An empirical study on the benefits of video assisted activities to students oral proficiency = nghiên cứu về lợi ích c

The extent to which the video-assisted activities enhance the students^ motivation to practice speaking English 21 4.1.3.. The extent to which the students think the video-assisted activ

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

DANG THI KIEU GIANG

AN E M P I R I C A L STUDY ON THE BENEFITS OF VIDEO-ASSISTED

ACTIVITIES T O STUDENTS' ORAL PROFICIENCY

(NGHIEN CLIU VE LOI ICH CUA CAC HOAT DONG CO SU TRO (;IL P CUA

VIDEO VOI VIEC PHAT TRIEN KHA NANG NOI CHO SINII MEN)

M.A MINOR PROGRAVLME THESIS

Field: English Methodology Code: 601410

Course: k l 7 Supervisor: LE \ AN CANH, M.A

Hanoi, August 2010

"hart 1 20 fable 1 21 fable 2 22 fable 3 23 fable 4 25 fables 25

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale I 1.2 The aims of the study 2

13 Research questions 2

1.4 Scope of the study 2

1.5 Method of the study 3

1.6 Significant of the study 3

1.7 Structure of the study 3

IIIAPIER IWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

!.l Oral Proficiency 5

!.2 IJcmcnts get involved in oral proficiency 5

!.3 Challenges to students in speaking English as a foreign language 6

!.4 I iciping students to cope with challenges in speaking English 8

!.5 Video-assisted acti\itics 10

!.6 Pedagogy value of video-assisted activities in teaching speaking 11

!.7 Benefits of using video in language teaching 11

I.S Drawbacks of using video in leaching language 14

HAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 15

1 fhe context of the study 15

3.1.2 1 he English Department 15

3.1.3 Students' background and needs 15

3.1.4 Course book and teaching materials for teaching speaking skill 16

.2 Research Methods 16

3.2.1 Participants 16 3.2.2 Instruments 17 3.2.3 Procedures 19

HAPTER I O l R: DATA COLLECTION AND DISCUSSION 20

1 Data collection and analysis 20

4.1.1 Ihc students' comprehension toward the video-clips 20

4.1.2 The extent to which the video-assisted activities enhance the students^ motivation to

practice speaking English 21

4.1.3 The extent to which the students think the video-assisted activities help to develop

their oral proficiency 23

4.1.4 The areas of oral proficiency that are most positively affected by video-assisted

activities , 25

4.1.5 Some disadvantages of leaming to speak English with the videos 27

4.2 Discuss of the findings 28

4.2.1 To what extent do video-assisted activities enhance the students' motivation to

practice speaking English? 28

4.2.2 To what extent do the students think the video-assisted activities help to develop their

5.3.1 Using video-assisted activities to motivate students to practice speaking 33

5.3.2 Using videos-assisted activities in teaching speaking to help students develop their

)ral proficiency especially in terms of intonation and pronunciation 33

5.3.3 Designing appropriate activities with video clips 34

5.3.4 Problem taken into consideration 34

i.4 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies 35

iEI ERENCES 36

U»PK\DI( ES

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

In globalization trend, the communication in English has been had an increasingly significant role than ever before The ability to communicate in real life has become the main goal of most learners They invest a considerate amount of time and money in the hope of using English better in all communicative situations The desire to speak English fiucnlly drives students of all areas in Vietnam to make more effort to improve their oral proficiency Many students, besides the time of participating in regular course at colleges

or universities, seek further occasions to practice speaking Some meet and converse face

to face with foreigners to familiarize themselves with native speakers' sounds while others like self-education with available softwares, or online English teaching programmes to ameliorate their oral proficiency These practical deeds offer students much success; help them be more llexible and confident in using English to contact w ith others

Despite the impressive progress made by my own students, their speaking ability was still limited They seemed to be more reticent and reluctant in presenting something in crowd audience This was clearly shown in several English speaking courses as well as the workshops with the presence of many students coming from different areas They were afraid of opening their mouth even to raise questions to the teacher or express their ideas in participating classroom speaking activities Their reticence led the atmosphere of my classroom to be quite unexciting After having small talk with them I have realized the fact that the first-year students had a lot of problems concerning their oral proficiency Especially noteworthy was that the students' leaming condition here was really poor Many students neither had speaking-assistant devices such as softwares, e-books, computers iu)r knew how to exploit the diverse information source trom internet

As a teacher, I ha\c always been preoccupied with the question of how to both arouse the students' interest, stimulate ihcm to be ebullient in speaking and help them to develop their oral proficiency more effectively

One day, w hilc reading a book tilled "Video in Action" w ith the attractive introduction that activities with videos are of great advantage to language learners in tcnns of motivation

vocabulary, and idiom with use

It was much hope that activities with videos could meet my students' needs and this motivated me to conduct an action research on the benefits of video-assisted activities to students' oral proficiency in an attempt to test the impact of these activities on my students' spoken language leaming

1.2 Ihe aims of the study

This action research was conducted to investigate the benefits of video-assisted activities to students' oral proficiency The aims of the study are set out as follows:

- The extent to which video-assisted activities motivate the students to practice speaking

-The extent to which video-assisted activities help the students develop their oral proficiency

- The areas of oral proficiency that are most positively affected by video-assisted activities

1.3 Research questions

To achieve the purposes of the study, the research questions are put forward:

- To w4iat extent do the video-assisted activities enhance the students' motivation to practice speaking English?

- To what extent do the students think the video-assisted activities help to develop their oral jiroficicncy?

- Which areas of oral proficiency are most positively affected by the video-assisted activities?

L4 Scope of the study

In this action research, I intended to investigate the extent to which the video-assisted activities motivate and help my students to develop their oral proficiency as well as find out the areas of oral proficiency that arc most positively affected by these activities The

action research are conducted within a periods of five months during the second term of the academic year of 2010 The participants are 79 students of two classes at the same college junior level

1.5 Method of the study

Action research has proved to be the best choice for this study since its aim is to improve the students' oral proficiency in a certain context The combination of different instruments: an observation, an informal talk with the student participants, a refiective journal-keeping, and a questionnaire in this research was intended to collect the data for the study

1.6 Signification of the study

This study is expected to provide an insight into the effectiveness of video-assisted activities on students' oral proficiency The findings from the study will therefore shed light on the practicality of video-assisted activities in developing students' oral skills in a context where exposure to the target spoken language is very limited

1.7 Structure of the study

The study is presented in five chapters; namely, introduction, literature review, methodology, data collection and discussion, and conclusion

Chapter one Introduction, introduces the rationale, the aims of the study, research

questions, scope of the study, method of the study, signification of the study and structure

of the study

Chapter two Literature Review, aims at reviewing some concepts as well as the theory

involving in oral proficiency, video-assisted activities that w ill be a fimi foundation for the study

Chapter three Methodology, consists of two sections The first section presents the context where the action research is pcrfomied A brief description of Ha Tinh University, linglish department with teaching condition, the students, the teachers and the course book arc also outlined The second section describes the research methodology that the description of pailicipants, data collection instruments and procedures are gone into details

Chapter five Conclusion, summarizes the result of the study Implications and suggestions

for teaching speaking using the video-assisted activities are also presented in this chapter

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the relevant literature on video-assisted language leaming activities Since the focus of this study is the impact of video-assisted activities on students' oral proficiency, a working definition of the term "oral proficiency" is discussed first

2.1 Oral Proficiency

According to Canale and Swain (1980), communicative competence is composed of (a) grammatical competence, (b) sociolinguistic competence, (c) discourse competence, and (d) strategic competence Grammatical competence means grammatical accuracy, and sociolinguistic competence refers to the ability to use language appropriately in terms of cultural norms in various communication settings or contexts Discourse competence is the ability to use language coherently and cohesively while strategic competence refers to the ability to deal with linguistic challenges by using the existing language resources One linguistic component which is missing from the above construct regarding oral proficiency

is the phonological competence, i.e., pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm as well as the lexical competence, or the appropriate range of vocabulary

Applying the above construct of communicative competence to oral proficiency, I, in this study, define oral proficiency as being composed of the following:

- ability to use English for oral communication accurately;

- ability to speak intelligible English

- ability to show cultural sensitivity to the interlocutor

- ability to speak English with relatixc confidence and ease

- ability to get the meaning across w ith whatever linguistic resources available

- ability to show a relatively sizable vocabulary

These mdicatoi-s will be used lo measure the mipact of video-assisted activities on students' oral proficiency in this study

2.2 Elements get involved in oral proficiency

variety of contexts In Plorez's view (1999) "speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information" (p 1, cited in Bailey, 2005)

Bailey (1993) divides the oral proficiency into four components; namely, accuracy, fluency, functions and mitigation Accuracy refers to the ability select the correct words and expressions to convey the intended meaning and use the grammatical pattems of English as well I'luency is the capacity to speak fiuidly, confidently, and at a rate consistent with the norms of the relevant native speech community Fluency happens naturally when proficient learners have ability to use vocabulary flexibly to speak smoothly especially for topics which arc easy or familiar (Stain, 1999) Functions (speech acts) in language are nomis or the appropriate ways to accomplish the goals in speaking such as thanking, requesting, apologizing, refusing, warning, complimenting, directing, complaining Mitigation is the various linguistic means of softening a message through pronunciation of words, phrases, clauses, or entire utterances that can make spoken utterances more or less polite

The elements of oral proficiency, which have been reviewed above, fit well the indicators

of oral proficiency listed in 2.1 at the beginning of the thesis

2.3 Challenges to students in speaking English as a foreign language

Speaking in a second language or foreign language has oflen been viewed as the most demanding of the four macro- skills When attempting to speak, "learners must muster their thoughts and encode those ideas in the \ocabulary and syntactic of the target language" (Bailey and Savage, 1993, p.l) Encoding ideas accompanied with affective influences and linguistic considerations is especially difficult even for native speakers, let alone language learners (Haymes, 2009) Oral proficiency is closely relates to vocabular>', phonology, structure, functions and listening comprehension .\ll these arc integrated into the whole, constituting the oral proficiency; as a result, these components should not be considered as parts of the whole Widdowson (1978) states the acquisition of linguistics skill docs not seem to izuarantee the consequent acquisition of communicative abilities in a

language alone does not constitute communicative competence in general and oral proficiency in particular

Bygate (1987) illustrates the differences between language knowledge and productive skills He points out that, as a native speakers, "we do not merely know how to assemble sentences in the abstract: we have to produce them and adapt them to the circumstances" (Bygate, 1987, cited in Haymes, 2005, p.5) while the value of linguistics knowledge should not be underestimated, it would seem that leamers need something more in order to transfer the interactive speaking skills they posses in LI to L2

This implies that dccontextualised linguistic knowledge is of little help to students' ability

to use the language in a variety of communicative settings In other words, oral proficiency involves more than linguistic know ledge, i.e., grammar and vocabulary

Fluent oral production is often seen as the final piece in the jigsaw Nunan (1991) also affirms that "course books, particular those aimed at lower-proficiency learners, consist largely of manipulative, form focused exercises" (p.5, cited in Haymes, 2009) This may lead to two problems: firstly, fluency is not developed as leamers arc denied the opportunity to combine the disparate elements of their existing productive store to communicate authentically; secondly, the original structures themselves are not internalized, as they are not used by the learners to create personalized meaning That practice alone is not the most expedient means to oral proficiency, many leamers become de-motivated because they are not given opportunity to use the language communicatively Moreover, the balance between fluency and accuracy is complex for students at the beginning and intci'mcdiate levels of language leaming because while developing the proficiency, fluency and accuracy often against each other Bailey (2005.) concludes that:

Before grammar rules hccomc automatic and while learners arc still acquiring essential vocahulaiy itetns, applying the rules and searching one's memory Jor the right words can he laborious mental processes, which glow the leartiers' speech and tnakc thctn dysfluent Likewise, language learners can sometitnes speak quickly, without hesitating to apply the rules they have learned, but doing so tnay decrease their accuracy (p.5)

In brief, oral production is a challenging task to second or foreign language leamers

because it requires a variety of different cognitive processes Following is a discussion of these challenges with a focus on pedagogical measures to help the students cope with them

2.4 Helping students to cope with challenges in speaking English

Helping students of English overcome difficulties in speaking is responsibility for teachers because "whatever you are doing in the classroom, your ability to motivate the students, to arouse their interest and involve them in what they are doing, will be crucial" (Bymc, 1991, P-3)

Many linguistics and researchers offers teachers many solutions to decrease students' challenges in language speaking Kayi (2001) suggests that teachers of speaking should choose and create classroom speaking activities matching students in each concrete situation In order to help students of English win ditTiculties in speaking, the author- after providing several popular ways of speaking such as information gap, brainstorming, storytelling, interview, picture describing, reporting, story completion , proposes some solutions as below

- Provide maximum opportunity tor students to speak the target language by providing a rich cnx'ironment that contains collaborati\c works, authentic materials and tasks, and know ledge- sharing

- Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim practice different ways of student participation

- Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing students speaking time Step back and observe students

- Indicate positive signs when commenting on a students' response

- Ask eliciting question in order to prompt students to speak more,

- Pro\'ide feedback like "your presentation was ready great I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use of your voice "

- Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking Correction should not distract students from his or her speech

- Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and other people who can help

- Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs

- Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities

- Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language (p.5)

Agreeing with Kayi's ideas but Zhao (1998) gathers them into concrete terms; namely, giving a good environment, timely encouragement and appropriate methods This is detail

of what he suggests

- Giving a good environment

Generally, according to Zhao (1998) there are two factors to affect students' speaking English in class Firstly, students fail because they do not find suitable words to convey their ideas Secondly, students arc afraid of making mistakes when speaking because they are not sure about their pronunciation or intonation what may make them embarrassed in frond of classmates Worry and failure would drive students to keep silent; thus, a safe environment is necessary to help language leamers confidently open their mouth Such a safe leaming environment can be created with various pedagogical inter\entions, some of which arc discussed below

- Timely encouragement

Zhao (1998) suggests that after students finish their speaking in class, teachers should encourage them and let students feel they have made some progress with a sense of their fulfillment Teachers behave students in a gentle way and give them praise whenever they are doing anything close to a good job Teachers are also sincere and look for opportunities

to find them doing something right Sometimes, teachers should remind themselves ot a\oid getting frustrated, angry and impatient Also, teachers should be nice, sensitive, and approachable person at all times and never single students out or put them on the spot Treating students with kindness, respect and valuing students' opinions benefit students Teachers, especially, should not laugh at or say anything that makes them reticent

Moreover, allowing students to be themselves rather than expecting them to conform to teachers' preconceived ideas about how they should behave This can be achieved by teachers' endeavours to build mutual tmst in the classroom as well as their patience and approachability

Also teachers should not correct mistakes that students make while they are speaking Doing so, students feel to be underestimated and lose their confidence in speaking Of course, teachers should point out some apparent errors in their speaking, for example, the incorrect words in pronunciation or some serious mistakes in grammar when they finish the speech

- Appropriate methods

It is very important for teachers to adapt as many ways as possible to let students practice English in class Zhao (1998) believes the success of this teaching strategy is due mainly to the fact that learners can choose what they want to read, listen to, watch, and talk about in class Teachers should try several different activities to do the practice There are various ways for teachers creating classroom activities of speaking such as retelling, debating, talking according to picture, short play, problem solving , among them, teachers should find ones giving learners some opportunities to leam in the way best suited to themselves All these may be achieved if the teacher tries to employ some video-assisted activities In the following sections and pros and cons of these activities will be discussed

2.5 Video-assisted activities

Video-assisted activities used in this study are the classroom speaking activities which are performed after watching some short videos In this study, the selective videos include two types: educational videos (made specifically for language leaming) and authentic \idco materials such as broadcasts, advertising commercials, music videos, dramas and films The types of educational videos arc mainly used for teaching pronunciation, intonation or communication m some concrete situations such as shopping, booking the hotel, complaining, asking for direction The other videos focus on providing the students w ith many opportunities to practice speaking as well as develop their \ocabular\ grammar structure and natural language use

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2.6 Pedagogy value of the video-assisted activities in teaching speaking skiH

Watson (2005) in guiding the principles for teaching speaking to intermediate leamer states: personalizing the content of speaking activities is great important because this is the process of making activities conformable the learners' own circumstances, interests and goals Watson suggests language teachers should create activities based on song lyrics, reading passages, pictures to stimulate students' leaming Litterwood (1991) also claims that teachers need to design further activities so as to provide an opportunity for leamers to produce language that they have recently leamed Therefore, using the video-assisted activities is extremely significant in the context of Ha Tinh students Of greater concem is that these speaking activities are based on the authentic video clips that have been considered to be of great advantage to language leamers What follows is a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of video-assisted activities

2.7 Benefits of using videos in language teaching

There arc two kinds of videos: educational videos and authentic \idco materials Both of them are valuable teaching aids for language speaking According to Shcmian (2003), authentic videos should be used to students in language classroom because there's a large amount of high quality, easily available, cheap material around these days

During the past several decades, videos have become quite popular from the form of language teaching materials A number of authors have discussed the benefits and advantage \ ideos based presentation of language has over other fomis of presentation According lo Stempleski and Tomalin (1990), benefits of videos to leamers are separated into two terms: motivation and communication

Ill terms of motivation: students arc more motivated in their studies when leamine with video clips In other words, videos can stimulate students' motivation, maintain their interest and sustain their attention longer than listening only Empirical evidence has shown that using video clips make students to pay much more attention to the lesson than sound- only environment For example, Balatova (1994) has pointed out that:

The first signs of distraction in the group of sound- only conditions appeared after the first tuinutc and hv the end of four tninutes distraction spread all over the

groups; while video conditions several students became distracted after six minutes, sotne students lost concentration after ten minutes and around a third kept watching until the end (Balatova, 1994, p.8, cited in Canning-Wilson, 2000)

Videos seem to have an almost magical ability to grab student's attention (Gainer, 2005) They are quickly attracted because of two reasons Firstly, language is experienced in a lively ways Secondly, the combination of moving pictures with sound can present language more comprehensively than any other teaching medium (Stempleski and Tomalin, 1990)

In terms of communication: using videos is of great advantage in communication to language leamers Video clips make students more ready to communicate in the target language (Stempleski and Tomalin, 1990) The ability to present complete communicative situations with the dynamics, immcdiateness and accessibility of the combination of sound and vision help viewers and language learners perceive communication more easily (Loncrgan, 1984)

Watching videos enables students to listen to different varieties of English in terms of pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, idiom and usage, and also to obserx^e non-verbal gestures in relation to particular situations and cultures Images contextualize in videos or

on it own can help to reinforce the language, provided the leamers can see immediate meaning in term of vocabulary recognition (Canning-Wilson, 2000) Using videos in language teaching can enhance students' understanding and retention of information (Herron, 1984) Leaming from video clips is also a chance for students being exposed to the non-verbal communication such as facial expression, body language as well as pi-oiuinciation, stress (Murugavel, 2005)

Thanks to videos, students can improve their spoken English (Sun, 2005) As listening and speaking arc the two major skills students should acquire, the video materials not only help

lo present the target language more vividly but get students to use English thev have learned in talking about the videos (Hcmcl, 2005)

Also, Vidcos are an useful access acquainting students with native speaker modes (Pctridcs, 2005) They bring students all kinds of situations, with full contextual back-up that help

on English -language culture (Sherman, 2003), for example , short documentaries can open

up students' eyes to different cultures ways of life; therefore, the aspects of culture are seemed as good and idea for any people using video material with classes (Shemian, 2003)

Furthermore, language teaching, when added with video allows difTerentiation of teaching and learning according to the students' abilities, leaming styles and personalities (Bum and Reed, 1994) Since video as a moving picture book, gives access to things, places, people, events, and behavior, regardless of the language used, and is worth thousands of picture dictionaries and magazines, using this tool pemiits teachers widen the classroom range of activities (Arthur, 1999) Teaching with videos promotes a pleasant environment through provision of a variety of activities

Obviously, leamers leam primarily because of what they bring to their classroom experience in terms of their perceived needs, motivation, past experiences, background knowledge, interests and creative skills (Combe and Kinney, 1999)

To conclude, as Arthur (1999) claims:

Video can give students realistic models to itnitate for role- play: can increase awareness of other cultures by teaching appropriateness and suitability: can strengthen audio/visual linguistic perceptions sitnultaneously: can widen the classrootn repertoire and range of activities: can help utilize the latest technology

to facilitate language learning: can teach direct obserwtion of the paralinguistic features found in association with the tatget language: can be used to help when training students in ESP related scenarios and language: can offer a visual rcitiforccmcnt of the tatget language and can lower anxiety when practicing the skill of listening (p.7, cited in Canning-Wilson, 2000)

2.8 Drawbacks of using videos in teaching language

Despite great benefits taken to language leamers, video likes any technology, can't avoid some weaknesses According to some researchers, students can meet several difficulties if

it is not selected carefully If visual or videos are poor, simple, complex or irrelevant to leaming aim and if their illustration is tidy, meaningless, that video-visual aids will not profit learners (Canning - Wilson, 2000)

Teachers are difficult to find the videos that match student needs because some kinds of video such as commercial videos are scare and limited (Ketchen, Morris et al, 2005) For teachers, that ihcy usually meet troubles in using videos in class is selecting appropriate movies and having time-consuming preparation For students, they have little occasion to communicate with classmates, with the teachers Moreover, some of them even prefer watching the plot to listening the language (Sun, 2005) In some cases, students will feel tired of catching with the language if the plot of video is too long and complex (Moobin, 2008)

In short, if students can not comprehend the video to an acceptable level, initial enthusiasm

is lost and the entire endeavor may lead to frustration for both students and teacher (Gainer, 2005)

Conclusion

This chapter reviews the pros and cons of video-assisted activities to promote second or foreign language teaching in general and speaking skills in particular One of the major advantages of video-assisted language activities as discussed in this chapter is they help to motivate the students and maintain that motivation Another advantage is they stimulate students' participation The next chapter presents the study

Experiencing three years of unity, Ha Tinh University quickly develops about quality and quanlily of students and staff of teachers Every year, the University of Ha Tinh receives thousand of students into studies; including many inlemational students from Lao, China

Enhancing the quality of students is the focus of Ha tinh University; therefore, the selection

of new teachers with high qualification is hold strictly Also, the improvement of specialty and study for higher level at home or abroad is a compulsory task for all staff of teachers here Besides, the well-equipped classrooms with leaching devices such as televisions, computers, over projects are available

3.1.2 The English Department

English department has fifteen teachers: eight teachers are in M.A degree standard, among them, two people have finished their studies abroad and one is continuing his PhD thesis

in an English speaking country The others are mainly young teachers who have high qualificalion and get zealousncss in their teaching Each year, English department receives over 306 new students with two different levels: university level and junior college level Student of college level is trained in three years to become teachers of I:nglish for secondary and primary schools of Ha Tinh province Therefore, the mark applied for these subjects is lower than university ones However, these students are strictly selected from the national examination entrance and according to regulation of the local university

3.1.3 The students' background and needs

Different trom university students, junior college students are from different districts of

Ha Tinh province Most of them are from mral or remote regions where their families mainly live on farming; therefore, equipping devices aiding to English studies such as computers, internet or softwares like students in other places seems impossible Moreover,

Ha Tinh until now is a young and sleepy country As condition of economics is still undeveloped, tourism is not exploited properly yet, the chance for the students to leam or communicate with native English speakers is scarce Deficiency of important devices for self-education and lack of language environment exert great effect on the quality of learning English especially in term of speaking skill Therefore, the efforts to develop oral proficiency for major English students at Ha Tinh University are always appreciated

3.1.4 Course book and teaching materials for teaching speaking skill

Like other universities, major English students at Ha Tinh University have four years with eight semesters of learning speaking for university level and three years with six semesters for junior college level

The students at both levels have fifteen weeks for each semester and have two 45 minute periods for every week They do not have speaking lessons in the last semester (the 8''^ semester for university students and the b"^ semester for junior college ones)

The main textbooks for teaching speaking skills are four volumes for speaking onl> that were modified from series of books of Da Nang University Each volume includes 15 lessons with different themes, arranged from simplicity to complexity However, these textbooks only provide the topics as well as concrete situations for discussion, but not deal with vocabulary, pronounce, or intonation Therefore, looking for further material and creating appropriate activities to fill the gap arc extremely necessary

3.2 Research Methods

3.2.1 Participants

This actiiMi research was performed during the second semester on two first-year English major classes of junior college level: kl6A and kI6B The total number of participants is 79 students (40 sludcnls of kl6A and 39 students of kl6B), among them 4 male and 75 female However, there arc only 77 students completing the questionnaire (2 students were absent from class)

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All participants are freshmen, so they are very young with average age of 18,5 Of 79 students, 40 students know the way of using computer network but do not use them effectively, and only 4 students have personal computer

The first students of junior college were chosen for this research because of some reasons Firstly, these students have just left high schools where they were mainly focused on doing written exercises to serve imminent competition; thus, they had a big gap in speaking in general and in term of vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation in particular Secondly, since they did not have favorable leaming condition to exploit available websites or useful softwares for practicing speaking skill, these students are expected to participate in fresh video-assisted activities actively

3.2.2 Instruments

To collect necessary data and information for the research, four instruments were used; they are small talk, observation, reflective journals and questionnaire These instruments were chosen because of several reasons as discussed bellow

- Observation,

As an action research, observation is one of the important instruments that provided a perfect opportunity for the teacher- the researcher also, to have a thorough observ aiion on the performance of the students Firstly, from observation the teacher can have initial judgment about real situation of the students and then view how active students arc when participating in the classroom speaking activities with videos as well as see the whole of

leaming atmosphere of the classroom Observation was conducted over a period o^ 15

weeks when the research program was in perfomiance All the participants' special attitudes towards learning speaking with videos or without videos were taken note

- Small talk

Small talk is also a useful way that permits the author to collect initial information about the students' learning condition, their anxiety and the needs as well

The teacher had a small talk with all the students for the first periods to find out about the

ways they got used to practice speaking as well as material source they based on to dcv elop

I R U N G T A M t H O U G T i H i ' ; ^

their oral proficiency This open talk also supplied the teachers with some information about the students' anxiety in speaking lessons and their ambition in this speaking course

- Questionnaire

Questionnaire is chosen for this study because it is extremely versatile and uniquely capable of gathering a huge amount of information in a short time "The researcher can collect a large amount of information in less an hour" (Brown, 2001) Moreover, questionnaire is easy to construct and simple when using The answers are usually recorded

in some way so that they become available for reflection and analysis (Wallance, 1998)

The questionnaire was designed into 6 parts with 22 questions Part one including 10 different statements aims at determining if the video clips given are appropriate to the students' language proficiency as well as finding out the benefits of the v ideo-assisted activities to the participants in term of motivation and aspects of oral proficiency such as words, intonation, pronunciation, the use of natural language

Part two consisting of 8 statements mainly focus on the improvement of the students after learning lo speak with the video clips and their preference between the activities with videos or without videos

The questions in the part one and part two were designed in both affirmative and negative form These varieties were evaluated through arranged items with a 5- point rating scale so that the students could indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statements given

Two open questions in part three and four were built in order to discover the aspects that arc the most beneficial and drawbacks the participants met in leaming process with the videos

A question of part five aims at checking the rate of speaking skill that the students had after finishing the speaking course

The content of the last question m part 6 is lo figure out whether students like leaming to speak with videos or not

- Rejlective Journals

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According to Oiler (1979), questionnaire is often problematic because the respondents

"tend to give answers that are associated with their perceptions of the predispositions of the

researcher" (p 17, cited in Liu, 2005) Therefore, reflecfive journals were used in the study

to supply additional data about personal and affecfive variables in language leaming The participants were asked to write joumals (in English or in Vietnamese if necessary) for ten successive weeks to reflect and comment on what they benefited and what they disliked from the lessons using video clips Their personal remarks on the video- assisted activities were also encouraged

3.2.3 Procedures

The study was conducted during the second term of the academic year of 2010 Ten

video-clips from 2 to 7 minutes long with speaking activities were presented in about seventeen to twenty-five minutes at the end of the lessons from the third week to the thirteenth week (except the seventh week) Almost of the selective video clips have clear intonation, pronunciation and various words Their content and language use are quite simple so that

the students at intermediate level could understand them

For the first week, the teacher, after making the acquaintance of the students and describing some information relating to the course, had small talk with the students lo understand more leaning condition and the students' needs

From the third week on, when the videos were started operating, the teacher introduced about the genre as well as the purjiose of videos that the students were going to see Then, the tasks for students were provided in which the teachers would guide them w hat they had

to do after watching those video clips At that moment, the students were asked to write journals for every week when each video-assisted activity finished The author randomly collected 10 joumals for each week

In the 13"' week, when the speaking activities with videos were complete, the teacher handed the questionnaire lo the students and asked them to fulfill it in the most sincere way Ten reflective joumals of the tenth week were also collected

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA COLLECTION AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, results of the study are presented followed by discussion and analysis of data The data has been collected from small talk, observation, questionnaire and reflective journals The information from the small talk, observation and reflective joumals were provided in case of necessity when the data from the survey needs more explanation The questionnaire, on the other hand, was subjected to content analysis The results are statistically presented in the forms of tables and chart

4.1 Data collection and analysis

4.1.1 The students' comprehension toward the video clips

Before finding out the answer for three questions of the study, the author would like to check the data from item four of part two in which the content aims at figuring out if the videos given are appropriate to the students' language proficiency or not This information

is great important because if students- as mentioned in the literature review did not comprehend the video to an acceptable level, it would take the initial enthusiasm away and turn their entire endeavor into frustration (Gainer, 2005) The pie below shows this problem

Chart 1 The students ' comprehension toward the video-clips

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understand but in some videos, the speakers spoke so fast that they could not catch the meaning of words However, a large number of the students (70%) negated the idea given, among them, 23% emphasized their strong objection on this item This also means most of the participants understood the language use in the videos Particular important, all these implied that the videos supplied are quite appropriate to the students' language level

4.1.2 The extent to which the video-assisted activities enhance the students' motivation to practice speaking English

The extent to which the video-assisted activities motivate students to practice speaking English was revealed in the statement 10 of the part one and the statements 7, 8 of part two The data from these is presented in table 1 below All numbers refer to the percentage of the students who chose each response category

Table 1

1(101)

2(711)

3(.S11)

Strongly disagree Disagree Not sure Agree Strongly agree

1 feel more interested in speaking English even when my English is limited

This result was reaffirmed on the last part of the survey When asked whether they would like to continue leaming with video clips, almost of the students (96%) expressed a desire

to be taught speaking skill with videos The rest (only 4%) did not show their precise choice for the question as reported in Table 2

Table 2 The students ' willingness to learn speaking skill with video clips

Willingness to leam speaking

skill with video clips

96%

Unwillingness to leam speaking skill with video clips

to participate in video-assisted activities This was further explained by another student, "1 get many things from learning to speak with the videos It not only gives me a comfortable atmosphere but also supplies me with many opportunities to familiarize myself with native speakers' voice through sounds and images" (Hang, kI6A)

Especially noteworthy was the result that more a half of the students emphasized their interest in learning with the video clips As some students reported "this is the first time 1

am introduced to the way of leaning speaking like that It actually makes my study more significant (Thuy, kl6A) "Leaming with the video clips changes my way of practice spoken language I do not completely depend on a dictionary to look up like what I did before I would like to exploit more videos on line to improve m\ speaking level" (Van kl6B)

The data from a questionnaire and the information from the students' reflective joumals demonstrated that the video-assisted activities stimulated the language students more in their speaking leaming process From observation, the author also realized that once the classroom speaking activities with video clips were hold up the classroom atmosphere completely changed It seems to be more exciting and joyful The students became agile and lively in dividing the class into groups or pairs as well as participating in discussion or

Table 2 The students' willingness to learn speaking skill with video clips

Willingness to leam speaking

skill with video clips

96%

Unwillingness to leam speaking skill with video clips

to participate in video-assisted activities This was further explained by another student, "1 get many things from learning to speak with the videos It not only gives me a comfortable atmosphere but also supplies me with many opportunities to familiarize myself with native speakers' voice through sounds and images" (Hang, kl6A)

Especially noteworthy was the result that more a half of the students emphasized ihcir interest in learning with the video clips As some students reported "this is the first time I

am introduced to the way of leaning speaking like that It actually makes my study more significant (Thuy, kI6A) "Leaming with the video clips changes my way of practice spoken language I do not completely depend on a dictionary to look up like what 1 did before I would like to exploit more videos on line to improve my speaking level" (Van kl6B)

The data from a questionnaire and the information from the students' reflective joumals demonstrated that the video-assisted activities stimulated the language students more in their speaking leaming process From observation, the author also realized that once the classroom speaking activities with video clips were hold up, the classroom atmosphere completely changed It seems to be more exciting and joyful The students became agile and lively in dividing the class into groups or pairs as well as participating m discussion or

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