Adapting speaking tasks in the text book tieng anh 11 to improve the 11th form students speaking achievement at dai mo upper secondary school

I hereby certify the thesis entitled “Adapting speaking tasks in the text book Tieng Anh 11 to improve the 11th form students’ speaking achievement at Dai Mo upper-secondary school” is m

Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies

Faculty of post- graduate studies

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: Methodology

HA NOI, 2014

Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and International studies

Faculty of post- graduate studies

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: Methodology

Supervisor: Assoc Prof., PhD Nguyễn Văn Độ

HA NOI, 2014

I hereby certify the thesis entitled “Adapting speaking tasks in the text book Tieng Anh 11

to improve the 11th form students’ speaking achievement at Dai Mo upper-secondary school” is

my own study in the fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts atUniversity of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Signature

Hán Thị Vĩnh Hà

My thanks are offered to all my respected lecturers in the M.A course, Assoc Prof Dr LêHùng Tiến, Prof Dr Nguyễn Quang, Dr Lê Văn Canh, Dr Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Dr, LâmQuang Đông…., for their informative and valuable lectures that have enlightened my researchpath of the study I also take this opportunity to express my gratefulness to the administrativestaff of the Department of Post Graduate Studies, CFL,VNU-Hanoi, for their help, guidance andsupport.

Special acknowledgement is also given to my students from classes 11A1 Dai Mo secondary school for their participation in the lessons My appreciation is also extended to mycolleagues in the English division of Dai Mo upper-secondary school for their assistance andwork sharing so that I could concentrate on doing the research

upper-Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my family and my close friends for theirunderstanding, love, and support during the entire period of my study

In the teaching context of Dai Mo upper-secondary school in Nam Tu Liem, Ha Noi, theadaptation of speaking tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 11 is necessary because teaching andlearning speaking is not usually efficient The students could hardly take part in speaking tasksseriously because they had difficulty expressing their ideas though they have the desire to speakEnglish This mini action research was conducted in order to investigate how adapted taskshelped students of low level to get more involved in speaking, as well as improve their languageaccuracy, fluency and complexity Oral tests together with survey questionnaire and observationswas the main instrument of data collection They were delivered to 40 grade-11 students tocollect individual scores before and after each of the two cycles, their opinions about speakingtasks in the textbook and their behaviors while doing speaking tasks Based on the data, thespeaking tasks were adapted and speaking activities were implemented then pilot teaching wasemployed to check their effectiveness The results indicated that most of the adapted tasksresulted in some clear improvement in the students’ participation and their language proficiencywithout omitting available textbook tasks or overloaded supplemented materials Finally, somesuggestions and implications for teaching speaking, task adaptation were offered to supportstudents’ speaking skills at Dai Mo upper-secondary school

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 1: The students’ motivation in learning English speaking

Table 2+3: The students’ opinions about English speaking skills in the textbook Tieng Anh 11Table 4: The students’ general evaluation of their current speaking lessons

Table 5: The students’ participation in speaking lessons

Table 6: Factors prevent the students from participating in speaking in the class

Table 7: The students’ opinion about the way their teacher taught English speaking

Table 8: The students’ evaluation of their teacher’s task adaptation

Table 9: The students’ scores in the Pre-test

Table 10: The students’ opinions about the vocabulary relating to the topics in the speaking tasksTable 11+12: The students’ opinions about the topics of speaking tasks

Table 13+14: The students’ opinions about the speaking tasks

Table 15: The students’ response to the adapted tasks for Unit 15

Table 16: The students’ response to the adapted tasks for Unit 16

Table 17: The students’ scores in Post-test in cycle 1

Table 18: The students’ scores in Post-test in cycle 2

Figure 1: The students’ motivation in learning English speaking

Figure 2: The students’ opinions about the textbook’s topics in the textbook Tieng Anh 11

Figure 3: The students’ opinions about the textbook’s speaking activities in the textbook TiengAnh 11

Figure 4: The students’ general evaluation of their current speaking lessons

Figure 5: The students’ participation in speaking lessons

Figure 6: : Factors prevented the students from participating in speaking in the class

Figure 7: The students’ opinion about the way their teachers taught speaking

Figure 8: The students’ evaluation of their teacher’s adaptation

Figure 9: The students’ scores in the Pre-test

Figure 10: The students’ opinions about the vocabulary relating to the topics in the speaking tasksFigure 11: The students’ opinions about the topic’s familiarity of the speaking tasks

Figure 13: The students’ opinions about the speaking tasks’ ease

Figure 14: The students’ opinions about the speaking tasks’ interesting organization

Figure 15: The students’ response to the adapted tasks for Unit 15

Figure 16: The students’ response to the adapted tasks for Unit 16

Figure 17: The students’ scores in the Post-test in cycle 1

Figure 18: The students’ scores in the Post-test in cycle 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

In the past ten years, teaching English speaking at school has earned a lot of attention andinvestment from both experts and teachers as well as learners and their communities The threemain reasons must be: first, the key practical role of English speaking has received the socialawareness; second, tape-recording and the Internet has enabled learners to access to nativespeakers’ talks; third, many methodology courses sponsored by the government have helpedteachers to approach some new teaching methods As a result, students’ speaking ability hasimproved much in general

Despite all of the above advantages, I see no much progress in the case of Dai Mo secondary school, class 11A1 in particular By observing, I notice most of the students hesitate toparticipate in English speaking tasks Even as the teachers have managed to engage them in, theirtalks show some problems of using accurate, fluent and complex language

upper-Some researchers have been particularly interested in the same situation in teachingEnglish skills and tried to improve it by adaptation (Phùng Thị Hoa Mơ, 2010; Nguyễn ThịTrang, 2012) However, most of them concluded that poor textbooks and students’ lowmotivation were the main reasons Whereas the students in class 11A1 confirmed that theywanted to speak English much more than reading, writing, grammar, and they found almost allthe topics interesting Especially, to grant comparatively equal achievements among studentsfrom different schools, a set of compulsory textbooks have been published The textbooks haveseveral strong points, that is task-based contexts are available and communication practice iscarefully guided

Considering their English scores at the beginning of the course, I realized that most ofthem were of low level, some were better but no one was advanced Therefore, I did apreliminary research, searched the Internet and read ESL/EFL studies I found that spokendiscourse has its own characteristics and, thus, the teaching must be distinctive I wondered if Icould help them by providing them with more language input together with knowledgebackground, and by adapting some speaking tasks in the textbook Tiếng Anh 11 I did hope thatthese changes would help them to have such achievements as participating more in speakingactivities and producing somewhat more accurate, fluent and complex language

All of these above have inspired me to conduct the study titled “Adapting speaking tasks

in the text book Tieng Anh 11 to improve the 11th form students’ speaking achievement at Dai

Mo upper-secondary school.”

2 Aims of the study

The study was designed to help the students of low levels in class 11A1 to participatemore in speaking activities and produce more accurate, fluent and complex language through theadaptation of the textbook Tieng Anh 11

The study is aimed:

1 To investigate the reasons why the English teacher at Dai Mo high school should adaptspeaking activities in Tieng Anh 11

2 To find out approaches to adapt speaking tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh

11 for low-level students

3 To investigate whether the adaptation increases the students’ participation andimproves their accurate, fluent and complex language

2 In what ways can tasks be adapted to help the students improve their speaking skill?

3 Does the adaptation increase the students’ participation and improve their accurate,fluent and complex language?

4 Scope of the study

Materials adaptation is such a broad topic that it cannot be wholly discussed within theframework of this paper; therefore, only one specific aspect will be central to the speaking tasks’adaptation

With the focus on speaking tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 11 (the basic textbook), thestudy was carried out to adapt those for the students of low levels

The study focuses on one class of grade-11 students, so the results of the study are notapplied for all students at Dai Mo upper-secondary school.

5 Methods of the study

The study in fact is a mini action research According to Nunan (1992: 19), an actionresearch includes seven steps They are: initiation, preliminary investigation, hypothesis,intervention, evaluation, dissemination and follow-up The applied steps in details are as follows:

Step 1- Initiation: In the process of teaching the textbook Tieng Anh 11, I observed that

most of the students hesitated to participate in speaking tasks Even as the teachers had managed

to engage them in, their talks showed some problems of using accurate, fluent and complexlanguage The students confirmed that they want to speak English much more than reading,writing, grammar, and they found almost all the topics interesting, though What should be done?

Step 2- Preliminary investigation: I carried out the preliminary survey and did some

initial observations to find out how speaking tasks were managed, how often they took part inspeaking activities and how the language produced was Also, I searched the Internet and readacademic studies on ESL and EFL

Step 3- Hypothesis: By collecting and reviewing the baseline data, I came to the

hypothesis that the students’ speaking achievement was not high because they often encounteredproblems associated with language and background knowledge due to their low Englishspeaking levels; and that the adaptation of some speaking tasks by ‘making accuracy-basedpractice meaningful’ and ‘adapting fluency-based activities’ can help them improve theirparticipation, language accuracy and fluency

Step 4- Intervention: My research had two circles.

First, the students were asked to take an oral test The students’ scores were counted intopercentages by following students’ score intervals

Second, I conducted Cycle 1: Before the new speaking lesson, I asked the students toanswer some questions to find out their opinions about the topic and speaking tasks in the cominglesson After collecting the results, the adapted tasks were delivered I observed the class andtook notes the teaching-learning activities and the students’ behaviors When the studentsfinished the tasks, I provided them with survey questionnaires for response to the adaptation.Then, an oral test was delivered to the students Data analysis, reflection and comparison were

done to investigate the students’ speaking improvement in terms of participation, languageaccuracy and fluency.

Because the successful result was not reached yet, it was needed to do another cycle.Final, Cycle 2 was conducted with the same procedure as that of cycle 1

Though the students’ speaking achievement was not improved to advanced level, it wasaccepted in this case Therefore, no more cycle was conducted

Step 5- Evaluation:

Before adaptation, the students’ scores showed their low speaking achievement because

of such problems as they did not have enough vocabulary, feeling shy when they spoke in front

of others, they were still rigid to express their ideas

After circle 1, the students found the adapted tasks less challenging and achievable Theyresponded in English more freely, had the feelings of being understood and took part in speakinglessons more actively However, the complexity of the language had not been achieved yet

After circle 2, the students felt more confident in controlling their English language whilespeaking They verified expressions, which were exchanged among partners Though thisimprovement was considerable and valuable, it did not reach the goal of producing their ownlanguage

Step 6- Dissemination: I discussed the effectiveness of the adapted tasks to the students

and colleagues

Step 7- Follow-up: I suggested some more adapted activities to teach other speaking

lessons basing on the textbook Tieng Anh 11 to the students

6 Design of the study

The study titled “Adapting speaking tasks in the text book Tieng Anh 11 to improve the11th form students’ speaking achievement at Dai Mo upper-secondary school.”/consists of threemain parts namely Introduction, Development and Conclusion

In the first part, Introduction, the reasons for the research, aims, research questions, scopeand methods of the study are mentioned

The second part, Development, contains four chapters

- Chapter One focuses on theoretical background of the study, which is aboutfeatures, and functions of spoken discourse, implications for teaching, and purposes aswell as two main approaches of adaptations: accuracy-based practice and fluency-basedactivities.

- Chapter Two not only describes the context of teaching and learning English atDai Mo upper-secondary school but also presents the instrumentation of the study, theadaptation of speaking tasks

- Chapter Three deals with a comprehensive data analysis

The last part, Conclusion, provides major findings, discussion, limitations and

recommendations for follow-up action

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

1 An overview on the teaching of speaking

In order to help students to develop their English speaking ability we need insights aboutthe nature of spoken discourse, so we will be able to find a useful methodology to select anddesign appropriate classroom activities

1.1 The speaking

1.1.1 The role of spoken English

The mastery of English speaking skills plays a very important role for many foreignlanguage learners Consequently, learners tend to evaluate their success in language learning aswell as the effectiveness of their English lessons basing on how well they feel they haveimproved in their speaking ability or proficiency

In addition, teachers and textbooks make use of a variety of approaches in the teaching oforal skills, which shows that “ oral skills have hardly been neglected in EFL/ESL courses” Therefore, it is observed that “ how best to approach the teaching of oral skills has long been thefocus of methodological debate”, Richards (2009:21)

Reflecting on the textbook Tieng Anh 11, I think teacher can take a great deal ofadvantages in methodology

1.1.2 Nature of spoken discourse

According to McCarthy and Carter, 1997 (cited in Richards, 2009:21), it is recentadvances in discourse analysis that have revealed the nature of spoken discourse and itsdifferences from written discourse Luoma, 2004 (cited in Richards, 2009:22) points out some ofthe following features of spoken discourse:

 Conjoined short phrases and clauses

 May be planned or unplanned

 Employs more vague or generic words than written language

 Employs fixed phrases, fillers and hesitation markers

 Contains slips and errors reflecting on-line processing

 Interactions are jointly constructed

 Shows variation, reflecting speaker roles, speaking purpose, and the context

Among them, I pay much attention to the two following features:

First, “spoken discourse is usually unplanned and often reflects the processes ofconstructions”, Richards (2009:2) Thus, errors must be carefully chosen to be treated in orderthat the correction does not ruin fluency In my opinion, errors that impede communicationshould be directly corrected Tricia Hedge (2000:289) gives an example of such error: “ They atesmoked worm” is not immediately apparent as “They ate smoked eel”, and “long trees” can bemisunderstood as “tall trees” Besides, the assessment of fluency should be much more flexible,which will be discussed in detail in the part of adaptation

Second, “interactions are jointly constructed”, which asks for shared background, activeand intelligibility participation It implies that in addition to fluency, accuracy must be put inconsideration and speaking activities must be well designed so that engaging students in can besuccessful Moreover, the topic of speaking tasks in textbooks should be familiar to students, orelse some preparation must be made before each lesson

1.1.3 Functions of speaking

Richards uses a three-part framework, which is expanded from Brown and Yule’s one, toclassify the interaction functions of speaking: talk as interaction, talk as transaction, and talk asperformance Their forms and functions are quite different and therefore they require differentteaching approaches

a Talk as interaction

This refers to “conversation” which serves as primarily social function The focus is more

on speaker’s wish to present themselves other than on the message Brown and Yule, 1983 (cited

in Richards, 2009:25) describe its main features as follows:

 Has a primarily social function

 Is jointly constructed

b Talk as transaction

The focus of this kind of talk is on what is said or done The message and making oneselfunderstood clearly and accurately are focused on rather than the participants and their interactingmanner

Some main features are given by Richards (2009:29):

 It has a primarily information focus

 Linguistic accuracy is not always important

c Talk as performance

This type of talk refers to public talk transmitting information in front of an audience.According to Richards (2009:32), the main features of talks as performance are:

 It reflects predictable organization and sequencing

 Form and accuracy is important

1.1.4 Implications for teaching

a Talk as interaction

Though mastering such skills is difficult and may not be the most important to moststudents at school, I think they should practice a wide range of topics to present good images ofthemselves in situations which call for interaction talks

Two simple activities Richards use to practice topic management are “in the hot seat” and

“question time” In the first activity, a student sits on a chair in front of the class and makes astatement about something he or she did recently The other members of the class have to askthree or more questions about the topic which the student has to answer quickly Then anotherstudent takes the hot seat With the activity called question time, before students begin a lesson

on a new theme, he prepares up to 15 questions related to the theme and put them on a handout.First, he asks students around the class to answer the questions quickly Then students practiceasking and answering the questions in pairs

b Talk as transaction

In terms of the level of linguistic accuracy that students achieve when carrying out tasks

as transaction, some scholars like Thornbury,1998 and Kumaravadivelu,1991 state that practicingthese tasks focuses on task accomplishment rather than grammatical practice and a gradualmodification of their language output over time takes on more and more target-like forms.However, Higgs and Clifford, 1982 (cited in Richards 2009:37) claim that communication tasksoften develop fluency at the expense of accuracy Richards (2009:39) recognizes that low-levelstudents often heavily rely on vocabulary and memorized chunks of language while carrying out

communication tasks Therefore, to improve the quality (accuracy and fluency) of languageproduced as students practice, he suggests:

 Pre-teaching certain linguistic forms

 Reducing the complexity of the task

 Giving time to plan the task

 Repeating performance of the task

c Talk as performance

According to Johns,1996 (cited in Richards, 2009:42), teaching this type of talk requires adifferent teaching strategy which involves providing examples or models of speeches, oralpresentation, stories,etc through video or audio recordings or written examples Guidingquestions are:

 What is the speaker’s purpose?

 Who is the audience?

 What kind of information does the audience expect?

 How does the talk begin, develop, and end? What moves or stages are involved?

 Is any special language used?

1.2 Factors affecting students’ speaking

Students’ participation in classroom speaking activities and their English output can beaffected by a variety of factors originating from context, learners, teachers, materials andclassroom activities In the following sections, some of the major factors will be discussed

1.2.1 Factors of context

Most of factors are “ outside the teacher’s control but they will bear heavily on decisionsabout choice of resources and classroom procedure” (Hedge, 2000:24) She mentions thefollowing factors:

- The extent to which the materials in use train for public examinations

- The hours available for teaching

- The existence of institutional or departmental policies

- The physical constraints of the classroom

- Class size

- The resources available

- The cohesion that exists among English language teachers

- The status of teachers in the hierarchy

- The financial/contractual status of teachers

- The interest of management in continuing professional development

 Examination system

Examination system is a heavily constraining factor where examinations are consideredgatekeepers to higher education or good jobs Teachers would be of high risk not to train studentsfor these

1.2.2 Factors of teachers

Harmer, 1991 (cited in Hedge, 2000:26) identify teachers’ roles “as controller in elicitingnationality words; as assessor of accuracy; as corrector of pronunciation; as organizer in givinginstructions for the pair work, initiating it, monitoring it, and organizing feedback; as prompterwhile students are working together; and as resource if students need help” All of these arecommon to a wide range of classroom methods Hedge (2000: 22-31) says that they can be seen

in lesson plans but only can the ability to manage activities and interactions put them in practice.Only when teachers have competence in management of interaction can the mentioned rolescreate beneficial conditions for language learning

1.2.3 Factors of learners

Individual differences exist and play a significant role in language learning However,they are just the useful distinctions to classify them in order to have some possible implicationsfor teaching Because there are not “certain attitudes, personality characteristics, emotionaldisposition, and learning strategies that somehow create the generically ‘good language learner’”(Hedge, 2000:24)

Addition to individual differences, students in Dai Mo upper-secondary school share somecommon characteristics that affect their learning in general and speaking in particular They are

of low-level, which leads to limitations in language output (accuracy, fluency and complexity)and anxiety (participation).

1.2.4 Factors of materials

O’Neill, 1982 (cited in Hedge, 2000:36) outlines the benefits of textbook materials: “theycan offer a grammatical and functional framework which provides for the common needs of agroup of learners; they allow students to prepare in advance; they provide quality of presentation,and they do not necessarily prevent a creative spinning-off in the classroom into all kinds of otheractivities.” Nevertheless, because of all the factors of teachers and learners mentioned above,textbooks should be learning guides for students, and “good teachers have always taken apositively critical approach to appraising and developing their work”

2 Tasks and task adaptation

No course book will be total suited to a particular teaching situation The teacher willhave to find his own way of using it and adapting it if necessary So we should not be looking forthe perfect course book which meets all our requirement, but rather for the best possible fitbetween what the course book offers and what we as teachers and students need Two

approaches that guided this research were making accuracy-based practice meaningful and adapting fluency-based activities

2.1 Tasks in FL/SL learning and teaching

Many linguists argue whether tasks can involve learners in working with particular kinds

of language Brumfit, 1984a (cited in Carter and Nunan, 2001:19) stresses that students should beprovided the freedom to improve in fluency activities Skehan, 1998 (cited in Carter and Nunan,2001:19) believes that tasks can only provide conditions for influencing the level of learners’complexity, accuracy or fluency In contrast, Loschky and Bley-Vroman, 1993 (cited in Carterand Nunan, 2001:19) argue that tasks can target language features Therefore, Carter and Nunan(2001:19) state that the key question is how tasks operate and how to make tasks operateeffectively within classroom contexts

2.2 Task adaptation in FL/SL learning and teaching

2.2.1 The need of task adaptation

No certain set of activities can ensure that different groups of students practice thespeaking and problems can be found around the activities Hedge (2000:281-283) believes that

whenever a problem occurs, which leads to students’ failure, they can feel frustrated to performand they do not behave in them as the activities suggest they should This usually obstacles thepossible contributions to speaking activities and presents limitations to the development ofEnglish speaking ability It suggests to us the need to create range and variety in languageactivities to adapt to the teaching and learning context.

2.2.2 What is adaptation?

According to Tomlinson (1998: xi), adaptation is “making changes to materials in order toimprove them more suitable for a particular type of learner.” In the aspect of adaptationtechniques, Madsen and Bowen (1978: ix-xi) mentions adaptation as the action of employing

“one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, editing, expanding, personalizing,simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content.” Differently,Stevick (1972), cited in Mc Donough and Shaw (1993: 83) emphasizes teachers’ role of bridging

a gap between materials and learners: “the teacher must satisfy the demand of the textbook, but inways that will be satisfying to those who learn from it.”

In brief, adaptation requires teachers to change and revise materials to make them moreaccessible to the teaching context

2.2.3 The purpose of adaptation

There are always some practical reasons for adapting materials in order to makethem as accessible and useful to learners as possible However, reasons for adaptation havevaried and changed as the field has developed and views on language acquisition and teachingpractice have become better informed by research and experience There are two most frequentlycited purposes for adaptation:

to make the material more suitable for the circumstances in which it is being used, i.e tomould it to the needs and interests of learners, the teachers’ own capabilities and such constraints

as time, or as Mc Donough and Shaw (1993:85) put it: “to maximize the appropriateness ofteaching materials in context, by changing some of the internal characteristics of a course book tobetter suit our particular circumstances”

to compensate for any intrinsic deficiencies in the materials, such as linguistic inaccuracy,out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity (Madsen and Bowen 1978) or lack of variety

Look deeper into McDonough and Shaw’s definition of purpose we see that maximizingthe appropriateness of teaching materials (by, e.g., modifying them in such a way that they seemmore relevant to learners’ interests and needs) is important because when teachers make changes

to a course book “to better suit our particular purposes” what teachers are really trying to do is toimprove students’ participation to increase the effectiveness of the learning experience

2.2.4 Approaches to task adaptation

Brumfit, 1984a (cited in Hedge, 2000:283) suggests that beginners “need a strong focus

on learning to use grammar, vocabulary, and features of pronunciation in more controlled,intensive forms of practice, but that they will then need opportunities to use the resources theyhave acquired in fluency work which stimulates real language use.” However, Carter and Nunan(2001:19) prefer “to engage learners’ fluent processing to begin with and only subsequently leadthem to integrate accurate language features into that fluent ‘base’”

I myself base on types of activities to decide whether fluency-focus or accuracy-focus.And I also tend to practice accuracy work within fluency activities; thus, complexity can beachieved later; because John and Liz Soars in the Introduction to Headway Upper IntermediateTeacher’s book (page iii), argue that students who have passed through the ‘intermediate stage of

a programme and who have ‘sufficient linguistic confidence an ability to survive in a targetlanguage environment and understand the gist of what is going on around them’ will still haveinaccuracies and a relatively narrow range of vocabulary Therefore, “maintaining or evenincreasing the amount of accuracy work might eliminate some of these mistakes and enrich theirlanguage repertoire” (ibid.)

I believe the two following approaches can produce effective adaptation:

a Making accuracy-based practice meaningful

Learners in communicative classrooms need to be exposed to input that they can attend to,and given opportunities to produce output in activities with more control Controlled activitiesmay deal with “a grammatical structure, a phonological feature, a conventional gambit, acommunicative function, or the time sequencers that might be needed in telling a story”, all ofwhich have a conscious focus on language (Hedge, 2000:273)

Hedge (2000:273-276) gives two suggestions:

 Contextualizing

Contextualized practice “aims to make clear the link between linguistic form andcommunicative function”, which “means finding a situation in which a structure is commonlyused.” [ For the example of contextualizing, see appendix 6-1]

 Personalizing

Personalizing “the language enables students to express their own ideas, feelings,preferences, and opinion”, which “makes the language more memorable” To make it motivating,students must be allowed to choose what they say in some degree so that they can “make use oflanguage resources in interpersonal situations” [ For the example of personalizing, see appendix6-2]

b Adapting fluency-based activities

In textbooks, we can see a lot of available fluency-based activities Making use most ofthem and adapting some is what I choose to contribute to the development of students’ speakingskills

Hedge (2000:277-281) suggests three basic types of activities used for adaptation:

 Free discussion

In free discussion, students can cover a wide range of topics and practice strategiesrequired in interpersonal communication such as taking and holding turns, encouragingresponses, etc However, more proficient or more confident students may dominate over anxiousones, thus participation from all members of the group may not take place

To overcome this, teachers need to support students with material that can focus thediscussion, provide content and linguistic resources Reporting stage after taking note thediscussion accurately also makes students follow the arguments In addition, goals should beestablished Group roles can ensure equality of opportunity for all group members [ For theexample of group roles, see appendix 6-3]

 Role-play

Role-play can be an effective “fluency activity if it is performed in pairs or groups ratherthan one group acting in front of the class” and it should be based on real-life situations Thus,role-play encourages a large number of students to participate in the activity Another advantage

is that as students take on different roles they will have a chance to practice language that variesaccording to the setting [ For the example of role-play, see appendix 6-4]

 ‘Gap’ activities

‘Gap’ activity “involves each learner in a pair or group possessing information whichother learners do not have The learners’ information must be shared in order to achieve anoutcome” One value of this fluency-based type is that it can push students to more accurateoutput while negotiating meaning and adjusting the conversation [ For the example of ‘gap’activities, see appendix 6-5]

To conclude, with the awareness of factors affecting students’ participation and languageproficiency together with two main approaches to adaptation, I adapted some activities in TiengAnh 11 to make them more communicative, suitable to my students’ ability in class 11A1 at Dai

Mo upper-secondary school Contextualizing, group roles, role-play and personalizing werepopular adaptation techniques used in the research Details of these above contents will bepresented in chapter 3 and 4

CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY Mini Action Research

This chapter will analyze the situation of the study with the description of the subjects, thematerials used by the students, the approaches of adaptations and the instruments applied tocollect data

1 Situation analysis

1.1 Setting of the study

The study was conducted in class 11A1 at Dai Mo upper-secondary school in Nam TuLiem, Hanoi City At Dai Mo upper-secondary school as well as other secondary schools all overthe country, English is one of the three compulsory core subjects in the national examination forGCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education)

The students have three 45-minute periods of English a week, that is, 51 periods in term 1and 54 periods in term 2 However, there are only seven speaking lessons in each term

1.2 The learners

The study was carried out with the participation of 40 students of class 11A1 In general,the students are at the age of 17 There are 16 girls and 24 boys They all live in Nam Tu Liemdistrict All of them have learnt English since they were at grade 3, but most of them are low-level English speakers Though they pay much attention to study English, their English is notvery good in general and their speaking ability is of low level in particular

At the time of the study, the students were in their second term of the school year Thesecond term began with Unit 9

1.3 Speaking materials

The textbook Tieng Anh 11, edited by Prof Hoang Van Van and written by Hoang Thi

Xuan Hoa, Dao Ngoc Loc, Vu Thi Loi, Do Tuan Minh and Nguyen Quoc Tuan, published by

Nha xuat ban giao duc, is a theme-based textbook, and a continuance of the textbooks Tieng Anh

10 It is intended to provide students with thorough coverage of basic grammatical and lexical

items and language skills

The textbook is used for grade-11 students It consists of 16 units Each unit has onespeaking lesson All the speaking lessons in the textbook follow three stages of pre-speaking,while-speaking and post-speaking The speaking tasks are not too difficult with coherent stages.They are intended to be suitable for all levels of students However, they are beyond the students’level in Dai Mo School.

2 Instrumentation and Procedures

The data collected from student-based evaluation and respond-based evaluation (Ellis,1997: 39-40) helped conduct this mini action research The former was to check whether thespeaking tasks are useful, based on the students’ attitudes to the speaking tasks Thus, the datawas practical and reliable Doing the later, the teacher had to see the actual outcomes byexamining not only the products but also the processes of the tasks

Oral tests were utilized as the main data collection instruments, questionnaires and classobservations were functioned as supplementary sources of information Because the students’scores were counted into percentages and all the informants answered the same questions, thedata collected were easy to be summarized, analyzed and reported Furthermore, the subjectswere free to give their ideas without having to provide personal information For that reason, theresearcher has more uniform and accurate data

To avoid misunderstanding and ensure the accuracy of the data, both types ofquestionnaires were written in Vietnamese and distributed with the researcher’s clearexplanation

The researcher let the participants read the tasks before hand and let them respond to asurvey questionnaire one period before each reading lesson, and set aside 15 minutes after eachspeaking lesson so that they were not under pressure of time

The instruments and procedures used to gather the information for the study will bedescribed as follows:

2.1 Instrument 1: Preliminary Survey

The Preliminary Survey Questionnaire (see Appendix 1) was delivered to the students atthe beginning of the second term, after they have finished the first term It was designed with fourparts Part 1 with 3 questions seeks information about students’ sex, time of learning English andEnglish result of the previous semester The questions in part two was designed to find the

students’ general attitudes towards speaking: the role of speaking (Question 4) Part three hastwo questions to find out students’ attitudes towards the textbook Tieng Anh 11: the topic(Question 5), the tasks (Question 6) Part four includes four questions learning about the way thespeaking lessons takes place (Question 7,8,9,10) and one question about their attitudes towardsadaptation (Question 11).

2.2 Instrument 2: Oral tests

Oral tests included a pre-test and two post-tests The pre-test and one post-test was forcycle 1, the rest is for cycle 2

Each oral test (see Appendix 2) consists of 2 parts Part 1 lasts about 5 to 6 minutes Inthis part of the Speaking test, each candidate interacts with the interlocutor, using the languagenormally associated with meeting people for the first time, giving factual information of apersonal kind, for example, name, place of origin, study, family, etc Candidates are alsoexpected to be able to talk about their daily life, interests, likes, etc Part 2 lasts 3 or 4 minutes.Prompt cards are used to stimulate questions and answers of a non-personal kind Theinterlocutor reads out instructions and gives a question card to one candidate and an answer card

to the other After the candidates have asked and answered the questions, they change roles

2.3 Instrument 3: Survey Questionnaire

These questionnaires (see Appendix 3) were designed with three parts of open and closedquestions They were delivered one day before each new speaking lesson in each circle and afterthe teacher had asked the students to read its tasks beforehand It is aimed at finding out thestudents’ opinions about the speaking tasks in the aspects of topics, language (vocabulary),speaking tasks, and activity organization in each unit

2.4 Instrument 4: Survey for Response to Adaptation

Two surveys for response to adaptation (see Appendix 4) were given to the students aftereach speaking lesson in each circle to see how effective the adapted tasks were Each has sixquestions The students were asked to self-rate their seriousness in preparing the lesson and doingthe tasks as well as the effectiveness of the adapted tasks

2.5 Instrument 5: Class Observation Sheets

The class observation sheets (see Appendix 5) were used to note down the students’performance in the classroom This was a useful tool to measure the students’ attitudes, behavior

and interaction when working in speaking activities and when dealing with adapted tasks Initialobservations including some field-notes, taken during my previous teaching which initiated theidea of doing this study, and an anecdotal record were used to have a deeper sight into students’behaviors in speaking lessons without much adaptation Two while-observations helped me toreflect on effectiveness of adaptation in the two cycles.

4 The adaptation of speaking tasks in Tieng Anh 11

Basing on the findings from the students’ statement of the way they often do theirspeaking activities and from my pre-observations, together with the knowledge of some teachingapproaches acquired through reading, some adaptation techniques were employed to involve thestudents in the English speaking and make the tasks more accessible to them The tasks of Unit

15 and Unit 16 were adapted, using common adapting techniques such as ‘contextualizing,personalizing, role-play, group role” I remained all the language materials in the textbookbecause of my limited ability Furthermore, the textbook had been written by a group of linguisticexperts, so it was a reliable and useful source of language Only the organizing of speakingactivities was in concern

 Samples of adaptation

1 Unit 15 (Page 171, the textbook Tieng Anh 11)

Rationale for adaptation:

Task 2-as a while speaking one was considered rather long and with many pieces ofinformation Low level students tended to be confused with time-consuming work and becomebored with repeated language or activities Therefore, the adapted version of Task 2 in thetextbook was aimed to enhance every student’s participation, verify their language and improvetheir accuracy as well as fluency through all of their presentations in a given limited period oftime

Adapted version plan:

- Task: while-speaking, task 2

- Aims and objectives: maximize students’ listening and speaking time on the importantevents in space exploration

- Type of activity: Contextualizing, Role-play, Group roles and Personalizing

+ Teacher: 40 cards with such names as from Sputnik 1 to Sputnik 5, from Laika 1

to Laika 5, from Yuri 1 to Yuri 5, from Valentine 1 to Valentine 5, so on

+ Students: drafts

- Time: 25 minutes

- Procedure:

After finishing the pre-speaking task 1 with the whole class:

a Group roles in group work

- The teacher divided the class into 8 groups, each of which has 5 students

- Each group discuss one of the eight events in the textbook

+ One student is appointed as the leader: to control the speaking turns

+ One student is the secretary: to take notes all expressions

+ The others correct the expressions to have the best ones

+ All the members take notes

+ the teacher goes round to help

b Contextualizing and Role-play in group work and reporting

- The teacher give each group a set of 5 cards, e.g the group who are talking about YuriGagarin get 5 cards with from Yuri 1 to Yuri 5, which are delivered to the groupmembers at random

- With the teacher’s instruction, all students with cards number 1 move to form a newgroup of eight students with eight different events

- The teacher sets the context: “ You are now in a Press Conference on important events

in space exploration You are very famous journalists In turn, please, report yourevent Ask any questions about the events Try to be the best journalist of theConference.”

- The students introduce their events in turns

- The others listen to, take notes to report one of the partners’ events later

c Personalizing the reporting

- The teacher ask such questions as “ Who is interested in your friend’s speaking aboutSputnik/ Laika/ Yuri/,etc.?”

- Some students choose one of the partners’ most impressive talks to report

2 Unit 16 (Page181, the textbook Tieng Anh 11)

Rationale for adaptation:

In stage Intervention 1, I adapted Task 2 Unit 15 Though the students’ participation,accuracy and fluency were clearly improved, I saw little progress in language complexity

Task 3-as a while speaking one was interesting, and requires much imagination leading tothe use of a wide range of vocabulary and expressions An adapted version of this task waspresented to meet that demand and to help the students generate ideas and present them inEnglish illegibly and fluently

Homework was given as the follow-up of Task 3 to solidify this main speaking task of thelesson

Adapted version plan:

- Task: while-speaking, task 3 and homework

- Aims and objectives:

+ To improve the students’ participation and language accuracy, fluency and complexity+ Students can talk about possible theories involved the construction of the Great Pyramid

of Giza

+ Homework can help students to solidify their language and presentation skills

- Type of activity: Contextualizing, Role-play, Group roles, Personalizing

After finishing the pre-speaking task 1 and while-speaking task 2:

a Contextualizing and Role-play

- The teacher sets the context of a competition to choose the most possible theoryinvolved the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza in

- The teacher divides the class into 5 groups as representatives of 5 nations.

- The teachers casts the roles and lets the students to choose their group names

b Group roles

- Each group work out their theory prepared for the competition

- One student, who controls the speaking turns, is appointed by the teacher as the leader

- The others present, take notes all the possibilities

- The whole group chose the best possibility and correct the language mistakes

c Role-play in reporting and discussing

- The teacher gave each group a set of card numbered from 1 to 5, which is then delivered

to group members

- With the teacher’s instruction, all of the students with cards number 1 moved to form anew group of eight students with eight different theories The same to the other 4 groups

- The students act as the national representatives to present their possible theories

+ The others listen to and try to debate the others’ theories whenever and wherever theycan

d Reporting

- The students remain in their later groups

- Each of the 5 groups vote for 1 theory Therefore, the competition has 5 votes

- The winner is the one having the theory with the most votes

e Personalizing the homework

- Each group draw a picture describing their theory at home

- They are supposed to present their theories demonstrated by the picture in the nextlesson

CHAPTER THREE: DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the data analysis from Preliminary Survey, Pre-test, Post-tests,Observations, Survey Questionnaire and Survey for Response to Adaptation To make it easier tounderstand the data, the percentage for each choice was calculated per the number of participantschoosing that choice The number of participants was 40

3.1 Data analysis of Preliminary Survey (See Appendix 1)

3.1.1 Personal information of the students’ taking part in the survey

According to the statistics, more than half of the students taking part in the survey (60%)are male They all have been learning English for 9 years However, only 25 students got aboveaverage results in the first term, and only 8 students got good grades (over 6,5)

3.1.2 The students’ awareness of studying English in general

4 Why do you want to study English?

a because English is a compulsory subject at school and the final exam 57%

c to listen to songs, read books, magazines and watch movies in

English

31.6%

f because of the interest in English language, people and culture 35%

Table 1: The students’ motivation in learning speaking English

As it is indicated clearly in the table, the most common reason ( 57 % of the learners) isthat the students “have to” learn English Obviously, these students knew the role of English inthe modern life as more than a half (50.6%) of the students want to learn English to get a goodjob in the future The high percentage of these students who have this reason for learning Englishdoes not imply a low motivation among them when 35 % of the students learn English becausethey were interested in English, correlatively to 31.6% students who learn English for songs,

books, magazines and movies in English The lower percent of students (14%) affirmed that theywere learning English because they wanted to get good marks The lowest percentage of therespondents (4%) claimed that the reason they tried to study English is to study aboard.

3.1.3 The students’ opinions about English speaking skills in the textbook Tieng Anh 11

5 In your opinion, are the topics for speaking in the textbook relevant to you?

b some are relevant, some are not 74%

6 In your opinion, are speaking activities in the textbook interesting?

as to raise students’ involvement in classroom activities, which then lead to higher languageproficiency

3.1.4 The students’ evaluation of their current speaking lessons

3.1.4.1 The udents’ general evaluation of their current speaking lessons

7.What do you think about your current speaking lessons?

a Boring Most of students do not speak 74%

b Interesting Students speak a lot 12%

Table 4: The students’ general evaluation of their current speaking lessons

The table reveals that the majority of the students (74%) found the speaking lessons wereboring and they did not participate in speaking 14 % answered that their current speaking lessonswere normal In addition, the 12 % left were interested in their speaking classes

3.1.4.2 The students’ participation in speaking lessons and the reasons

8 How often do you speak English in English class time?

Options Result (%)

d never except when asked by the teacher 7%

Table 5: The students’ participation in speaking lessons.

Table 5 presents that only 7% of the respondents were always willing to speak in theclass Whereas 44% spoke it rarely and 7% never spoke if they were not called by their teachers

42 % of students sometimes spoke when they found speaking activities interesting and suitable

There are many different reasons that cause students to be reticent in the speaking Englishclasses

9 What prevent you from speaking in the English speaking class?

Factors Percentage (%)

a I fear mistakes and derision 13%

b Speaking activities are difficult 67%

c Speaking activities are not various 56%

d I don’t like the teacher so I don’t want tospeak

20%

e I am not accustomed to speaking 41%

Table 6: Factors prevent the students from participating in speaking in the class.

As shown in the table, there were some main factors that made the students reluctant tospeak in class 67 % of the respondents said that the most influential reason was speakingactivities The requirements were too far from their real English proficiency They did not haveenough words and structures to express what they wanted to share The second highestpercentage of students expressed that undiversified activities carried out in the classroom alsomade them bored with speaking English Nearly half of them (41%) stated that they were notacquainted with speaking English The reason may lie in the fact that traditional learning stylewhich focuses on mastering all the rules and vocabulary rather than to be able to communicate inEnglish, and the effect of written exams prevent students from being familiar to speaking English

in the classroom A smaller percentage of students (20%) did not participate in speaking activitiesbecause of their teachers and 13% admitted that they were afraid of making mistakes and beingderided

In short, there were various factors that restricted the students’ English speaking inclassroom These factors came from the students, the teacher as well as speaking activities Inorder to be better in speaking class, the changes need be done among the teachers, the studentsand the speaking activities

3.1.4.3 The students’ opinion about the way their teachers taught English speaking

10 In what way does your teacher teaches speaking in Tieng Anh 11?

c She/he sometimes adapted activities in the textbook 85%

d She/he sometimes replaced textbook activities by

other activities

5%

Table 7: The students’ opinion about the way their teachers taught speaking

* The students’ evaluation of their teacher’s task adaptation

11 Do you like your teachers’ adapted speaking activities?

a No, I don’t like I’d like her/ him to follow all the

activities in the textbook

5%

b Yes, I like these adapted activities 95%

Table 8: The students’ evaluation of their teacher’s task adaptation

Most of the students stated that their teachers just sometimes adapted-85% (not 5%) activities in the textbook And nearly all of them liked the way the teacher had done to theoriginal activities in the textbook-95%

replace-The students’ approval to adaptation determined me to do this research To have a betterinsight into speaking activities in the classroom, I did some observations

3.2 Data analysis from initial observations (see appendix 5)

* Observation 1: Field-notes

During my teaching, I took some field-notes that could be useful for my research Thebrief reflection was done during or right after the lesson in order that no events or ideas would beleft Following are some of them

1 Field-note 1: Unit 11- B Speaking- Task 1

Field-note: “Students work quietly or discuss and ask for new words in Vietnamese.

Their work is completed by putting ticks in either column A or D There is not muchEnglish speaking involved.”

Reflection:

- Students may mistake this activity for a reading one Therefore, they are notwilling to speak English.

- Suggested adaptation: the Magic Hat

+The 7 above statements are printed in 7 pieces of paper and put in the Magic Hat.+ 7 students in turn pick out 7 pieces of paper and read aloud the sentences

+ The rest of the class listen to and decide they are A or D

2 Field-note 2: Unit 12- B Speaking- Task 1

Field-note: “ After I gave the students some useful language, helped them practice

pronunciation, almost all of them could ask and answer about Asian Games However,after several pairs reported, they got bored with the monotonousness No more volunteersfor reporting.”

1 2

3 4

* Observation 2: Anecdotal record

To have a triangle sight, I invited one of my colleagues to teach my class, 11A1 As forobservation 1, brief reflection was done during or right after the lesson in order that no events orideas would be left Following is what was observed and reflected during his teaching procedure

- “Ss answered the same: “I like… ”

Sometimes T added: “Why?””

Reflection: The students may have had difficulty answering or the repeated answers made the

studying atmosphere dull

- “Sometimes, T appointed some pairs to stand up and read aloud These pairs, side by side,

also with handouts, read their parts No pairs face to face.”

Reflection: Without contact, Ss seem not to take part in the lesson actively Whereas,

eye-contact plays an important role in dialogues addition to language This makes the communicationmore naturally Ss need to be asked for this skill in following lessons In addition, Ss just readEnglish, which means their English level is rather low

- “ The whole class spoke loudly Several Ss spoke fluently, many Ss stumbled during

their speaking Some Ss seemed to retain nothing when they looked at nowhere.”

“After 1 minute, some groups reported what they could remember Ss had much

difficulty.”

Reflection: The main reason for the difficulty may be the lack of language input that ensured Ss’

full understanding of the dialogue and their confidence on right pronunciation and intonation

- “A map as suggestion was displayed on the screen Basing on this map and the modeldialogue, Ss worked in groups to make similar dialogues on stamp collection.”

Reflection: The restriction to only 1 topic on stamp collection did not stimulate Ss to speak and

made the speaking activity impractical

- “Ss tended to ask or answer thorough the dialogue, which is not real communication.”

Reflection: The teacher had better help them with some role-switching techniques.

- “AFTER YOU SPEAK

Some suggested phrases were displayed:

Reflection: These phrases help the communication more naturally They should have been

presented before this WHILE YOU SPEAK part

In conclusion, the students’ participation in classroom speaking activities was very poor,their language was simple, and only several students gained language fluency to some extent.Therefore, it was urgent that the teacher apply teaching techniques to increase the students’participation as well as improve their language accuracy, fluency and complexity

3.3 Data analysis of Pre-tests (see Appendix 2)

Score Interval Qualification Percentage

Table 9: The students’ scores in Pre-test.

The data shows that most of the students (71%) were of low level Only 32% passed with

no excellent one

3.4 Data analysis of Survey Questionnaire (see Appendix 3)

This survey questionnaire was delivered to the students one day before each new speakingunit, after they had been supposed to read the speaking tasks and try all the speaking tasks in thetextbook The questionnaire is aimed at finding out the students’ difficulties in the speaking tasks

in terms of topic, and task types Though the statistics show some divergence in the students’opinions, most of them, in the end, agreed with some adaptation in Unit 15 and Unit 16 The datawere shown as follows:

3.4.1 In terms of language (vocabulary)

Items Unit 15

(%)

Unit 16 (%)

Vocabulary: I know

many words relating to

the topic in the speaking

Table 10: The students’ opinions about the vocabulary relating to the topics in the speaking tasks

As can be seen in the table, the students seemed to know more words relating to the topic

in Unit 15 than those in Unit 16, 29.3% and 2.4% respectively In both units, new words mightcause difficulties for the students when a large number of them did not know many wordsrelating to the topics These figures imply a careful input teaching in previous tasks in eachspeaking lesson

3.4.2 In terms of topic

Items Unit 15

(%)

Unit 16 (%)

Don’t know 12.2 7.3

Familiarity: The topic of the

lesson is familiar to your

The statistics shows that the majority of the students (73.2%) had difficulties in dealingwith unfamiliar topic of Unit 16 whereas more than half of them (53.7%) found the topic in Unit

15 familiar Though there were still 34.1% of the students did not feel at ease with the topic inUnit 15 A small number of the students were not sure, 12.2% for Unit 15 and 7.3% for Unit 16

However, the unfamiliar topics did not restrict the number of students who found the one

in Unit 15 and the one in Unit 16 interesting (56% and 75,6% respectively) Again, the number

of the students who could not make decision was small ( 12.2 for Unit 15 and 4.9 for Unit 16)

In conclusion, it is the content of rather than the familiarity with the topics or a widerange of vocabulary that engages students to take part in speaking activities Teachers’ duty is totake advantage of the useful languages available in textbooks, then adapt speaking tasksefficiently

3.4.3 In terms of speaking tasks

Items Unit 15

(%)

Unit 16 (%)

Don’t know 24.4 31.8

The speaking tasks are not

very difficult to do because

of the given useful

Don’t know 29.3 29.3

The organizing of the

speaking tasks is interesting

Table 13+14: The students’ opinions about the speaking tasks

According to the statistics, the number of the students disagreeing that the speaking tasks

of Unit 15 and Unit 16 were suitable for their level accounted for about one third (29.3% and34.1%) More students found the speaking tasks of Unit 15 easier than those of Unit 16 (46.3%compared with 34.1%) Approximately another one third (31.8% and 24.4%) had no idea ofwhether the speaking tasks of the two units were suitable or not