Sử dụng hoạt động“case-study” để khuyến khích sinh viên năm thứ hai ngành quản trị kinh doanh Trường đại học Hải Phòng nói tiếng Anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ MẾN USING THE “CASE-STUDY” ACTIVITY TO ENCOURAGE 2ND YEA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ MẾN

USING THE “CASE-STUDY” ACTIVITY

TO ENCOURAGE 2ND YEAR STUDENTS

OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

AT HAI PHONG UNIVERSITY

TO SPEAK ENGLISH

SỬ DỤNG HOẠT ĐỘNG“CASE-STUDY”

ĐỂ KHUYẾN KHÍCH SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

NGÀNH QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HẢI PHÒNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Ha Noi - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ MẾN

USING THE “CASE-STUDY” ACTIVITY

OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

AT HAI PHONG UNIVERSITY

TO SPEAK ENGLISH

SỬ DỤNG HOẠT ĐỘNG “CASE-STUDY”

ĐỂ KHUYẾN KHÍCH SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

NGÀNH QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HẢI PHÒNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor: NGUYỄN VIỆT HÙNG, MA

Ha Noi – 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Background of the study 1

2 Aims of the study and research questions 2

3 The scope of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 3

5 The methods of the study 3

6 Organization of the thesis 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Speaking skill 5

1.1.1 Definition of speaking 5

1.1.2 Teaching speaking according to communicative approach 6

1.1.3 Principles of teaching speaking 7

1.1.4 Speaking difficulties of language learners 8

1.2 Students‟ oral participation 10

1.2.1 Definition of students‟ participation 10

1.2.2 Factors affecting students‟ participation in oral activities 11

1.3 Characteristics of a successful oral activity 17

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 The setting of the study 19

2.2 Participants 21

2.3 The instruments 21

2.3.2 Classroom observation 22

2.4 Data collection procedure 22

2.5 Data analysis procedure 23

CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA 24

3.1 Students' degree of participation in the "case-study" activities 24

3.1.1 Students‟ speaking time per task 24

3.2 Factors encouraging students to speak in the "case-study" activity 26

3.3 Factors inhibiting students to speak in the case - study activity 28

3.4 Students‟ desires 29

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 31

4.1 Findings 31

4.1.1 The positive impact of the case-study on the students 31

4.1.2 Factors affecting student's participation in the "case- study" activity 33

4.2 Pedagogical implications 34

4.2.1 Clear instructions 34

4.2.2 Developing learner autonomy in vocabulary learning 35

4.2.3 Oral correction technique 36

4.2.4 The emphasis on the case-study background and cultural features 38

4.2.6 Building a supportive learning environment 42

PART III: CONCLUSION 45

1 Conclusion 45

2 Limitations and suggestions of the study 47

REFERENCES 49 APPENDIX I: OBSERVATION SHEET I APPENDIX II: QUESTIONNAIRES III

PART I: INTRODUCTION

This initial part states the background of the study, together with the aims, scope and the methods of the whole paper Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research

1 Background of the study

Since the spread of English to almost aspects of the world, people are getting more and more aware of the importance of the language In Vietnam, English has been seen as a necessary device to closer to a dreaming job, especially a job in a foreign company Therefore, there is an increasing demand for learning the language for communication In that context, the new framework of learner-center approach and the advent of communicative language teaching in the realm of teaching English as a foreign language have exerted the great impact on the teaching and learning English, in which students‟ oral skills and their active participation in class activities have come

to take on added importance Following the communicative approach, teachers make great effort to get their students to talk as much as possible in their classes According to the studies on what constitutes a “good language learner”, in the oral activities, student who raised their hands more often responded to teacher elicitation did better on test than other students (Naiman

et al 1978, cited in Breen 2001)

However, in Hai Phong University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, where students need the ability to express themselves in English as a powerful device for their future career, especially in modern society where working with foreigners often occurs After years of applying the communicative language teaching into practice, it has been noticed that student‟s active participation, particularly in observable speaking classes are

not prominent Hence, the author takes the focus on the “case-study” activity,

an activity in the text book “Market Leader”, the official ESP syllabus of Economics and Business Administration Faculty at Hai Phong University to carry out the research on “Using the case-study activity to encourage 2nd year students of Business Administration to speak English”

2 Aims of the study and research questions

“Case-study” is an activity in the text book “Market Leader” This activity provides students with writing skills, speaking skills and problem solving skills Therefore, this research aims at analyzing the ability of “case-study” activity applying in real learning situation to encourage students to speak English In order to achieve the purpose stated above, the study revolves around the following questions:

1 To what extent do students participate actively in the “case-study” activity

from the perspectives of 2nd year students of Business Administration at Hai

3 The scope of the study

In the text book Market Leader, the official syllabus of 2nd year students of Business Administration at Hai Phong University, the case studies are linked

to the business topics of each unit They give students opportunities to practice speaking skills in realistic business situations Each case study ends with a writing task

The research only focuses on the oral tasks of the case-study activity It seeks to find out the Students‟ degree of participation in the case-study

activity, factors encouraging as well as inhibiting them in those tasks and their desires, the expectant activities from the teacher to enhance their active participation in the speaking period It should also be noted that within the scope of a graduation paper, the sample of the research is limited to 40 second year students of K11A class of Business Administration at Hai Phong University so that the researcher can get the specific and accurate information and data from each student grasping the comprehensive learning situation to find out feasible solutions encouraging students to speak English

4 Significance of the study

The finding of this study can draw learners‟ attention on their attitudes towards classroom participation, thus making them aware of factors that motivate as well as demotivate their participation in the case-study activity

As a result, researcher can identify the roots of student‟s obstacles as well as motivations, has a closer look at students‟ psychological features and their own needs In addition, student‟s desires, what they expect the teacher can change in the case-study activity will also made known to teachers, who hopefully will initiate possible adjustment in using case-study activity to encourage students to speak English Finally, future researchers who share the same interest may find helpful information from this research to conduct further studies into this area

5 The methods of the study

The method of this study is survey study because it was conducted by using questionnaires and teacher‟s self-observation to collect data It was a qualitative and quantitative study Employing both approaches, it is hoped to achieve the reliable results for the study

6 Organization of the thesis

Part 1: Introduction deals with the background, the aims and the research

questions, the scope, the significance, the methods of the study, and the organization of the thesis

Part 2: Development

This part includes 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review lays the theoretical foundation for the study by

discussing Definition of Key terms and Framework

Chapter 2: Research Methodology details the methods which have been

adopted and the procedures which have been followed when researchers conducted the study

Chapter 3: Presentation and analysis of data presents and discusses the degree

of students‟ participation in the case-study activity and some demotivative factors affected their performance

Chapter 4: Findings and pedagogical implications presents the findings with

comment and suggests what teachers should do to enlarge the students‟ participation in speaking activities

Part 3: Conclusion ends the study by summarizing the main points, revealing

the limitations and suggesting further studies

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter aims to shed light on the literature of the study, specifically, the theoretical background and the theoretical framework will be reviewed To begin with, an overview of the theoretical background will be presented from definition of speaking, approach and principles of teaching speaking, definition of students‟ participation Subsequently, factors affecting students‟participation and characteristics of a successful oral activity will also be discussed, which is to form a theoretical framework for the study

1.1 Speaking skill

1.1.1 Definition of speaking

There is a long history of the study of the speaking skill in language learning Many variants of speaking definition were provided by different linguistics

First of all, it is worthy to consider the Byrne‟s view He suggested that

“oral communication is a two-way process between speakers and listeners, involving the productive skills of speaking and receptive skills of understanding” (p 19) in which the speaker functions as the person encoding the massage and the listener functions as the one decoding the massage Moreover, a clear distinction between written and spoken language was made:

“…in contrast to the written language, where sentences are carefully structured and linked together, speech is characterized by incomplete and sometimes ungrammatical utterances and by frequent false and repetitions”

(p 24) Bygates (1987) held the similar idea that “speech is not speaking like a book is, in two words, disagreeable and difficult.” (p 102) According to the author, conditions and the reciprocity are the two primary differences between speech and writing In speech, the former includes time factor and other associated problems like planning, memory and production under pressure affect the form of spoken language Besides, the later indicates that listeners can generally show their agreement or disagreement with speakers; thus, speakers can pay attention to listeners and adapt their message according to their reaction Meanwhile, in writing, readers‟ understanding and potential problems such as what readers want to read are factors that the writers have to anticipate or predict in each of their works

writing-From these two first points of view, it is clearly seen that the researchers have defined speaking basing on the emphasis on the differences between spoken and written language

Besides, Brown and Yule (1983) suggested that spoken language consists

of short, fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation Therefore, speaking is “an inter-active process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and process information (Florez, 1999 as cited in Bailey, Kathleen, 2005) The author also described it as a process which is spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving but it is not completely unpredictable

In a nutshell, speaking is basically defined as a productive, oral skill which

is spontaneous and comprehensible Within the framework of this study, the well-rounded definition of Byrne has been adopted as the core foundation for the development of the research

1.1.2 Teaching speaking according to communicative approach

The focus on communicative proficiency rather than the mastery is the most striking feature provided in the theory of Communicative Language

Teaching expanded in 1970s According to Richards (1986), one of this teaching method‟s aims is to make communicative competence the goal of language teaching As a result, speaking has its place in syllabus setting Because of the communication aim of language learning, learners focus on developing the oral ability through communication and other activities, so that, they work more independently under the observation and supervision of the teacher, who sometimes plays the role of facilitating the communication process only The teacher sets up real communication for learners to practice speaking themselves However, as Thai and Suhor put forward their theory based on Brown‟s work (1976) in their work (1984, p.105), students instead of doing “show and tell” and making informal classroom speeches, they should develop communicative competencies in five functional areas important in everyday life, including controlling, sharing feelings, informing-responding, ritualizing and imagining Thus, classroom is not the only environment for the learners to develop communicative competency, it should be built up through everyday contact as well as social interaction

1.1.3 Principles of teaching speaking

According to Nunan (2003), teaching is sometimes considered a simple process, which explained why many language schools hire native people with

no teaching certification to teach conversational English Even though speaking is natural; speaking another language is far more complex, which requires teachers to strictly follow its own principles Among various studies, the simple principles suggested by Nunan (2003) are worth consideration First and foremost, teachers should be aware of the differences between L2 and foreign language learning contexts Moreover, it is the teachers who provide students opportunities to talk by using group- work or pair-work with the practice of both fluency and accuracy while limiting teacher talk Besides,

lesson plan plays a very important role in making a successful speaking period,

in which the plan speaking tasks that involve negotiate for meaning and the design of classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both

transactional and interactional speaking should be carefully prepared

More specifically, Burns and Joyce (1997, p.105) examined speaking and principles of teaching speaking in a broader and more systematic way They concluded that as speaking involves a wide range of skills; teachers should consider four vital guidelines First of all, learners need to understand the cultural and social purposes of spoken interactions, which may be broadly classified as transaction or interaction The second principle factor is that speaking involves an understanding of the way in which context influences the voice of language made Furthermore, learning and practicing vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation should be related to the use of the whole contexts Finally, spoken discourse types or text can be analyzed with learners for their typical structures and grammatical patterns

As can be seen, while Nunan provided detailed guidelines for planning a speaking lesson, Bums and Joyce put more emphasis on the role of context on teaching speaking besides learners‟ communicative purposes By saying that, speaking does not only mean vocabulary and structure recalling but also a kind of expressing individual world of thought, a crucial concept that teachers should always bear in mind on designing speaking activities

1.1.4 Speaking difficulties of language learners

Burn and Joyce (1997, p.134) identify three sets of factors that may cause reluctance on the parts of students to take part in classroom tasks involving speaking They suggest that this reluctance may be due to cultural factors, linguistic factors, and psychological factors In the first place, the cultural factors derive from learners‟ prior learning experiences and the expectations

are not familiar with the cultural or social knowledge of the target language, they have to face with a wide range of difficulties In addition, the linguistic factors including difficulties in transferring from the learners‟ first language to the target language in terms of the sounds, rhythms, and stress patterns also make contribution to inhibiting the spoken language In the third analysis, psychological factors like cultural shocks, previous negative social or political experiences, the lack of motivation, anxiety or shyness in class are those which trigger the negative impact to the learners

According to Tsui (1996), after implementing the case study in secondary school classroom in Hong Kong, he identified five principle factors accounting for the reluctance of students to speak up in class:

(1) Students‟ perceived low proficiency in English

(2) Students‟ fear of mistakes and derision

or their family members because all of them are Vietnamese and they only use Vietnamese in communication As a matter of fact, the lack of real English communication environment is the big challenge that Vietnamese students have to face with when learning English

1.2 Students’ oral participation

1.2.1 Definition of students’ participation

Educators at Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo,

Canada defined students‟ participation as a “lengthy conversation with the

whole class”, which can include short dialogues between instructors and

students, or within small groups of students More specifically, Green (2008) has examined the term “students‟ participation” as perceived by students and teachers According to the author, students‟ responses often coincided their class participation, in general, as the act of being involved in the class, including an active intervention and showing interests to classroom‟s activities Conversely, teachers highlighted the aspect of student involvement

in class activities by interacting freely with classmates and with the teacher, expressing themselves without inhibitions, completing teachers‟ thoughts, answering or asking questions, and responding to comments or instructions Allwright (1984) stated that there are three types of oral engagement language lessons In the most frequent type, called „compliance‟, students‟ utterances are very much dependent on the teacher‟s management of classroom communication In the second type, known as „navigation‟, learners take the initiative, to overcome communication breakdowns, as in requests for clarification of what has been said The less frequent type is „negotiation‟, and when it occurs, the teacher‟s and the students‟ roles may become less asymmetrical, and interlocutors attempt to reach decision making by consensus

According to Luu and Nguyen (2010), classroom interaction comprises of two types: non-verbal and verbal interaction The non-verbal type refers to students‟ behavioral response in class, for example, head nodding, hand raising, eye contact, body gestures, etc The verbal interaction includes written

and oral interaction with the former presenting the interaction in which students write out their ideas or thoughts, on the contrary, the latter implying the learner communication with others by speaking in class, answering and asking questions, making comments, and taking part in discussions

Within the framework of this study, the researcher chooses the interpretation of Luu and Nguyen (2010) as the foundation for further discussions in the following parts Specifically, student‟s participation in this study refers only to students‟ oral interaction, which includes voluntarily answering teacher‟s questions, giving opinions about certain topics discussed

in class, making spontaneous contributions, making a commentary, asking questions, participating in group discussions

1.2.2 Factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities

There is a long history of the study of factors affecting students‟ participation

in the oral activities The approach by William and Burden (1997) as cited in Dornyei (2001) is worth considering as it categorized motivational factors in L2 learning into two detailed subgroups The following table was adapted from Dornyei (2001) and employed to distinguish the two types of factors

INTERNAL FACTORS

Intrinsic interest of activity

 Arousal of curiosity

 Optimal degree of challenge

Perceived value of activity

 Personal relevance

 Anticipated value of outcomes

 Intrinsic value attributed to the activity

 Mediated learning experience

 The nature and amount

 Awareness of developing skills and

mastery in chosen area

 Self- efficacy

Self- concept

 Realistic awareness of personal strengt

hs and weaknesses in skills required

 Personal definitions and judgments of

success and failure

 Self - worth concern

 Learned helplessness

Attitudes

 To language learning in general

 To the target language

 To the target community and culture

Other affective states

The learning environment

 Comfort

 Resources

 Time of day, week, year

 Size of class and school

 Class and school ethos

The broader context

 Wider family networks

 The local education systems

 Conflicting interests

 Cultural norms

 Societal expectations and attitudes

Table 1: Motivational factors in L2 learning (William & Burden (1997) as

cited in Dornyei, (2001, p192-203)

Trang (2007) has conducted a study to examine the level of the student demotivation in EFL learning and to document the underlying sources of demotivation suffered by students Stimulated recall methodology was used to collect retrospective data Based on the nature of the demotive categories, Trang classified demotive factors into 2 groups: internal attributions and extemal attributions The former included students‟ attitudes towards English, their experiences of failure or lack of success, and incidents related to their self-esteem; the latter consisted of teacher-related factors, the learning environment, and other external factors

- left behind classmates

- fail to answer teacher‟s questions, do exercises, tests

- fail to communicate in English

- get low marks despite having studied seriously

- feel insulted

- unconfident (fear of losing face/

incompetence/afraid of not being able to

- fail to pronounce

- difficult to

Teaching methods

- uncreative, boring ways of conveying knowledge

Grading and assessment

- test outside lessons (does not cover material)

credibility

- teaching language skills incomprehensively

- speed of teaching is too fast

- ineffective distribution of L1 & L2 use

- lessons limited to textbook

- repeated lessons from class to class

- different teaching methods among different teachers

- frequently test students -inappropriate workload

- not equal to students‟ levels of proficiency

- no corrective feedback

Learning enviromental demotivating factors Classroom

- lack of opportunities to contact to foreigners in class

- lack of opportunities to use English

Learning condition

- crowded groups

- insufficient teaching and learning facilities

- unequal levels of

Class time

-unfavorable class time

- limited class time

Textbook

- boring

- not equal with students‟ levels of proficiency

- availability

of instruction books

outside class proficiency

between classmates

- lack of extra curricular activities

Table 2: Categories of demotivtaion (Trang, 2007, p 90-92)

In spite of a solid and scrupulous foundation for the sources of factors affecting students in the oral activities, in the work of William & Burden and Trang, there is no distinction between inhibiting and motivating factors as in Green (2008)‟s paper In her approach, Green investigated factors and their influence on both teachers and students in terms of motivating and inhibiting

their in-class performance

 Class size

Fear or negative evaluation

 Lack of knowledge about and/or

interest in topic

 Perceived low level of L2

competence

 Teacher‟s attitude

 Knowledge of an interest in topic

 Teacher's positive feedback

 Knowledge of and interest in topic

 Being prepared for class (include

 L2 competence

 Lack of motivation and interest

 Types of activities

 Teacher‟s attitude

having time to prepare for class)

 Working in pairs or groups

 Freedom of expression without fear of negative evaluation

 Relaxed atmosphere and rapport with teacher and/or peers

Table 3: Inhibiting and motivating factors on students and teachers’

 Having a dialogue between teachers

and students and/or between students

 Following classes with attention

 Being involved in the class

 Listening to others

 Helping teacher to “make her class”

 An attitude a student adopts in class

 Talking about a topic

 Showing interest

 Reading

 Participating in group discussions

 Making a thought public

 Making an intervention

Table 4: Action representing participation (Green, 2008, p.58)

In the context of this paper, on considering the factors affecting students‟ participation in the case study activity, the researcher would like to put aside the broader context as stated in Williams and Burden‟s and Trang‟s

framework and place a stronger focus on students‟ factors rather than both students and teachers as reflected in Green (2008) The combination of factors from those studies will be developed into questionnaires to investigate factors driving students‟ performance in case study activities

1.3 Characteristics of a successful oral activity

Apparently, when designing or adapting a speaking activity, a considering

of the teacher on the related aspects as well as the criteria of a successful oral activity is a must According to Ur (1996), a good speaking activity can be estimated basing on four factors

At the first place, an oral activity is a really successful when “as much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by the learner talk” (Ur, 1996, p.124) This also means that teacher talks or pauses during speaking activity should be described to be decreased to minimum The second criterion goes on the even participation which requires that all learners

of the class get equal chances to talk and make contribution to classroom discussion In other words, all of them are actively and enthusiastically taking part in the activities so that there is the limited number of too talkative students or too passive students in the speaking period Moreover, high motivation is important factor to contribute to a successful speaking activity,

in which teachers‟ role is of vital importance because their responsibility is to provide learners with interesting topics, create the need to speak, adapt the suitable activities, etc Therefore, the learners are interested in the lesson and easily express themselves Finally, an acceptable level of language accuracy is worthy to consider so that students should be encouraged to talk as much as possible and to use easy, comprehensible, and relevant language to express themselves

However, Ur also suggested that in practice, few language classroom activities succeed in satisfying all above criteria Teachers, bearing in mind these criteria, would able to create or adapt speaking activities that are motivating and help students to develop the speaking ability

SUMMARY

In short, this chapter has employed to present definitions of key terms and

issues regarding speaking skill, student‟s participation and characteristics of a successful speaking activities The knowledge gained from this part was put in the hope of shedding light on the results and findings of the study

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the previous chapter, the literature on the research topic was reviewed for the theoretical basic of the whole study On the more practical side, this chapter provides a detailed picture of methodology as the participants, the instruments, as well as the procedure of data collection and analysis are

discussed in detail

2.1 The setting of the study

The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Hai Phong University was established in November, 2007, originated from the Economics and Management Department, Faculty of In-service training-HPU The major missions of the faculty are to provide highly qualified human resources in line with the demands of international economic integration and the development of the country, at the same time offer high quality consulting services in economics and business administration for enterprises The Faculty provides a variety of training programs and levels, in which, Business Administration Department has attracted a great amount of candidates in the entrance exam every year The whole department includes 3 classes of K9, 3 classes of K10, 3 classes of K11 and 3 classes of K12

The research was carried out on the class of K11A with 40 students mostly aging from 19 to 21 To take the entrance exam in this profession, they have

to take Mathematics, Literature and English, so that students have rather high starting point in English

The text book “Market Leader”, the official ESP syllabus is taught for the

2nd year students of Business Administration during two semesters Market Leader is an elementary level business English course for business people and students of Business English It has been developed in association with the

world It consists of 12 units based on topics of great interest to everyone involve in international business

Each unit has 7 main parts, including

+ Starting up which offer a variety of interesting activities in which students

discuss the topic and exchange ideas about it

+ Vocabulary which provides students with important new words and phrases

that learners can use when carrying out unit‟s tasks

+ Discussion helps to build up learners‟ confidence in using English and

improve the fluency through interesting discussion activities

+ Reading with adapted articles on a variety of topics from the Financial

Times and other newspaper will develop students‟ reading skills and essential English vocabulary

+ Listening part develops students with listening skills such as listening for

information or note-taking

+ Skills will develop essential business communication skills such as making

presentation, taking part in meetings, negotiating, telephoning, and using English in social situations

+ The last one is the case study which is linked to the business topics of each

unit They are based on realistic business problems or situations and allow students to use the language and the communications skills that they have developed while working through the unit Case studies give students the opportunities to practice the speaking skills in realistic business situations In addition, each case study ends with a writing task to provide students with writing form necessary in the business field

One semester will last for 15 weeks with 3 periods of ESP for each week,

so that case studies are often taught and learnt within one period-45 minutes

The other periods are spent on teaching and learning others parts and skills of the unit

2.2 Participants

Since the study focus on using the case study to encourage students to speak English, the participation of students in the study is very important A number of 40 students from K11A class who have actually handed back the questionnaires took part in the survey The students reported to have studies English for at least 4 years and at most 10 years, with the majority of them voted for a study period from 7 to 8 years These students are regarded as the primary target of the research because they are ones facing with the matter of low degree of participation in speaking period, the fundamental reason for the low proficiency in English communication skill

2.3 The instruments

For a collection of sufficient reliable and vivid data for the study, questionnaires and classroom observation were utilized as methods of the qualitative approach

2.3 1 Questionnaires

The questionnaires were written in English, began with a brief explanation

of the research topic and a request for personal information The researcher proposed a combination of both opened-end and closed-end questions to facilitate the comprehension of the collected information and data analysis The questionnaires are designated for a particular area of investigation as follows:

1 Students‟ degree of participation in the “case-study” activity

2 Factors encouraging students to speak in the case study activity

3 Factors inhibiting students to speak in the case study activity

2.3.2 Classroom observation

Taking the advantage of the practicum, the researcher decided to observe 5 case study periods of K11A class with different oral tasks It serves as an important source of the information which solidified the information of the questionnaires to find out the degree of students‟ participation in the case study activities It helps to increase the validity of the information gathered and the finding drawn

2.4 Data collection procedure

The procedure of data collection could be put into 3 phrases as follows: Phase 1: Preparation

In this phase, the researcher managed to 1) design the questionnaires and the observation sheet; 2) make adaptations and finalize the design of data collection instruments and 3) set up schedule for collecting data

Phase 2: Observation

The researcher observed the K11A class during 5 periods of case-study activities with different oral tasks In each speaking task of a unit, students were divided into groups of five There are 10 minutes for each tasks, hence each student has at least 2 minutes to speak Teacher and other group leaders will carefully observe and take note the speaking time of every member in groups for each task

Phase 3: Questionnaires

After getting the timetable for students, the researcher handed out the questionnaires to the members of K11A class The researcher briefly explained the purpose of the term to the students and encouraged them to answer the questions honestly and carefully to better serve and develop their study effect

2.5 Data analysis procedure

The classroom observation was collected and transferred into data in which the detailed numbers of students are put in four segments of speaking time The collected data was also classified according to the research questions The questionnaires had already been divided into sections from the design stage basing on the research questions Therefore, it was convenient to classify the information gathered The factors were categorized after the researcher read and reread students‟ answers The data collected from the questionnaires was then synthesized and illustrated by diagrams or tables according to each research question

SUMMARY

In brief, the above method and procedures of data analysis were useful in

that they helped the researcher obtain comprehensive and rich data From such data, surprising and interesting results were found out and will be presented in the next chapter

CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

The following chapter presents the data analysis in terms of three main issues: Students‟ degree of participation in the case-study activity, factors affecting students in the case-study activity including encouraging and inhibiting factors, the desires of students of the more suitable adaptation for the case-study activity This chapter is of significance to be the foundation of the findings for the next part in this study

3.1 Students' degree of participation in the "case-study" activities

3.1.1 Students’ speaking time per task

Speaking time (ST)

Task

ST ≤ 1 1' < ST < 2' 2 ≤ ST ≤ 3' ST ≥ 3'

Table 5: Student's speaking time per task

As can be seen from the table, there is a gradual increase in student's speaking time per task through lessons from Unit 1 to Unit 5 Working with task 4 of Unit 1, the first lesson, students seem to be too passive when participating in speaking activities, the highest number of students (15 students) go on the group having speaking time under 1 minute One week later, participating in task 2, unit 2, the number of this group drops to 10 students Noticeablely, there are 12 students with speaking time reaching over

3 minutes Until the third week, with task 2 of unit 3, the group

having speaking time ranging from 2 to 3 minutes is up to 16 students The last two weeks of the self - observation process witnesses the progress of students Working in groups with task 3 of the unit 4, there are 19 students can speak from 2 to 3 minutes In addition, there are up to 5 students with the speaking time reaching over 3 minutes The final week follows the similar pattern However there are only 3 students whose time of speaking lasting for under 1 minute per task while the numbers of students can speak over 3 minutes are up to 6

Overall, the case-study activity has had beneficial impact on students It is

obvious that their degree of participation increasingly rises lesson by lesson 3.1.2 Students’ level of participation

Chart 1: Degree of students’ participation in the case study activity

A I'm willing to speak English in any "case-study" activities

B I like speaking English when appointed by the teacher

C I only like to speak English with friend at the same table

D I like to speak English when I have already prepared the speaking content

at home

E I'm shy when participating in the "case-study" activities