Developing students' English speaking skills through personalization tasks Action research on grade 10th students at Hoang Quoc Viet High School kỹ năng nói t

C VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TRIỆU ANH THƯ DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ ENGL

C VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

TRIỆU ANH THƯ

DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS THROUGH PERSONALIZATION TASKS: ACTION RESEARCH ON GRADE 10 th

STUDENTS AT HOANG QUOC VIET HIGH SCHOOL

Phát triển kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh cho học sinh qua các hoạt động cá nhân hóa Nghiên cứu hành động của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hoàng Quốc Việt

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE : 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

STUDENTS AT HOANG QUOC VIET HIGH SCHOOL

Phát triển kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh cho học sinh qua các hoạt động cá nhân hóa Nghiên cứu hành động của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hoàng Quốc Việt

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: LÊ VĂN CANH, PhD

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARRATION

I certify that the work presented in this study is the result of my own research and the material has not been submitted either in whole or in part for any degree to any other university or institution

Signature

Trieu Anh Thu

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to show my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Le Van Canh, for his encouragement and guidance through the research, without which this study can be impossible

My deep sincere thanks go to the administrators of Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies- Vietnam National University for giving

me the best environment to fulfill the thesis

I would like to acknowledge to the support and assistance of my co-teachers as well as the students at HQV high school

ABSTRACT

One of the common problems faced by almost every teacher of English in my school is the students‟ limited participation in speaking lessons This thesis reports the results of an action research project, which was designed in an attempt to resolve this problem The research was carried on 40 students in a class at grade10th of HQV High School in six weeks following Nunan‟s (1992) five-step procedure The aim of the study is

to find out whether using personalized lessons can help to develop students‟ speaking skills

or not The results of the study have shown that using personalization tasks can help develop English skills for grade 10th students at HQV high school However, not all the techniques give benefits for all students Therefore, teachers need to choose a suitable method in order to make speaking lesson more effective

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

CLT: communicative language teaching

HQV: Hoang Quoc Viet high school

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Student participants’ experience in learning English

Table 2.2 Students self-reported classroom participation

Table 2.3 Reasons for willingness in classroom speaking English

Table 2.4 Students’ suggested speaking topics

Table 2.5 Observed number of students participating in speaking activities per lesson Table 2.6 Time of each student in speaking lesson

Table 2.7 Students’ confidence in speaking English

Table 2.8 Table for students’ changes in their attitudes toward personalization

techniques

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATION iv

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS v

TABLE OF CONTENT vi

Part 1: Introduction 1 Rationale 1

2 Aim and objectives of the research 2

3 Scope of the research 2

4 Research question 3

5 Research method 3

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Structure of the thesis 4

Part 2: Development Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 The role of speaking in second language learning 5

1.2 Nature, characteristics of speaking competence 6

1.3 Challenges with teaching speaking skills 9

1.4 Approaches and strategies in teaching speaking skills 9

1.4.1 Approaches in teaching speaking skills 9

1.4.2 Strategies for developing speaking skills 11

1.4.2.1 Using minimal responses 11

1.4.2.2 Recognizing script 11

1.4.2.3 Using language to talk about language 11

1.5 Personalization in foreign language teaching 12

1.6 Personalization and students‟ participation in oral activities 13

1.7 Chapter summary 15

Chapter 2: The Study 2.1 Definition of Action Research 16

2.2 Rationale of using an action research 16

2.3 Steps in doing Action Research 17

2.4 The school 17

2.5 Participant students 18

2.6 Research procedure 18

2.7 Findings 21

2.7.1 Changes in student‟s participation 23

2.7.2 Observed time of each students‟ speaking per 45 – minutes lesson 24

2.7 3 Students‟ self- reported changes in their confidence in speaking English 25

2.7.4 Students‟ evaluation 26

2.8 Discussion 29

2.9 Reflection 30

2.10 Chapter summary 31

Part 3: Conclusion 3.1 Recapitulation 32

3.2 Concluding Remarks 33

3.3 Limitation of the study and plans for the next cycle 33

REFERENCES 35 APPENDICES I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

In this Part, the rationale, the aims and objectives as well as the research questions and research design are presented The structure of the thesis is also presented briefly in this Part

1 Rationale

In the history of language teaching, many methods have been created in order to help learners study a second language and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is considered one of the ways to teach English effectively In CLT, teaching speaking is one

of the difficult skills and it has an important role in each person‟s daily life Speaking is the key to help human communicate Just think of all different conversation in comparison with how much communication we write, which one we do more? In fact, we often speak more than we write in our daily lives, so if the goal of language course enables the students

to communicate in English, then speaking skill should be taught and practiced in the language classroom Many language learners regard speaking as a measure of knowing a language To them, speaking is the most important skill that they can acquire The learners often need to be able to speak with confidence to carry out their attitudes or message they want to mention Speaking is an excellent vehicle of social solidarity, of social ranking, of professional advancement and of business Therefore; teaching and learning speaking skills are necessary than we thought

The necessity of teaching and learning speaking skill was emphasized by Nunan (1991) said: “Success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language” Therefore; in language classrooms, if students do not learn how to speak and do not have a chance to practice speaking, they will lose interest in learning On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can motivate student participate oral interaction successfully Both teachers and learners are aware of the importance of speaking skill, but it is true that speaking ability of Vietnamese students is still weak In fact, many Vietnamese students have a weak instrumental motivation for studying English This is because they do not have much opportunity to talk and they do not have adequate exposure to the target language environment Therefore; many students do not participate in speaking activities in classroom There are many

reasons to explain for this cause and there were a lot of resolution which were given to solve this problem However, I think, although we used what measure, which method, they have the same goal that is to motivate students to learn

As language teachers, we are aware that the learners need to be motivated in order to learn successful

This small piece of action research was designed to test the effectiveness of applying some personalization techniques in teaching speaking skills in order to increase the students‟ interest and their participation in classroom The study was based on the assumption that learners will participate better if students have chance to associate with the learning materials in their daily lives

2 Aims and Objectives of the study

The aim of this study is to find better ways of teaching speaking skills to the students in a secondary school located in a rural area, where students do not seem to have motivation to speak English due to the lack of opportunities to use English orally outside the classroom Basically, the aim of the action research reported here is to increase the students‟ participation in English- speaking lessons and helping them to speak English in the classroom more confidently

This overall aim is specified into the following objectives:

1 To gain understanding of the extent to which the use of personalized activities can help my grade 10th students to be more active in participating in speaking English in the classroom; and

2 Find out the students‟ opinions of whether personalized speaking activities helped them to speak English better or not

3 Scope of the study

This is in fact a mini-scale action research project in which I designed some classroom techniques to personalize the course book so that students‟ feelings, prior knowledge, experience are used to motivate them to speak English in the classroom The

study was not intended to identify the correlation between the use of new teaching strategies and students‟ speaking competence or speaking performance Rather, its aim, as stated in 1.2 above, is just to gain understanding of students‟ attitudes to the new teaching strategy Therefore, the study is the initial step for the next cycle of action research, which could be quasi-experimental in nature

6 Significance of the Study

The findings of the study will help me to decide whether personalization techniques help my grade 10th students to enjoy speaking English better or not The results will inform

me to make better decisions about my teaching and help me understand better how to change my teaching practices for the benefit of the student learning In other words, the significance of this action research is its information on how I can improve my teaching English-speaking skills so that my students can speak English better

7 Structure of the Thesis

The thesis is organized into three parts Part One - “Introduction” - introduces the rationale, the aims and objectives and the research questions Information about the research design and the scope of the study is also provided in this chapter Part Two -

“Development”- is composed of two chapters Chapter I reviews the relevant literature with a focus on the use of personalization techniques in teaching English in general and teaching speaking skills in particular Chapter II provides information about the study including the research design, the research procedures, and the research findings Part Three, “Conclusion”, summarizes the key issues in the study and the conclusions resulted from the study In this part, the limitations are acknowledged and information about how the next cycle of the action research will be conducted is provided

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE

This chapter reviews the literature review related to teaching speaking skills and the benefits of personalization in English language teaching in general and teaching speaking skills in particular The chapter begins with the review of the literature on the role of

speaking in second/foreign language acquisition Following this is the review of the nature

of speaking a foreign language as well as the challenges of teaching speaking skills The chapter concludes with the presentation of what other scholars have said about

personalization in foreign language teaching

1.1 The role of speaking in second language learning

In the foreign language teaching and learning, speaking and writing are productive skills while listening and reading are receptive skills From the second language acquisition perspective, the success of second language learning depends on the availability of comprehensible input and opportunities to produce output, among many other factors Nowadays, language learners tend to use oral language to communicate with others According to Swain, (1985), Language learners can develop their language by producing comprehensible output Swain‟s output states that the production of oral language can, under certain circumstances, enable learners to acquire new forms of the language Language learners can be pushed to use language further when what they say is unclear or ungrammatical, and they have to repeat, rephrase or correct what they have said

in order to produce speech that is comprehensible to others Swain (1985) also argues that learners, while speaking the target language, must notice language forms in their speech that are causing problems for the listeners, such as pronunciation or grammar, and try to modify their spoken language for greater accuracy Thus, input, feedback and modified output are the tripartite framework for teaching and learning speaking skills

Although speaking plays an important role in second and/ or foreign language learning, Bailey (2003, p 54) points out,

Learning speaking skills is very challenging for students in foreign

language contexts, because they have very few opportunities to use

the target language outside the classroom

This reason partly explain why students learning English as a foreign language like those

in Vietnamese high schools tend to be weak at speaking This raises the need for teachers

to find ways to help their students to develop their speaking skills

1.2 Nature, characteristics of speaking competence

It is obviously that speaking is one of the most important key to communication and it seems to be involved in all other kills like reading, listening and writing People speak to each other to exchange their ideas, attitudes, thought, cultural values Let imagine that what would happen to our world if we did not speak? We only use gestures or signal to communicate with others?

The communication will be difficult and our world will become as silent as grave Therefore, speaking skills become an essential part in language course and the classroom‟s activities which have aim to develop learner‟s ability to express themselves through speech are considered an important factor in language teaching

There are some scholars who studying and discussing about the nature of speaking According to Burn & Joyce, (1997) and Brown (1994), speaking is an interactive process

of constructing mean that involves producing and receiving and processing information; its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes for speaking; It often spontaneous, open- ended, and evolving To Hedge (2000), speaking a foreign language competently involves the ability to make oneself understood and to manage interaction However, speaking is also unpredictable Speaking requires the language learners not only know how to produce specific points of language, such as grammar, pronunciation, but also understand when, how and what ways to produce language

Brown (2001:27) said that in teaching oral communication, micro skills are very important He also mentions that the pieces of language should be given attention for more

that make up to the whole He gives some features of micro skills of oral communication that the speakers should to know:

- Produce chunks of language of different lengths

- Orally produces differences among the English phonemes and allophonic variants

- Produce English patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions rhythmic structure, and into national contours

- Produce reduced forms if words and phrases

- Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) in order to accomplish pragmatic purpose

- Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery

- Monitor your own oral production and use various strategic devices pauses, fillers, self- correction, backtracking to enhance the clarity of the message

- Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, ect), system (e.g tense, agreement, and pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms

- Produce speech in natural constituent in appropriate phrases, pause groups, breath groups and sentences

- Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms

- Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse

- Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to the situation, participants and goals

- Use appropriate registers, implicative, pragmatic conventions and other sociolinguistics features in face to face conversations

- Convey links and connections between events and communicative such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification

In most cases, speaking is the interaction between at least two people, the speakers and listeners By speaking, the speakers can express their ideas, attitudes or their opinions about something or someone Of course, the listeners will receive information and they can give immediate reaction to what is spoken to the speaker This reaction can be positive

or negative meaning depends on the attitudes of the speakers Because of the complexiblity

of speaking interaction, some researchers give some characteristics of speaking skills

According to Bygate, he showed that speaking is a reciprocal activity This means that in speech, in order to “make sure that communication is taking place, the speakers have to adapt their message according to their listeners‟ reaction” ( Bygate, 1987:12)

The same opinion with Bygate, Nunan gave another characteristic of speaking skill

It is “speaking is spontaneous” He said that: “we all have routines, set of phrases and other expressions that we use to assist us when speaking spontaneous” (Nunan, D 1999: 227)

The third characteristic is Speaking consists of colloquial language Colloquial language appears in both monologues and dialogues It will be difficult for the learners, who only study standard language in textbook, to produce or try to understand about words, idioms or phrases of colloquial language

The following characteristic of speaking is Speaking depends much on language‟s stress, rhythm and intonation It is obviously that with a same sentence, if the speakers use different stress, rhythm and intonation, the speech can be understand with different meanings, in some cases, the listeners can misunderstand the original meaning of the speakers This is a very important characteristic of speaking because in speech, different stress or intonation use can convey different messages

The last characteristic of speaking is “Speaking is interaction process” According

to Brown, H.D (1994:93), he states that “ the greatest difficulties that learners have in learning to speak is not in multiplicity of sounds, words, phrases and discourse forms that characterize any language, but rather in the interactive nature of most communication” It means that speakers have to engage in process of negotiation of meaning with many discourse constraints, so they have to be care of choosing what and how to say in what situation

1 3 Challenges with teaching speaking skills

Ur (1996, p 120) states,

Classroom activities that develop learners‟ ability to express themselves

through speech would therefore seem an important component of a

language course Yet it is difficult to design and administer such activities;

more so, in many ways, than to do so for listening, reading or writing

Similarly, Goh and Burns (2012) say that in many classroom situations, although both the teacher and the students do a lot of speaking, little teaching of speaking actually takes place This is because the teacher is just concerned with providing opportunities for the students to talk in the target language The authors point out that there are many things that teachers can do to help their students develop specific speaking skills and strategies, and acquire the language they need for a range of speaking demands

According to Ur (1996), there are four major challenges with speaking activities First, learners are inhibited about trying to say things in the target language in the classroom for fear of mistakes, criticisms, and shyness Secondly, they cannot think of anything to say Thirdly, some learners may dominate the speaking lesson while others speak very little or not at all Finally, they tend to use their mother tongue instead of the target language

1.4 Approaches and strategies in teaching speaking skills

1.4.1 Approaches in teaching speaking skills

There are a lot of changes in approaches and methods in language teaching Many methodologists have studied to find out the most effectively way to teach English Many language teaching methods and approaches have been mentioned such as:

- Grammar- translation method

- The Direct method

- The Audio – lingual method

- The Audio- visual method

- Communicative Language Teaching

Among these methods, Communicative Language Teaching is considered to be the most effectively way to teach learners to communicate and help them to develop the learners‟ communicative language ability According to Nunan,

CLT views language as a system for the expression of meaning

Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks

and using language, which is meaningful to the learners Objectives

reflect the needs of the learners; they include functional skills as well

as linguistic objectives The learner‟s role is as a negotiation and

integrator The teacher‟s role is as a facilitator of the communication

process Materials promote communicative language use; they are

task – based and authentic (Nunan,1989:194)

CLT is the learned- centered method and it emphasizes communication and real- life situations The role of the teacher in CLT is quite different from traditional teaching methods In the traditional method, the teacher is in charge and they often control their students In CLT, the learner is in charge of their own learning and the teacher often serves

as more of a facilitator CLT is defined as a list of general features One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan‟s (1991a:279, cited in Bang, N & Ngoc, N.B) Five features of CLT are given:

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

 The introduction of authentic texts into learning situation

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

on the learning process itself

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

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

The goal of language teaching is to develop communicative competence In CLT, learners are encouraged to contribute as much as they gain and learn in independent way

1.4.2 Strategies for developing speaking skills

1.4.2.1 Using minimal responses

Learners who lack confidence in their speaking ability rarely take part in oral interaction in classroom They often keep silent and listen while others do the talking One way to help them participate in talking is that build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges These minimal responses can be predictable and often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to express understanding, agreement, disagreement, doubt, angry and others responses to what another speaker is saying By using this method, language learners can participate successfully in oral interaction These minimal responses help a learner to focus what the other participant is saying

1.4.2.2 Recognizing speaking scripts

Some scripts are predictable set of spoken exchanges such as greeting, apologies, compliment, invitations and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns Teacher can use script to help students develop their speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations When they recognize types of script, they can guess what they will hear and what they will need to say in response The teacher can ask student to practice more and more by giving them different scripts

1.4.2.3 Using language to talk about language

Language learners who do not understand what another speaker is saying often feel shy or embarrassed, so they often do not say anything, just only keep silent and try to listen others speak In this case, teacher can help learners by asking them to assure misunderstanding and explain that the need for clarification can occur in any type of

interaction Teacher can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check

1.5 Personalization in foreign language teaching

Personalization is rooted in the humanistic approach to language teaching (Griffiths

& Ethane, 2000) Personalization happens when activities allow students to use language to express their own ideas, feelings, preferences and opinions Personalization is an important part of the communicative approach, since it involves true communication, as learners communicate real information about themselves

Personalization is not a form of language practice, but it is the context and stimulus for language learning Moscowitz, (1978: 197) states,

In foreign language teaching, we customarily begin with the lives of

others, with whom students may not easily identify, and then expect

students to transfer the material to their own lives However, transfer

to the textbook is easier when the content starts with the student

himself and then leads into the materials to be learned… Let the

students first discover what they can generate on the subject from their

own personal thoughts and feelings By drawing on their own

experiences and reactions, the transfer to the textbook will be more

relevant and more apparent

Similarly, According to Griffths and Keohane (2000: 1) ,

As language teachers, we are well aware that learners need to be

motivated in order to be successful Personal involvement is one very

effective way of enhancing motivation By this, we mean making

language learning content personally meaningful If learners feel that

what they are asked to do is relevant to their own lives, and that their

feelings, thoughts, opinions and knowledge are valued, and crucial to

the success of the activities, then they will be fully engaged in the

tasks and more likely to be motivated to learn the target language

These authors also list the following benefits of personalization tasks to language

learning For them personalization tasks help in:

 Creating trust between class and teacher;

 Facilitating positive group dynamics with the class;

 Securing honest, helpful , and interesting feedback;

 Bringing humour into the classroom;

 Making language learning something the teacher and the students

will recall with affection;

 Making language learning memorable

In other words, personalization tasks are aimed at helping the students to

express their own experiences, opinions, tastes or feeling in English so that they

can develop the skills in using the language in a relaxing manner According to

the scholarly description of what „personalization‟ is in language teaching, it

seems that this instructional strategy can be most applicable to the teaching of

speaking skills

1.6 Personalization and students’ participation in oral activities

In a speaking lesson, teachers have an important role when they construct

the students their own lessons of course, the students have been affected their

ideas If the teachers use personalization techniques, student can reveal their

opinions, and talk spontaneously about their own experiences within the lesson

The aim of applying personalization techniques is to encourage meaningful

interaction between students, make them more active, creative and interested in

the lesson in class The teacher is more interested in what students say than how

they say it Therefore, personalized lessons can be motivating

According to Connolly (1998, p.24) “taking an active part in shaping lessons to suit the demands of the class is the essence of personalized teaching” Personalization means a

strong element of personal involvement on the part of the teacher and students As the lessons are related to the daily lives of the students, students have opportunity to talk spontaneously about their own experiences within the lesson Students activities enable other class members to get know each other and students can talk about the things related what they learned in the classroom to their real situation outside the class

Nunan (1991) states that “success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language” Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or

do not have any chances to speak in language classroom, they will be lost interesting in learning and soon get de-motivated In addition, if the teacher chooses right method, right activities to teach, the speaking lesson can be lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be Students are willing to learn to speak and participate in speaking lesson

The teacher works at drawing out the experiences and interests of the students For instance, teacher can ask students to talk about themselves, their hobbies or something related to their lives In personalization in a speaking lesson, the learners are center and the teacher plays an active role in constructing their own lessons The teacher is more interested in what information students say rather than how they say it Thanks to this, students can feel more confident In other words, personalized lessons are motivating because it exploits the need and desire of learners to have interesting and meaningful exchanges in the class

The purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, expressing a opinion In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say Moreover, to achieve their purpose, participants have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding Therefore, develop communicative competence by creating appropriate speaking activities in the classroom is essential for students

The aim of applying personalization techniques is to encourage purposeful and meaningful interaction between students, or make student more active in the classroom Besides, this method helps students become more confidently and creative in their real situations By using this method, students have more chances to speak English follow their

thoughts and their participation in speaking lessons will increase more and more Therefore, the success depends on what is done by teachers before the class begins and what is done in the class Using this technique, teachers can design many activities to make students take part in speaking lesson

Although personalization has been suggested as one of the possible solutions to the enhancement of students‟ participation in speaking English in the classroom context (Ur, 1996), there has been little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this teaching strategy This limited literature on personalization in developing students‟ English-speaking skills motivated me to conduct this action research

1.7 Chapter Summary

This chapter reviews the literature on teaching speaking skills and the benefits of using personalization activities in teaching English as a foreign language as general and teaching speaking skills in particular The benefit of personalization can be summarized as lowering students‟ anxiety thereby helping them to be more confident in speaking English

in the classroom Another benefit is that as personalization gives students chance to use their own personal feelings, knowledge and experience in learning English, it may encourage them to participate more actively in classroom speaking activities However, as stated above, the literature does not show many studies on teachers‟ use of this teaching strategy

The next chapter provides information on the research design, research procedures and the results

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter presents the study It starts with a definition of action research, which

is employed in this study, and the rationale for using action research Then, the research

procedure is described Next, the findings are presented before these findings are discussed

2.1 Definition of Action research

According to Carr and Kemmis (1986),

Action research is simply a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken

by participants in order to improve the rationality and justice of their

own practices, their understanding of those practices and the situations

in which the practices are carried out (p 162)

Kemmis and McTaggart (1982) elaborate the nature and the purpose of action research as follows:

The linking of terms „action‟ and „research‟ highlights the essential

feature of the method: trying out ideas in practices as a means of

improvement and as a means of increasing knowledge about the

curriculum, teaching and learning The result is improvement in what

happens in the classroom and school, and better articulation and

justification of the educational rationale of what goes on Action

research provides a way of working which links theory and practice

into the one whole: ideas- in- action (p.5)

In sum, action research is stimulated by the problem the teacher is faced

with in the classroom and her motivation to address that problem The results of

action research may help the teacher to improve her teaching practice and

possibly the students‟ learning

2.2 Rationale of using action research

This study, as stated in Chapter One, is aimed at improving my teaching practices regarding teaching speaking skills by trying out a new teaching idea, i.e., the use of personalization techniques to improve my own students‟ participation in classroom speaking activities By experimenting this new teaching idea, I can improve my understanding of instructional strategies for teaching speaking in the context of a high school in Vietnam The study was designed, implemented and evaluated by myself as a classroom teacher with my own students Thus, the rationale and the nature of this study fit well with those of action research

2.3 Steps in Doing Action Research

Action research is cyclic, following various cycles Nunan (1992) lists the following steps in each cycle of action research:

Step 1: Problem/puzzle identification

Step 2: Preliminary investigation

Step 3: Hypothesis formation

Step 4: Plan intervention

Step 5: Initiate action and observe outcomes

All these steps were followed in this study Details of how these steps were implemented are reported in section 2.6 below

60 teachers of different subjects and nearly 1,000 students Each grade has 7 classes on the average; there are about 35 to 40 students in a class

For grade 10, there were 280 students They were 16-17 years of age They did not have the same level in learning English Some of them have learned English for 7 years, some only 3 years Although how many years they learned English, their English proficiency is not good At school they have three English classes and a optional period of

English class in a week

2.5 Participant students

The students participating in this study were from class 10A3 at Hoang Quoc Viet High School, aged 17 The class consisted of 40 students ( 28 girls and 12 boys), and all of them were chosen conveniently, and they all agreed to participate in the study All of them come from Vo Nhai district, one of the mountainous district of Thai Nguyen province Because most of these students are of ethnic minorities: Tay, Nung, Dao, H‟mong, etc., their English was quite limited as compared with their Kinh peers Their experience in learning English was varied, as shown in Table 2.1 below

Table 2.1 Student participants’ experience in learning English

4 years 5 years 7 years 8 years

As their classroom teacher I observed that even the students with eight-year experience in learning English were able to speak English minimally though their ability to deal with grammar exercises was satisfactory It was not clear to me whether their limited English-speaking competence was due to their low level of proficiency in English or to their affection This is one of the reasons that motivated me to hypothesize that personalization could increase the students' participation in speaking lessons Therefore, I decided to undertake this action research

2.6 Research Procedures

Step 1: Problem/puzzle identification

In this study, the problem that I identified in my teaching was that the students seemed to be reluctant in speaking English Usually, the speaking lesson was quiet and the teacher had to speak most of the time while the students spoke minimally, if any Usually the students spoke in the form of answering the teacher‟s questions and their responses tended to be minimally short: one or few words Because of the importance of speaking in learning English as a foreign language as pointed out in the literature review, I thought that this problem had to be resolved

Step 2: Preliminary investigation

The first step toward the solution to any problem is to find out the causes of the problem Therefore, I decided to investigate the problem by administering a questionnaire

to them to find out their attitudes towards speaking English and their preferred speaking activities and topics The questionnaire consists of 6 questions, which are aimed at finding out the learners about their attitude towards speaking English in the classroom and why they had that attitude Question 1 asks the students whether they liked learning English or not and why they liked it/ why they did not like it Questions 2-3 are open-ended questions asking about the students preferences of classroom speaking activities Question 3, which

is a multiple-choice question is concerned about the students‟ self-report of the level of their participation in classroom speaking activities Question 5, also a multiple-choice question, is aimed to find out the students‟ preferred speaking topics Questions 5-6 are open-ended questions asking about their opinions on how the teacher should conduct a speaking lesson why the students are unwilling to speak English in the classroom respectively (see Appendix A for the full questionnaire)

After the students returned the questionnaire (the return rate is 100%), their responses were analyzed so that I could gain relevant information for the decision to be made on the intervention

Step 3: Hypothesis formation

The results of the questionnaire analysis in Step 2 revealed that students‟ reticence

in speaking English in the classroom could be hypothesized as their lack of confidence resulting from their limited English words and grammar and their unfamiliarity with the