Towards adapting speaking activities in Tiếng anh 10 to increase students participation in english speaking classes + Nghiên cứu thiết chỉnh một số hoạt động nói trong sách Tiếng anh 10 nhằm tăng cường sự thạm gia của học sinh trong giờ học tiếng anh

Teachers' Perception on Which Parts of Speaking Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” Need Adapting to Increase Students’ Participation in Speaking Lessons ………….. Chart 3.11: Teachers' perception

Table of contents

SUB COVER PAGE . I

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP II

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III

ASTRACT IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS 5

LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES 6

PART A: INTRODUCTION 7

1 Rationale 7

2 Previous Studies Related to the Toppic 9

3 Aims of the Study 11

4 Research Questions 12

5 Scope of the Study 12

6 Significance of the Study 12

7 Organization of the Study 12

PART B: DEVELOPMENT ………. 14

Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ……… 14

1.1 What is “Students’ Participation”?……… 14

1.2 Factors affecting Students’ Participation ……… 15

1.3 Background of Speaking ……… 19

1.3.1 The Nature of Language Skills ……… 19

1.3.2 The Importance of Teaching English Speaking ……… 21

1.3.3 Teaching Speaking ……… 21

1.3.4 Speaking Activities ……….……… 23

1.3.5 Problems with English Speaking and Speaking Activities ………

24 1.3.6 Ways of Organizing Speaking Activities ……… 26

1.4 Material Adaptation ……… 28

1.4.1 Definition ……… 28

1.4.2 The Purpose of Adaptation ……… 28

1.4.3 Techniques of Adaptation ……… 29

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY ………. 34

2.1 Research setting ……… 34

2.1.1 Brief Introduction of Tĩnh Gia 3 High School ………… 34

2.1.2 Students and their English Background Knowledge…… 35

2.1.3 General Description of the Curriculum of Textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ ………

35 2.2 Research Method ……… 38

2.3 The Participants ……… 39

2.4 Data Collection Instruments ……….….… 40

2.4.1 Classroom Observations ……… 40

2.4.2 The Teacher Interview ……… 41

2.4.3 Student Questionnaire ……… 41

2.4.4 Follow-up Students’ Interviews 42

2.4.5 Textbook Analysis 42

2.5 Data Collection Procedures ……… 43

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ………. 45

3.1 Results of Students’ Participation from Pre-Experimental- Observation 45

3.2 Results from Students’ Questionnaire ……… 49

3.2.1 Students’ Self Evaluation of their Participation in Speaking Lessons…… ……… 49

3.2.2 Students’ Motivation in Learning Speaking English … 50 3.2.3 Students’ Learning Styles ……… 51

3.2.4 Factors Prevent Students from Participating in Speaking in the English Class ………

52 3.2.5 Students’ Attitude toward Speaking Skill, Speaking Topics and Activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10''……… 53

3.2.6 Students’ Opinion about the Way their Teachers Teach Speaking ……….……….…… 60

3.2.7 Students’ Evaluation on their Teacher’s Adaptation … 60 3.2.8 Students' Evaluation towards their Current Speaking

Lessons ……… 61

3.3 Results from Teachers Interview ……… 62

3.3.1 Teachers’ Evaluation on Speaking Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” ……… 63

3.3.2 Teachers’ Satisfaction with Students’ Participation in Speaking Class ……… 67

3.3.3 Teachers’ Perception on the Factors Affecting Students’ Participation in Speaking Lessons ……… 67

3.3.4 Teachers' Perception on Which Parts of Speaking Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” Need Adapting to Increase Students’ Participation in Speaking Lessons ………… 68

3.3.5 Teachers’ Reasons for Adapting Speaking Tasks of “Tiếng Anh 10” ……… 70

3.3.6 Teachers’ Frequency of Adapting the Speaking Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” ……… 71

3.3.7 Teachers’ Opinions of Speaking Activities Should be Adapted to Apply in “Tiếng Anh 10” … ……… 73

3.4 Results from the End of Experiment Observations … 74 3.4.1 Observations in Control Group ……… 74

3.4.2 Observations in Experimental Group ……… 75

3.5 Students’ Participation in Experimental and Control Group in Three Lessons at the End of the Intervention 87

3.6 Comparison of Students’ Participation before and at the End of the Experiment ……… 88

3.7 Follow-up Student Interviews ……… 89

3.8 Results of Document Analysis ……… 90

PART C: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION ………. 96

1 Implications ……… 96

2 Conclusion ……… 99

3 Limitations of The Study ……… 100

4 Suggested Further Study ……… 100

REFERENCES ……… 102APPENDICES

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

e.g: Exempli gratia (for example)

etc: et cetera

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

STT: Student Talking Time

TTT: Teacher Talking Time

TG3HS: Tĩnh Gia 3 high school

LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Page

Chart 3.1: Students’ self - evaluation of their participation in speaking

lesson ……… 49

Chart 3.2: Factors prevent students from participating in speaking in the English class ……… 52

Chart 3.3: Evaluation of speaking skill ……… 54

Chart 3.4: The importance of speaking skill ……… 55

Chart 3.5: Students’ interests in speaking lessons ……… … 56

Chart 3.6: Reasons for students’ low interests ……… 57

Chart 3.7: Students’ assessment on speaking topics in “Tiếng Anh 10” 58

Chart 3.8: Level of difficult of speaking tasks in “Tiếng Anh 10” ………… 59

Chart 3.9: Students’ evaluation on their teacher’s adaptation ……… 60

Chart 3.10: Students' evaluation towards their current speaking lessons …… 61

Chart 3.11: Teachers' perception on which parts of speaking activities in

“Tiếng Anh 10” need adapting to increase students’ participation

in speaking lessons ……… 69Chart 3.12: TTT and STT of experimental group in adaptation 1 ………… 82

Table 2: Students' background information……… 38Table 3.1: STT and TTT in control and experimental group before the

Table 3.2: Students’ reasons for learning English ……… 50Table 3.3: Students’ learning styles in both groups ……… 51Table 3.4: Students’ opinion about the way their teachers teach speaking … 60Table 3.5: TTT and STT of control group at the end of experiment ……… 75Table 3.6: Students’ participation in experimental and control group in

three lessons at the end of the intervention .……… 87Table 3.7: TTT and STT in the two classes before and at the end of

experiment 89Table 3.8: Speaking activity analysis in “Tiếng Anh 10” 93Figure 1: Framework for adaptation ……… 33

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

English is seen as a means of access to scientific and technologicaldevelopment and as the language for international communication For youngpeople, English is an effective tool for further study as well as better jobopportunities English has therefore, been most widely taught not only at alluniversities and colleges, but also at almost every senior high school and it isconsidered as a compulsory subject at secondary school

However, teaching speaking skills to students in Vietnamese classrooms isstill a matter of much concern by language teachers due to current teachingmaterials, characteristics of learners as well as teachers’ proficiency and classroommethodology

At Tĩnh Gia 3 high school, the 10th graders have three periods of Englishevery week with “Tiếng Anh 10”, which consists of sixteen units combining foursskills with grammatical structures and language funtions introduced in meaningfulcontexts All of the units are designed to aim at encouraging students to learn not

only grammar structures but also all the four- language skills: reading, speaking,listening, and writing The English textbooks for general education in which theexercises are primarily task-based Although the new text books have shown agreat deal of improvement as compared with the old series of grammar-based, it seems that not all activities or tasks in the books, especially in speakingpart are suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of differentlocalities within Vietnam Beside communicative tasks, some tasks are not verycommunicative Others are very difficult for students to interact or participate wellduring their learning

After 6 years teaching “Tiếng Anh 10” text book at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school, Ifind out that speaking is considered the most challenging to teach and still remainsneglected due to students’ low level proficiency, time constraints and lowmotivation Therefore, it is difficult to teach speaking successfully because of theclass size, the students’ language level, and additionally, students are not acquaintedwith CLT Moreover, a majority of the teachers were trained under the stronginfluence of the Grammar-Translation method which impedes them from teachingspeaking successfully even the textbook follows the communicative approach.With 7 year – experience in teaching English at high school, the authorrealizes that the English lessons with speaking activities adapted or designed byteachers always motivate students and get them involved in speaking effectively.Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to adapt some speaking activities in “TiếngAnh 10” to increase students’ participation As Cunningsworth [11] said, even the

"best" course book requires adaptation

From the reasons above, the study “Towards adapting speaking activities in

‘TIẾNG ANH 10’ to increase students’ participation in English class” is carried

out with the hope to increase students’ involvement in learning speaking

2 PREVIOUS STUDIES RELATED TO THE TOPIC

Because of being a very important skill to master a foreign language, speakinghas received a lot of attention from a number of experienced experts as well as

methodologists in the world and in Vietnam particular These research works alsooutline some activities to increase learners’ participation in speaking lessons thathelp the author a lot to do this research.

Christine Kuramoto’s [23] action research was about improving Motivation inOral Communication Classroom in three third-year high-school classes in Japan.Because of three practical reasons: a large number of students, one researcher andlimited time, the method chosen for data collected consisted self-reportquestionnaires for students at the beginning and at the end of the term andimmediate feedback after each new activity The result showed that the students’motivation did increase in her classroom although it was different from class toclass and student to student The improvement was in attitudes, extrinsic andintrinsic motivation She suggested that Gardner’s [16] attitude/motivation testbattery questionnaire was recommended as a practical and enlightening tool tomeasure students’ motivation

Another research by Trịnh Thị Ánh Hằng [42] investigating the effects of pairwork and group work activities to increase motivation for non- English majorsecond year students was conducted at Hanoi University of Technology Theproblem found out was that group activities could not motivate students unless theywere introduced and monitored by the teacher, then an action plan wasimplemented And with the new plan, the researcher could totally enhance themotivation among her learners

The research conducted by Nguyễn Thị Thu Linh [30] was about sometechniques to increase students’ participation in classroom activities and oralactivities in particular of second-year students at Thai Nguyen University oftechnology She mentioned some factors effecting the students’ low participationcoming from students themselves, teachers and classroom Then, she recommendedone effective technique- group work and showed some ways to get students intoworking in group to increase their involvement as well as participation in speakinglessons

Nguyễn Thị Tuyết Mai [31] carried out a research on implementing based teaching to increase motivation for grade 10 students at Ngo Quyen uppersecondary school An action research was planned and implemented with such datacollection instruments as classroom observation, questionnaire and documentanalysis The results showed that in order to make the speaking lessons moremotivating to students, the teacher should prepare the tasks carefully detectingvocabulary and phrases, allocating time, considering skills and techniques to beemployed

tasked-The research conducted by Đoàn Thị Lê Nhung [12] was about usingdifferentiated instructions to increase learners’ participation in multi- level classes

at Phuong Dong University In this thesis, she mentioned three major factors oflearners’ low participation They are the activities themselves uninteresting andunsuitable instruction for speaking activities She applied differentiated instructionsstrategies in the action plan suggested by Tomlinson [40] which were aimed atmodifying the content, process and products and learning environment on the basic

of learners’ readiness, interests, etc to improve their participation The evaluationshowed that the action plan was successful when applying differentiatedinstructions to increase students’ participation in speaking classes

In summary, it can be seen from the above review that researchers focused onmodifying speaking activities to increase students’ participation and motivation inspeaking class Furthermore, their research subjects were mainly students at thetertiary level, not high school students However, there are not many researchershave conducted research on adaptation of "Tiếng Anh 10" yet Therefore, theauthor has decided to conduct the research with the aim of adapting some difficultspeaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” to increase students’ participation in speakinglessons and help improve teaching and learning English at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school

3 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The main purpose of this study is to increase students’ participation inspeaking lessons at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school To achieve this aim, firstly, the studyattempts to find out the reasons why teachers at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school should adaptspeaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” from both teachers and students viewpoints.Secondly, the research points out what speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10”should

be adapted Finally, it determines the effect of the adapted activities in increasingstudents’ participation in speaking lessons at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school

4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

In relation to the above-mentioned aims, this research tries to seek theanswers to the following questions:

1 Why should teachers adapt speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10”?

2 What speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” should be adapted to increase

students’ involvement?

3 To what extent do the adapted speaking activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10’increase students’ participation in speaking classes at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school?

5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Adaptation is a complex issue for teachers, especially teachers of English.Due to the time limit and research condition, this study does not cover all aspects oftextbook adaptation teachers meet in teaching English The study will focus onteachers’ adaptation of some difficult speaking activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ at TĩnhGia 3 high schools in Thanh Hóa As the result, the samples of the study wererestricted to 6 EFL teachers and 90 students at 10th form at Tinh Gia 3 high school

6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The result of this research will bring about meaningful suggestions andpedagogical implications which are very beneficial for my professionaldevelopment After having conducted this research, I myself can developknowledge, skills and experience to improve my teaching quality Furthermore, thestudy also helps teachers at TG3HS overcome difficulties mentioned previously andimprove English language communication for students through speaking lessons

7 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The research consists of three parts as follows:

First, the Introduction presents the background of the research including therationale, the previous studies related to the study, the aims of the research, theresearch questions, the scope of the study, the research significance and the overallorganization of the study

The Development is divided into 3 chapters

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background, describes fundamental and theoreticalconcepts which are relevant to the study Additionally, this chapter focuses on thetheory about textbook adaptation including definition of adaptation, reasons foradapting, principles of adapting textbook Furthermore, it gives out an overview ofthe curriculum and the ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ textbook Finally, the brief overview of TĩnhGia 3 high school and current situation of teaching English speaking at Tĩnh Gia 3high school will be presented

Chapter 2: Methodology, describes the research method, participants, datacollection instruments, and data collection procedures

Chapter 3: Includes the findings and discussion about the results of theinvestigation

Finally, the Conclusion summaries the study, pedagogical implications,limitations, and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 What is “students’ participation”?

There are several views on student participation Howard, Short, & Clark [21,8-24] stated that participation is the student’s active engagement in theclassroom to promote effective learning (Howard, Short, & Clark, 1996) Thestudent’s activities may include reciting in class, having conversations with theinstructor or their classmates, doing written outputs, and sharing ideas withothers (Howard, Short, & Clark, 1996; Howard & Henney [22, 384-405] Itmeans a participative learner is one that is not passive As Fraser [15, 221- 227]defines student participation as the extent to which students are encouraged toparticipate rather than be passive listeners Similarly, Sylvelyn, Judith & Paulin[39] define participation as students who actively engage in classroom discussions,rather than be passive learners who simply take in knowledge They affirm that

in a classroom-based learning, participation can be a positive feedback given

by students to either the lesson or the teacher which can lead to possible ways in thedevelopment of an improved classroom learning experience.

Teachers of large classes have found that students’ participation can beidentified in terms of three kinds of interaction: students to their teacher, students tostudents and students to material The interaction between students themselves isestablished when they are working in groups The kind of interaction betweenstudents and material can be understood as students’ success in completing assignedreading activities In term of the interaction between students to their teacher,students who maintain good interaction with their teacher always participate in theclass discussion They become involved in what is happening in the classroom byasking more question, share personal ideas, opinion and experience with theirclassmates Thus, participation can be understood in more ways than just come toclass on time, take notes what teachers say and write down on the blackboard, andstay in the class all the time and get to know the teacher Students who are activeand attentive that means they work on the problem with the teacher during the class,laugh at jokes, respond to the teacher’s questions, often show great desire to learnand become good students

1.2 Factors affecting students’ participation

1.2.1 Students factors

There are some factors from students affecting their participation such as: theirlearning style, their attitudes and motivation, their language levels and habits aswell as gender differences

 Students’ learning style:

Willing (1985), cited in Nunan [33, 93] classified learners’ styles into four groups:

 Concrete learners: They preferred learning by games, films and videos

talking in pairs and learning though the use of cassettes

 Analytical learners: These learners liked studying grammar, studying

English book, finding their own mistakes and learning through readingnewspapers

 Communicative learners: They liked to learn by observing and listening to

native speakers, talking to friends in English and learning Englishwhenever possible

 Authority-oriented learners: They liked the teacher to explain everything,

writing everything in their notebooks, having their own textbooks, learning

to read, studying grammar, and learning English words by seeing them.Harmer [19] emphasizes the importance of understanding that there are differentindividuals in our class if we are to plan appropriate kinds of activities for them.Different individuals may have different learning styles, prefer different kinds ofwork and expect different degrees of care and attention from the teacher

We can see that if the teacher neglects these differences among students,only one or two groups of students can benefit from the activities organized by theteacher while others do not This is one reason for the fact that when one activity is

in progress, not all students participate in actively

 Students’ attitudes and motivation

Attitude and motivation are considered key factors leading to students’ success

in learning second language Motivation refers to the combination of effort plusdesire to achieve the good of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towardlearning the language That is, motivation to learn a second language is seen asreferring to the extent to which the individual work or strives to learn the languagebecause of a desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced in this activity

Harmer divides motivation into extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation.Extrinsic motivation is caused by such outside factors as the need to pass an exam,the hope of financial reward, or the possibility for future travel In contrast,intrinsic motivation is caused by inside factors like the enjoyment of the learningprocess itself or by a desire to make them feel better

Clearly, motivation plays an important role in the success of language learning

in general but we may wonder how much or to what extent motivation accounts forstudents’ participation in oral activities We may not give the exact answer but we

can conclude with certainty that the degree of motivation is directly proportional tothe level of involvement in oral tasks In general, the more motivated students are,the more actively they will participate in oral activities.

In order to raise students’ motivation we have to understand motivation.According to Harmer they can derive from the society we live in, significant otherslike parents, the teacher and the method Among these sources, the teacher and themethod may be of the most important

Downs [13, 8-13] also points out some conditions that help increase students’motivation He says that motivation increase when students feel acknowledged andunderstood, when students are confident they can succeed, when language has acommunicative purpose and when students take responsibility for their ownlearning

Obviously, the degree of motivation is directly proportional to the level ofinvolvement in speaking tasks In detail, the more motivated students are, the moreactively they will participate in oral activities

 Students’ language levels:

For students’ language levels, Harmer [15] mentions that in a class wherestudents’ language levels are different, teachers may have some difficulties inchoosing a suitable teaching method, language and activities used in class Harmeralso claims that some techniques and exercises are suitable for some students butless appropriate for others The limitation in the students’ language level candirectly after their participation however much they like the activities We,therefore, should choose the topics as well as the kinds of activities of their levels toencourage their participation

In addition, for a long time students have formed a habit of learning subjects

in Vietnamese passively They are hardly willing to speak out their ideas in classunless they are called This habit may have a negative effect when they are learning

a foreign language which needs their frequent practice Besides, even for English,

many schools and learners only focus on written exams while developing learners’communicative abilities is not emphasized.

To conclude, those are the main factors originating from students’ side thatmay affect students’ participation in classroom activities in general and oral ones inparticular

1.2.2 Teacher factors

 Teachers’ teaching methods:

The first mentioned is teacher’s teaching methods including teacher-centeredand learner- centered methods In more recent time, concerning developinglearners’ communicative competence Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)has captured pedagogues’ attention due to its salient characteristics including adesire to communicative, a communicative purpose, content not form, variety oflanguage, no teacher intervention or learner-centeredness, and no material control.Listing out these methods does not mean that we can choose a method to beperfectly applied to a certain class to increase students’ involvement However, ithelps us understand the strengths and shortcomings of these methods In order tohave suitable method, the teacher should take some of the following factors intoconsideration including learners, teaching purposes and other available classroomconditions This method can be one or a combination of those above mentionedmethods Choosing an inappropriate or not being flexible in applying methods to acertain class may have negative effects on students’ participation

 Teacher’s knowledge:

A good teacher of English is a person who is supposed to have languageability, specialist knowledge and general knowledge of an English speakingcountry In the study: What Makes a Good Teacher, Breach [2, 30-37] points outthat most students believe that the teacher is a fountain of knowledge and their mainresponsibility is to pass on that knowledge to students Breach compares the teacherwith a teapot and the students with empty cups waiting for the knowledge from theteacher to be poured down in To discuss teachers’ knowledge, we are going to

focus on language ability, specialist knowledge and general knowledge of speaking countries A good teacher is not a fluent, accurate English speaker but theyunderstand the difficulties their students often face.

English- Teacher’s characteristics:

Besides the knowledge, teachers’ characteristics may have a great effect onstudents’ participation Teacher who always manage to create an exciting class arethought to have a “special gift” for the teaching job Actually, the thing called

‘special gift’ is his characteristics and qualities

Barry [1] lists out some characteristics a teacher should have that help

motivate students to participate in classroom activities These are being natural,being warm, pleasant, approachable and tolerant

In conclusion, students’ participation can be affected by teachers’ factorsincluding teaching methods, teachers’ knowledge and characteristics

Besides these factors mentioned above, some classroom factors includingclassroom itself, classroom structure, and classroom atmosphere and other factors asthe place of examinations and tests also have effect on students’ participation inclassroom speaking activities This is very important work as it provides us withbasic theory to find out techniques to overcome those factors and increase students’participation

Summary

It is not easy to study all the affective factors affecting students’ participation

in oral activities It can be also affected by different affective factors originatingfrom students, teachers and other classroom related factors In this study, we havepointed some major factors that may affect learners’ participation in classroomspeaking activities This is very important work as it provides with basic theory tofind out techniques to overcome those factors and increase students’ participation

1.3 Background of speaking

1.3.1 The nature of language skills

Based on the purpose of analysis and instruction, language is divided intodifferent skill areas On the teaching point of view, language skills consist mainly offour macro-skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Those four skills havesupportive relationship

Byrne [9] divides the four language skills into two groups The group ofproductive skills consists of speaking and writing The group of receptive skills

includes listening and writing They are also divided according to the manners by

which they are formed The skills which are related to articulate organs are calledoral skills which include listening and speaking The ones in connection withmanual script are named literacy skills which consist of reading and writing Allthese four are represented in table 1

Table 1: The four –macro skills

Of the four skills, speaking plays an essential role Byrne [10, 9] proves that thisoral skill in communication is complementary If one man is good at speaking skill,other skills will be much supported

Many language learners considerer speaking ability is the measure of knowing alanguage As for them, fluency is the ability to converse with others much more thanthe ability to read, write or comprehend oral language They regard speaking as themost important skill they can acquire and they access their progress in terms of theiraccomplishments on spoken communication Bygate [8] considers speaking as anundervalued skill in many ways; he also comments that speaking is a skill thatdeserves attention every bit as much as literacy skill in both first and secondlanguage Learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry

out many of their most basic transaction Bygate highly appreciates speaking skill bystating that speaking is the medium through with much language is learnt Brown [6]

defines “speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves

producing, receiving and processing information” In Brown and Yule’ [5] opinion,

spoken language consists of short, fragmentary utterances in a range of

pronunciation

Different linguists have different concepts of speaking but they are all agree that

if learners do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunities to speak in thelanguage classroom, they may soon get demotivated and lose interest in learning Onthe contrary, if the right activities are taught in right way, speaking in class can be alot of fun, raising general learner participation as well as motivation, making theEnglish language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be

To sum up, it is undeniable that speaking is the key to communication Toincrease students’ participation in English class, it is necessary to try to changetraditional lessons into new lessons or adapted speaking lessons with foster students’interaction It is teacher’s responsibility to provide opportunities for participation andinteraction (Brown, 1994) Methodologists suggest that teacher can increase the level

of participation if they can provide activities that can facilitate learner’s participation,maximize their practice time, encourage them to voice ideas and feelings, and thenincrease their motivation in oral activities By considering what good speakers do,what speaking tasks can be used in class and what specific needs learners report,teachers can help learners improve their speaking and overall oral competency

1.3.2 The importance of teaching English speaking.

It is observed that many Vietnamese teachers of English are good at teachingvocabulary and grammar in order to translate texts and to to prepare students forexaminations Howevver, organizating lessons to practice speaking English can be abig challenge for both teachers and students Many teachers worldwide have toteach mainly grammar and vocabulary because tense areas are tested inexaminations This means that speaking is a neglected language skill in many

classrooms Students may have a good knowlege of grammar and a wide range ofvocabulary, they can use this knowledge to pass the examiantions, but they find itdifficult to speak English in the real-life situations.

A classroom is not only a place where we learn about the rules of language It

is also a place where students can practice using the language in a supportiveenvironment As a result, we, teachers have to try to speed up this process Thismeans that teachers have to introduce new language and help students practice itoften

Teachers need to use lots of interesting ways to motivate students to speak andimprove their speaking ability Teachers not only gie them new words (vocabulary)and tell them how to put words together correctly (grammar) but also give themopportunities to use and practice the language they have learnt Also, providingextra speaking skills

1.3.3 Teaching speaking.

a) The role of the teacher and learner in teaching and learning speaking

 The role of the teacher

According to Breen and Candlin [3], the teacher has three main roles in aspeaking class The first is to act as a facilitator of the communicative process, thesecond is to act as a participant, and the third is to act as an observer

 The role of the students

The aim of teaching speaking is to enable learners to communicate effectivelyand successfully in real life So in Nunan’s [36] view, to meet this aim, the learnershave to take some roles such as: the passive recipient of outside stimulation, theintegrator and negotiator capable of giving as well as taking, a listener andperformer little controlling over the content of learning, and they should be involved

in a process of personal growth and in a social activities Especially, they must takeresponsibility for their own learning developing autonomy and skills in learninghow to learn

b) Principle for teaching speaking

Thankfully, language teaching methods have changed somewhat since thenineteenth century This is particularly true of the last twenty- five years, whichhave seen a change of focus from “language structure” to “language use” In thearea of speaking, researchers have put increasing emphasis on “natural speech”.That is to say there has been a shift in focus from the product of speaking to theprocess involved This has led us to a fresh view of the students’ free expressions asthe goal of teaching speaking.

The governing principle for the processes involved is to give students moreand more opportunities to use language as they wish, they try to express their ownideas so that they become aware that they have learnt something useful to thempersonally, and thus they are encouraged to go no learning (Byrne [8]) The bestspeech is creative However, teacher may help students’ progress through severalsteps First, the teachers present new language to the students, then they mustpractice the new language in a controlled way Finally, students can try to uselanguage they have learnt in free or creative speech For the purposes of this,teaching spoken language should start from the early stage of learning

Burns [7] has suggested some general principles for the teaching of speaking,namely:

+ Speaking involves an understanding of the way in which context influencesthe choices of language made

+ Speaking involves an understanding that spoken texts differ from writtentexts in their grammatical patterns and discourse strategies

+ Speaking activities should focus on whole text in contexts, rather than onesentence level grammatical construction in isolation

+ Speaking activities aim to develop the confidence, desire and ability to usethe target language not only accurately but also appropriately and effectively for thepurpose of communication

+ Learning and practicing vocabulary, grammatical structures andpronunciation should be related to contexts and lead to the use of whole the texts

+ Spoken discourse types or texts can be analyzed with the learners for theirtypical structures and grammatical patterns.

1.3.4 Speaking activities

Characteristics of a successful English speaking activity.

According to Ur [43, 120], a successful speaking activity consists of thefollowing characteristics:

- A lot of learners talk: learners speak as much as possible during the period oftime allowed Time taken up with teacher talk or pauses is minimized

- Even participation every learner takes part in the speaking activity Theparticipants’ contributions are fairly distributed

- High motivation: The topic makes them interested and eager to speak orlearners want to fulfill the task to get the goal

- An acceptable language lever: Learners use relevant and comprehensibleexpressions Language accuracy is of an acceptable level

- Also discussing the features of speaking activities, Nunan (1998) suggestedthat the features of “good” activities should:

- Get all students to participate actively

- Not make students feel embarrassed

- Not make students feel stressful

- Enable students to use their own language even when they are not in theclassroom

- Be practical to daily life

- Mobilize the ability for the desire of speaking and interacting fromstudents themselves

- Enable students to work in groups and discuss to find out the solution totheir common task

1.3.5 Problems with English speaking and speaking activities.

a) Problems with English speaking

Everything has bad and good sides Speaking also has its own problems

According to Brown (1994: 256), the characteristics of spoken language can makeoral performance easy as well as in soe cases difficult There are followingproblems with speaking:

 Stress, rhythm and intonation

This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation because thestress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey importantmassages But the fact that the learners of English often find it difficut to pronounceEnglish words, to stress the right syllables, to follow the tress-timed rhythm andintonation patterns of spoken English

 Affective factors

In the process of learning speaking, students often encounter the risk of sayingout things that may be wrong, stupid and incomprehensible At those times, theytend to be anxious because they do ot want to be judged by other learners

 Interaction

The greatest difficulty that the students face in learning to speak originatesfrom the interactive nature of most communication Engaged in the process ofnegotiation of meaning with any discourse constraints, learners have to do thecomplex task of choosing what to say, how to say, when to say, Learners are alsoaffected by thier interlocutors’ performance

b) Problems with English speaking activities

Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselvesthrough speech is an important component of a language course where CLT isapplied However, it is more difficult to design and adminster such activities than to

do so for listening, reading or writing Teachers often come across the problems that

Ur [43,121] lists out:

 Inhibition:

Unlike reading, writing and listenig actiities, speaking requires some degree ofreal time exposure to an audience Learners are often inhibition about trying to saythings in a foreign language In the classroom: worried about making mistakes,fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that thier speechattracts

 Nothing to say:

Even if they are not inhibited, you often hear learners complain that they cannot think of anything to say, or that they have no motive to express themselvebeyond the guilty feeling

 Lows or uneven participation:

Only one participate can talk at a time if he or she is to heard; and in a largegroup this means that each one will have only very little talking time This problem

is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speakvery little or not at all

 Mother-tongue use:

In classes all, or a number of the learners share the same mother tongue formany reasons: Firstly, they may tend to use it because it is easier Secondly, they

feel unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language and lastly because theyfeels less ‘exposed’ if they are speaking thier mother tongue If they are talking in asmall group it can be quite difficult to get some class-particularly the lessdisciplined or motivated ones to keep to the target language

Through two sections above, we can know most of the difficulties thatstudents often encounter in learning English speaking skill Basing on these views,

an action research is to caried out on adapting some English speaking activities forthe ‘Tieng Anh 10’ to reduce these difficulties

1.3.6 Ways of organizing speaking activities.

Little Wood [25] and Brown [4] say that communicative language teachingmakes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication The teacher sets up

a situation that students are likely to encounter in real-life As a result,communication teaching and learning are normally implemented through pair-work,group work, helping both teachers and students a lot in teaching and learningprocess

It is undeniable that the way of organizing pair-work and group work are veryimportant The time that students spend in English lesson is usually quite short,especially in a clas If they are only allowed to talk to the teacher, most studentsswill not have many opportunities to speak much

Group- work and pair work, in term of classroom management, provide acontext in which many of the recent curricular initatives can be more easilyimplemented (Long [26,207-228]) In fact, students in cooperative classroomimplement tasks more accurately, obtain more information and perform better thanother students working alone In addition, in language learning, when studentsdicuss issues with each other, they will really use the target language and interact inthat language In most respect, pair-work and group work are seen as flourishing asPeak [37] states that it would be difficult to find one single area of social work that

is not the suject of group-work service somewhere in Europe

Acccording to Brown [5], in some setting group-work is inreasingly themethod of choice Pair-work and group work seem to be extremely attractive ideabecause it can increase the amount of student talking time and maximizeopportunities for the students to speak A pair-work is defined as two beinginteracting with each other in doing a task together and they will work on itcooperatively (Harris [20, 71-74]) Moreover, a group should not be too large as awhole class because that will be the sane as lock step that will defeat the purpose ofgroup- work: letting students speak more Thus, in pair and group learning activitiesstudents work togerther and help each other to complete the tasks This also helpsteachers to overcome the difficulties of the large classes and make the atmosphere

in group more friendly,creating such a good environment where students caninteract Only when interacting in the setting like that they are likely to show freelytheir social and personal output They do not limit themselves in the structures andthe vocabularies in the learning context (Nolasco and Arthur [32])

In brief, pair-work and group work are really vital for students to be helpedwith motivation and willingness to interact with each other to fufill thecommunicative tasks successfully Group work is particularly a very effectiveactivity for teaching English to students Even those who have no prior experiencewith this type of task in classroom can quickly learn to use it According to Peak(1991), group- work is a great way to increase students’ participation and motivatethem toward a more active approach to work and group-work in organizing andimplementing the adapted speaking activities show in action plans for teachin time

of this study

1.4 Material adaptation.

1.4.1 Definition.

In reality, a textbook can never totally be an effective tool for teachers to

follow without any material adaptation because of its intrinsic deficiencies such aslinguistic inaccuracies, out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity or lack of variety.Material adaptation is to compensate for those deficiencies

Masuhara [28] points out that materials adaptation involve changing existingmaterials in some forms so that they become suitable for specific purposes, learners,teachers or situations’ Similarly, from Tomlinson’s [41] point of view, materialsadaptation means to ‘make changes to materials in order to improve them or tomake them more suitable for a particular type of learners Adaptation can includereducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplement’ Another author, Ellis, M[14, 47] considered adaptation the process of “retaining, rejecting, re-ordering andmodification”.

According to Madsen and Bowen [27], adaptation is the action of employing

“one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing,simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content” Materials adaptation means matching materials with the learner’s needs, theteacher’s demands and administration’s purpose

1.4.2 The purpose of adaptation:

There are always sound practical reasons for adapting materials in order tomake them as accessible and useful to learners as possible However, reasons foradaptation have varied and changed as the field has developed and views onlanguage acquisition and teaching practice have become better informed by researchand experience There are two most frequently cited purposes for adaptation:

 to make the material more suitable for the circumstances in which it is beingused, i.e to mould it to the needs and interests of learners, the teachers’ owncapabilities and such constraints as time, or as Mc Donough and Shaw [29,85] putit: “to maximize the appropriateness of teaching materials in context, by changingsome of the internal characteristics of a course book to better suit our particularcircumstances”

 to compensate for any intrinsic deficiencies in the materials, such aslinguistic inaccuracies, out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity (Madsen and Bowen1978) or lack of variety

Look deeper into McDonough and Shaw’s definition of purpose we see thatmaximizing the appropriateness of teaching materials (by, e.g., modifying them insuch a way that they seem more relevant to learners’ interests and needs) isimportant because it can stimulate motivation, and increased motivation is in turnlikely to lead to a classroom atmosphere more conductive to learning In fact, whenteachers make changes to a course book “to better suit our particular purposes” whatteachers are really trying to do is to improve students’ participation to increase theeffectiveness of the learning experience

1.4.3 Techniques of Adaptation

Adapting textbook is the work that needs every teacher's professionalknowledge, skills and appropriate techniques to regulate teaching and learningstages McDonough and Shaw [29: 88-97] suggested the following techniques toadapt textbooks

Adding

The notion of addition is, on its face, a very obvious and straightforward idea,implying that materials are supplemented by putting more into them, while takinginto account the practical effect on time allocation We certainly can add in thissimple quantitative way by the technique of "extending" For example, adding asecond passage parallel to the one provided is helpful in reinforcing the keylinguistic features-tenses, sentence structure, vocabulary, cohesive device-of thefirst text

Adding technique by extending is to supply more to the original material Thismeans that the techniques are being applied within methodological framework ofthe original materials We can also add in a qualitative way by the technique of

"expanding" Adding technique by expanding is to add to the methodology bymoving outside it and developing it in new directions, for instance by putting adifferent language skill or a new component This can be thought of as a change inthe overall system

Deleting or omitting

Deletion is clearly the opposite process to addition, and as such needs nofurther clarification as a term However, although material is taken out rather thansupplemented, as a technique it can be thought of as "the other side of the samecoin" The technique is used to omit material or reduce the length of material assubtracting from it For instance, the teacher leaves out lengthy and difficult taskswhich are unproductive or inappropriate for a particular group of students

Addition and deletion often work together, of course Material may be takenout and then replaced with something else

Modifying

Modification is, at one level, a very general term in the language applying toany kind of change In order to introduce further possibilities for adaptation, weshall restrict its meaning here to an internal change in the approach or focus of anexercise or other piece of material It is rather important and frequently usedprocedure which, like all other techniques, can be applied to any aspect of 'content'

Modification can be sub-divided under two related headings The first of these is

writing, when some of the linguistic content needs modification The second is structuring, which applies to the classroom management The teacher may rewrite

re-material, exercises, to make it more appropriate, more “communicative”, moredemanding, more accessible to their students To re-structuring, for many teacherswho are required to follow a course book rather strictly, changes in the structuring

of the class are sometimes the only kind of adaptation that is realistically possible

In short, modification refers essentially to a "modality change" to a change inthe nature or focus of an exercise, a text, or a classroom activity

Simplifying

The technique of simplification is one type of modification, namely a writing" activity Many elements of a language course can be simplified, includingthe instructions and explanations that accompany exercises and activities, and eventhe visual layout of material so that it becomes easier to see how different parts fittogether For instance, teachers can simplify gap-filling activities by rewriting each

"re-filing sentence to make easier for students to understand Teachers can reword orleave out difficult words or expressions, etc Simplification has a number of furtherimplications Firstly, it is possible that any linguistic change, lexical or grammatical,will have a corresponding stylistic effect, and will therefore change the meaning orintention of the original text Secondly, some teaching situations require attention tothe simplification of the content when the complexity of the subject-matter isregarded as being too advanced Thirdly, simplification can refer not only tocontent, but also to the ways in which content is presented We may decide not tomake any changes to the original text

In conclusion, adaptation is a very practical activity carried out mainly byteachers Teachers may select any feature of the materials that would like to bechanged researchers refers as much as possible techniques mentioned above, draw

up some which are not suitable for their own teaching situation In this study, thesuggestions for how to adapt some difficult speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” toget students more involved in speaking activities and increase their participation inspeaking lessons

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY

First, this chapter briefly describes the situation where the study wasconducted and the informants involved in the study It includes an overview of Tĩnh

Gia 3 High School, students and their English background knowledge, general

description of the curriculum of textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’

Then the method, the participants, data collection instruments, datacollection procedures are also discussed in detail

2.1 Research setting

2.1.1 Brief introduction of Tĩnh Gia 3 High school

Tĩnh Gia 3 high school is located in Tĩnh Gia district which is in the rural area

of Thanh Hoa It has three grades: 10, 11, and 12, in each of which the number ofstudents is nearly the same

As in every high school, English is one of the compulsory subjects in Tĩnh Gia

3 high school which is taught in every three forty-five periods per week As forclassroom arrangement, the class size is averagely 42 -45, therefore, it is difficult to

carry out a communicative task in such a mixed –ability large class The school alsohas a room with an overhead projector and a computer with is occasionally used byteachers of all subjects in teaching festivals that are held twice an academic year.Concerning the teaching staff, there are nearly ninety teachers of all subjects,nine of whom are teachers of English whose ages range from 30 to 52 One of themgraduated from the English Department of Hong Duc University, Thanh Hoa Three

of them graduated from Russia Department and she got English as the 2nd Degree.The rest were from Vinh University, Nghe An They all have at least seven years ofteaching experience However, during their teaching process, the teachers mostlyspeak their mother tongue a habit, even in speaking classes This results in the factthat they face difficulties in pronunciation and expressing themselves in the targetlanguage

2.1.2 Students and their English background knowledge.

Students of Tĩnh Gia 3 high school come from many parts of Tĩnh Gia district.Tĩnh Gia 3 high school is located in Hải Yến village It is one of the poorest villages

of Tĩnh Gia Although learning English at lower secondary schools and high schoolshas been considered an official subject among Maths, Literature, Chemistry,Physics, and others, it is not appreciated at lower secondary schools at Tĩnh Giabecause English is not included in any entrance or final exams Therefore, teachersand students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning English are negative Theyconsider English a minor subject at school As a result, students do not pay attention

to learning English They learn it very badly Thus, it is difficult for teachers at TĩnhGia 3 high school to teach them English because the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ athigh schools now written based on the English textbooks at lower secondaryschools Teachers have no time to re-teach all the English knowledge students havelearned at lower secondary schools, especially speaking skill They have to followthe syllabus Day by day, both teachers and students feel tired and bored whenhaving to teach and learning English So it is essential to find out the way to reducethese difficulties and improve students’ speaking English ability

2.1.3 General description of the curriculum of textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ a) Overall Design.

The textbool “Tiếng Anh 10” is designed to foster a more comunicativeapproach, learner-centered learning, an emphasis on oral skills, and language forreal-life communication This intention is explicitly presented in the followingobjectives of the “ Tiếng Anh 10”:

- To formulate and develop a fundamental and systematic knowledge ofEnglish hence learners can use English as a means of communication at the basiclevel

- To enable the students to develop their communicative skills in the targetlanguage including the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing

- To have an appropriate, systematic and basic knowledge of English for uppersecondary school learners

- To create a communicative environment or set for students to acquireEnglish by using it through activities in class

- To broaden learners’ general understanding of and positive attitudes towardthe language, countries, people and cultures of some English countries, thus enrichthier knowledge and pride of their own culture and language

The textbook is theme-based designed in which language and the skills arestructured round a certain topic or theme The theme provides a context i whichlanguage is used so as to help students be able to use the appropriate languagestructures in different communicative situations

The topic and vocabulary are recycled in guided group discussion (i.e.speaking practice) before students listen to a lecture or tape (i.e listeningcomprehesion) A writing task taking the form of narrative, letters or reportsconcludes the theme-based activities Thus, all four major language skills togetherwith note-taking, analytical and interpretive skills, etc can be practiced

b) The methodology underpinning the text book

The need to use English in actual communicative context is beginning toemerge as educators realize that the traditional learning and teaching styles do nothelp learners comumnicate with foreigners, both native or non-native speakers ofEnglish The shift toward a new way of learning with more opportunities to use thetarget language, not only in classroom but also in reality has brought a livelieratmosphere to learning and teaching English in high secondary schools.

The textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ based on two popular approaches incomtemporary English teaching Grammatical phenomenon is considered important

to the development of communicative skills, learner-centered approach andcommunicative approach The two oriented methods of teaching Engish isconsidered by task-based teaching The new method considered learners as thecenter of ther teaching-learning process; promote students’ ability, positiveness,activeness and creativy It is directed toward communicative competence throughskills Communicative competence is a means of achieving communicative goal.The teacher in the new teaching context, instead being dominating authority in theclassroom, plays a role as an assistant, advisor, organizer, helper and enlightener inclass to facilitate the communicative process among all the learners so that studentscould be confident and relaxed Whereas, students get familiarization with pairwork and group work, willing to fulfill thier tasks (linguitic and commuincation)positively, actively under the supervision and assistant from thier teachers

In conclusion, the text book ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ is designed to exploit thoroughlyand effectively the modern teaching methods so as to innovate teachers’ teachingmethods as well as formulate learners’ learning ones It also provides a good source

of motivation for students to learn the target language

a) The curriculum and the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’

‘Tiếng Anh 10’ is continuously designed based on “Tiếng Anh 6”, “Tiếng Anh7”, “Tiếng Anh 8”, and “Tiếng Anh 9” at the level of high secondary school In thistextbook, the learning objectives are clear and concise and a detailed overview of

the topics, functions, structrures/ grammar, and skills within each unit can be found

in the introductory table of contents

The English textbook – “Tiếng Anh 10” is theme-based designed with 16

units, equivalent to 16 topics divided into 6 themes: Personal information,

Education, Community, Health, The world around us Within the frame work of

each unit, the language input is respectively introduced within 5 sectionsrespectively: reading, speaking, listening, writing, and language focus.Each section

is designed to be taught in one period These section are theme-based closely related

to each other as follow to ensure a smooth transition from one to another

b) Sections for speaking skills in the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’

The section for speaking is placed the second, after reading lesson The aims

of speaking lesson are to develop learners’ speaking skills on given topic In eachspeaking lesson, there are 3 or 4 tasks, Task 1 and task 2 focus learners’ languageinput and develop language competencies as well as language specific functionssuch as expressing preferences, talking abour the uses of computer, givinginstructions, expressing opinions, asking for and giving information, expressingagreements and disagreements, and making comparison and contrast etc Task 3 –

4 get students synthesize specific competencies and develop a text for 1-2 minutespeaking practice with or without the guidance of the teachers

Although designed to renovate the teaching and learning of English inVietnam, the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” is not without faults Teachers and studentsreport that sometimes, it is very difficult for them to just follow the pre-designedspeaking activities in the textbook This points to the need to investigate into thisproblem The current study is such an attempt

2.2 Research method

Because the purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between theuse of the adapted speaking activities and the level of the students’ participation inspeaking classes, a quasi- experimental design was chosen Four instrumentsincluding: observations “before” and “at the end” of the experiment, questionnaires

for students, interviews both the teachers of English and 10th grades at Tĩnh Gia 3high school and material analysis were used in this study to collect the data

Considering the two groups selected in the study, they were not removed fromthe normal teaching and learning context This intactness helps to increase thevalidity of the later generalization of the results to the population Furthermore,since this kind of research is less intrusive and disruptive than the true-experimental one, it is easy to gain access to the subject population and thus easier

to conduct such research (Selinger & Shohamy, [38,149]) As a result, it saved theresearcher a lot of time and effort in grouping the participants, which wasimpossible under the present conditions In short, the quasi- experimental design isthe most practical and feasible for the research, all above factors are underconsideration

The experimental design is used “to explore the strength and relationshipsbetween variables” (Nunan [35, 25]) In this study, the adapted speaking activities

in “Tiếng Anh 10” are independent variable while the students' motivation orparticipation in speaking lessons is dependent variable In other words,experimental design is used to determine how the adapted activities in “Tiếng Anh10” cause the change in students’ participation in speaking lessons

For this study, two classes of 90 10th grade students at Tĩnh Gia 3 high schoolwere asked to participate in this experimental One class was employed as anexperimental group The other was employed as a control group Each class consists

of 45 students The researcher taught each group 3 lessons using the currenttextbook “Tiếng Anh 10” The author was the teacher (herself) in two classes toensure the designed lesson plans were strictly followed The teacher instructed thecontrol group in the usual fashion The same lessons were taught to theexperimental group with adapted activities With the assistance of the three otherEnglish teachers, before- experimental and at the end of experiment observationswere administered for two groups The observers helped take notes of student’talking time and teachers’ talking time as well as interaction patterns in these

classes The purpose of before- experimental observations was to make sure that thetwo groups has the same level of participation The end of experimentalobservations aimed at measuring levels of participation of the two groups after threelessons.

After the experiment, the degrees of participant of the two groups werecompared and then some conclusions were drawn out about the relationshipbetween the use of the adapted speaking activities and the level of students’participation in the speaking lessons at Tĩnh Gia 3 high school

Currently Learning English at a

High School in

Table 2: Students' Background Information

The experimental group, group 10A2, had 45 students with 20 females and 25males while the control group, group 10A1 included 45 students with 30 femalesand 15 males They are from 16 to 17 years old The two groups seemed to have arelatively similar level of proficiency in English as determined by not only the factthat they had spent four years studying English but also their first semester exam onEnglish listening, reading, writing and language focus In the researcher’sobservation, the levels of participation of the two groups in learning English in

general and in learning speaking in particular were relatively equal This initialassumption was later justified by the pre-activity observation.

2.4 Data collection instruments

To have a good and deep understanding of the issue, four instruments:classroom observations, interviews (with both the teachers and students),questionnaires (for students), and document analysis were used to collect the data

2.4.1 Classroom observations

The class observations in this study were carried out in 3 English lessonsbefore and during the treatment For each lesson, three other teachers observed in 45minutes The researcher design a checklist for what she wanted to observe: students’talking time, their interaction and teacher’s talking time were measured and takennotes

Before the experiment

The three other English teachers observed the two classes in 3 speakingperiods to be aware of the degrees of the students’ participation before theexperiment The degrees of participation were measured in term of talking time.The before experiment classroom observations are vitally important The resultdecided whether we would have the following research If the present level ofparticipation was unsatisfactory, we would have to find out the way to improve theirinvolvement The data collected from the before experiment classroom observationswould be used to compare with the degree of participation of the control group andexperimental group before the interventions

During the experiment

During the treatment, the teacher or the author herself and her teachings in

both control and experimental groups with the three same lessons were observed by

the three mentioned teachers The control group was taught the original activities inEnglish 10 while the experimental group was taught adapted activities Then theresearcher measured the “students’ talking time” of both groups and then compared

them to prove whether the adaptation of speaking activities would be helpful inincreasing the students’ involvement in speaking lessons.

2.4.2 The teacher interview

An interview to 6 English teachers who have ever taught English 10 at TĩnhGia 3 high school was conducted to get information about their evaluation onspeaking activities in the textbook, their evaluations on students’ participation andwhat they have done to increase students’ participation

2.4.3 Student questionnaire

The questionnaire was delivered to students in two classes 10A1, 10A2concerning their evaluation on the speaking activities in the textbook, theirparticipation and what affected their participation in speaking class Thequestionnaire was the same to the control and experimental groups because theresearcher wanted to know if the two groups had equal levels of motivation andparticipation before the intervention

The questionnaire for students was both in English and Vietnamese withsimilar forms and contents Only Vietnamese version was used to help studentsunderstand easily so that they could supply reliable answers and exact information

2.4.4 Follow-up student interviews

Ten students were randomly chosen from the experimental group andinterviewed to give their evaluation on the level of participation, attitudes towardsthe adapted activities in the lessons they had been taught

2 4.5 Textbook analysis

Textbook analysis is the systematic analysis of the text materials including thestructure, the focus, and special learning assists There are many ways to analyze atextbook, depending on the intention of the analysis The analysis can include thestructure of the text, the focus on the author, and the usefulness of the learningassists or the aims and approaches, design or organization, language content, topicand methodology of the book