with its scope and limitation

1 The rationale of the study

It is useful to begin this part with the significance of English as an international language It is unarguable that English has an indispensable role to play in every field of life of every country all over the world As Crystal (1997) stated “English is now the language most widely taught

as a foreign language in over 100 countries, and in most of these countries, it is emerging as the chief foreign language to be encountered in schools, often displacing other languages in the process”

Along with the widespread influence of English as an international language, the “open door” policy of Vietnam also presents demands for better command of English to everyone, especially, the college students who will be in the labor forces in the future However, according to Mrs Tran Thi Ha, deputy director of University Education “there are only 49.3 percent of graduates who meet the employers‟ requirements of English, 18.9 percent of graduates do not meet these requirements and 31.8 percent of them need to be retrained.”(Translated by the writer) [Source: aad.vnuhcm.edu.vn 15/09/2011] Besides, Widdowson (1979) stated that “students, especially students in developing countries, who have received several years of formal English teaching frequently, remain deficient in the ability to actually use the language and to understand its use in normal communication”

From this fact we can see that Vietnamese students are not very efficient in their English, especially, speaking English

From my own experience of teaching English over the years, I found that Vietnamese students are extremely shy when speaking English and they usually speak English slowly and

unnaturally I once encountered one student who surprised me a lot with the answer “No, I wouldn’t like a cup of coffee” in response to my invitation “Would you like a cup of coffee?” instead of “No, thanks” or “Yes, I love to” or when another student said hello to me saying “it has been a long time since the last time I met you” instead of using “long time no see” These

grammar is rather good but somehow fail to speak English efficiently and effectively To my surprise, I thought that these kinds of sentences should be taught at the very early stage of the learning process such as how to reply to an invitation and greeting This is may be as Hill (2000) noticed that “the reason which so many students are not making any perceived progress

in communication is simply because they have not been trained to notice which words go with which” This leads students to contemplate carefully what they want to say and coin words at their will Consequently, their English is usually not natural and fluent

This is the reason why I choose lexical phrases as the topic of my study with the hope of finding something meaningful in helping students improve their speaking skill, particularly in improving the fluency and naturalness in speaking English since the authors of Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2002) state that “learning how words can be combined in English will allow you to say what you mean- and say it more naturally”

2 Aims of the study

The study aimed at:

-Giving some theoretical information about the nature of spoken English

- Finding out teachers and students‟ habits of learning spoken English as well as their opinions

on the roles of lexical phrases in spoken English

-Providing some suggestions to the teaching and learning of spoken English

3 Research questions

This study was guided by two following questions:

1 What are the habits of teaching and learning spoken English of teachers and students

at HUI?

2 What do teachers and students think about the roles of lexical phrases in spoken English?

4 Scope and limitations of the study

The study was carried out with the help of the teachers and students of Ho Chi Minh

University of Industry (HUI) This study was based on quantitative method Due to the

research methods of data collection, generalizations and recommendations will be limited to

the education setting at speaking classes of HUI only The results of the study might not be highly representative because the learners are just in three classes at HUI The findings of the study should be considered as tentative suggestions which would need further research One of the limitations of the study is that it is conducted just to collect the subjects‟ points of view of the relationship between lexical phrases and spoken English Therefore, there is a need of

practical experiments of how lexical phrases really work in spoken English

5 Significance of the study

This study aims to provide an insight into the habits of teaching and learning speaking skill of teachers and students It also provides a new look on how teachers and students perceive the roles of lexical phrases in spoken English The significances of the study are presented as follows:

1 This study presents some beliefs of students on how they usually learn speaking skill so that we can navigate our teaching methodology in the future

2 It provides some theoretical background information of spoken English that has been ignored for a long time

3 Through the answers of teachers and students, we will find out what is inadequate the traditional way of teaching speaking skill from which we can adapt something practical and necessary

6 Design of the study

This study consists of 3 main parts:

Part One is the introduction providing background information to the study

Part Two is the study This part consists of 3 chapters:

-Chapter one: Literature review: this chapter provides the relevant literature in which the

theoretical background is mentioned to see the important roles of lexical phrases in teaching and learning spoken English

-Chapter Two: Methodology: describes the methodology of the study This chapter includes a

presentation of the research questions, a discussion of the research design and a description of the subjects, instruments, and data collection procedures

-Chapter Three: Data analysis and findings: this chapter reports the results of the study and

discussions of the findings

Part Three draws some conclusions and suggests some implications for further research

CHAPTER 1: LITERARURE REVIEW

1.1 Lexical phrases

1.1.1 Review of lexical phrases

The term „lexical phrases’ was first coined by Becker (1975), then it came along with many

different labels, including “gambits” (Keller, 1979), “speech formulae” (Peters, 1983),

“lexicalized stems” (Pawley & Syder, 1983), “lexical phrases” (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992) and “lexical bundles” (Biber &Barbieri, 2007; Cortes, 2002) However, it only came to prominence in language learning and teaching and attracted marked attention from the work of Nattinger & DeCarrico “Lexical phrases and language teaching” (1992) Since then, a lot of researchers pay more and more attention to the increasing role of these prefabricated units in language learning and teaching, especially in spoken English It became a new trend in language research when Michael Lewis (1993) coined the term “lexical approach” with some following emphases:

1 Lexis is the basis of language

2 Lexis is misunderstood in language teaching because of the assumption that grammar

is the basis of language and that mastery of the grammatical system is a prerequisite for effective communication

3 The key principle of a lexical approach is that “language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”

4 One of the central organizing principles of any meaning-centered syllabus should be lexis

1.1.2 Definition of lexical phrases

First, lexical phrases belong to the bigger term called „formulaic sequences‟ which is defined

by Wray (2002) as “a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated; it is stored and retrieved whole from the memory at the time of use, rather than being subjected to generalization or analysis by the language grammar” Formulaic sequences encompass collocations (e.g., bread and butter), phrasal verbs (e.g., run into), idioms (e.g., a piece of cake), and figures of speech (e.g., as cold as ice); as well as lexical phrases However, lexical phrases are different from collocations since they are

“collocations, such as how do you do? and for example, that have been assigned pragmatic

functions” (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992) They are also different from phrasal verbs and idioms for its somehow less fixed nature; therefore, in some cases, they give the users free rein

in coining new phrases which are pragmatically and grammatically acceptable

1.1.3 Kinds of lexical phrases

According to Pawley and Syder (1983), finding the way to define certain categories of language is difficult; therefore, we should “assert that this feature of gradation is a fact of the language, and in seeking discrete classes we are in danger of misrepresenting the nature of the

native speaker‟s knowledge” (p.212) The Dictionary of Longman grammar of Spoken and Written English divided lexical phrases into 14 major categories according to their structural

correlates They include (1)personal pronoun+ lexical verb phrase (I don’t know what), (2)pronoun/ noun phrase+ be (it’s going to be), (3)verb phrase with active verb (let’s have a look at), (4)yes-no question fragments (can I have a), (5)wh-question fragments (what are you going to do), (6)lexical phrases with wh- clause fragments (what I’m going to), (7)lexical phrases with to-clause fragments (don’t want to go), (8)verb+ that clause fragments (thought it was), (9)adverbial clause fragments (as soon as I ), (10)noun phrase expressions (something like that), (11)propositional phrases expressions (for a long time), (12)quantifier expressions (all of the sudden), (13)other expressions (on and on and on) and (14)meaningless sound phrases (la la la, uhm) Although this type of classification is useful in terms of helping the

learners express the so-called “I- centric” in conversation which I will address later, these categories are somehow confused to learners due to their lack of context

On the contrary, Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992) divided lexical phrases into 4 categories based

on four structural criteria which I think much more suitable with the first criterion has to do with their length and grammatical status; the second, with whether the phrases are canonical or non-canonical; the third, whether the phrases are variable or fixed; and the fourth, whether the phrases are continuous or discontinuous They are of four categories:

1 Polywords: polywords are short phrases which function very much like individual lexical items They are continuous and allow no variability They

can be either canonical like “in a nutshell, by the way, so to speak” or canonical like “as it were, by and large, once and for all”

non-They are mostly canonical, for example, “a watched pot never boils, how do you do”

3 Phrasal constraints: they are short-to-medium-length phrases They are continuous and allow variation of lexical and phrasal categories They can be

both canonical (a day ago, a long time ago, ect ) and non-canonical (the…er the…er, for better or for worse…)

4 Sentence builders: sentence builders are lexical phrases that provide the frameworks for the whole sentence They are both continuous and discontinuous They allow considerable variation of phrasal and clausal

elements: “not only X, but also Y (not only was her mother injured in the accident, but also her father)” is a canonical sentence builder, while “the- er X, the- er Y (the sooner all this work is finished, the sooner we will all be able to

go home)” is a non-canonical one

The two former categories are somehow fixed; therefore, they do not allow much variation However, they prove to be useful in the first stage of the learning process where learners can learn some sentences by heart since “there is nothing wrong with memorizing some essential chunks, especially at the beginning stages of language learning” (DeCarrico, 1989) The two latter categories are much more popular since they function as frames with slots for creating phrases or sentences

1.2 What is communication?

1.2.1 Definitions and roles of communication

We generally believe that the ability to communicate a language is the ultimate goal of learning a language This is not to say that making conversations is the only reason we learn a language but rather it is the most prominent aspect of showing how good we are at mastering a language through a certain period of learning it Subject to different criteria, we have different definitions of conversation For example, Collin‟s COBUILD English dictionary defines conversation as follows “if you have a conversation with someone, you talk with them, usually

in an informal situation” This refers to the social context of conversation In addition, Longman dictionary of Contemporary English defines conversation as “the informal talk in

which people exchange news, feelings and thoughts” This is all about the purposes of conducting a conversation To some extent, these two definitions are not very satisfying Personally, I find the following definition more suitable: “Conversation is the informal, interactive talk between two or more people, which happens in real time, is spontaneous, has a largely interpersonal function, and in which participants share symmetrical rights” (Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade, 2006) From this definition I want to highlight the features „real time, and spontaneous‟ of conversation to which lexical phrases can contribute the most

It is believed that “the conversation session is sometimes regarded as a source of relief from more serious language work This should not prevent us from recognizing the important functions it can perform in helping to develop communicative ability” (Littlewood, 1981) From this point of view, we can identify two important features of conversation: the first one

is the ultimate role of conversation in developing communicative ability and the second is the characteristics of conversation which I will address later in this study

Nunan (1999) defines conversation as a way to verbally communicate for mostly interpersonal and somewhat transactional purposes or the way to mark relationships (Richards and

Sukwiwat, 1983:117) However, I, personally, think that the major role of making conversations is to show how competent we are in communicating what we want to say in a language

1.2.2 Characteristics of conversation

1.2.2.1 Conversation is lexis-centered not grammar-centered

In this part, I have no intention to describe some generally thought features of conversation

such as the four conversational maxims of Grice (1975), „communicative need‟ (Doff, 1988),

adjacency pairs, topics and the like In this part I will only present some characteristics of

conversation which the lexical phrases can be of great help in promoting the oral fluency and the so-called native-likeness or naturalness

First of all, we all notice that conversation is also “a type of speech event” (Hymes in Richards,

1980:14) and is different from other kinds of speech events such as lectures, discussions, interviews and courtroom trials in which its prominence is the informality in style and simplicity in structure with „short, frequent turns consisting of phrases and clauses‟ (Cook, 1989:51) And according to Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992), these phrases and clauses are lexical phrases of different kinds

restructuring our words as there is in writing; there is often no time to pause and think, and while we are talking and listening, we cannot stand back and view the discourse in spatial or diagrammatic terms…” Due to the pressure of online processing and other objective conditions, the speaker has to count on lexical phrases to acquire certain level of fluency to maintain the flow of conversation In this case, lexical phrases can be of great contribution Also, Hammer (1991) stated that it is accepted that choosing our words carefully in certain situations is more important than choosing grammatical structures This is to say, in conversation- under the pressure of online processing, the choice of pragmatically and socially appropriate words is more important than grammatically suitable sentences but awkward meanings

Furthermore, the capacity of our short-term memory is limited and “the information stored there decays quickly” (Aijmer (1996); therefore, we don‟t have many things to count on in conversation as there is in writing

In short, we can believe that “the spoken language produced by the majority of young people,

as indeed by the majority of the population, consists of relatively simple sentence structures- often just phrases and incomplete sentences, strung together”(G Brown et al (1984: 17-18) This is to say we do not use lots of complicated grammatical structures to be fluent speakers This is due to the nature of spoken language, we do not have much time and brain space to recall and use various grammatical structures at the time of speaking; therefore, we mainly rely on lexis or prefabricated phrases to compensate our limitations of short-term memory and pressure of online processing

1.2.2.2 Intonation phrases are very popular in spoken English:

Intonation phrases are also called intonation units by Celce-Murcia et al(2002) or tonic segments by Brazil (1997) or tone groups by Halliday (1978) and then tone units by Richards

et al (1993) According to Halliday and Richards they are „the unit of information which can

be of any length‟, and clearly they are larger than a single sound Words in spoken language are mostly pronounced in unit of information, for example, in spoken English we rarely pronounce “it is going be” with every single sound like “it-is-going-to-be” but “itsˈɡ ənəbi”

or “that-is-what” but “ðætəzwəs” or “want-to” but “ˈwɒ nə “and the like This way of

pronouncing makes your speaking much more natural and fluent Therefore, to be a fluent speaker, the first thing to do is to pronounce words with intonation phrases

1.2.2.3 Language of conversation is vague

According to Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade (2006), vagueness “serves the interpersonal function of conversation, and is considered perfectly acceptable In fact, not to be vague about facts and figures might be considered inappropriately pedantic” since they “allow learners to compensate for gaps in their lexical knowledge, including those created by online processing

demands” They include words like sort of, kind of, stuff, things…

Vagueness also frees speakers from any responsibility of being too precise on something they

said, for example, the sentence “he is kind of selfish” is more socially acceptable in

conversation than “he is selfish” since the former is just to show the speaker‟s judgment with some uncertainty but the latter is a confirmation with 100% certainty It is clear that native speakers of English prefer vague language in their speaking rather to be too straightforward and crystal clear Therefore, the lack of vagueness in spoken language somehow makes your spoken English sound unnatural

Vagueness is also a means for you to buy time when you have nothing to say or when there is

a lapse in your memory for words and ideas It makes your speaking more natural even though you have nothing new to say at that time With this function, it maintains your flow of speech Vagueness also allows you say things with speed It is simply because when you want to use a precise term, it requires you to go through a lot of words to choose an appropriate one and this also requires the listener more effort to analyze

1.2.3 Spoken English: fluency or accuracy?

For so long, teachers pay much attention and effort helping students master grammatical structures which they think will ideally increase students‟ speaking competence Although, it

is thought that accuracy is a must in written language, it somehow takes the second position in spoken language This is not to say that spoken language does not value accuracy but it is somehow secondary This can be explained due to the nature of spoken discourse: it is a continuous flow of speech in which how speakers get across the messages that matters If a speaker can not maintain the flow of speech due to spending time for polishing his language, the conversation will break down immediately If learners prefer accuracy in conversation,

Since communication itself is the flow of information which doesn‟t allow too many pauses or hesitation or else the communication will fail, fluency has a vital role to play in spoken language since “the main goal of teaching the productive skill of speaking will be oral fluency This can be defined as the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too much hesitation (otherwise the communication may break down because the listener loses interest or gets impatient)” (Byrne, 1986)

And Brumfit (1984) takes fluency as “natural language use” There are many criteria to define

a fluent speaker; however, according to Fillmore (1979) there may be four abilities that might

be subsumed under the term fluency, the first of which is the ability to talk at length with few pauses The three other abilities include the ability to talk in coherent, reasoned, and

“semantically dense sentences”, the ability to have appropriate things to say in a wide range of contexts, and finally the ability to be creative and imaginative in language use” (p.93) In this case, lexical phrases can be of great help in the first three abilities since they “allow us to name complex ideas quickly so that we can continue to manipulate the ideas without using all our brain space to focus on the form of words” (Lewis, 2000); they allow us to say

„condensed‟ sentences, for example, instead of saying „it has been a long time since the last time I met you’, we can say „long time no see’ with ease without analyzing its inner structure

They also allow us to say “appropriate things in a wide range of contexts” with a lot of

discourse functions such as topic markers (let me talk about, let’s first deal with…), topic shifters (this leads to), summarizers (all this is to say), exemplifiers (take X, for instance), relators (keep in mind that) and the like

1.2.4 The “I- centric” in communication

It is crucial to keep in mind that one of the important roles of communication is to maintain relationships where individuals seek to establish themselves to some level However, teachers most of the time pay attention to guiding students how to say “bald factual statements” (Lewis, 1997) rather than helping them to speak about themselves and what they think A large store

of lexical phrases such as I don’t know whether it is, I know what you mean, what I was going

to say is…can help learners speak fluently as well as downsize the structuring workload and

increase their confidence in speaking

1.3 Lexical phrases and communication

1.3.1 Lexical phrases and communicative competence

According to Chomsky (1965), competence is “the idealized and internalized knowledge of the rules of grammar that native speakers possess, and which allows them to distinguish well-formed from ill-formed sentences” He distinguished between competence (one‟s underlying knowledge of the language) and performance (the realization of language in specific situations) Then, Hymes (cited in Brown, 1994) coined the term “communicative competence”

In 1980, Canale and Swan confirmed three components of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence Later, this model was updated by Canale (1983) He proposed a four-dimensional model of communicative competence: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence Although, there were many debates over what components should be included in the model of communicative competence, it is believed that communicative competence determines speaking proficiency

Scarcella and Oxford (1992) proposed 4 components under the term speaking proficiency as follows:

SPEAKING PROFICIENCY

In short, we can assume that:

“Communicative competence is the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where

to use these sentences and to whom Communicative competence includes: (a) knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language; (b) knowledge of rules of speaking (e.g knowing how to begin and end conversations, knowing what topics may be talked about in different types of speech events, knowing which address forms should be used with different persons one speaks to and in different situations); (c) knowing how to use and respond to different types of speech acts, such as requests, apologies, thanks and invitations; knowing how to use language appropriately.” (Richards, John Platt and Heidi Plat, 1993:65)

So in this case, how lexical phrases can be a help in improving speaking proficiency?

First and foremost, it is important for us to notice that “oral communication needs to be conceptualized as a skill rather than as knowledge” (Bygate (1987) This means, to be good at

making communication, we should practice how to make communication rather than learn

everything about what are there in a communication So what materials should we practice with?

First, we should have a look at grammatical competence in conversation According to authors

of „Conversation: from description to pedagogy’-Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade, the

acquisition of core grammar as a basis for developing conversational competence includes:

1 Some basic conjunctions in order to string together sequences of clausal and clausal units

non-2 The use of deictic devices (here, now, then, this, that) to anchor utterances in the

immediate context, and to refer to other contexts

3 A command of simple verb tense forms, both present and past, and the ability to use the latter to sequence narratives

4 Familiarity with the use of aspect both to frame and to background information in

narratives: as in it was snowing… I had been working

5 A knowledge of the most frequently occurring modal and semi-modal verbs (can,

could, would, will, have to, going to, used to) and the ability to use these to express

both intrinsic and extrinsic meanings

6 The ability to formulate questions, especially yes/no-but also Wh-questions (but

perhaps question tags and comment questions-which- although frequent-are

syntactically complex, and can readily be replaced by lexical items such as no and

Therefore, to be fluent speakers, we do not have to have a large amount of grammatical rules

Second, lexical phrases can provide learners with appropriate means to attain sociolinguistic

competence through different kinds of speech acts such as questioning (do you X?), requesting (Modal+ Pronoun+ VP- would you mind, may I X?), offering (Modal+ Pronoun+ VP- may I help you, would you like), complying (of course, I would be glad/happy to), refusing (no way, I‟m sorry but), complimenting (it‟s amazing/ great/ incredible), asserting (it

is the case that, it is said that)

Third, lexical phrases also supply learners means to make their conversation more coherent

with such discourse markers as (topic markers: we’ll be looking at, let me talk about; topic shifters: so let’s turn to, one final point is; summarizers: so what we’ve got is, what I’m saying

is that; exemplifiers: if you have seen…then you know, take X, for instance; relators: if you look at X, keep in mind that; evaluators: but as a matter of fact; qualifiers: But X does not mean that, it depends on how you; logical connectors: as a result of, in spite of; spatial connectors: at the corner; and many others) and condensed phrases, for example, instead of

saying „it is up to you to believe it or not‟ we can say something more natural and native-like

1.3.2 Lexical phrases and conversation

First, we will look at the density of lexical chunks in spoken language in general

Sorhus (1976) arrived at a figure of “one fixed expression per five words in a spoken corpus of

about 130,000 words of Canadian English” Sorhus, Aijmer (1996) also confirmed that “fixed

expressions come at the rate of one every five words in spoken English” This is to say, prefabricated language in spoken English in general and in conversation in particular is inevitable We also don‟t need to have a large amount of vocabulary to be a fluent speaker of

English since “repetition, combined with a reliance on a relatively limited number of high

frequency words, accounts for the fact that there is typically a lower lexical density and less lexical variety in conversation than in other registers” (Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade, 2006)

More convincingly, Schmitt (2000) cites an analysis of a corpus of Australian English which

assertively suggests that “a person can largely function in everyday conversation with a vocabulary of 2000 word families” Word families are groups of words that are sufficiently closely related to each other to form a „family‟, and words can be group into families in two ways under this term They are words are similar in form and their meanings are related Come back to the notion proposed by Bygate (1987) that “communication is a skill rather than knowledge” This means that teachers instead of giving learners knowledge of how conversation works; they should give learners „things‟ to practice with so that they can become fluent speakers themselves This can also provide learners with motivation for outside learning since learners know that they can access real language themselves

Second, conversation is lexical chunks-centered since, for long time, it is considered that

“lexical chunks are an important part of sounding natural, either in your own or another

language” (Gairn and Redman, 2002a)

According to Pawley and Syder (1983), the workload of speakers in a conversation is enormous since they are expected to “make contributions to conversation that are coherent, take into consideration what has gone on before and what might happen later, and are sensitive

to audience knowledge and other features of the social situation; this talk should be native-like

in an appropriate register and meet other general and specific requirements (e.g of accuracy or vagueness, as the situation demands, of logic, wit, modesty and the like)”; therefore they “by

no means free to concentrate on the grammatical content of his production” It goes without saying that to meet all these demands, we must count on something that set us free from the word-coining process They are lexical phrases with their prefabricated nature that can be ready to be recalled at the time of use

Third, lexical phrases can provide conversations with easy ways of comprehending the messages uttered at the time of saying by giving us the clues to the flow of speech since they provide the so called „tone units‟ And Jespersen (1924) called them formulas: “some things in language- in any language- are the formula; that is to say, no one can change anything in them

A phrase like „how do you do?‟ is entirely different from phrases such as „I gave the boy a lump of sugar‟ In the former, everything is fixed: you can not even change the stress saying

„how do you do?‟ or make a pause between the words… it is the same with „good morning!‟,

„thank you‟, „beg your pardon‟, and other similar expressions One may analyze such a formula and show that it consists of several words, but it is felt and handed as a unit”

These kinds of tone units are formed by lexical phrases such as „now, what I’d like to do today

is (topic markers), I think the most interesting one is (evaluator), here’s one (exemplifier), all this is to say (summarizer) and many others

In short, “lexical phrases are integral to conversation for they provide the patterns and themes

that interlace throughout its wandering course These phrases are essential, even for rudimentary „communicative competence‟ (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992)

1.3.3 Lexical phrases and oral fluency

Although fluency takes the first position in conversation, accuracy also has an important role

to play We can‟t be good English speakers if we speak fluently but incorrectly With lexical phrases, we can increase oral fluency and reduce grammatical errors due to structuring workload and on-line processing pressure at the same time

According to Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade (2006), the ability to achieve fluency by stringing chunks together accounts for one of the basic constructional principles of spoken language, which is that talk is built up clause by clause, and phrase by phrase, rather than sentence by sentence, as in the case with written text Two authors further addressed that “no discussion of the vocabulary of conversation would be complete without considering the important role played by fixed and semi-fixed multi-word phrases in the achievement of conversational fluency”

With the help of lexical phrases, oral fluency is achievable at all levels even in the first stages

of the learning process where learners still don‟t master a larger amount of grammatical rules Maybe, for a very long time, teachers have thought that good pronunciation is one important factor in enhancing speaking ability It is certainly true However, they mainly stick to the pronunciation of separated sounds such as vowels, consonants and the like In speaking

English, one way to promote fluency is to help learners pronounce words in groups, for

example, “aɪ wɒ nə , wɑ ːtdəyəwɒ nt, wɑ ːts ðæt” for “I want to, what do you want, what is that” This will considerably increase the speed of the learners and give them much more

confidence than we ever thought

In addition, one way to promote fluency “is by encouraging „pidginization‟, urging students to put language together the best they can and avoid the self-monitoring that would inhibit its

use” (Nattinger, 1988) Why don‟t we encourage learners to utter the phrases like „this is

going to be…‟, „you‟ll just never know what is going happen‟, „what‟s interesting about it is…‟ as „ðɪ sˈɡ ənəbi‟, „juˈl… wɑ ˈtsˈɡ ənə ˈhæpən‟, or „wɑ ˈts ˈɪ ntrəstɪ ŋ əˈbaʊ ðitɪ s‟ at the early stages of the speaking learning process to increase oral fluency In

contrast, we tend to spend hours and hours explaining the 12 tenses in English, how to use „is going to, be about to, will, shall, should, might…‟ while oral conversation most of the time uses “be going to‟ to say about future events, and an abuse of will sometimes turns out to be

awkward in some cases Why don‟t we help learners memorize these phrases as whole chunks

so that they can be retrieved with ease and speed when learners make conversations! This is advisable since “there is nothing wrong with memorizing some essential chunks, especially at the beginning stages of language learning” (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1989)

Here, I strongly emphasize that oral fluency and native-likeness are the real motivations to learners They will feel confident and have fun doing speaking when they know that they are using the language that is real instead of the unnatural language patches from grammatical rules It is true that intrinsic motivation, for a long time and maybe always, is considered important to bring learners to class and help they learn a language, but, personally, I think that the fun of doing something practical and useful is the true source of motivation encouraging the learners‟ autonomy outside the classroom

It is true that “oral communication needs to be conceptualized as a skill rather than as knowledge” (Bygate (1987) Therefore, oral fluency is also a skill that learners can achieve through practice with lexical phrases of all kinds

It is important to keep in mind that “fluency is best achieved through exposure to large amounts of comprehensive input in combination with awareness-raising activities such as the identification of frequently occurring word strings and collocations in association with their communicative functions” (Lewis, 1993) This is to say we need to provide learners with large amount of input of lexical phrases, and more importantly, we need to raise learners‟ awareness

of the importance of these phrases since „you can lead a horse to water but you can make it drink‟ unless it sees the importance of water in quenching its thirst Teachers should remind the learners that “grammar enables us to construct language when we are unable to find what

we want ready-made in our mental lexicons” (Lewis, 1993) and “language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”

1.4 Summary

This chapter provides the theoretical background for the implications of teaching lexical phrases in ESL conversation as well as some suggestions of how we should teach ESL conversation

In this section, I have, on one hand, emphasized the ultimate role of fluency over accuracy in teaching speaking, but on the other, I have also shown that we do not have to attain fluency at the expense of accuracy since most lexical phrases are „grammaticalized‟ in nature

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In Chapter 2, I presented some theories related to the importance of lexical phrases in communicative competence, especially fluency and naturalness in spoken English This chapter describes the methodology employed in the current research project The first part of this chapter will present the research questions of the thesis The second part discusses the research methods and procedures with a description of the subjects, instruments and data collection procedures

2.1 Research questions

The study is conducted to gather information about the situation of teaching and learning spoken English at the University of Industry (HUI) of majors of English and teachers‟ and students‟ opinions on the relationship between lexical phrases and spoken English The study was intended to answer two following questions:

1 What are the habits of teaching and learning spoken English of teachers and students

at HUI?

2 What do students and teachers think about the roles of lexical phrases in spoken English?

2.2 Subjects and data collection instruments

All the data of the study were gathered from two questionnaires for the students and teachers

at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry In this study, the quantitative method is used as the main research method to collect the data

The following section describes the design of the study in three parts: (1) the subjects, (2) the instruments and (3) the data collection procedures

2.2.1 Subjects

There were two groups of subjects in my study: the third- year full time students in 3 classes

of HUI and the teachers of English of HUI This part will provide the characteristics of these two groups:

The first group is the full-time students of HUI with English as their major They all had already finished their second year at university and have been in the 15th day of their third year Since they are all third-year students, their ages are ranging from 18 to 22

The summary of the characteristics of the subjects in terms of the following personal information: gender, where they are learning English and the time they began to learn English, the frequency of their communication opportunity with speakers of English and their self-

assessment on their own speaking ability is presented in Table 3.1

Table 3.1: Summary of subjects’ characteristics:

Gender

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

The place where they are learning English

The place they are learning

Both at school and

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

The time they began to learn English

The time they began to

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

All of the subjects‟ ages are from 18 to 22 with the dominance of female subjects (91.1%) Most of the subjects are learning English at school (92.2%) The next characteristic is the time the subjects began to learn English We can see that 22.2% of the subjects learned English in elementary school and 74.4% learned English in secondary school This may be a very important factor to evaluate the students‟ speaking ability in correlation with the time they started to learn English

The second group consists of eight male (42.1%) and eleven female (57.9%) Vietnamese teachers of English Table 3.2 shows the minimum age, the maximum age and the average age

of the teachers and their average years of English teaching

Table 3.2: Teachers’ personal information

Age

Years of English teaching

Years of English teaching 2 years 14 years 6.11 years

2.2.2 Data collection instruments:

Two questionnaires were used as the main instrument for this study: one for the teachers and one for the students The use of questionnaires is a reliable source of gathering data since Richard and Lockhart (1994) consider it as an effective way of yielding data quickly in respect

of “affective dimension of teaching and learning as beliefs, attitudes, motivation, and preferences” (p.10) since they encouraged the subjects to answer the questions straightforwardly and genuinely (Gillham, 2000)

2.2.2.1 Questionnaire for the students:

The questionnaire, which consists of 18 items with 3 separate parts, was designed to gather information about students‟ personal information, their English competence, the subject‟s habits of learning speaking skill and the characteristics of their speaking process The questionnaires distributed to the students were written in Vietnamese in order to ensure that the students fully understood the questionnaire and avoid misunderstanding of the content of the questionnaires due to the subjects‟ levels of proficiency of English The students‟ questionnaire has three parts as follows:

PART 1 is the background part consisting of 5 items with 2 subparts Part 1 has 3 questions enquiring personal information such as gender (question 1), where they are learning English (question 2), when they began to learn English (question 3) Part 2 includes 2 questions about their frequency of communicating with speakers of English (question 4) and their own evaluation of their English speaking ability (question 5)

PART 2: there are four items in part 2 enquiring the learners‟ habits of learning speaking skill This may show some problems the students encounter during the process of speaking owing to their habits of learning speaking skill The questions are designed as follows:

1 What do students usually learn to speak English well? (question 6)

2 Their opinions on grammar and individual words in learning speaking skill (question 7)

3 Their frequency of learning lexical phrases in spoken English (question 8)

4 Their frequency of pronouncing words separately instead of in intonation phrases (question 9)

PART 3 consists of eight items concerning the students‟ opinions on the speaking process including:

1 Their opinion of fluency and accuracy in spoken English (question 10)

2 Their real motivation in speaking English (question 11)

3 What makes their speaking less fluent? (question 12)

4 Their habits of pronouncing words in intonation phrases (question 13 and 14)

5 Their way of forming sentences in English (question 15)

6 Their frequency of creating sentences with grammatical rules and individual words (question 16)

7 Their frequency of using vague language (question 17)

8 Their opinion on what can be of most help in speaking English (question 18)

2.2.2.2 Questionnaire for the teachers:

A questionnaire was designed for the teachers to collect data of some following areas: PART 1 was the personal information of teachers (question 1 to 5)

PART 2 was about the teachers‟ beliefs in teaching speaking skill (question 6 to 10)

PART 3 was designed to gather information about the teachers‟ perception of the relationship between lexical phrases and spoken English (question 11 to 14)

2.3 Data collection procedures

In order to serve this study, 98 questionnaires were intended to deliver to 98 students of the 3 classes of third-year students of English The questionnaires were distributed at the beginning

of the classes and with my attendance so that their needs for clarification can be met Although

the intended questionnaires were 98, the collected responses were 90 since there were absentees on the day the questionnaires were distributed Yet the number of responses is appropriate to guarantee the quality and accuracy of the research

The intended questionnaires for the teachers were 21 All these questionnaires were distributed during the break time to ensure that the act of answering these questions would not disturb their usual schedule However, the collected responses were 19 due to two absentees on the day of distribution

2.4 Research method

In order to answer the research questions, quantitative method was applied with two questionnaires designed to collect data for the study Then, the data of the study were analyzed using the SPSS 13.0 package to ensure the accuracy of the results

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

The previous chapter has described the methodology used in the study In this chapter, the subjects‟ responses to the questionnaires will be analyzed and discussed The data analysis is intended to identify (1) what are the current situations of the learning and teaching spoken English of teachers and students at HUI and (2) what do teachers and students think about the relationship between lexical phrases and spoken English

Learners’ responses to the questionnaires

This section analyzes the findings from the survey questionnaire with an aim to get information about the students‟ habits of learning spoken English

Question 4 was designed to gather information about the frequency of communicating with speakers of English of the students The results were shown in Table 4.1

Table 4.1: Learners’ frequency of communicating with speakers of English

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

The data show that the number of students who have the opportunities of communicating with speakers of English is low Only 30 % of the students sometimes communicate with English speakers while 58 9 % rarely have chances This means that students don‟t have much chance

to encounter real life language

Figure 4.1: Frequency of speakers’ communicative opportunities with speakers of English

Question 5 dealt with the students‟ self-assessment of their speaking ability The data collected were shown in Table 4.2

Table 4.2 Students’ self-assessment of speaking ability

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

The result shown in Table 4.2 was little surprised to me since 71.1% of learners are not very

confident with their speaking ability and the number of “poor” speakers is also high (21.1%) although they are majors in English and all in their third year at university

Figure 4.2: Students’ self-assessment of speaking ability

Question 6 investigated what students usually learn to speak English well

Table 4.3: What do students usually learn to speak English well?

What do students usually

Lots of vocabulary of various

Total number of respondents: 90 (100%)

From the data shown in Table 4.3, it is obvious that most students‟ strategy to enhance their speaking capacity is pronunciation (43.3%) in stead of what I believe when conducting this research, the lexical formulas Lexical formulas (lexical phrases) still occupied the second position

Question 7 dealt with their opinions on the traditional way of teaching speaking skill

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